A few people asked me to expand on the setting of Cosmic Star Heroine, so here’s a little information (don’t want to give too much away!). Remember, this is all early and subject to change.
General setting is high-tech, distant future plus magic. Although the game’s universe is vast, Cosmic Star Heroine will focus on 3 main worlds.
World 1 – Vast cities, skyscrapers, primarily inhabited by humans. Highest level of technology in the general area. A technological utopia or dystopia depending on who you ask. Alyssa’s home world.
World 2 – Desolate world where people live in a single large underground city. It’s a major trading hub so you can find more aliens here than in any other location in the game. A bit run-down (used to have a thriving mining industry, but that’s dried up in recent years). Excellent place to find mercenaries.
World 3 – Very wet planet. Lush jungles, and scattered settlements. Inhabited by a strange race of aliens that other races tend to avoid.
Hey, so, big fan of your Precipice games here. This is off topic but I was wondering if you’d talk about the enemies in Cosmic Star Heroine a bit. I really did enjoy the Penny Arcade games but the one thing that felt kind of lacking to me were the enemies. Not the variety or creativity that went into them- that part was great! I’m talking about the cold mechanics of the battles. All the enemies kind of felt the same. Some were faster, some did more damage than others but you beat them by running through whatever optimized attack patterns you’d built. I never felt the need to pay much attention to what the enemies were doing, other than their position on the ATB gauge.
I think this is a big reason why some people got tired of the ‘grind’ in those games. While your characters were constantly changing and adopting new strategies the enemies, even the bosses, remain the same. Their turn comes up, they deal damage to one character, rinse and repeat. No special moves, no charge up attacks, no damage reflection moves, nothing. There was… a healing catbus, a handful of all party attacks, and non-interactive stun move (non-interactive in that it happened, and you couldn’t do anything about it, and then you could move again).
A lot of RPG players like battles that have a certain amount of call and response to them. Keeps them engaged, makes them take notice of the enemies. The enemy poisons so you cure, the enemy buffs itself and you dispel, the enemy constantly heals and you zombify it, etc. A couple months ago I played some of a fairly terrible JRPG, Lost Odyssey. One of the things the game got right was interesting enemies. They had all sorts of things that you really needed to pay attention to. One enemy might be immune to elements. Another might be an unobtrusive tank… that then charges up a party wiping attack. The boss fights were great- bosses that siphon power off minions, or shift elements. You get my point.
Graphics/sounds are not very important to me, I just hope you would conceive a good battle system with lot of customization for builds, like Genius of Sappheiros for example which has an excellent gameplay although it’s also fanmade. Just speaking my mind out loud, i’m looking for indie games to enjoy a refined gameplay after getting too tired of the streamlined games with good graphics/story but lame gameplay system.
I love your work and cannot wait for Cosmic Star Heroine, every update makes it sound better and better.
We’re taking various measures to speed combat up in Cosmic Star Heroine.
Kinda sounds like a Phantasy Star game, which certainly isn’t a bad thing. By the way, one thing that I enjoy about the Phantasy Star games is how fast the battle system is. Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World had an even faster battle system, which I also enjoyed. Precipice 3, however, significantly slowed down the pace of battles. (I haven’t played Precipice 4 yet.) Will your latest game bring back the faster battle style of your first two games?
So does three planets meant three whole world maps? #pleasepleaseplease
“I just love the concept of magic as an advanced type of science.” perfect way of summing it up!
I hope you’ll adopt the term and concept of “magitechnology”. Obviously it was prevalent in Final Fantasy VI, but I prefer the Tales Of interpretation – as an actual brand of science, a way of humans to apply mana as magic in contrast to creatures who can do so naturally (in Tales’ cases, usually elves and half-elves). I just love the concept of magic as an advanced type of science.
Wow just wow. This sounds awesome. I get a real Water Planet feel from the 3rd world. Kind of like an episode of Outlaw Star? I’m pretty excited for this. It seems like a huge change from your other games, fantasy with CStW and BOD7 somewhat modernity with the PA games. I can’t wait to see screenshots of some maps.