its driving me crazy!! Chapter 2 level 2?!?! its impossible? there are two zombies but they want you to beat it in one turn..... HOW DO YOU DO IT!?!

Yeah, the art and animation are great. But maybe this should have been just a comic book, rather than a game. It's held back by UI issues, unclear game mechanics, and OH GOD STOP THE CAMERA.

To be specific on the first two (assuming the third to be self-explanatory):

The UI is missing really basic functions, beyond the one mentioned in the review (no way to exit a battle early). Like how once I open Equipment Store, there's no way to close it. And how the unclosable store window is blocking the button to open the Trophy Store.

Or like how the Chapter screen only shows two battles at a time, even though there is plenty of screen real estate to show most, if not all, of them at once.

Or like how the Chapter Select screen is only accessible through the main menu, with no "back" button to get you out of a particular chapter so you can quickly select another.

Or like how you can't drag-and-drop a new inventory item onto a slot that is already equipped. Oh, no. You have to drag the equipped item off first, and drop it in an empty slot, before you can equip the new one. Because that's efficient. Yup.

Also, the "progress to level up" bar that shows after every battle is always fully green. Not seeing any "progress" there.

Another major drawback is that some game mechanics are never explained, and that the player is kept uninformed of basic info during the game. The battle screen is pretty dense with clickables and stats, but the "tutorial" level doesn't bother to explain most of it.

One crucial game mechanic is that each enemy starts out with several "shields" that must be destroyed before it takes damage directly. Each shield is weak to a certain attack type, indicated by the color of the little bar icon above the enemy's health bar (also color-coded). This information was presented, but not fully explained. It took me a few turns to figure out exactly how it worked.

Other information is never explicitly presented, or presented obliquely. For instance, I learned by trial and error that you can only string together three healing or defense items at a time-only in my 8th battle did I finally see the randomly-generated tooltip letting me know that useful fact.

Similarly, the game does tell you that you can earn gold trophies for completing each battle in a minimal number of turns. But you will never learn what the magic number is before starting a battle, and you are not provided with a turn-counter to keep tabs on your performance once you do know (having played the level once already). Never mind that the trophies are pretty useless, being worth far less than the effort required to procure them-playing each level at least twice (unless you are super lucky and hit the target on the first try, blinded), often playing it half a dozen times, until you're lucky enough to be able to string together a winning sequence of combos.

And I'm still not exactly clear on how I earn "tech points" during each battle. I think you get one each time your "chain level" meter fills. And I think your chain meter fills a bit with every attack you string together. But with the camera zooming in and out and back and forth like a drunken tourist filming the Scrambler at an amusement park, it's all pretty hard to follow.

I really want to like this game, mostly because of the artwork, and also because even though I don't fully understand the mechanics, it's pretty fun at times. But the issues I've mentioned here are absolutely killing it for me.

Great game, I'm giving it a 5/5. The graphics are beautiful. A few suggestions for the programmer(s):

When there are multiple enemies and one of them is in front of the other, the front enemy covers the back enemy so that it's not possible to select the one in back. Perhaps you could introduce a button/hotkey (such as tab) for switching targets, or just shift the graphics so none of the enemies are covered.

How about some subtitles for the introduction, for people who can't play sound because we're pretending to work. (Not that that's what I'm doing. *cough*)

I'm not trying to be all 3rd grade, but why do the bats attack the main characters crotch?

You can use the left and right cursor keys to change targets.

It would be nice to know how much an item will sell for before I sell it so I know if I will have enough to buy a replacement.

What do the green pluses and the grey shields do exactly, besides waste my turns?

Green +s heal you for I think ~20% of your health. Grey shields increase your def by a lot. If you don't put too many of your lvl points in hp (I had 60 total hp and still had to use them at times), you very likely WILL need to use those +s on the last chapter and a few other fights. Though just good +def coat can last you pretty much most of the game.

