Fooliolo's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tower of Heaven]

Solid game

To be fair, you did say that the game was difficult. But to a person not familiar with platforming games, you probably did something incredibly cruel at level 3. Oh well, it's all about solving dilemmas no?

Since the game was so short, even for a first run through (which is rather unfortunate and detracts from the score), I decided I would screw around with the mechanics. There are some interesting things to note...

-- In some levels, if you jumped and hugged the right-most wall, you'll fall below the level and be in a state of "limbo" until the god smites you for being too slow. lol
-- You are exempt from the rules while you are in the non-level rooms. Technically you are still within the tower walls and must obey them, no? On the other hand, that would be annoying after working your ass off for secrets.
-- I couldn't get the Tenacious Eid medal, no matter what I did, short of playing custom levels.
-- If you die in a level but then you close the game and come back to continue it, it will not register the deaths. Cheater method for getting the Eternal Sanctity medal. (stupid level 9 >_>)

Concerning the secrets, the ending changes depending on whether you found any, none, or all three. I didn't witness the original ending dialogue until after I found all three secrets, so I was pretty darn confused as to what meaning the game had until after I saw it.

Overall, the game experience was cool, music was great, repeated decapitation for touching stuff was gravy, and it was just too darn short.

[Epic War 4]

This game delivers!

Unique art, LOTS of fighting and some pretty epic moments are guaranteed. I'd have to say Epic War 4 brings more difficulty than Epic War 3 when you ask for it, and there's definitely more strategy involved than just a simple grind-fest, although grinding is okay too.

Now, there are a few things that grind my gears...

-- Chaining invulnerability spells beats nearly any level. With a max level castle Altar (for mana) and max Shield, it turns all but the last few epic challenges a stroll in the park once you wait a little bit for that 400 mana. Just about the only things where it needs a little help are when killing the Golden Angel (harder than killing the castle), Hard+ Goblin Madness (just annoying) and Epic level 16 (lmao!).

-- Goblin Madness, while funny at first with an omfg moment later on, eventually becomes annoying and really serves to show the flaws in the game. Come on, let it rain goblins all you want, but if I want the fking army advancing on the castle, don't make them backtrack and try to kill something behind them, especially the death goblins.

-- Two super soldiers. Super Succubus in Epic level 1 was just balls in your mouth. Wipes out half your army in one attack, and if you somehow put a serious dent in its health (without grinding enough money for all the cheap tactic stuff), it just retreats and regenerates. First time I beat that level, it didn't even die! Hell, I tried killing it, still harder than knocking down the castle! All the other levels, with exception to Shooting Stars on Hard and some of the challenge levels, were easier than that. And about Shooting Stars, the super Elf Sniper was ridiculous as well. Each arrow hurts a buttload, and they shower it all over the place. And we have to deal with TWO of them!? I couldn't think of any reasonable way to deal with that combined with their army, so I just chained invulnerability and swiftly brought destruction. (Epic Shooting Stars is ridiculously easy thanks to the Great Diablo titan and some levels in Heal spell, but the aforementioned tactic is still faster.) The super sylph is a joke compared to those two feggots.

-- The arrow units cannot be obtained until you get the 4th hero. With that said, there's only three arrow units available to you in the whole game. Four arrow attacks if you count the spell. That's quite a bit of investment involved if you wanted to exploit monster weaknesses involving arrows, like say, killing the Golden Angel at level 16 for early farming.

.

Some of the smaller, minor things that could be improved on...
-- I don't know if it's just me, but I can't get the TrojanDestroyer medal. I've done everything in the game too.
-- Maybe you could have redone the hotkeys so that they're easier to reach, like say qwe asd zxc. Then again there's little to no twitch response required of your units to play the game, so the mouse works fine.
-- It was really hard to see the lifebar of the boss in Hard mode level 16. Why? The mana bar was in the way.
-- You could explain what "resist" meant. I thought it was synonymous with "strong vs X". Would have made my planning a lot easier if I figured it out earlier.
-- It seemed like your artist was too lazy to animate the body of the Phoenix.

