@Jade:

The thing with FF is it's a Japanese game, and Japanese games tend to know what they're doing and take their time to get it right, it's a cultureal thing as much as anything for the Japanese to do the best they can in life or anywhere else. Remember Japan is a very honor driven society and they want to put out the best they can to live  up to that honor.

@Exodus: Well said. People shouldn't rip a game apart because it's similar. If you want to take it back to the basic building blocks. Every audiogame is a clone of every other just because of the fact it's limited, you're just using sounds, and in many many cases, sounds overlap and you only have a certain number of ways to convey soundss though.

Clone is not an automatic dirty word in my book. I believe I've said this elsewhere.

I don't care that AHC is a little derivative, and I don't care that Crazy Party is much more. I -do care that Manamon is derivative though, because it sort of pretends not to be and borrows a metric ton from its source. That's always sat wrong with me.

@Exodus, I'm definitely not one of those people who thinks every new game has to be its own totally unique special snowflake. As I said before, find a thing, whether it's new and novel or fairly bog-standard, then do it as well as you can. Don't just mail it in. AHC does not just mail it in. Heh.

Well manamon is the clone of pokemon, but there is digimon, the japanese have cloned their own thing so it hardly seems to matter.
Unlike some of us they seem to not have any issues cloning things with slightly different names.
I do aggree manamon's idea is not new it is a clone but the fact there is a name change is probably enough to say that it is origional enough.
Becides, if you are emulating a console you are basically making a clone of a console and no one seems to mind that much unless you don't own your cart and not everyone does.

Crystal, thanks for this. Clearly you get it.

Manamon is not a terrible game, btw, even if it's a shameless clone. Its status as a shameless clone should absolutely be held as a point against it, however, because even if it's virtually bug-free and has decent sound design, it is asking us to pay forty dollars and more for something which is  heavily, heavily plagiarized. I'm not in favour of causing any legal trouble for VG Storm, by any means, but I'm also not in favour of letting things just slide by either. I refer to it as calling a spade a spade.

AHC is not a clone, not in the pure sense. If it's supposed to be a DND clone, where's charisma? Where are feats and saving throws? Where is Magic Missile? No, it's a high-fantasy-inspired RPG, as are about half a thousand others in the mainstream market. This should not and must not be held against it.

As someone who's actually done my fair share of design from the dev side (online and otherwise), I can tell you largely why magic hits more often than melee. It's because magic actually has a cost. You can plug away with a mace and sometimes you'll miss, but magic, by virtue of the fact that it has an associated cost, generally has to either hit harder, or hit more often. This is, in fact, an area where I think AHC has missed just a wee bit, but not by much. I'm not saying magic should never, ever, ever miss, ever. I'm saying that it should be harder to miss with magic because it has a cost.

No, AHC is not 100% totally original. But is any RPG 100% original? Is this to be a point of contention? Because that's what I feel like at the moment. We can agree that the idea of levelling up, learning skills, using stats to improve combat performance and killing the big bad guy, in and of itself, has been done a lot. A whole lot. It's all in how you get there. Are the maps interesting? I'd say they are. Is the combat interesting? Again, I'd say so, though I'd make buff-stacking outside of battle stop being possible because it wrecks balance. Is levelling up and learning skills good? Well, it's decent, anyway; you never feel like you have to grind for five hours just to be competent, the way you might have in, say, FFVI or Dragon Warrior or Crono Trigger, two of which are rather iconic in the RPG genre. And is the story good? Again, I'd say it's pretty good. I've seen better, I'veseen far worse (Paladin, I'm looking at you). Rather than focus on the fact that a game is an RPG, and shares traits with a lot of RPGs, ask yourself how well it does those things.

The reason Manamon has gotten slammed so hard is because it's unapologetically a rip-off. And it doesn't even have superiority to its source to argue for it. A lot of moves/creatures/mechanics are iffy, the story is interesting but rather shaky, its maps are decent, and its level-up system is bog standard (not bad, not good, just standard). Manamon gets slammed because it goes into a genre, borrows very heavily from a source, then fails to execute properly. AHC, on the other hand, succeeds because it goes into a genre, borrows not quite so heavily from its source material and, for the most part, does a good job with it.

