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[Nillo]

It will be released TOMORROW. 

Oh my god oh my god. I quiver in anticipation!

[Nillo]

It is here! You heard it right! I am faster than TIGSource itself!

http://www.thespiritengine.com/

Playing it right now and loving everything so far. Lots of text to read but I'm fine with that. The music is classy, the story is quite intriguing, and the characters' appearance and animation is simply astounding. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a game to play!

[TeeGee]

Downloading right away. I'm a big fan of the first one and I was quite excited about the sequel's release.

[Derek]

It's pretty damn awesome.

[dessgeega]

it looks like there's a woman character who's not a spellcaster, so i already like it more than the original.

[TeeGee]

Because now all females are ranged specialists .

Anyway, the game's pretty great. I'm up for some fun this evening and weekend. It's been a while since I actually played anything on a PC :D.

[ChevyRay]

I suddenly forsee myself being $18 poorer within the next couple days...

[muku]

Awww, what a cliffhanger to end the demo on.

This seems like a great game, and this is coming from someone who rarely plays RPGs and has never played one that was as console-ish as this one. I really like how the character choices you make at the beginning influence the dialogue; it must have been an awful lot of work to write all these customized bits of dialogue. Plus I like how the party incessantly bickers among itself

The combat system is weird, took me a while to figure out despite the tutorial, but after that it's not too complicated and sort of fun.

It's hard to say something about the story after the short demo, but its at least okay so far. I can actually see myself buying this, the price seems very fair, it's really more the thought of the time I'd put into this keeping me back right now instead of the money...

Oh, and the music is definitely very nice.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I wonder why he did the character selection like that -- I'd think with all the work that went into the different character animations and dialogue, it might have been easier to just use all 9 of the characters in the storyline and have the player control all of them alternately (like FF4) rather than just select 3 characters in the beginning and have all the rest of the dialogue that isn't used for them go to waste... but I guess it makes it more replayable.

I didn't find any of the 3 initial characters I started the game with interesting. Maybe I'll create 3 different ones and try again.

I also found the text a bit too small to read comfortably on a large resolution in windowed mode, and could not get full screen mode to work.

[Nillo]

Well on the other hand, the storyline makes a lot more sense when you can let all your heroes fight at once. The party limit in conventional RPGs is arbitrary and damages my suspension of disbelief. Some games at least try to explain it, like in Chrono Trigger you can't have more than three in your party because it causes the time portals to malfunction or something... but I still think it's a weak excuse.

And yeah, it's a lot more replayable like this, especially with the new addition of difficulty levels. Second run through the game, pick Hard and three characters you didn't use. Next time, Absurd difficulty and the final three characters. After that you've experienced everything.

[Jimbob]

Not quite, the combinations of certain characters makes a difference as well. not to mention the fact that you do have to alter your tactics for different combinations of characters (assuming you don't always pick one of each).

Talking to Mark, it was a nightmare to arrange (and to test )

[Inane]

  I can't get past the trail with artillery explosions. Do I just suck at this game? I can last a pretty long time using those barrels of smoke + my priests counter ability, but I fail to do any real damage.

Edeet: Nevermind, I started over with different characters and am now kicking ass <3.

[Don Andy]

Hrm, the game looks good, as does the story, but I don't think I'm going to buy it. The frustrating battle system just doesn't make it worth it for me. It may be more strategic and stuff, but I just don't like having literal no control about what happens in battle without having to do math first :T

Which does suck though. I'd love to see what happens and play it with all characters, but seriously. Me and the battle system just can't be friends.

I'm grateful he gave out a demo though. I'd hate to dish out money for a game, only to notice that I can't get past chapter 2.

[Nillo]

Oh man, it's already over. 14 hours of thrills are what I got for my $20, more if you count the possible replayability. Not bad. Also it was amusing to see my name in the credits because of my donation to the cancer drive.

I'm sad now that I probably won't see another RPG as good as this one in quite a while.

[TeeGee]

I must admit I liked the story in the first Spirit Engine better. And I miss character-specific intros for every member of the party.

The gameplay is pretty neat imho and for me it's rather on the easy side. Maybe you, guys, are playing on Hard mode or something?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I found the upgrade system a bit too imbalanced. Like, upgrading 1 point to your HP raises your HP by like 50 (from 300 to 350 or something), whereas upgrading 1 point to a damage attack raises attack power by like 2 (from 60 to 62 or something) -- talk about unbalanced use of upgrade points.

[TeeGee]

Yeah, that's true. I also don't like how I can't run using mouse without pressing CTRL. Why can't it just make you run when you press the mouse closer to the edge of the screen - it's not like running changes anything other than being a convinience feature.

Overall, I have the same nitpicks with this one as with the first one - I like the game a lot, but it's sometimes a bit amateurish. Still, it's just fun and $18 is really cheap.

[Nillo]

TeeGee, I found that the game got a LOT harder a few chapters into it. But by all means go for a harder difficulty. If you're like me and go around grinding enemies just for the heck of it (and to look at the beautiful animation), you can offset those extra levels with a higher difficulty setting.

I agree that the story in TSE1 was a bit better. At the end when you get to the World's Eye it turns into some kind of science fiction and it's hard to understand what they're talking about.

rinkuhero, I didn't think it was imbalanced, at least not later in the game. HP is a limited resource, and for longer battles (like the one against Urtat in Porto Vale) spending points in attack/defense skills is more important. Plus there are some places in the game that are timed so you need to finish them as quickly as possible.

[Baba Brainchild]

Well, I've played through a few scenes in the demo, and man is it verbose. I feel like they could have cut out a lot of the dialog and made it better.

Dumb question: what do skill chains do? I can't see how they're different from just using the skill you want.

[Nillo]

With skill chains, you can put different skills together and have them activated automatically. For example, the knight has a "Charge" skill that increases damage on the next attack, allowing you to kill enemies with high resistance. So you could add it in a skill chain and follow up with Slay. Then when you choose that skill chain, the knight will use Charge, Slay, Charge, Slay et cetera.