Hello, I’m back and testing the last version now after a while. With a fresh mind I can also tell you what issues I still notice or discovered due to not playing for a long time:
Setup
- first, my game started 1 fight before the 1st boss, while I remember having defeated the boss and stopped soon after that last time.
- in fact I just tried again after defeating the minions and I’m also back to before the minions! I’d rather be sure the save system properly works before going further before the boss takes quite some time to beat
- the game’s maximum resolution is 1080p. On a 1440p monitor, the main menu (and the rest of the game) looks OK, but the settings menu itself still looks blurry. Maybe it’s due to the Unity default widget textures just being too lores, and it will be fixed once you fully customise the UI?
UI
- the UI is still very raw at places (I mentioned default Unity buttons but there are also many buttons using primary colors that look proto), since release is approaching it’s something to work on seriously over this year. I see there is no UI/graphic designer in the team, that will be an important addition to the staff, not only for the overall in-game look (since it’s a VN / turn-based RPG you can say that UI is a big part of the aesthetics)…
- … but also for promotional art. If your case I see you already got a Steam page with capsule art and all, but you can still improve things like the color palette. For instance, the blue of the BONDS in the MAGNETIC BONDS logo is bit dark. It’s not too hard to read but you want maximum clarity on the capsule art. If you find a good stylized Japanese font for マグボ, it will also help stand out (e.g. Freedom Planet’s katakana sub-title uses a nice font with a golden gradient - OK maybe the 3-level gradient is a bit too much and not that easy to read, but you get the idea)
- on the same idea, a few messages (e.g. “Victory”) have very low contrast (yellow on white) making them hard to read.
Battle
- dropping back into the game, I had forgotten about non-trivial inputs (namely E/R to switch character and boost, Shift to cancel). It would be nice to have a Help / Input reminder menu somewhere (in the Escape menu I suppose) or have the controls reminded in the PDF Guide (easier since no need to implement feature in-game). Personally when I don’t have time for in-game controls I write them on the itch page, which you can also do (but that won’t do for Steam, as people are less expected to read the Steam page while playing!)
- … but to me, the best is in-game HUD indicators, namely showing the E/R keys near the character avatars and boost buttons to indicate E/R switches character or increases/decreases boost level
- E/R effect actually depends on context and that’s a bit troubling at times: you want to boost and instead you switch character. More exactly, in the top battle menu and skill menu, E/R switches character (or fails with error if no character available, which can give the impression that Boost is not available when trying to boost). When selecting an enemy, E/R changes Boost level. It differs from Octopath which allows Boost level change on skill selection, so I easily mess up. I like however that unlike Octopath, you can Boost at the last moment during enemy selection. => in the end it may be better to allow boost on both skill and target selection. To avoid confusion completely and also allow player to change character during skill selection, you can also assign different buttons to character switch and boost level change. It would be more complicated to remember and use all these keys though (but if inputs are remappable, players can choose to either use contextual boost/switch character or dedicated buttons).
- if you support gamepad (very recommended for Steam), I suppose E/R would become L/R triggers which is very intuitive (Octopath uses it for Boost already). Would could still use LT/RT on Xbox or X/Y to switch characters. Alternatively a Chrono Trigger-style left/right button to switch character from the top menu (then it’s better to show all character action boxes as in Chrono Trigger - it can be overwhelming to some, so there’s some UI decision to make)
- the Escape pause to increase Boost indefinitely hack has been fixed!
- otherwise my observations are the same as last time (too many OT, nice to defend at last moment…), and my strategy didn’t change (defend when enemy turn gauge or Rage approaches 100%, else use most powerful skill, consume all Boost when available - I’m considering to use 2 Boost instead of 3 since if I wait for 3 I will “waste” some Boost increase as it gets clamped on the max level)
- I tried to use the mouse to inspect enemy status alterations/weakness, but I couldn’t see my cursor. Is it disabled during battle? I’d recommend PC-compatible RPG to support mouse, it’s very useful to hover all sorts of information (as in Darkest Dungeon). Otherwise you need a way to navigate through all UI elements to inspect them (I know, it’s hard to do, even Octopath doesn’t do it - I only know CrossCode to have a full help with navigation to get a hint on every element on screen, and that’s just in normal menus).
I have no time left to beat the boss now, and the save system seems to fail again so I’ll wait for your confirmation that it’s working again before I try to beat it again. Then I’ll continue the demo as much as I can.