@Jayde I couldn't have said it better myself!  I consider a clone to be a 1 for 1 rip off of something.  Like you could say Final Fantasy 3 is a clone of Final Fantasy IV if you're going off of mechanics, but they both have differing stories and characters and all that jazz.  I'd just rather see actual conversation about how to better AHC as a whole (because I do have issues with it's execution, no matter how much I'm enjoying the game)  rather than seeing everyone say that it's a clone because...it's a fantasy RPG.  Going that route every piece of fantasy fiction is just a clone of Lord of the Rings~

@Nocturnus  I'm the same way, I see the flaws in AHC, I'm not here to sing it's praises.  But to completely discount what it's done in the audio gaming space by saying it's a clone when it's just inspired by the fantasy genre I feel just shuts down the conversation, gets people on the defensive, and makes any actual conversation about making games like it better in the future become rather pointless because then the whole subject of "Is it a clone?  Is it not" pops up.  But I do think from a story line stand point, it could be better.  I think from a balance standpoint, it could be better, but it's still something we can play and enjoy, and learn from to take into developing audio games, and accessible games in general in the future

@CrystalD,
Awesome stuff and well phrased post; thumbs up on 63.  I'm not trying to discount any of what AHC has done.  My concern actually lies in the fact that a game of this caliber comes out and then we settle for saying that this is the best we can do or the best that we've done up until now.  You're absolutely right, however; every title is going to serve as a drop of history by which we can establish something else, a point of reference we can work around when the next title comes along.  either way, it is what it is to every single one of us differently.  Because this is the case, I'm going to address all of the points in post 1 and hope that will actually get the ball rolling in the right direction.  this is gonna be rather long, so if you read it in its entirety, I sincerely appreciate your attention in advance.
1.  What makes this game any different to the 50000000 clones out there?  I think we've hashed and rehashed this aspect of gaming quite enough where AHC is concerned; some people believe it to be a clone by virtue of the fact that the concepts are not unique; others are not entirely convinced and prefer to call something a clone only if it deliberately goes out of its way to look exactly like something else, which is a fair assessment of the word clone, I suppose.  Perhaps we should use the word immitation instead?
2.  What will make people want to come back and keep playing for longer than 5 minutes?  In the case of AHC there are a few things.  First, the game is not all fighting and not all story line.  the quests are somewhat difficult and there isn't always obvious answers.  The various paths one can take are also worth mentioning, even just within dialogues... see the easter eggs topic if you want further examples.  Given I've only begun to scratch the surface on this one, I'm sure there's much I'm missing, so I'm willing to admit that there may be much, much more to it than all of the above, but as it stands right now, the kind of expansion i'd' like to see concerns itself more with what and how we do things.  Aside from the obvious ones that might make a game like this more enjoyable to some, myself included, such as multi-player support, the ability to buy and sell from other players in a centralized location or the ability to craft your own weapons or enhance those that already exist by some means, more simplistic goals might be things like actually having to learn the spells and or skills you're dealing with, either through tomes or training, having to use a wand/staff/rod  and strange mechanics/gestures to cast some spells more reliably than others perhaps simulated through the use of the mouse, possibly even doing the same with melee weapons and the like so that you have to hold down left or right mouse button and slide the thing to swing a sword or what have you, instructing a character to act as a hitter, blaster or a tank entirely through his or her lifespan/the time they're with you/any extended amount of time of your choosing.  sound complicated?  Fine!  but I'm tired of simplistic number crunching and keypad mashing where the result is determined by setting a stat to this and putting experience into that.
