That is, Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time. It's a PS2 rpg, I'm sure many people know about it. It was fairly hyped up by the rpg community. It came out right around the time I began to detest jrpgs and this one sent me over to that total dislike side. It simply did not live up to the hype by a long shot. I hated pretty much every aspect of the game. The combat system was easily broken, especially once they give you the Berserk skill. I think it was called Berserk, the one that boosts power, lowers defense, and drops your Fury usage by 50%. That last aspect pretty much allows you to chain your abilities non-stop. Your AI helpers, while horrible, would chain along with you and stun-lock anything (including bosses) that would flinch. The paper-rock-scissors concept was fine at first, but the above aspect breaks it somewhat. You can win almost any battle by standing around, which allowed you to auto-shield any light attacks. Heavy attacks break through the shield, but are seen easily. That system wasn't inherently horrible and I did like that part at first. Until I realized that every battle came down to me using a stun AAA move (if you've played the game, you know what that means) and then following up with an endless combo string till the enemy had no more numbers that kept it alive. Maybe I just found a method that worked for me, but something about it felt horribly broken. And before anyone says "omg, you didn't fight Lennith or Freya." It works on them too. Lennith (misspelled) was the only encounter I ever lost on. Yes, I hated this game and played that much of it. I didn't bother with the other difficulties. Unless they made the enemies not flinch when hit, which would make the game bleh to play, it would come to the same conclusion. I assume their numbers were just bigger on harder settings. Besides, the game is 60+ hours on its own, why would I want to do that again? Okay, I can see how those who liked it would want more. :P The combat was bareable though and did provide quite a bit of enjoyment at times. It was satisfying to beat a boss and see the 2 trophies "Beat X Boss in under 1 minute" and "Beat X Boss without taking damage" pop up. Not every time, I derped on a lot of bosses. :P The most memorable boss trophy pair was the big dragon.

Anyway, the worst part was the bland characters. They were all so boring and forgettable to me. It was your standard jrpg/anime line up and none of them really went outside of that role, which was disappointing. The dialogue and voice acting had me facepalming far too often. If the scene was supposed to be dramatic, it was turned into a satirical comedy from side commentary by me and my roommate. Heck, we didn't need to do that, the character's terrible voice actors and lines were enough. I could tell what mood they were going for most of the time, but the execution didn't match that feeling they were trying to achieve. The music during cutscenes only served to make it worse since it all felt overdone. It seemed like all the elements to make each scene weren't working together, but trying to fight with each other for dominance.

The story didn't help anything. It was alright for the most part and enjoyable. That is until the plot twist which made the first 75% of the game's story completely pointless. The only thing that was relevant, other than the characters meeting each other, was the artifact in the temple. That aspect just comes out of left field and there was no foreshadowing or build up to it. It just happens and breaks up the conflict that was already going on with that other race. They had something with them and there was some build up with that. They show up right at the beginning and were perfectly established as a villain. Sure they weren't THAT original, but hell, it made a lot more sense than... ugh, 4D. I have nothing to say on the villain except that he felt very contrived.

Wow that was a long answer. No worries, my rant is over! No it's not, Star Ocean 4 sucked too. That game can go eat my ass! I played 4 hours of that, decided to screw doing that and saw key moments of more overdone dialogue and horrible voice acting when my roommate played it. I really love when they go back in time to Earth of 1956 or... whatever time it was and it was a seperate dimension... or something. Well played Tri-Ace, well played. The only thing that served was to bring in the obligatory catgirl character and make Edge emo for the next 20 hours of unfortunate story time.

NOW I'm done ranting. Man I hate Star Ocean. I'M SO BITTER!! D: If you giggled anywhere during my rant, then it served its purpose, if not... well then I just suck.

What's the most memorable game you ever played?
Look at the previous question... okay not really!
There are two games that almost always come to mind when someone says the words "memorable game" to me. "Shadow of the Colossus" and "Silent Hill 2".

Shadow of the Colossus for its great story-telling with very little dialogue and use of atmosphere.
Silent Hill 2 for... well the same thing, aside from the dialogue part. Had great use of atmosphere with lots of tense moments.

What is the hardest game you've ever beaten?
I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting something, but there are (again) two games that come to mind. The original Battletoads seems to always come on top. Oh yeah, and this is without cheating or game genie codes. Using those aren't beating the game.

The other is Ninja Gaiden. All three of the NES games. The third one actually gives you a limited amount of continues on top of its player hating madness. I will say it now. I F&*$ING HATE BIRDS because of that game! No wonder I think about taking a piss on pidgeons when they get close enough.

When you started making Distorted Travesty, where did you start?
I started off with Martin Piecyk's base Mario engine in Game Maker. I had built a platform game engine myself, but his was vastly superior and he allowed others to use it freely as long as you gave him credit. The testing grounds for the engine was a Zelda 2 style game. I had built a combat engine (DT1's combat) in that other platform code I had and ported it over to Martin's code, then modified the hell out of it all to make it work how I wanted it to. This wasn't super serious stuff and I played around with it for maybe an hour or two a week (if even) back around August of 2008. I really didn't want to do a Zelda fan game, that was just for getting things started and it was mostly goofing around, there were no real plans for it to go anywhere. Eventually the engine came together around October 2008 and I had a small 5-10 minute game demo showcasing how it worked.

