The Traveler (PRE-RELEASE B)

Cliffhanger intensifies.

Those bats caught me off-guard!

 

The jump for the secret is hard! I only could find it after the hint from kanpachi, and using the map system.

 

Spoiler

I didn't take a lot of pictures to help review this, so I'll probably be all over the place with this.

To begin, I appreciate the work done to the files. Only the necessary files are there, and few mistakes were made (I did notice that the manual is still mentioned in the readme, and even though I prefer it at fullscreen, it seems most people like windowed better).

The title screen is really nice looking (but as a nitpick I think the version number at the bottom should be changed).

The dialogue is part of what I really like about this mod, and where I think a lot of the problems come from. A combination of inconsistent spacing, misspelled words, sloppy grammar, and flat-out bad wording sprinkled throughout definitely broke the immersion for me.

Belief is spelled incorrectly, and you must've tabbed after the comma by mistake.

There were a few instances where the text got cut off at the end of a line. Another notable occurrence was the Igor fight.

Of course, those are only a couple of examples, so I hope you can comb through your script and fix some of the other ones. If you're having a tough time finding any more, I suppose I wouldn't mind playing through this again.

But on to the positive side of it: you made it feel like a real world around me. You were able to describe the area without boring me, and you gave me more of a reason to explore. The second-time conversations with a lot of people not only felt like a nice touch, but does wonders when I don't want to have to mash buttons to get through dialogue I may or may not have already seen.

There are a lot of NPCs to talk to in the village. This isn't actually a bad thing because of how you handled it, though. Usually it's just short tidbits of info that enhances the world or gives you a hint, which is a thumbs up. What would have helped, however, would be more unique NPCs. There were too many generic Mimigas, which makes remembering who you still want to talk to more of a puzzle.

The Balrog boss fight felt kind of unnecessary?? He's supposed to be your friend and all now, but he suddenly just wants to fight? Really all it did was made me think you were too lazy to do something else with the Shack, so you tried painting over it with the placement of the blocks and the dialogue. That's where another minor problem of mine comes: it feels a little too similar to Cave Story. Not the fact that it's in the same world or anything, but the progression too closely resembles the original game. The village immediately leading up to a Balrog fight, and not to mention a very Egg Corridor-esque area leading up to an Igor fight. If this game can branch out and find more of its own identity, I feel that would be the best direction to take.

Level design: nothing stand-out, but it definitely gets the job done. My complaint here is probably going to have to be the same as the above: too similar to the original. I've played Egg Corridor before, I don't need to play it again. The intro path is excusable because it doesn't much resemble any other area in Cave Story and because it most likely serves to get you acquainted. My hope is that, in future areas, you experiment with more unique enemy combinations and stray away from the vanilla layout.

I will always have a personal bias against vanilla Cave Story music because, well, it's used in 90% of mods. I noticed there was a small remix of Plant, which was interesting, but didn't do much for me. I actually really dig the Egg Corridor music though. It's neat to hear CSWii music being redone in the ORG format, so if anything I wouldn't mind more of that.

Oh, and a glitch. You can damage boost up a ledge:

In summation, I wish that you will eventually fix up the problems with the dialogue and break from the Cave Story mold that a lot of mods tend to get stuck in.

_____________________

This mod is impressive. It's easy to tell that, at least compared to most mods, a lot of effort was put into this. The only other time that I had felt so whimsical and charmed by a mod during my first playthrough of it was NoStoryJustCave, and both times it was likely because there was such a shift in quality from what I'm used to. Good luck with finishing it, I mean it.

 

Spoiler

I didn't take a lot of pictures to help review this, so I'll probably be all over the place with this.

To begin, I appreciate the work done to the files. Only the necessary files are there, and few mistakes were made (I did notice that the manual is still mentioned in the readme, and even though I prefer it at fullscreen, it seems most people like windowed better).

The title screen is really nice looking (but as a nitpick I think the version number at the bottom should be changed).

The dialogue is part of what I really like about this mod, and where I think a lot of the problems come from. A combination of inconsistent spacing, misspelled words, sloppy grammar, and flat-out bad wording sprinkled throughout definitely broke the immersion for me.

Belief is spelled incorrectly, and you must've tabbed after the comma by mistake.

There were a few instances where the text got cut off at the end of a line. Another notable occurrence was the Igor fight.

