[LOVE & TRUTH]

You can't buy experience points. =/

You can, in a way! By buying the "Double XP" ring.

[feint_ruled]

I was interested until I heard it was by the Soldner-X people. I was desperate for a solid PS3 shooter but that game just encapsulated everything that could go wrong with shmup design. It was the ultimate euro-jank. It was absolutely insulting to the player.

They say Soldner X-2 was much better to be fair to them. But I wouldn't bite on this in case this is a similar adventure in the SRPG arena and we have a similar "Rainbow Moon 2" situation in future.

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

This game is addictive, but it's very difficult to argue that it's actually good.

Details, please.

[Labadal]

Started this on hard mode with no items. Let's see if I regret it.

[krae_man]

Downloading now.

Can't wait to play it.

[Wuthering_Heights]

This game is addictive, but it's very difficult to argue that it's actually good.

Addictive huh?

Must be good then. Thanks. :)

[toythatkills]

Details, please.

The writing is terrible, the world is an absolute pain to navigate, and the AI in battles (if it can be called that) is literally the worst I've ever seen in a videogame of this type. It's also incredibly grindy, but not in a fun way. It's like they've looked at Disgaea and said "lol, level 9999!" and wanted to emulate that, but instead of allowing a player to grind to become super-powerful, you have to grind to become competent. There are so many decisions that have been made solely to slow the grind down, such as only giving pearls (which you use to increase skills) to the person that deals the killing blow in battle, and only awarding XP to people who are actively in your party.

It's slow for the sake of being slow. Or for the sake of making you buy the extra DLC to speed it up.

[RPGCrazied]

Screw it. You can do much worse for $15 on PSN. I'm going to just get it. If it didn't have trophies I probably wouldn't bother. I'm not expecting and epic story or whatever, but I sure do need more time wasters waiting on my 3DS XL.

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

The writing is terrible, the world is an absolute pain to navigate, and the AI in battles (if it can be called that) is literally the worst I've ever seen in a videogame of this type. It's also incredibly grindy, but not in a fun way. It's like they've looked at Disgaea and said "lol, level 9999!" and wanted to emulate that, but instead of allowing a player to grind to become super-powerful, you have to grind to become competent. There are so many decisions that have been made solely to slow the grind down, such as only giving pearls (which you use to increase skills) to the person that deals the killing blow in battle, and only awarding XP to people who are actively in your party. It's slow for the sake of being slow. Or for the sake of making you buy the extra DLC to speed it up.

That's all I needed to hear. Looks like I'll be skipping this one.

[wastedyears]

...only awarding XP to people who are actively in your party.

What's so bad about that?

[Freakinchair]

The writing is terrible, the world is an absolute pain to navigate, and the AI in battles (if it can be called that) is literally the worst I've ever seen in a videogame of this type. It's also incredibly grindy, but not in a fun way. It's like they've looked at Disgaea and said "lol, level 9999!" and wanted to emulate that, but instead of allowing a player to grind to become super-powerful, you have to grind to become competent. There are so many decisions that have been made solely to slow the grind down, such as only giving pearls (which you use to increase skills) to the person that deals the killing blow in battle, and only awarding XP to people who are actively in your party. It's slow for the sake of being slow. Or for the sake of making you buy the extra DLC to speed it up.

I bet you hated FF:Tactics as well.

[benny_a]

The writing is terrible, the world is an absolute pain to navigate, and the AI in battles (if it can be called that) is literally the worst I've ever seen in a videogame of this type. It's also incredibly grindy, but not in a fun way. It's like they've looked at Disgaea and said "lol, level 9999!" and wanted to emulate that, but instead of allowing a player to grind to become super-powerful, you have to grind to become competent. There are so many decisions that have been made solely to slow the grind down, such as only giving pearls (which you use to increase skills) to the person that deals the killing blow in battle, and only awarding XP to people who are actively in your party. It's slow for the sake of being slow. Or for the sake of making you buy the extra DLC to speed it up.

