Hello Existenztim!
I have played your game until i finally found that it was too annoying to continue.
Well lets get straight into it. In short:
Gameplay: Way too easy. Only 3 foes were a challenge. 2 that could reflect abilities and one that knew doom. The burning bird was very easy and couldn’t give me any trouble.
The puzzles were annoying. Mostly at least. There was a lot of work into them, no matter how much i despised them. So a plus point. 3/10
Sound: I normally play muted, but i did give this a chance and i just didn’t like most the music. Didn’t really feel fitting in all the times i let it run. 1.5/10
Graphics: Not that many standard enemies, you tried to make good custom animations and tiles (or you googled for them). It was decent enough. 7/10
Story: Oh boy you gave me hope at the beginning… just to get progressively worse. 1.5/10
Alright we are done with the short one and it comes out at 13/40. Which is about 32.5%, meaning its a failure for me.
Alright lets get into the details i still remember after a week or two of a break hoping to get my motivation up again.
Gameplay: The first boss was alright and i liked that normal enemies weren’t much of a threat… but i could only really remember the turtle that reflected skills/normal attacks/etc (Plus the annoying fake chest that did that too) and the dragon in the prison that had instant death (well after a few turns) and abilities that did % based damage. On everyone with the later.
Plus stealing from bosses didn’t give any extra or rare items, i checked with every enemy i could as i got stealing as soon as i could and used mug even before i could get snatch. Maybe i could have gotten more with mug but who knows. I didn’t feel like testing more after i snatched the gold he said he was out of everything when i tried to mug ‘em.
Well if you used the thief, the healer, the mage and the “spellblade” nothing was really a challenge. With haste and slow my damn spellblade got like 4 turns before this fiery bird even moved. It was ridiculous. Also the spellblades spell, despite its higher cost, is absolutely OP if you invest into matk. What were you thinking when you made this move?
Basically my spellblade could do it all, except healing though i grinded in the arena in the first tier enough to buy a good amount of full restores so to say, and was absolutely overpowered the whole game!
Maybe you could have done a difficulty options for people that want harder enemies.
Now to the puzzles.
They were annoying, horrendous and all that. I don’t like puzzles much but normally i can power trough… but yours were everywhere and i tried to get 100%. Meaning i had to do the ruins. I have like 18,5hours saved but a total investment of 30+hours if we count resetting cause i suck. But that you make your minigames and puzzles mandatory…. that was annoying. Very much so. There went a lot of effort in but i can’t say I liked it.
I honestly gave up on a lever riddle with bookcases in that floating castle cause i really, really didn’t have the patience for it anymore, even after a 1-2 week break.
Maybe add an option with a penalty that allows to get rid of them. Maybe in a later game.
Also maybe you could focus one to three puzzles you build upon. You had so many that none were memorable and that people get used to it.
Story…
Well I had hopes when you did the whole time manipulation thing at the beginning. But you just got goddamn worse with each goddamn bit you revealed. I had hoped that it would be an actual active time travel thing (where we travel from past to present to the future constantly) but instead i get a normal adventure (and i hoped i would have been wrong too). You baited me. Well done.
Also you get your last comrades very late. I thought i was in the prolog till i got the robot. I mean… I mean… I hoped thats when the true journey started. But I am pretty sure it ends with the whole floating castle thing.
It just got worse and worse… but i won’t go into detail if someone reads this that hasn’t played it yet at all.
Graphics: Not much to say. You tried your best there and it is part of what kept me going.
Major bug: You can get infinite ancient magica ore in the forest fishing spot. Where the saving spot is.
Well have a nice day.
Fooljastic.
If you find any spelling mistakes you can keep them, english is not my first language.