This game has a lot of potential. I genuinely mean that. It is incredibly early in it's development in terms of actual content. I'd say only the first peninsula is fleshed out in any meaningful way, but what's there is good.
It lays out the world building in a somewhat okay manner. I'd personally scrap the 'virtus' singular good and evil entity idea, and go for a more broad, generalized 'natural elements' style of description. Either that, or lean wholely into the Religion aspect, the way FF did with Altana the Goddess of Light, and her guardian Carbuncles. Things like that. It would probably be a better idea from a writing standpoint. It also takes the burden of showing us this Virtus, or placing a 'final boss', being the epitome of evil on the board away.
Ok, that's all I'll say on the story side, it's rough but it works... Now onto the combat.
While the class systems are good, and I can see a lot of room for growth, it does look fun, and I'm glad you added a class tree like this, I want to say the balance aspect is a problem. A swordsman character can learn Quadruple Slash, allowing them to deal 3000 or more damage in one turn, while a character who is the same level of another class can only dish out 500 if they're lucky. It's a scaling difference that comes with having two attacks, then multiplying that. I don't mind Quadruple Slash staying in the game, I love it, but I'd make it take 100 TP or something. There are other issues as well. My character was a Cryomancer, but all 3 of the cryo spells are...well, to put it bluntly, garbage. They do not do anything different from each other, they are not very powerful, and they don't seem to have a reason to exist when Unaligned Energy or whatever the second Unkindled spell is does better than them.
I'd rework how you approach spells in general, I thing it's fine for now, but a better way to structure this system is when you unlock a spell, it leads to other spells in that class tree.
A list, or page depicting this for each class would also be welcome, so players can browse each class' spell list and make an informed decision. Not just for their main character, but allies that join them. SO they don't need to make a save file 3 hours back, and reload, if they made a choice they disliked. A way to just see which classes are healers, which have spells they'd enjoy, that would solve the issue, and then the player that makes a bad decision, or regrets it can only be upset at themselves, and not the developer when the tools they needed existed.
Hm
Ok, that's enough about the combat...
My final issue is the quests...which I guess are fine. Having the person who gives you hints at the bar is a good thing. I'd add exclaamtion points to NPCs that have a quest, similar to how you did it in the Adventurer Guild. This would make it a little less tedious to talk to every npc to find hints on where to go. However, if you want the player to not be so jaded and blunt, or direct, then every NPC would need to have something interesting, or unique to say. Something that'd point them in a direction, and make the player feel callous or dumb for skipping talking to every npc.
I am the type of person who talks to every npc in a game, because i want to, but their existence should be meaningful to help suck the player in via immersion. Even if just for a moment.
Oh, also, the Tragedy in the well quest does not seem completeable. Not sure if that's intentional or just an oversight. There doesn't seem to be a way to scale up the walls to kill the last zombies. Also, while wandering around i discovered not only are the Cryomancer's skills broken, but so are the Heretics. His 'no encounter' spells do not work. The enemies still ambush you every 5 steps. Personally, I am a fan of the new age rpg system, where random encounters do not exist, and instead enemies appear as sprites you can bump into. This makes it the players' issue whether they want to grind or not. It also renders the no encounter spells non essential, unless you want to use them to make enemies not run at you anymore, which is also a valid tactic. I am talking about this here and not in the Combat paragraph, because walking from one end of a map to another with 3 encounters feels like a bit much, but without the ability to grind, it could also make leveling harder. Which goes to the question of Balance. Again, having the player be in charge of what they run into solves that issue, and lays the question of power scaling entirely at the player's feet. So if they enter a region and the enemy is too strong, they can avoid it to hunt for treasure, or grind earlier sections to get stronger, leaving you, the dev, free to think about other things.
I hope this game is actively receiving some love, I think it'll become great given enough attention and love. God bless you.
Viewing post in Thoughts/suggestions
Well first off, Thanks you for taking the time to write such a long and detailed review. I appreciate it.
The story and idea is pretty bare right now since I'm trying to focus on adding areas and refining that content. I want to have more areas for story moments to take place in. I'll think about making the story sort of more religion focused, or at least having religious aspects. One thing I want in the story is for either good or evil to not be so black and white. Like not just the embodiment of good and evil but characters that are more mixed.
The Class balance is totally unbalanced, but I didn't have much time to test it out before releasing it either. Even while making the damage calculations I knew I'd need to go back and fix some things. I've already lowered the basic attack damage for almost every class since they just seemed too strong generally. The Cryomancer is supposed to be the weakest of the Diviners in terms of damage but yeah the skills could use some work in terms of variety or progression. I think in some cases I made some of the basic spells for the starting classes a bit strong, I'll look into making them feel more like a stepping stone into the real spells/skills.
The spells/skills are already structured so that once you fully learn a spell it unlocks a new stronger spell. I wanted to add a visual skill tree so you could see that but I couldn't find any plugin that worked the way I wanted. I might have to add an image showing the progression or something. But I agree, having a visual skill tree would be very helpful.
I can add a exclamation mark to quest important NPC's, though I don't know if there are that many. 'Quests' that Vic in the bar gives hints for aren't meant to be obvious or well known so stuff like that would still be unmarked but I should mark him. Followers should probably also be marked but I don't want it to be so obvious with an exclamation mark above them. I'll have to think about that.
The well quest I had to check because I forgot but you're supposed to stand on the water bubbles that blast water upwards. There should be a lightbulb icon over the bubbles that disappears when it forms the geyser and returns when it goes back to the bubbles. This is in the lowest level with all the lava by the way. So if that doesn't work then let me know, it used to at least.
I'll look into the no encounter/half encounter spells not working.
I'm also a fan of not having random encounters and instead encounters you can see. I do use encounters you can see in several areas but I think I should make it more consistent like dungeons and forest hideaways being where you can see the encounters but overworld type areas having random encounters. I'm not really sure what the percentage of people who like one over the other is. Maybe if I can't get the no/half encounter spells to work I'll just make it a toggle in the settings.
Thanks again for the suggestions and trying out the game, it gave me some things to think about, look into, and fix.