That's it for my criticism, due to space. You can assume everything else was generally in the right direction in what is desired in a game =)

My personal farming strategy for the Grindfest medal: Epic Goblin Madness.
Take any units that can advance to the castle while attacking, like Goblins and the Lord of Fire (titan) and perhaps Valkyries; chain invulnerability. Get Guardian Angel (titan) so the goblins don't touch your castle, and she makes a nice insurance against the last Revenge Wave (death goblins), but you want to save Shield for invulnerability just in case. Kill all the red goblins that spawn, including those from Revenge Waves (LOTS!!), and kill as many death goblins as you care to (only non element attacks hurt them; level 5 Meteor Blast at most guarantees they die). You'll get 500-600k gold each run.

[Epos]

KISS type RPG has great execution!

Great stuff going around. My biggest gripe is that you failed to explain what the stats do, and my second complaint in terms of game mechanics is explaining the cost of spells and your MP quantity (though I guess it doesn't matter much). Following up on that, are the uselessness of the 3 TP spells; absurd costs, and it's not worth using on the random encounters. And when it comes to bosses, it's really inefficient. Last but not least, it would be nice if you told us the exact numbers and such when we're considering passive talents and turns taken during battle.

--=-=-__SPOILERS__-=-=--

Tactic of safety for bosses:
Spec someone to be a dedicated healer by pumping him up with magic and speed, with some vitality. It is especially important that you get lots of speed, or else bosses will run circles around your team, taking two or even three turns, and possibly wipe you out, given how devastating their attacks are (especially Vira Cocha). Polymath Signet combined with the Serendipity skill is a good plus.

Random bosses, in order of area encountered, in my experience:
Elo (the thief) (Signet increases rare item drop rate)
Raging Boulder (Signet gives great physical defense; costs you your physical attack)
Polymath (swamp) (Signet gives a battle orb when you cast magic spells)
X and Y (forget their names) (Signet causes wearer to be targeted more often)

Troublesome Bosses:
- Garh Maka - Use water magic to bring him out of the earth. He'll take significant damage while exposed, but will switch to a single target fireball attack.
- Queen Angeline - If you don't have a dedicated fighter... good luck! A fighter with some stacks of Fixate can 1-hit the divinity sapplings. Angeline herself doesn't have much HP actually, but make sure she doesn't receive healing, as you can't just rush damage on her.
- Vira Cocha - This monster does excessive amounts of damage, mixed with instant death here and there. The spell Revelation is your insurance here; Cocha can end it for you easily if you're unlucky. The Guardian Signet is also recommended, found from X and Y.

[AN Escape Series #5]

0:48

I am ashamed to have gotten stuck at the part where the electricity was used =(

At any rate though, I thought that some of the puzzles involved were fairly difficult, but they weren't impossible, nor did they involve pure guessing. I like that! And you also avoided pixel hunting for the most part. It's a simple escape game I can recommend to my friends if they get board one day.

One has to wonder what the room possibly could have been used for though if the only way in was the hatch...

[LARRY: Gnomergeddon]

Oh gawd gnomes!

They make the game l4g horrendously! Such hidden super ability makes playing the game super hard!

No seriously though, it runs fine in the first five waves or so. But when the waves get longer, the more guys come, and the more corpses and blood splatter there is, and it makes the game waaaay slow. Talk about a let-down in game immersion experience =(

As for the actual game difficulty, let's just say it depends on the weapon you're using. Wanna make it hard? Fight with fists, and see how long it takes for you to even take down the simplest of gnomes, making securing a better weapon pretty dam hard. Wanna make it easy? Keep your starting weapon! Try to grab the lvl 3 large gnome's weapon, as it slows the enemies you hit, and if you're lucky, it'll be a 13 power weapon. It's okay to chuck your weapon for nice damage (especially against wizards), as long as you remember to pick it back up. Eventually, you'll want a small weapon that glows red; I ended up with a 13 power sword that does +15 whatever, being able to 1-hit all the super small shyt. Don't lose it, you'll probably never find another one again in the later levels. (As fun as the large weapons are, they're just too slow, I don't recommend them)

Game play and mechanics were nice and fluid as long as the gnomes didn't use their super hidden power to l4g the game with their dead bodies, and the stamina system seemed like an annoyance at first, until you realize it really mattered against the nastier gnomes.

I liked how when you chucked weapons at people, it stuck into them and stuff like that, including the large ones (a little ridiculous, but okay).

Overall, I enjoyed the experience, but it might ultimately be forgotten if you weren't already a standing name on newgrounds. It has the feel and play of a typical finite arcade game, and it has its share of flaws and frustrations as well as the fun.