This combined with the list of DLC is enough reason to not pick this game up. Thanks for sharing!

[toythatkills]

What's so bad about that?

It's archaic. It's not done to improve the game, it's done to elongate the game.

I bet you hated FF:Tactics as well.

Nope, I love FFT. The difference is that in FFT you get EXP for attacking, which you don't here. You only get pearls if you land the killing blow, which means characters with low speed kill hardly any enemies, get hardly any pearls, and thus it takes ages to level up their speed - at which point the other characters are just miles ahead of them again. The way around it is to just piss around for twenty minutes in every battle to let your weedy character finish the enemies off, but this is more tedious than I can possibly describe.

Oh, and FFT has challenging AI which makes battles interesting. This game has, well, I have no idea.

[Stealth20k]

this game is nothing like tactics, advance 1 or 2

[wastedyears]

It's archaic.

Its not archaic. Why should chars that are not in your party get exp? They aren't doing anything, why should they get better?

[RPGCrazied]

Played about an hour. The music is nice, the art is pleasing to look at. My only gripe so far is how slow the main character runs. Wish it was a little faster. Runs silky smooth, so that is a plus I guess.

[toythatkills]

Its not archaic. Why should chars that are not in your party get exp? They aren't doing anything, why should they get better?

It's not real life, it's a game. Such logic doesn't apply here.

Answer: Because it's no fun having weak characters that it's difficult to level up. Because it's the year 2012, and gaming has moved beyond that. These days I expect games to be made with playability in mind, rather than games that do everything they can just to be annoying. See also: hunger; constant inventory management.

You can make a "retro" RPG without having to make it as if it was 1990. You can keep the good bits and ditch the bad bits. Where Rainbow Moon goes wrong is that it keeps all the bad bits that should have been left in the past.

I get that it's a grind-em-up more than it's an RPG and that's fair enough, but the grinding is handled entirely wrong. Instead of a satisfying grind like in Disgaea where you can get stupid strong, here you have to grind way too much just to remain on a par with regular enemies, and that aspect of it is simply not fun. Every mechanic in the game is designed to slow you down and as a result you never feel like you're getting anywhere.

[Noi]

This game is addictive, but it's very difficult to argue that it's actually good.

This is pretty much my opinion as well. I somewhat like what I've played of it and can find some fun with it, but I can't bring myself to fully recommend it to anyone until the demo is out. Not everyone is going to like it.

[famousmortimer]

I'm streaming some... firing it up for the first time right now. If any of y'all wanna see it played by a fat guy.


http://www.twitch.tv/famousmortimer#

[Labadal]

Played for 3-4 hours and I'm conflicted.

I started on hard and the game feels really grindy. I don't mind grinding, but it's actually true; it feels like the grinding is there for the sake of grinding. Reaching level 4 required me to get 20exp. reaching level 5 50exp, reaching level 6? 350exp, haha. It also feels a bit unbalanced on hard. I know, hard mode means that the game is going to be challenging, heck, that's why I chose hard. But, and this is a big but, it got ridicilous when I got into a fight with 10 enemies. Fighting 5 enemies at once was challenging enough and already felt like the balance was all wrong. I can't afford to buy armours or weapons since all my money is spent on potions. I did get some stuff from sidequests, so it wasn't all bad. The combat system is alright, but feels like it's very basic. There's no reason to flank enemies so far. No penalties for frontal attacks, so I don't have to worry about counter attacks as of yet.
It does get a bit addictive if you like seeing your character slowly becoming stronger and stronger. It felt so good to beat down some of the more challgenging monsters I had trouble with after spending pearls on strength and speed. Crafting also helps a little. I'm not sure I like the fact that the only characters that get pearls are those that actually kill monsters. Your characters will not develop equally if you don't spend extra time, making sure they all get some kills in each battle. Reserves get no exp on top of no pearls. This wouldn't have been a problem if it wasn't for the grindy nature of the game. The problem is that it will most likely take you a lot of time to have all party members at the same level of usefulness. Switching party members a lot will be a must. I know I'm sounding very negative, but for some reason, I couldn't stop playing the damned thing. Fights have become easier now, and it doesn't feel as grindy anymore. It was mostly the beginning of the game that was really tedious.

