force of natured
Reviews for "Elemental Force"
When will EF2 come out?
hyugaHouse responds:
I can not say for sure, but not soon :(
A good strategy game. I like how customizable it is; This game has different pathways for the heroes and varied skills and strategies to use. Also, different evolutions have their own skill points and you can port some of the skills into other evolutions, which enhances the gameplay.
There are still some things to add though. There are no ways to get a more detailed view of each evolutions' stats in the skill menu. Speed, armor, movement range, and other stats can't be seen, which hinders betterplanning. Skill descriptions are also kind of unclear, and I found myself levelling every skill at least once just to know what they do because I need to try them out in battles no thanks to vague description.
Also, healer issues. The heroes has no natural mp regen and their skills consume so much MP, so you have to rely on your healer to provide other heroes with MP. The problem is that the stage 1 water hero is the only hero that can do that. Hell, even stage 1's HP heal is better than stage 2's. I found myself not able to use stage 2 water heroes because of that. I do understand that this gives more variation to the game, but I think it is kind of weird that stage 2 (water) heroes are overclassed by stage 1 hero.
Overall, it is a nice game, but more details and options should be added.
hyugaHouse responds:
Thank you for response!
Now, we are working on EF2, and we will keep you advices in mind.
I absolutely love this game. Being able to customize the passive abilities based on any of the incarnations of one of the elemental's makes for such a large variety of customized teams and countless hours of enjoyment. I'll be playing with this for months probably screwing around with different options and trying to find the best builds for each upgrade.
A cool idea would be to allow a team to be saved under specific codes then have the code loaded into another game where online players could have their teams battle each other. Not that that would be easy but very plausible. Hopefully you think it over. Look forward to more from you and would love if you took a shot at my sheep concept.
hyugaHouse responds:
Thank you :)
We can't make PVP-system now, but we are going to make it in EF2. But thanks for advice.
This is excellent! It's harder than most people realize to create a balanced, engaging turn-based strategy. You've done a marvelous job. The game has a great deal of replay value due to all the different character evolutions. In fact, when I finished the game I still hadn't unlocked them all.
I disagree with the reviewers who say the evolutions aren't useful. It seem to me that every form has its niche, and they require different styles of play. What's good for one person may not be good for another. There are some forms I have lesser interest in, but that doesn't mean they are useless. Also, newly evolved characters start a few levels lower than the current enemies and require some extra work to get up to speed. But because we can select previously finished levels, it's possible to grind for levels. This isn't as hard as it might sound, as levels tend to come very quickly. I did have a few character who seems to lag, probably because they were dying too often, but everyone eventually caught up.
There are a lot of really nice mechanical touches, like the ability to reset all the character skills, the fact that each evolution uses its own skill points and levels --which let the player really explore their options, as opposed to forcing choices that can't be undone-- and the fact that there's a "sleep" button right there at the bottom of the screen for turn skipping.
I don't have much to say about the graphics. They satisfactory, and games of this sort rarely require eye-candy visuals since the value is all in the gameplay. The music, however, is great.
Only have a few things to add. One, it would be nice to be able to temporarily pass a character's turn and then come back to them later in that turn. There are a lot of tactical possibilities here. For example, you could pass on a healing character to move a slower character into healing range, and then re-select the first character and use his turn to heal the second one. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this would make it too easy to lure enemies out and unbalance them game. Play around with the concept.
There might be some way to do this that I'm not seeing, but I'd like to be able to select characters on the screen so I can see their stats, range of movement/attack, current HP and MP, etc, for both enemies and friends. It would help to plan the moves better.
A better idea of what the enemies can do would help. There were some enemies toward the end of the game that seemed very resistant to physical attacks, which actually makes some forms rather useless against them. Other enemies would damage an entire area with what appeared to be a single melee attack. I wasn't sure what to expect some of the time, even after I had seen the enemy in action.
Try to work on explaining what the skills do a little better. Some were confusing or unclear.
Lastly, maybe a bit of story would be nice. Even if you don't add any, though, try to signal the ending of the game somehow. After level 26, I was looking around for the next level before I decided that I must have won. Leave the map open so players can keep unlocking more forms and achievements, but be clear that the adventure has been completed.
Really wonderful job.
hyugaHouse responds:
Thank you! Nice to hear that you have enjoyed the game.
Thanks for advices. We'll keep it in mind when we make our next game.
You can longtap(longclick) on character to see his stats/skills. It doesn't show his movement speed/initiative etc., but you can see his attack/skills/description etc.