Great, but could be even better.

(This is one review for both parts A and B)

Unfortunately, this seems like a small step backwards compared to what we've already seen from you, especially after the ingenious 14 Days, 5 Minutes parody series. The voice acting is one of the biggest culprits here - not one, not two, but all three of the main character's voice actors have noticeably low-quality microphones. Most of the secondary characters, by comparison, have little to no trouble. Simply taking care of that would solve one of the biggest problems I have with this. It's just kinda weird, especially after most of the 13/14 nobodies did it well previously.

This has also been a constant for a lot of your stuff, but there are some obvious mispellings in the subtitles, and places where the subtitles deviate from what is actually said, with results that vary from insignificant to changing the meaning of the sentence. It's a small quip, though.

As Metaklight said, the voice actors shouldn't speak so quickly, and/or mechanically. One scene that comes to mind that could be improved is the monologue after Maleficent 'dies'.

And now the good stuff! Your animation has gotten better, and the opening video was your best music video yet - in fact, I just bought the song used in it from iTunes! It's also good to see that the battle sequences don't sacrifice as much art for animation like in the fourth part of 14 Days - they're executed well, particularly Aqua vs. Maleficent.

Like always, there were parts when I simply burst out laughing. I won't spoil them, but they're there when you least expect them, and that's what makes it so funny.

Also, personally, I can't believe you didn't make fun of the armor appearing out of nowhere when Aqua, Ven, and Terra left the Land of Departure - that was a major 'WTF' point of the game for me.

Anyway, great job! I can't say that this part will go onto my favorites list, but I'm still eagerly awaiting the rest of the series!

*clap clap clap*

Amazing work. I haven't laughed this hard at a Flash animation for a LONG time. Favorited, 5/5, 10/10, shared on Facebook.

Well, this was a nice surprise this morning! It's been a long time since I've heard anything from this project. Glad to see you saw it through! :)

Some of the similarities to First Fantasy are rather striking, including the UI layout, battle system, and even the style of humor. Yet there are some nice touches that I wish I had thought of at that time - like green and red highlights for stat changes. The story, though, definitely makes this its own game. Either way, I'm still very flattered that you took inspiration from FF!

And now for the actual review, with far less comparisons :P

I'm impressed with the depth of the story. Not that I have ANY knowledge of Chinese myth, folklore, or history, but it does seem like you have a lot that you pull from here, both in terms of the breadth of folklore and your knowledge about it, and the popup text is great for learning more about a subject - but it's never required (yes, that's a good thing). The popup manner of that text, though, is odd - you could have skipped the popups and implemented the text into the game window itself somehow. I don't have a problem at all with user-initiated popups, but I've been here long enough to know that some people simply just love their adblocker.

Art is fairly minimal but what's there does its job, I suppose.

Music is just about exclusively piano and ambiance. Not too memorable either. It seems like more Chinese-sounding music would have gone great here.

The battle system is solid, and easy to get the hang of, with a couple exceptions - cultivating qi is basically a way to ensure death never happens if you start early enough, so it might have been wiser to limit that capability. Similarly, there is no penalty or chance of failure (at least in my experience, even though the tutorial says it may fail sometimes) for running away. And this was a problem in my game too (actually, a WAY bigger one in my game), but when you attack with the same results as the previous turn, sometimes the text won't change at all, so you don't know if you actually attacked. Some feedback would be welcome when attacking, even if you miss for that turn.

A more visual movement controller would have been nice too - for example, if the 'up', 'down', 'left', 'right' buttons were actually arranged like arrows or something (like Halsaban in FF 1.1). Just for us visual people. Especially if the button text shifts a lot.

I think that's everything I have right now. I like this, and I'll be looking out for a Part 2!

Good as usual

Well, this is a grand, sweeping theme for a large, fantasy-inspired city. There are some undertones of battle, but they don't dominate the piece. The harp especially helps diffuse some of the tension. I bet this could also be used for a city that was about to go off to war, though.

One of my complaints is the the harp, while it serves a purpose, felt a tad artificial, like it didn't 100% belong in the song. That might be due in part to the fact that I originally heard another version of the song, where bells replaced at least some of the strings. The song felt like it supported those better, but this version still fit my game more.

And you are correct on liking it more with time - it has also happened with art for the game :P It's the difference between what I had in mind at the time and what it actually was, and eventually I came to terms with it and realized that it wasn't a bad thing. It does happen a lot with me.

Aww yeah

This was, without a doubt, my favorite song from DJ Maniax. Great that I get to put it on my Ipod now :)

DnB takes a step back- but it's a good thing.

Well, I was missing some adequate BGM for scenes in my game, so I did a portal search for tension and I came across this. I didn't actually think I'd find a DnB track that was good for something that- being tense without overdoing it and actually being more hardcore instead. I love how there's a hint of furious drumming in the beginning, cutting out into the main part of the music, which seems like it's intentionally holding itself back a bit to make a mood that it otherwise couldn't have. Great job.

Something is off in between the two... it looks to me as if they're sharing the same shirt, and there doesn't seem to be any depth difference between the left arm of the left girl and the shirt from the right girl. So either one could potentially be closer to the viewer than the other. It's just... odd when I look at it.

Congrats, you have lured me out of Art Portal lurking because Umineko.

This is great work, but on first glance the face seems sort of odd. Her right eye seems more closed than the left one.

One effect which I don't think you were trying for but came out kinda neat anyways is the black on the background - they sorta look like wings. Slightly moreso than the original, anyways.

Other than that, great stuff... it'll be an interesting wall hanging. Maybe you should hang the epitaph right under it :P

Nice. Can't really explain it, but the colors work well, and the piece simply works. Well done.