Most RPGs start the game with strong enemies that requires you to do a little leveling up before you can move on.
Well no, not really. Most RPGs start off pretty light. The ones that start with hard enemies are exceptions, and I know this because I can name them -- Dragon Knight, Cosmic Fantasy 2. The thing is, those games have strong hooks to keep people playing.
I disagree with that as from my experience with RPGs, you tend to have to level up once or twice in the beginning before you can comfortably move on in the game. You
could get away without leveling up right away in probably many RPGs, but it's a lot easier to just to take the time to do some light leveling up.
One thing I should note for people having trouble with Mysterious Song is to not venture off too far between the castle you start off in and the first town because after a certain point in the distance, the tougher enemies will kick in and it would require luck to safely travel between the castle and town without leveling up a couple times. So like I mentioned in an earlier post, immediately purchase whatever weapons and armor you can afford after talking to the king, and just level up a couple of times against the enemies that are just outside the castle, not the enemies that are near the next town.
Now, I haven't played the MS demo, so I can't say whether or not it has a strong hook. But if the game is really hard at first, and the opening cinematic doesn't enchant people, then there's not much hope that they'll want to keep playing. You don't want to drive people off before they get to the good stuff!
The game does have a strong hook, but it's not just hard because some enemies might be tuff, but because the game will require some strategy, which is a great thing. You make a great point though that the start of the game should interests people, but there are definitely much jucier parts throughout the game and the ending is pretty nice!
Another thing I'd like to comment about on the cinemas is that the art isn't all that makes the cinemas. What really sells me on the cinemas is the dialog: the script, the voice acting, and the sound editing are all pretty top notch if you ask me! What's amazing is that the voices were recorded and edited from people's home computers and not done in a professional studio, yet the outcome is just as good, if not, better than what you would get from a studio.
Well honestly the art in the opening cinema is really, really bad, like the Zelda games on CDI bad. The in game graphics are ok in a NES sort of way, but it would have been better to axe the cinemas completely if that's how they all look since they give a really bad impression.
The cinemas went through a lot of changes throughout development and funny enough, I think this is represented in the game because the cinemas at the end look nicer than the ones in the beginning. I'd like to redo the first cinema because of this not only so it looks better, but so it blends in with the later ones. Keep in mind there are only four/five cinemas in the game, so they aren't really a distraction at all since most of the time spent is ingame. Lord_Cack's tile work really impressed all of us.