Using skills upgrades them to deal more damage, or the scan skill will reveal more info as you use it more and more. You can find items that improves HP, speed, etc. There's crafting, but I haven't delved into that yet. There are side quests, but all of them have been fetch quests. On the plus side, the rewards are ok.

The music doesn't make my ears blled, it's standard fare. The graphics are ok. Don't like how the characters look, but the enviroments are ok.


I don't have much to say about the writing. I'd put it in the same boat as Infinite Undiscovery and Star Ocean 4. Then again, from what I had seen in pre-release footage, I knew that I was not getting this for the writing.

[wastedyears]

It's not real life, it's a game. Such logic doesn't apply here. Answer: Because it's no fun having weak characters that it's difficult to level up. Because it's the year 2012, and gaming has moved beyond that. These days I expect games to be made with playability in mind, rather than games that do everything they can just to be annoying. See also: hunger; constant inventory management. You can make a "retro" RPG without having to make it as if it was 1990. You can keep the good bits and ditch the bad bits. Where Rainbow Moon goes wrong is that it keeps all the bad bits that should have been left in the past. I get that it's a grind-em-up more than it's an RPG and that's fair enough, but the grinding is handled entirely wrong. Instead of a satisfying grind like in Disgaea where you can get stupid strong, here you have to grind way too much just to remain on a par with regular enemies, and that aspect of it is simply not fun. Every mechanic in the game is designed to slow you down and as a result you never feel like you're getting anywhere.

I don't recall games from 1990 that have dlc, but I guess I could be wrong on that. And just because you don't enjoy particular aspects of a game does not mean that it should be left in the past. Not everyone wants their games to be complete cakewalks like Bethesda or Bioware games, or even Disgaea with over leveled characters. By the way, the Disgaeas aren't 'grindy' until you get well into the post game content. Choosing to grind levels or not grind levels is a mechanic that lets the player choose how difficult the game will be. Grind if you want an easier game, don't grind if you want it tougher. Story mode in every one of the Disgaeas (and virtually every other rpg I've ever played) are completely winnable without grinding. If you can't get past an area or a boss than change your tactics. Not every rpg has to be easy. Legend of Grimrock has hunger and constant inventory management, especially later in the game, and I think it is an excellent game. I think that helped to make the game even better. It sounds to me like this game just isn't for you.

[Labadal]

I'm streaming some... firing it up for the first time right now. If any of y'all wanna see it played by a fat guy. http://www.twitch.tv/famousmortimer#

For the love of God, don't play on hard if you hate grinding.

[toythatkills]

I don't recall games from 1990 that have dlc, but I guess I could be wrong on that. And just because you don't enjoy particular aspects of a game does not mean that it should be left in the past. Not everyone wants their games to be complete cakewalks like Bethesda or Bioware games, or even Disgaea with over leveled characters. By the way, the Disgaeas aren't 'grindy' until you get well into the post game content. Choosing to grind levels or not grind levels is a mechanic that lets the player choose how difficult the game will be. Grind if you want an easier game, don't grind if you want it tougher. Story mode in every one of the Disgaeas (and virtually every other rpg I've ever played) are completely winnable without grinding. If you can't get past an area or a boss than change your tactics. Not every rpg has to be easy. Legend of Grimrock has hunger and constant inventory management, especially later in the game, and I think it is an excellent game. I think that helped to make the game even better. It sounds to me like this game just isn't for you.

Even if we take out the grinding as an issue it's full of problems, like the shocking AI and the awful writing.