3. When I sit down tomorrow and hammer out another game, will I think about the game I just made yesterday?  this one is not one I can answer because I'm not a dev, but I hope other devs are going to take it seriously because it holds a ton of implications.  Recycling code and even certain aspects of your games is perfectly fine; n64's Golden Eye and Perfect Dark, made by the same company are, I feel, perfect examples.  The controls feel almost the same, but you can tell that PD was slightly more than GE given there are more achievements to collect, more dialogue, acted scenes, new sounds, even new mechanics!  IN GE you constantly threw grenades by holding down the z button.  In PD, a grenade could actually detonate in your hand if you did the same exact thing.  In GE your guns only did one thing.  Because PD was more sci-fi, you were given a secondary mode for practically every weapon, even those that were simplly average every day handguns.  In GE every door had to be manually opened.  In PD some doors opened of their own accord to showcase the futuristic aspect.  In GE you could enter cheats even if you hadn't completed the game by entering codes right in your playscreen through the use of your remote.  In PD you seriously needed a gameshark because screw you!  I'm not letting you cheat unless you beat me first!
4.  How can I get the best with my sound design with whatever limited resources I may or may not possess? (I know that last one is a very grey area).  Seriously, I actually think this is an area where AHC did immensely well; I was pleased to see we weren't sticking to old 90's stock sounds all the way through just because they're there and sony and sound ideas and hollywood edge are the best and screw you!  Everyone recognizes this stuff!  Lets do it!
5.  How am I going to market my game, should I maybe seek advice from other successful candidates?  I believe the marketing strategy for AHC was exceptionally aggressive; I'd like to believe it was entirely honest as well.  Some of its goals were obviously not met and the devs were clear enough on that front, saying that they pushed the game out knowing it would crash and that there would be bugs owing to the fact that they didn't test as extensively as they wished they could have because they were more eager to get this thing out to us than they were on looking like the perfect guru magicians of the ag community they knew they weren't.  As I said above, I make no attempt to hide the fact that I would rather have waited another year or two for this game to meet its full potential; this is where I feel like the rest of the gaming community gets a bit too greedy and pushes devs to release games yesterday rather than allowing them to deliberate longer and without as much stress.  Yes, gamers, we're all mostly to blame for that one.
6.  If this a practice game, maybe state this in my thread when making it? If we look at it from this perspective and AHC was supposed to be seen as a practice run, then we can safely say that it was more than a success and those who expected better should and would, had they understood it as such, probably not be so surprised or put off by the end result, but this is, I believe, an important topic to cover.  given the game was not free of charge and the devs expected some sort of financial compensation from the very beginning set a sort of standard though, a message that this was in fact, no practice and no child's play, that we are ready to go into the professional field fulltime and what you pay for is going to be a spectacular product.  The word spectacular here is going to be subjective, which is where the arguments are always going to exist, because one's idea of it will differ if only slightly from the next.
7.  Finally, should I perhaps implement a pre planning stage before I start making a game?  It'd be hard to say whether this game was exceptionally thought out over the past 5 years without first answering question 6, but this is a no-brainer for every dev.  My art is somewhat different from yours; I work with audio.  Every timeI record/produce something I like to think about the end result first; it doesn't always turn out that way and the project ends up being scrapped for something better or shelved for another day.  I have a lot of ideas when it comes to music and sound design; I don't always know how to make them come to life, but I toy with them in my mind regardless.  Brainstorming doesn't always have to be done on paper, but some do it better that way.  I work best when I'm honestly enthused by an idea; if it doesn't hold/captivate me anymore, it's time to kiss it goodbye for the next one, at least until I can come back to it again and recapture the feeling.
If you've managed to make your way through all of this rambling I salute you; I honestly didn't intend for this to be as lengthy as it turned out to be, but I haven't been able to sleep for the past few hours and figured I'd make some productive effort on this topic rather than just being the guy who sits off in the background saying I want more more more without saying what I want more of.  I do not believe my aims to be unrealistic, even if I am rather crazy.  the perfect game doesn't exist, but those who want it will keep trying for it because the desire, does.