Of course, those are only a couple of examples, so I hope you can comb through your script and fix some of the other ones. If you're having a tough time finding any more, I suppose I wouldn't mind playing through this again.

But on to the positive side of it: you made it feel like a real world around me. You were able to describe the area without boring me, and you gave me more of a reason to explore. The second-time conversations with a lot of people not only felt like a nice touch, but does wonders when I don't want to have to mash buttons to get through dialogue I may or may not have already seen.

There are a lot of NPCs to talk to in the village. This isn't actually a bad thing because of how you handled it, though. Usually it's just short tidbits of info that enhances the world or gives you a hint, which is a thumbs up. What would have helped, however, would be more unique NPCs. There were too many generic Mimigas, which makes remembering who you still want to talk to more of a puzzle.

The Balrog boss fight felt kind of unnecessary?? He's supposed to be your friend and all now, but he suddenly just wants to fight? Really all it did was made me think you were too lazy to do something else with the Shack, so you tried painting over it with the placement of the blocks and the dialogue. That's where another minor problem of mine comes: it feels a little too similar to Cave Story. Not the fact that it's in the same world or anything, but the progression too closely resembles the original game. The village immediately leading up to a Balrog fight, and not to mention a very Egg Corridor-esque area leading up to an Igor fight. If this game can branch out and find more of its own identity, I feel that would be the best direction to take.

Level design: nothing stand-out, but it definitely gets the job done. My complaint here is probably going to have to be the same as the above: too similar to the original. I've played Egg Corridor before, I don't need to play it again. The intro path is excusable because it doesn't much resemble any other area in Cave Story and because it most likely serves to get you acquainted. My hope is that, in future areas, you experiment with more unique enemy combinations and stray away from the vanilla layout.

I will always have a personal bias against vanilla Cave Story music because, well, it's used in 90% of mods. I noticed there was a small remix of Plant, which was interesting, but didn't do much for me. I actually really dig the Egg Corridor music though. It's neat to hear CSWii music being redone in the ORG format, so if anything I wouldn't mind more of that.

Oh, and a glitch. You can damage boost up a ledge:

In summation, I wish that you will eventually fix up the problems with the dialogue and break from the Cave Story mold that a lot of mods tend to get stuck in.

_____________________

This mod is impressive. It's easy to tell that, at least compared to most mods, a lot of effort was put into this. The only other time that I had felt so whimsical and charmed by a mod during my first playthrough of it was NoStoryJustCave, and both times it was likely because there was such a shift in quality from what I'm used to. Good luck with finishing it, I mean it.

Thank you for the input, TP.



Now that school's done (for now), there's not much in the way of me and progressing this mod. I'll be making sure that next update deviates more from vanilla Cave Story, and into something of it's own kind.



Not saying this won't take a while though, fixing and making old stuff better will take some time, not as much time as it would have without the input from you and many others though (thank you! <3). Adding new stuff to the mod will obviously take a bit more time, as you all can imagine.



Next release, and others following it, will come in big dumps, not sprinkles of salt. Pre-Release B was kind of small, and everyone loves updates that are filled to the brim with new stuff.



Also, everyone else, I'm completely open to this kind of input! If anything needs to be fixed or if you have any suggestions on what could make this mod better, give this topic a reply, or send me a PM, whatever works for you.

 

So I hear Blues Traveler is good? Must I play?

I literally only wrote this post to say "Blues Traveler"

 

First time notes + opinions:

Spoiler

-The mimiga guarding the door to the market needs a layering change because he's currently standing half behind it. The transition to the market is also a little odd, going straight from blank space to inside a cave. A few wall tiles behind the door would help.
-Echoing TP's comments on the Blargo fight.
-The life capsule event is broken, he gave it to me after only bringing back the yellow flower.
-The above aside, it's been quite a while since I can remember a mod where there were actually a bunch of new characters around to talk to like this. The dialogue and layout of the village create an appreciably endearing little environment. I quite liked the level design in the tunnels too, it didn't feel that much that an Egg Corridor clone, aside from the eternal problem of backtrack-chasing beetles. Mainly it was rather on the easy side, especially after levelling the Polar Star up; personally I think it would help keep things fresh if you beefed the enemies up a bit a gave the player a new weapon to learn.
-In the final dialogue features the line "I have fate in you"; presumably this is meant to be fatih faith.

That was fun I'm not sure what you have planned going forward, but I hope for some more NPC/plot related areas to break up the enemy levels every so often.