The Dink Network

Legend of TerraEarth (The)

I dun think this has anything to do with the game...
July 6th, 2002
Demo 2
Score : 3.0 tolerable
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Binirit
Peasant She/Her
 
This D-mod demonstrates a new Battle Engine.
The fights are fought in rounds of 5 seconds. So Dink has 5 seconds to attack and so has the enemy.

Map and graphics: Both are made nicely. There are some new tiles you can see too, although they look like some kind of material instead of real backgrounds. The new statusbar looks allright, but I prefer the old one since that one is more surveyable.

Music: I didn’t like the intro-music, but the other music was fine.

Good: The idea of developing a new battle engine is good. There is an escape spell, which is really good: if you run out of healtpoints, you just cast this spell and are transported to a save place.

Not so good: It feels really stupid when Dink just stands there when he is attacked without being able to do anything. I wouldn't like that in a D-mod. If you do want to have a D-mod with this type of battle engine, you should at least give Dink the possibility to block an attack. Besides that, you have to walk to the enemy before you can attack it and since you have only got 5 seconds, you loose about half of those just to reach the enemy. And before you can walk over to the enemy you have to press spacebar to get rid of the text that says it is your turn (you could of course also wait untill it is gone, but then you will not have any time left).
You can hardly read the text in the beginning since it goes to fast.

Overall: Everything is worked out neat and nice, but I don’t like this new way of fighting because it is really annoying and timeconsuming and not handy at all.

Fit for: If you want to see a different kind of way to engage in battle.
May 9th, 2002
Demo 2
Score : 4.0 tolerable
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This is the second version of the demo of the mixed fighting engine of Christiaan's upcoming D-Mod Legend of TerraEarth. It does improve in several aspects from the previous version, but I do hope it can really achieve what Christiaan claimed in the info.txt.
There are a few new graphics and tiles. They are basically nice, but just an OK.
The music is good, and some of the new sound is great. The "'We are loading and you are waiting" sound is funny at first, but quite annoying since Christiaan put it in the savebot script. Every time you walk in the screen with a save machine, you would hear the annoy loading sound.
Since the fighting engine is a mix of real time and turn-based, there is really no need to use another screen for the fight like Red Shield. Otherwise Christiaan needs to write different script for every single monster, and use at least twice as large for the map. Again, the monsters did not chase after Dink. They just wondered around.
Although Christiaan claimed the mixed fighting engine can be a tactical combat system, it does not show in the demo. Because the monsters will cast spells on Dink no matter where Dink is. You can have one or two useful retreat if the monster did not cast a spell, but in the end, you will be hit by a 500 Power bite or something else similar.
If Dink cannot get a lot of friends fighting along with him, there would be no way to fight more than one monster in a screen. The battle is too long. Just image to kill a lowly pillbug. You need to slash it first to initiate the fight, then wait for a new screen to load, then wait for the "your turn" to show up, then walk up to the pillbug again to attack it. If Dink is not strong enough to finish the pillbug in round one, you need to wait another 5 second for pillbug's turn, and then finish off the little guy. How fun is that? Using say_stop for "your turn" and "monster's turn" makes 5 seconds last much longer than it should be.
Some bugs. The fireball does not fly as it should be, and the targeting is bad. The firewall looks bad, and useless. The final master would leave a bomb on the ground (not the first one) and it would stay there. Attack graphics of the skelton does not work. If somebody uses cheat and Dink has more than 500 hp, the fighting would go back to normal fight if the monster does not kill Dink with the last power blow.
There are a lot of possibilities in this kind of fighting system, but this demo does not do a good job.
May 5th, 2002
Demo 2
Score : 3.0 tolerable
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WC
Peasant He/Him United States
Destroying noobs since 1999. 
Ok, this is a demo based on an up coming d-mod called (you guessed it) Legend of TerraEarth. The basis of this demo is to show off the new fighting system which is a lot like the FF8 battle system that Someone created, but with one difference. To engage a enemy, you walk up it and hit it, and it's on. From there, it’s a turn base battle system in which you and the enemy each take turns (5 seconds long even though it was like 10 seconds on my 2Ghz athlon) slashing each other. But, unfortunately, the battle system is the only good part. It takes way too long to level, so you are stuck fighting slime, you don't get any magic except one (which I shall explain), and you are stuff using only your sword. Now, you do get one spell, but it's more of a town’s port spell that if you are really screwed, you hit the panic button and it takes you to safety. So, you are stuck using a sword, while, yes, the monsters can cast spells! So, you are just about to kill the little terd when he casts a huge spell and you are screwed. Next the graphics, the tiles in this game are all right, but, Christiaan seemed to steal a bunch of graphics off of other d-mod like FIAT, and LOT, and worst yet, he doesn't even give proper credit in the readme.txt to the hard working authors that made them. Next for the intro, OMG, after that intro my ears bleed. There are some credits in the intro while horrible music is playing and some weird sound wav that everyone can live without plays. After the intro you get to the start screen. I won't touch the start screen any, it's ok, but after you click start, you run into a problem. The characters start talking and the text goes away WAY TOO FAST! But however, when you get to the next section with talking it goes away WAY TOO SLOW.

Story: None, it's a battle demo so that's cool

Graphics: Some are ok, some are bad.

Game Play: Horrible balance, but with the balance fixed, and a story line, it could be ok.

Sound: Let’s not go there

Overall Score: 3.0 if you haven't gotten the clue of why it gets this score, just download the demo and play it.
May 6th, 2002
Demo 2
Score : 3.5 tolerable
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crazi
Peasant They/Them
 
Original Concept. Would It work with the Dink Engine? Probably not.

Flaws with the Idea
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It isn't Dink. Dink is meant to be real time and you have defiled seth's grave. Its an ok concept but you don't give street fighter "FINAL FANTASY" fighting engines. It just doesn't work.

Second, How many of these fight scenes do you expect people to initiate? All the enemies will just be there guarding stuff and you have to walk up to them to kill them. I don't know about you, but the idea is ludacris if you expect to make anything other than a romp. Just as the other reviews, maybe you could use this fighting style with only the bosses or something. Maybe as a side game or a quest but definetly NOT the whole game. I could barely stand 5 minutes of it. Just crazi.

Good Points
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Original Concept, At least you are thinking outside of the box. Great programming, I am really impressed that there were no major bugs (at least I felt) while I played. Good attention to detail and so forth. It was worth the look just to see what it's all about but you'll probably never play this demo again after you download it.

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I just tell it how it is. Truth.

Score: 3.5
Original Concept Gave this demo 3 points. .5 is from the flawless bugs.