It's just the grinding that's the biggest issue, whether you choose to make excuses for it or not. Your point about Disgaea is exactly why they're better grinders. The player can choose to do it, and isn't punished for not doing it. In Rainbow Moon, you're punished for not grinding by being thrown into battles against up to 20 enemies at once that you have no chance against at all. Especially since things like poison stick with a 95% success rate and smack you for nearly a quarter of your health each turn. It's not about the game being a cakewalk, I don't care if a game is hard, but this game is artificially hard to force the player to go through boring, samey battles over and over again until they happen to earn enough pearls to progress, pearls which the game is pathetically stingy with. (BUY OUR DLC!!!)

Have you played this yet, out of interest, or are you just blindly defending it? I just can't think of a single thing the hunger adds, so if you can enlighten me I'd be interested to hear your take on it.

[Kenshin001]

Not really my cup of tea but here are some reviews:

GamesTM gave it 8.9/10.

For a digital release from a team that has produced just a handful of titles, this 40 hour-plus adventure stands proud besides full retail releases in terms of polish, content and execution. It’s just a shame that it lacks the character and plot establishment of its peers.

http://www.nowgamer.com/psn/psn-revi...on_review.html

Metro gave it 5/10.

Pros: The character customisation is deep and versatile. Bright, colourful graphics and oddly translated script are undeniably charming. Cons: Combat is enjoyable but too shallow to last such a long game. Too few innovations and a painfully slow pace. Very poor artificial intelligence.

http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/games/90...view-spoon-fed

Seems like a bit of a love/hate game.

[anddo0]

I LOVE this type of game. Been playing for 2 hours straight. It's a bit simplistic, but enjoyable.

[famousmortimer]

For the love of God, don't play on hard if you hate grinding.

I played on normal but did the adventurer thing (where you get no starting bonus).


5 bees handed my ass to me over and over. I had to grind like a mofo. On normal.


The game is begging you to buy DLC. That's annoying. But the actual mechanics are fun. I'm conflicted. I like it enough to keep playing though.

[Ichabod]

The difference is that in FFT you get EXP for attacking, which you don't here. You only get pearls if you land the killing blow...

I don't understand why SRPGs do this. Everyone should get Xp for fighting or at least clearing a stage/battle. I don't want to spend an eternity leveling up each individual character in my squad.

[feint_ruled]

OK, so it is Soldner-X all over again.

My prediction:
A patch will come along to reduce the grind substantially (and probably wreck the balance).
Rainbow Moon 2 comes out next year and is the much better game.

My rationale is that normal mode Soldner-X was notoriously difficult, and they responded by adding an easier mode in which I was able to finish the game without dying once! Felt a bit like a troll patch, LOL. "You bastards want it easier? Well how about this!"

[Seventy5]

I couldn't put this game down last night, I really like it. I also love the Diagaea and Sacred 2, so I suppose grindfest dogs are my thing. I will gladly buy a vita version, this would be a perfect portable game.

[Cyberia]

SideQuest Studios borrows elements across the entire RPG spectrum and sends players on a massive journey on the beautiful world of Rainbow Moon. With more features than we can fit in a review and an epic quest that can last up to 100 hours, Rainbow Moon is completely worthy of a boxed retail release. Instead, Rainbow Moon launched itself on PSN in the hopes to break our social lives, rather than our wallets. RPG fans, this one is not to be missed.

http://www.pushsquare.com/reviews/psn/rainbow_moon

9/10

[Stealth20k]

i wish i could get past the look

[RPGCrazied]

I'm getting my ass kicked by the first boss. I can do the bees easy enough, but the golems always go straight for trishia.

[PuppetSlave]

I'm getting my ass kicked by the first boss. I can do the bees easy enough, but the golems always go straight for trishia.

Sometimes that can work to your advantage. Use your sword guy as an center pillar and let trishia and the boss run around him. Then just whack the boss at every opportunity with sword guy.

[HamPster PamPster]

The way around it is to just piss around for twenty minutes in every battle to let your weedy character finish the enemies off, but this is more tedious than I can possibly describe.

