PRE-GERI GERAN DARI GARARA is not a typical RPGMaker2k RPG. There is no general direction that is spoon-fed to you. You must talk to NPCs and make notes in order to know where to go next, and quite a lot of the game's quests are optional (about 75% actually). Here are also a few things you MUST realize:
- Your characters' personalities are displayed from what they say and how they interact. You are NOT going to be seeing "character development" from long, boring 10 minute cut-scenes. You must do things like searching barrels, talking to people, triggering events, etc., to see how each of your individual characters will react. IMO this is a lot cooler than Final Fantasy-style RPGs where your characters only talk and act during cut-scenes, so before you write the game off as having bland characters, try and actually explore the game's interaction first.
- Unlike most other RPGs, every single NPC in the game has a life. If you noticed already, every NPC has a name (except maybe a few shopkeepers), and every NPC does at least 2 different things. Often you might talk to an NPC and write him off as just another NPC, but later in the game, he may show up again to either help you out or just to goof around so you can go, "OMG that was that one guy!". This is why I created Fred Minnich (and a few others). NPCs will even make references to things that you might think are irrelevent, until you encounter them in the game much later on!
- There are NO major events! The game will NEVER shift from Panda's perspective to some other place so you can see what the badguys are thinking (as this is a paradigm of Final Fantasy-style story RPGs). So you might get the feeling that there is no plot in the game. That may be true depending upon your definition of plot, but as far as I am concerned, expecting a traditional type of RPG already limits the kinds of games you can experience, because this game is definately not something you've played before if you're just expecting another story RPG.
- I would also like to take the time to point out that in some guy's review of the pre-alpha 3 demo, he called me an immature writer with poor writing skills. While this game may display poor dialogue and barely any story, that does not in any way reflect upon my actual writing skills or maturity (I don't see how vulgarity determines one's maturity anyway, I guess the people who did the movie There's Something About Mary must be immature pricks like I am). If you want to see high quality writing from me, check out: http://www.gaban.com/tarney/ . I also intend to satisfy my story-writing urge with a story based RPG after PGGDG is finished.