Second Verse, Same as the First...?

Shortly after I finished my first game, I started to think about ideas to put into a second game, which I ahve alluded to in previous developer blogs on my first game. I'm still working on new content to keep buffing out no.2 (a v1.01 patch should be out this week), but I wanted to talk a bit about the things I was aiming to do differently in game no.2 versus the first one. Lessons learned, as it were.

Mechanical Changes

One of the bits of feedback I got was, amusingly enough, related to the weapon system. In game no.1, I had a single parameter that controlled skill activation rates and dictated what weapons could be wielded. If you could use swords and lances, you could use all of them of those types if you had a high enough Weapon Level.

Feedback was mixed. Some loved it, others hated it and wanted something more akin to the Fire Emblem weapon rank system. I decided to see how implementing it would work out, so I figured out how to get a plug-in running to facilitate that. It worked well enough...with the proviso that it added a lot of additional legwork to make work. Still, it gives the game a different mechanical texture, and I am definitely in favor of adding little things so that this game doesn't fall into feeling like "game 1, but different".

The other major mechanical change was not making doubling and critical hits an intrinsic part of each unit, locking them to special skills. I figured doing this would add a bit of strategy and opportunity cost in terms of if you wanted characters to have those abilities.

In addition, I worked on adding in a diverse array of new skills to both color in the experience and flesh characters out more individually. Providing a clear demarcation of "this character has this over another character" has always appealed to me; the games with "open reclassing" systems are rarely all that intriguing to me, and I'd rather make interesting specialists than just have everyone be a generalist who wants to go into the same singular class.

Writing Tone

I default heavily to humor, and the humor of my game was generally well-received...with the caveat that a couple people felt it was a bit too snarky and sarcastic. I didn't want to completely eschew it (I see humor as one of my strengths), but I figured I could rein it in a bit, pull the snark and sarcasm down to reasonable levels while still allowing for absurd moments.

So this time, I aimed for a more serious protagonist. I did want to make them a woman, to balance out having a dude leading the charge the first time, and I tried to avoid a lot of the clichés that come with the women in lead roles, the "I'm not one of the girls" things. I don't entirely know how I succeeded with Helena, or if I did, but she's not a character I am ashamed of having written.

I also tried for a bit more of a philosophical bent at points. It's probably not going to reach Tactics Ogre levels of intricacy, but it can be fun to ask questions that don't necessarily have a singular "correct" answer.