From that, I started a game with the working title Dieb Katze, which was dropped in January 2009. This game used DT1's spell system. It had roughly 20 minutes or so of gameplay and the 2 boss fights that showcased how the game worked actually made their way into DT1. The first boss was one of them and I'll let everyone speculate on the other. That game was dropped due to the plot and story mainly. It needed too much work, and the concepts and themes didn't feel right with the gameplay, nor did it complement the protagonist. It had heavy Christian themes and I realized that subject needed to be approached with far more care than what I was giving it. The story for that still isn't completely written, I periodically consult a friend of mine who is a far FAR better writer than I'll ever be. The gameplay for it revolves around protection and self sacrifice. (Not as in giving your life for someone else, though that theme is present.)

I guess you could say that DT1 is actually a revision of 2 1/2 previous games.

What was the hardest part of making the game?
Aside from coding AI for bosses and trying to work out interface bugs. (Like the one in the skill tab.) It would be minor design decisions. Such as deciding to move an enemy spawn point over 16 pixels to the right, left, or not at all. Or deciding if a pitfall should be 6, 8, or 10 tiles wide. These little things all fit into a specific theme or challenge I'm trying to generate. When the level and scenario have been implemented, it comes down to these fine tuning decisions and they were by far the hardest part of making the game.

What would you consider to be the most important aspect of game design?
Finding the fun.
If the core concept of the game isn't fun, it's a failed game. The fun can be from many sources though, from what I've found. The most recent example would be the game, Catherine. To me, the fun of that game isn't just in the puzzle solving aspect in the nightmares, but going through the narrative of the game. I think the narrative is the best part of the game and what makes the entire experience fun, as it integrates seamlessly into every other aspect of it.

What was the most important thing you learned from making Distorted Travesty?
I learned a ton from the game so it's hard to pinpoint the most important thing. The aspect that I disliked the most from DT1 is actually the spells. The way the player uses them was fine, but selecting new ones is time consuming and tedious. In order to switch a skill or spell of the same type, you had to go in the menu and select a new one. This makes the player stop the game and have to navigate a menu every time they wanted to switch spells, and for some parts, this could happen on many occasions. (Depending on play style.) The less a user has to use your interface the better. Menus, if necessary, should be designed with getting the user through them as quickly as possible and with as few button presses as possible. I did later add a key for switching these abilities without the menu, though it still felt hard to use that. I learned from that to not design systems that requires the player to constantly switch their character state in this manner. This is one of the things I've fixed up with DT3. The only thing the player will ever go in the menu for, as far as utility stuff goes, is assigning ability points.

I definitely learned a lot about difficulty balancing. At least for DT's gameplay style.

I never expected to see Allen Walker in any game outside a D-grayman liscenced game, or possibly a crossover fighting game. He is awesome, but why did you choose his sprites?
To this day, I have not seen the D-grayman anime. Though my roommate has been meaning to get it and have us watch it simply because of DT. When I started DT, I had no idea who Allen Walker was. It wasn't till a fan of DT told me about him that I knew. There was a name drop and I did some research. I usually don't choose sprites without knowing the source. All I knew, at the time, was that it came from a DS anime fighting game. I used it because it matched the mood I was going for with Jerry's character. Then of course I wrote it off (horribly justified it) later in the game. :P

About how long did it take you to put Distorted Travesty together?
A year and a half. The actual game itself was being put together starting February 2009 and ended November 2010.

How about Distorted Travesty 2, the sequel to the prequel?
Roughly three and a half months. I could have easily finished it in less than a month, and was hoping to do so. Life had me very busy, so I didn't get to devote much time to hobby stuff.

The difficulty of some of the areas in Distorted Travesty... Is the real reason you made this game because secretly you feed on the frustration and suffering of humankind?
Absolutely. When I want to make an area hard for the player, I just think of the people we have running the US government. And if I REALLY want to punish the player, I just think of women or my ex.

But really, I like challenging games. It was only natural that I make something to follow through with that.

How many hours a week do you spend on average game making?
This fluctuates all the time. Right now I can get around 8-12 hours a week. Even with work, life, and all that. Sometimes it can get to where I can barely touch it for 2 hours that week. My record time during DT1 one week was about 42 hours. Never got to do that again, not even close. That was around the time when I made Black Rock. Wow, it's a good thing I don't have a girlfriend. Women are a waste of quality production time.

What advise would you give to those starting their own fan/indie games?
I'll just fire off a few phrases.
-Everything is a learning experience if you want it to be.
-Refine and retune, and do it again... and again. The game you have in your mind when you start will not be the game you end with and don't be afraid to let that happen.
-Always listen to second opinions and suggestions from others. You don't have to use them, but still a good idea to listen to them and understand why these suggestions are made. A lot of DT1 was made better because of player feedback.
-Learn from your mistakes. (Huge, huge deal here.)
-Don't use sprite rips, make your own stuff, it's ALWAYS better. (Oh right, fan games.) :P
-Most important of all is to have fun doing it, the game will turn out so much better.

Anything you want to say?
Nope.

Oh right... I don't this to be one of those things where the interviewee simply says thanks to his fans, so I just want to thank all my fans for playing the game, providing me with feedback, and sending bug reports. I think some of these answers are quite verbose, so I'll not say any more than my blog holds a lot of what I'd probably say here.