As mentioned above, there are many things that aren't really mentioned before you encounter them. For instance: the gambler class is actually one of the HARDER classes to get gold trophies on as it has 1 less turn than usual. (ex: tutorial needs to be done in 2 turns rather than 3). You can click the last orb you clicked to cancel that move. You don't get to know what exactly do each classes skills do until you selected. I don't think they tell you at all how you gen tech points (1 per turn and then once every 3 then 4, then 5, etc. "combos". Note that it only counts attacks that hit, so heals/shield/overkill don't count). You can't use items with lvl higher than you, but you can still buy them. Glowing items has 1 more stat than normal items. You might not notice the fact that you get one free use of the first skill, and that there is a max level to how much you can reduce the cost of the skills. Many of these don't need a tutorial just for them, but at least some kind of help file or such would have been nice.

Some other notes/bugs: do not get 3 heals/shields as the first set of a power bonus. It'll automatically end after the 3rd, without letting you chain. Clearing a save slot is a bit bugging at times. When I used it on the 2nd slot, it removed all the items from the first. The exp didn't change just the items.

The game has very nice animation and art, but the gameplay is fairly bland and at times very luck based (esp. to get those gold trophies). Also I feel there's no real "point" to them being vampires. There's no blood sucking, transformations, stakes, holy water, etc. Besides the art, it would probably make more sense if they were werewolves or something. It's still fairly additive, but could really have used more polish, innovation, and better use of its theme.

Tedric's comment is spot on. I was just going to see the first game hoping that the game mechanics would be better explained there. The game is fun, but needs some professional polish.

The grey shield bonus basically functions to use up a turn while taking minimal damage. It's usually a waste of time, but can be useful for setting up your next attack.

It's a little weird and confusing that there are two completely different kinds of trophies: the kind earned for completing battles in a certain number of turns, and the kind earned for achievements like killing a certain total number of enemies. The first kind can be spent at the trophy store; the second kind has no use that I can see, and only exist on the achievements page. The two kinds of trophies look identical, which makes me think maybe the achievement trophies were meant to be spendable but the programmer forgot to implement that feature. If that wasn't the intent, why not use different words and images for the two kinds of trophies?

I don't know if it's just my new computer, but my savegame for this is gone. I'm a bit miffed because I spent some time on it, too.

Do you guys know if anything that could cause this? I have a new Windows 7 laptop, the latest Flash and Firefox, and have enabled cookies and unlimited storage.

Help?

Thanks so much.

When I try to play on armor games, the game screen is cut off. Is anyone else having that problem?

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The game always gives you least of the attacks you would need most. Enemy shield all red = good luck getting some on your first "draw".

It's not random. To me, thats bad game design.

Glitches:

I saved a game at level 19 and left - when I loaded the game, all my equipment was gone and I was left with my level 1 jacket.

The ability to switch targets using the arrow keys works half the time.

I've that when I replay a level, sometimes one of the enemies will an unusual amount of shields - one enemy had 8 shields in total (this was on chapter 1).

Sometimes, when I spend trophies, I get the item I paid for but the number of trophies I have doesn't change and I can't spend them.

Other than that - fun game.

I'm not a huge fan of the art style, but I do love the gameplay idea!

Too many bugs to spoil a fun game.

So many silly, silly issues. "Scoundrel" class can't get all the gold trophies because the -1 turn requirement leaves you with 1 turn to kill 2 enemies. And the -1 turn requirement itself is silly, because that class has the least powerful "Free" special move. (One free shuffle, which you can buy in the trophy show, is definitely not as good as one free tile swap (manipulator) and is usually not as good as "all offense").

"Trophy King" achievement appears to be unattainable. I first tried earning every trophy in a slave slot, but didn't get the award. So then I actually went back and held all 35 gold trophies at the end of the game (finishing the game without spending any), and it still didn't unlock.

The gold slave slot also didn't unlock after completing the game in the other two slots. So I'm kinda left to assume that there's some part of the game that thinks there's new levels after level 35, or that I never finished the last battle ("New" never goes away), so all this stuff that depends on "finishing the game" doesn't trigger.

Which is highly unsatisfying.

I've got the same problem - Chapter 2 level 2 - two zombies and one turn - is there any trick to avoid it ??

We have been here to look for the choices hack online .