Sword & Squire

Played through on Hard and thoroughly enjoyed it!  Still ended up being pretty comfortable on HP and MP at the end, and I had a couple Toxic Bombs leftover as well.

I've always felt like the key to randomness in an RPG is what options you give the player to play around it, and this game nails it.  Mia is slightly faster than Draconius [sic], which means that you can always decide what to do with him at the start of combat if you're willing to spend the MP.  This was a common choice for me because eliminating an enemy quickly at the start of combat is important, and I could take my time to conserve resources after the pace of enemy attacks slowed down.

If you choose to let Draconius strike randomly, then you can still assert control by choosing Mia's target correctly.  Attack items provide options to make up for bad luck or seize a good opportunity.

I enjoyed the way you used the Cave and Forest as tutorial zones before the player goes to the Tower.  They're too small to work as proper dungeons unless you jump through hoops, so it makes sense to use them for something else instead.  Because you don't need to use any resources there, it gives you a chance to see what your strengths and weaknesses are before you have to decide how to use your limited resources.

Speaking of which, I felt like I was spending the most resources against Solid enemies, so I ended up spending most of my money on Toxic Bombs to mitigate that weakness.  Poison (in a battle system where it's quite valuable) and extra multi-target damage options never hurt in general, so they have utility even beyond Solid foes.  With that, I had multi-target damage against both Solid and Fluent, and I figured the combination of Sure Fire and a natural bonus to Draconius' attacks was enough to handle the Formless ones.  The Tower encounters are structured such that you usually don't get easy wins regardless, but having those fundamentals down meant that I always felt like I had a tool for the situation on hand.

Beyond that, I gave the Power Bagel to Draconius since he's attacking every turn while Mia isn't.  I ended up keeping the Formless-element whip on Mia because I felt that using Erosion was going to be preferable against the powerful Stoners, while I wanted to boost coverage against Fluent enemies.  I bought some Stun Bombs as well, which I saved to spam against the final boss or some hypothetical bad situation that never materialized.  I bought only two Potions (one for each character) because they looked expensive and I had a funny feeling they'd be less critical than what my natural RPG instincts were screaming at me.  I bought three Dispel Herbs, but those ended up being a complete waste because they were never worth using.

From a story perspective, it's neat that you were able to give Mia the same sort of guiding, mentoring role she plays in combat without it feeling unnatural given the difference in Mia and Draconius' social positions and power.  I think it's a common problem IRL that people try to maintain the status quo because it makes them feel powerful and necessary, even when life becomes better for people at large when progress is made.  The music was great and felt natural as well, though I don't have enough musical background to say much more.  The built-in RPG Maker tracks are fine, but having different music does a lot to make a different game feel like a different game.

This game was really neat! Having enemy types be something for the player to visually/conceptually deduce was cool, and figuring out the right combination of abilities for each area and fight felt rewarding. I liked the lack of progression/grinding, it made the game came down to a lot of decisionmaking - and a little luck here and there. I also enjoyed the dynamic between the characters and the little arc that was presented.

The whole idea of controlling one party member while reining in the other is so cool...I dig the resource management focus. On my first run I made it to the boss but ended up having to restart my run so I could have like, enough potions or MP for like one more heal, because I ended up buying more dispel herbs than I ended up needing lol. Looking forward to giving it another shot soon! (I played on the "confident enough" difficulty.) The original music is awesome too

Played on the hardest difficulty and was on the edge of my seat the whole tower. Won by the skin of my teeth. Pristinely balanced, gorgeous presentation. One of my favorite entries.

Hey, this was great! I love the idea of a perma-berserk party member. Paper Mario 64 has an unused badge that makes Mario berserk and increases his attack, and playing a randomizer that adds it back in is a lot of fun. UFO 50's RPG, Grimstone, also has a functionally Berserk party member in the form of a dog.

As others have said, the type triangle is a fun spin on the usual formula. I will say, in my personal run through, Formless was the clear winner, simply because 90% of the post-floor 1 fights were all evildewers. I only ran into a solid enemy a single time in the form of the golems, which beat me up enough that I wound up resetting anyway. It is possible to get some pretty rotten luck if you run into the three evildewer troop and they all decide to bubble Mr. Solid. I greatly appreciated the save points, which balanced out the high encounter rate. I actually managed to get through the entire tower without using my items, which was good, because they were pretty essential in the final fight.

This is a real nice and tight experience. I particularly like the solid > formless > fluent triangle. Even though it is functionally identical to traditional rock-paper-scissors combat formulas, the change in flavor gives new life to each new encounter. The fresh take on elemental weakness is a great way to innovate within the harsh design restrictions that come within RPGmaker. I found each novel encounter to be an interesting puzzle to figure out- and the game is short enough to where the novelty did not overstay its welcome. 

Also props to having a fair degree of flexibility within such a short rpg. I went against the final boss using the squire as my main source of damage against the final boss using the fluent whip + golden bagel on her. It made for a thrilling fight.  

One of my favourite combat-focused entries. The highest difficulty felt very tightly tuned towards forcing me to fight in suboptimal conditions and use items to keep things from getting even worse. I ended up using a strategy that was heavy on Toxic Bombs, but I talked to John afterwards and he said he didn't buy any of those. It's really impressive that it supports multiple playstyles while still feeling incredibly tense throughout the last dungeon (I wasn't even able to fully heal up before the final boss!) The uncontrollable party member made fights feel dynamic, and the elemental weakness system combined with the encounter design kept me guessing about the best approach to the tower's upper floors.

Wow this game is so cool! The writing is so nice... The elemental system is really intuitive too, and the skill + encounter design leverages it perfectly.