Oh god this is like my cardinal sin of gaming. Between this and some of the other comments I'll pass

[Franklinator]

I just saw the listing for this on the PS3 store, and it looked cool. But after reading the comments here, I think I'll pass. Looks like it can be kinda tedious.

[krae_man]

For the most part I like the game but I have a couple of issues with it so far. I don't like how everything is done by pressing a direction on the d-pad instead of pressing X. Both attacking and moving in battle. I keep on moving the wrong direction in battle. I would much rather adjust which way my character is facing and press X to attack, or move a cursor to the place I want to move to and press X to go there.

I had one battle with 10 enemies vs just one for me and 8 of them were those wannabe heros or whatever they are called that are almost on par with you. It takes 3 hits to kill them minimum and that's with me maxed out and they are going to get at least two shots in each. I shouldn't have to down multiple potions to survive a battle this early on. If there's one or two of them I can be strategic with where I move. I've also noticed that enemies don't walk in squares with treasure in them and I've used that to my advantage as well but getting hit for 5-10HP twice per turn from two sides is unavoidable in some of these battles and fucks you up pretty good.

This game really should have been set up so you regain all your health/MP after every battle.

[RPGCrazied]

I really hate the food system. That should get removed. And rainbow coins need to drop more, but I guess that will mess with them wanting to sell them for real money.

[toythatkills]

For the most part I like the game but I have a couple of issues with it so far. I don't like how everything is done by pressing a direction on the d-pad instead of pressing X. Both attacking and moving in battle. I keep on moving the wrong direction in battle. I would much rather adjust which way my character is facing and press X to attack, or move a cursor to the place I want to move to and press X to go there.

If you use the analogue stick it's a lot easier since you can just point up-left when you want to attack up-left, without having to wait for the prompts to appear so you know whether you're meant to press up or left.

[LOVE & TRUTH]

So, I've been looking through the Rankings list: http://www.rainbowmoongame.com/ranking.php

I'm surprised to see people who have already spent 90 hours on the game but that's beside the point. The highest characted level I see there is 163 which is a bit disheartening - looks like it takes a lot of time to reach level 400. Event reaching level 200 looks like a daunting task. Oh well. ^_^

There are currently 5400 players in the rankings list - I hope this number is satisfactory for the developers. I personally think the game is great and wish it best of luck in terms of sales (bought 3 DLC packs so I'm doing my part ^_^).

[feint_ruled]

I bet this goes free on PS+. DLC heavy games like this often seem to. Possibly should have been f2p in the first place, if their business model is so heavily dependent on these packs.

[toythatkills]

So, I've been looking through the Rankings list: http://www.rainbowmoongame.com/ranking.php

Since you have to manually put yourself on the leaderboards, I imagine there's way more that 5,000 who just haven't bothered to connect.

No, I don't know why.

[Hobbun]

So, I've been looking through the Rankings list: http://www.rainbowmoongame.com/ranking.php I'm surprised to see people who have already spent 90 hours on the game but that's beside the point. The highest characted level I see there is 163 which is a bit disheartening - looks like it takes a lot of time to reach level 400. Event reaching level 200 looks like a daunting task. Oh well. ^_^ There are currently 5400 players in the rankings list - I hope this number is satisfactory for the developers. I personally think the game is great and wish it best of luck in terms of sales (bought 3 DLC packs so I'm doing my part ^_^).

Does the game have a reincarnate feature like Disgaea? Maybe that's why there are more people with lower levels as they've 'reincarnated'.

The game certainly looks intriguing, didn't even know about this until I received an email from Sony on the latest updates at the store.

I've read some of the negatives on the game, but none of them really bother me too much. And I like the positive things that have been said, as well.

The only thing I worry about is the goofy control aspect of pushing the direction of the d-pad/analog stick for commands I am hearing about. Just really wish they would have standard moving the characters with the d-pad/analog stick and choosing commands with a button.