I'll look forward to your other works!

[Knight Elite]

Fun game!

First time playing through, I decided I would specialize in little men and such while getting all the fort upgrades. It was okay, although I didn't do too well in the end.

But after seeing I was the only superman of the team, I decided I would try all-out sword style. Getting the Orcbane was ridiculous in itself: bought the crystal mine and the stuff before it, bought the prerequisite buildings for the Orcbane, bought the minimap, bought the Longsword and Crossbow, then I did nonstop farming until wave 43 or so before I could afford the fking monster of an overkill sword. With the Sword Mastery maxed out, a single combo kills the orange dudes, and if you're lucky with crits, the big guys with the swords as well. That was WAY more satisfying, being a one-man army! I cried a little when I was up against a huge arsenal of bombers and the wave 48(?) shamans though. By the time I was done with the game, I also bought the Templar Shield and almost got enough for the Adamantine armor.

Will try out elite mode in the future =)

But in the meantime, there are a few complaints to the system.

First thing comes from where the money spills from the enemies. Most notably, the money that gets missed a LOT are the ones that get stuck underneath the buildings, and the notorious top-left gate.

The intro sequence runs ridiculously slowly for some reason. You might want to look into it. Also, there are a few issues with loading games and whatnot: enemies would disappear (but their shadows remain), weapons would not function correctly, and on a few rare occasions you'd have gained or lost a few buildings and skills.

Anywho, you make pretty fun games. Keep up the good work!

[Thanks Tanks!]

Cool casual game

It was a nice and short game, and I liked how you kept it relatively simple and you could customize tanks.

Those were the main selling points though. There's a lot of things about the game that I feel could be done better and whatnot.

--The physics engine you used was probably not something you should have implemented for living tanks, unless you intended the possibility that tanks could rollover and become immobile. Case in point, sometimes that would mysteriously happen at the enemy factory. And the 2nd factory you get in the level Double Trouble is more or less useless because some tanks you spawn will bounce on the ground and land upside down.
--The Plasma Sling isn't exactly the best weapon out there. DPS-wise, it's mediocre, and the accuracy is rather misleading in some cases. The only reason why I've ever wanted it was because it wins the level Runners (unless you get unlucky), and maybe for the turrets in the last level.
--The big fat boss tanks are soooooooo slow, all you have to do is amass tanks and wait for them to come. Proceed to shred them.
--Scrolling speed is pretty slow. I would like for it to be much faster in case I wanted to use a factory behind the front line.
--Making wheels the most expensive parts to buy with prestige points is probably unjustified, seeing how body and weaponry probably play a bigger role given your limited controls over your tanks. Enduring slow tanks for the first half of the game wasn't exactly the most fun thing ever.
--Sometimes the UI for the factory got in the way when my strategy was to camp tanks on the factory. And sometimes when I clicked for tanks to go, some would be set to suicide mode. I don't suppose there's much you can do about the latter problem, given this is a 2D game... except maybe have bubbles hovering over each individual tank?

Having said that, there were a few things that I personally loved.
--Using big meat shield tanks and a squad of small, flamethrower tanks. Toast bosses in 3 seconds flat!
--Numbers were nice and small. Like, the cheapest tank was worth 3 coins, and the most expensive was like around 20 or something.
--In the Runners level, if you got shelled by the death tanks, body parts fly everywhere!

All in all, if you were going for a casual short game, you did a good job of it. Anything else however, and it's back to the drawing board.

[Level Up!]

Cool concept, yet it was limited.

It's possible to defeat Nightmare with only lvl 1 Love. It requires Hardy (touch the lava a lot) and Regen (touch a spike plant FIRST). Either that, or you're really good at dodging! It's also possible to up your Heal and Fortitude to lvl 5 in the first day (lava again). Then just ride it out with Nightmare and hope for the best. And don't touch his stationary fireballs, they hurt. A lot.

As for the rest of the game, the medals don't work (and I beat the game before the system got setup), your character turns invisible sometimes when you fight Nightmare, and when I reloaded a game, gems that I previously collected would no longer be faded, and in fact collecting them again would just cause most of them to orbit around me forever. This includes the huge gems. I also ended up being able to poke my head into the ceiling a few times. I don't know what happened to cause these glitches to spring up like locusts, but it was playing fine before.