Actually Love quest...on that score, the idea of "talk to everyone" pays dividends.
slight
spoilers
Beatrice will help you. And she's close by the armourer, so while it's a little bit of an odd one, it's not utterly impenetrable.
I'm assuming I've done all the quests the game has to offer - thirty-five of them, at last count - and none of them really and truly gave me fits except Laying Down the Law, for reasons I've explained elsewhere.

Crystal, I understand what you're saying about wanting to enjoy vs. wanting to struggle. I feel like this is nothing more or less than a personal preference thing. I love to explore, personally, and as long as I'm not dying right and left, I don't really care. Being able to save anywhere, at no cost, really helps in this regard. I save religiously. This does not mean your perspective is wrong, it simply differs from mine, and I'm okay with that.

I agree, Nocturnis, that we don't have to give a game a complete pass just because it's good at what it does. I've never, ever thought that. And on the one hand, I'll admit that it was annoying to have so many little bugs in AHC when it launched, but on the other, it was very nice to see just how fast those bugs got patched.
I confess that the stuff using the mouse to sword-swing or gestures to cast spells just seems gimicky. This is a turn-based RPG, there's nothing wrong with selecting things. Where I personally feel AHC falls down a bit is that there's no real AI that I can see. I don't see complex strategy. If you bash stuff hard enough, it dies, and sometimes monsters will waste turns not doing the optimal thing. One thing I've always liked about Final Fantasy and Crono Trigger and games like that is that bosses, while sometimes laden with gimicks, are also smart, sort of. If you cast a magic spell, the boss counters with Silence. Or, a particularly lovely example, the Magus sisters from FFIV. One of them casts protection spells on the trio. One of them is a huge damage dealer. The third will heal the hell out of all three. So you have to figure out how to deal with that. This is the sort of strategy I like, and where I found AHC lacked a little.

Her or his user name is spelled Jayde,. I thought you would want to know.

I would have to do a playthrough on hard starting at level 1, which I'll do when I have time...but even on normal I didn't notice specific strategy. i.e., turn 1 the boss does this thing, then turn 2 one of his lackeys does this other thing to help him and turn 4 the boss, protected by that lackey, does something epic. Stuff like that. I have never seen cooperative groups, not even in boss fights. The closest is the final battle, but all you need to do there is AoE the hell out of them, and all strategy goes out the window (this is true on both easy and normal, and I wrecked the final boss on normal even easier than on easy, funnily enough). I really hope Blessed Peace got a hard nerf, not a soft one. lol

Anyway, yeah. I'll have more specific data about hard mode at some point, but so far I noticed little enough difference between easy and normal that I'm...not really expecting much. And like I say, this is where an RPG falls down for me. It's why I liked Entombed...at least in general, its boss fights were kind of interesting. I'm thinking of the final battle, and the way the Alyssa and the crystals worked.

Well...

Audio games are still really limited, easy to play (mostly) short, boring in terms of story lines (if there's any), not addicting enough (with few exceptions) and overpriced (usually)

One thing I learned in my life is you don't need lots of cash, huge team behind a project to do something good, ambitious and creative. Of course it depends on the project: You can't create something massive like AHC without voice actors but I saw lots of video games made by one / two people and even if 8-bit, games were played by many gamers for many many hours.

Greatest example is BK3, easy to pickup but hard to master. Tons of secrets, unlockables and stuff. Is this one sounds really like a pro video game? of course not but it's really additing, original and groundbreaking.

I played most (if not every) audio game out there and sadly most of the audio games are just clones of each other. Someone mentioned games from SEGA systems, yes, but games from 90s were more original and complex compared to our audio games we have for now.

Many times I feel like a blind developer is:
1. Hungry for money and this is why development takes really short amount of time.
2. Blind developers don't have any kind of experiences regarding video games (Of course it could be understandable, not every blind should play video games)
When I was testing and every time I am playing AHC I feels like developers are gamers, true gamers as they knew what to do and how to do things  to make AHC a game like it is now: Balanced, with great living world, with fantastic atmosphere.

No offence of course, just say what I am thinking.