Bro...
Literally posted on Discord yesterday about how the writing at the end was my biggest regret when developing this game.
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To accuse me of "not giving a fuck about critical feedback" is perhaps the biggest fucking insult anyone on this site has ever given me.
You've been on this thread, seen me chatting so you've seen first hand how much crticism matters to me and how much I listen to it. The controversial ending sequence is entirely regrettable, so let me tell you how I'd write it now if I had the time and opportunity to just redo the entire thing.
1. Swiftstroke would be significantly weaker. She's not nearly important or relevant enough to get the screentime and growth I gave her.
2. Dante, Bessie and Ray would be significantly stronger and now major players in several aspects of the raid. I'd take advantage of his Calamity Overlook power boost to pit him against several of the Shadow Hunters.
3. I'd keep the focus and perspective on Dante, instead of playing out entire battles with the other characters. The other characters will only get snippets and updates of their situation.
4. "But why wasn't it already changed?" - Because this is an extremely long game, and the final mission was released all at once. It took a long time for the complaints to build up, and I
did make changes where I could to smooth out this issue from the criticism I'd received by that point. I looked at every single scene Swiftstroke appeared in and rewrote it to try to make her growth more natural. At this point, it's felt like it was too late, I made a mistake and there's no magical fix beyond rewriting 50,000 words of story - it'd feel even more wrong going back to the RPGMaker Engine which might be the single biggest thing preventing me from wanting to make any more changes to be honest. If this game was designed in Ren'Py I probably would have already changed the ending.
It's sad to me that 4% of the game, the very last mission, is enough to sour a previous fan into hating my game and hating its creator. I fucked up, and it's just that simple sometimes, and if you don't realize that then I don't think you realize just how hard writing can be. Consider this situation for a second, I made one small mistsake at the very end of my 500,000 word game and it was enough for you to drop my game from a "4/5 to a 2".
That is insane.
Honestly, I got massive respect for the amount of work you put into these games. Especially this one since it's what first really made me start following you.
Honestly, this is still my favorite RPGMaker game I've ever played-
But it's regrettable that you never really meshed well with the RPGMaker engine, honestly though, while I don't personally know in detail the differences between working in Ren'Py and working in RPGMaker, I will always say it'd be great to have more of this game in some form-
Be that in a sequel, a spin off, a "director's cut" remake or any number of things-
The story is good, characters are solid, and the gameplay, apart from a few bugs and what seems to be an issue with new players struggling to grasp the systems, is solid.
I won't lie, the ending was also one thing that peeved me a bit as well, but it didn't ruin the whole experience for me, and I actually grew to appreciate it somewhat with some of the Post-Game content, with me personally recognizing-
"The MC, Bessie and Ray are ABSOLUTE beginners practically, it'd make no sense at all if they were ready for this."
Could things have been done differently and possibly better? Probably, but would you have done it? Probably not. That's just how creative projects go, and this is a game that was such a massive project, I genuinely still can't believe it was made by one person-
And yes, I realize that I basically just quoted Zap, it wasn't intentional, but that's how good the writing in the game generally is, it sticks with you.
It'd be nice to see what you could do or could've done in say-
A Ren'Py remake to the game.
But that's a big project, and you're already moving on to new things, either way though, this is still one of the top adult RPGs. For all it's flaws, it's still damn good to have a 4 and a half star average, literally the only way you could make it better is by perfecting what's already there in my opinion.
But that's up to your choices as a developer, and no matter how perfect the games get, the negative comments are still gonna stand out more than the positive.
It's the creative's curse.