I was hoping there was more you could do to lvl up your stuff and continue unlocking new areas, but the game didn't last long. Oh well. It was nice that you had the option of either buying expensive upgrades from the Squarians or complete challenges and buy cheap upgrades from the Roundites, although the Radar upgrade from the Roundites is questionable.

I kinda wished there was a way to dispose of enemies. Sort of frustrating that there are lots of enemies in certain places and the only thing you can do is jump over them or Dash through. It's also very annoying that the Dash thing doesn't grant you any defense against enemies other than being unstoppable and suffering more damage.

But in the meantime I'll just wait for your update and then enjoy the game once more!

(The boy can't jump because his X key is actually the shoot button, lol)

[Spot the Dot 2]

Simple and fun!

I like the concept and expressed focus of this simple game.

It's also a good thing there's no online highscore list because there's one method of cheating that's guaranteed to go past 50 and cause the dots to become invisible. Not that I tried it, that would defeat the purpose of the game =P

RockLou responds:

Being rainman?

[Ge.ne.sis]

It seemed like you gave up working on this game.

Good stuff first. The story and setting just sucked me into the game. It was pretty wonderful and I actually got daydreams of those places. Creepy xD Of all things, the environment is probably the most notable element of this game! The foundation of the theory you introduce in this game (multiple reality timelines, Genesis, Apocalypse, yada) is also very believable, and there's no sense of "this came out of nowhere" after the initial explanation. And by that, the final bad guy's logic (not necessarily his motive) could be seen beforehand by the player.

Now for the bad stuff, because I'm picky. Stop reading if you don't like waves of criticism.

After about twenty minutes of playing it, it is starting to scream at me "I'm unpolished and I've got aesthetic holes everywhere!" I'm not talking about the game being glitchy, I'm talking about how battling characters warp around, characters moving through trees and rocks when you tell them to move, and choppy animation. Holy crap! They're eyesores compared to the beautiful places you've made for this game, which, btw, is also lacking, seeing how it's really only 18-ish rooms large through 2-3 main areas (subjective) with battlefields littered all over the place.

The difficulty of the game also spikes quite dramatically once you have the option to do the sidequests. I appreciate that you meant for this game to be challenging and all, but I kinda find it ridiculous that there are plenty of enemies that can potentially kill your "tanks" in one turn, let alone everyone else. It was basically blitz when killing Cerebus. Probably the most notorious example is the Shadow Master.

In terms of progression, I find it a bit stupid that you had to fight people in a specific order to get all the moonshards. I found them to be of approximately the same difficulty (actually I beat the tree and vine duo without anyone going below 40% HP). Character stat development also felt fairly linear and not very RPG-ish, and combining arbitrary lvl ups as you go through the story makes it a lot like an enclosed hallway; no going left or right, just follow the path!

Other stuff to point out:
--When Neraine gets the Death tarot, when attempting to summon both tarots at once, you get some error saying that it is already summoned. Wait no that's not right... Death is out there, yes, but the High Priestess isn't.
--When selecting field abilities, it would be much more convenient to click on the characters rather than little boxes in the prompt window. It's just so much more natural, especially when you want to heal somebody or move The Fool.
--You should be more descriptive about what benefits you get when you up a stat. Just how much defense would you get if you upped endurance, for example.
--How to win battles: Summon High Priestess, then use her scan ability. Restart. Adopt appropriate strategy. I frown on this kind of meta-gaming, although I suppose it's hard to prevent. You did quite well with the Holy Egg however. Kudos!
--I don't know if this was an oversight or the key to beating the final bad guy, but blue damage does not trigger damage reflection.
--Gely's slow shot acted as if it were black element instead of white when fighting the Holy Egg. The same cannot be said for Soul Pact.
--When fighting Gold Feeder for the first time, I noticed the heart at turn 2, but I didn't realize it was floating really high in the air. Thus I thought my guys were just standing on top of it and something else had to be done, when in reality it was in the square just below it.
--Marking whether the character/monster in question can "fly" or not would be quite helpful in making decisions.
--On a similar note, friendlies shouldn't really blockade someone else when they're passing through. Ridiculous.
--Have you even tried to kill the last optional boss on the highest difficulty setting?

I anticipate seeing what more you can do for this game when you produce Part 2. But at least you've come this far, and it sure is something to present!