But still going to give it a shot because I like most of what I hear about it and I can also get it with the discount with PS+.

[saveweyard]

Does the game have a reincarnate feature like Disgaea? Maybe that's why there are more people with lower levels as they've 'reincarnated'. The game certainly looks intriguing, didn't even know about this until I received an email from Sony on the latest updates at the store. I've read some of the negatives on the game, but none of them really bother me too much. And I like the positive things that have been said, as well. The only thing I worry about is the goofy control aspect of pushing the direction of the d-pad/analog stick for commands I am hearing about. Just really wish they would have standard moving the characters with the d-pad/analog stick and choosing commands with a button. But still going to give it a shot because I like most of what I hear about it and I can also get it with the discount with PS+.

As far as I know there is no reincarnate feature, but the game does like to slowly reveal new features as you go. For example, I got 2 hours in and a tutorial popped up for "weapon affinity". Basically a chart for which weapon type is strong against another.

I would definitely recommend this game. It is a bit slow, and buying DLC would probably speed up the process but it is definitely not necessary. They ease you into the battle system, maybe a little too slowly, but it gets more and more complex, especially when you start gaining new characters.

One thing to mention: there may be a demo coming soon, because when I downloaded the game it was a demo/unlock key together.

[LOVE & TRUTH]

The only thing I worry about is the goofy control aspect of pushing the direction of the d-pad/analog stick for commands I am hearing about. Just really wish they would have standard moving the characters with the d-pad/analog stick and choosing commands with a button.

Don't worry, it's not that big of a deal. I complained about the controls in the beginning, but now I don't mind them at all. It doesn't distract from the game and it does the job, so it's fine by me.

[Clear]

These days I expect games to be made with playability in mind, rather than games that do everything they can just to be annoying. See also: hunger; constant inventory management.

I really have a hard time accepting that argument. All games are made with "playability" in mind, its an oxymoron to state otherwise.

What you're actually talking about is whether a game is "low maintenance" or "high maintenance" which I think is a legitimate design choice because some people enjoy the cognitive juggling involved in keeping up with this sort of micro-management detail.

There's nothing inherently wrong with it; it just not for everyone. And if your design is focussed upon appealing to everyone, it is by definition "casual". Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with making games like that, but I have a hard time accepting that if a game isn't built like that, its doing it wrong.

[toythatkills]

I really have a hard time accepting that argument. All games are made with "playability" in mind, its an oxymoron to state otherwise. What you're actually talking about is whether a game is "low maintenance" or "high maintenance" which I think is a legitimate design choice because some people enjoy the cognitive juggling involved in keeping up with this sort of micro-management detail. There's nothing inherently wrong with it; it just not for everyone. And if your design is focussed upon appealing to everyone, it is by definition "casual". Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with making games like that, but I have a hard time accepting that if a game isn't built like that, its doing it wrong.

I'll assume you've played it, then.

Tell me what hunger adds to the game. Tell me how it makes the game better.

EDIT: Has anyone made decent progress in this? How the fuck am I meant to beat Drajight? He can destroy me for 800HP a turn even when I'm defending, and there's literally no way I can see to compete with that.

EDIT2: Hmm, maybe exploiting the AI is the way to go.

[Labadal]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m24uUzJgfwQ

Replace the word dream with the word grind. This song is dedicated to the grinding and rainbow pearls.

[Sir_Crocodile]

wow

so the dlc is something you could do yourself in ten seconds with cheatengine were this a pc game?

think I'll give this a wide bearth

[Hobbun]

I will be downloading this when I get home today.

Probably will choose ‘start with no equipment’ and on hard difficulty. See how quickly I die.

And I will be bypassing the DLC.

[Labadal]

I will be downloading this when I get home today. Probably will choose ‘start with no equipment’ and on hard difficulty. See how quickly I die. And I will be bypassing the DLC.

That's how I started, prepare to grind, friend. *whispers* Prepare to grind.