Changing my rating because I feel like the game quality went down. Instead of adding a bunch of mostly useless features to cover up your mistakes, focus more on the quality of the game itself.
Sidenote: your writing feels very robotic. It feels like you are trying too hard to make the dialog impactful that its got no actual emotion behind it. I dunno man, it almost feels like an AI wrote it.
Well for starters, a lot of the dialog just runs off the screen, even in the tutorial. Something that is NOT found in the browser demo. Additionally, the tutorial boss, Mammon, seems to use only skills that have no effect, ALSO something NOT found in the browser demo. Like, how do you have issues with a part of the game that you released last month??? Also the new gear system seems highly unintuitive and it seems much more difficult to acquire something passable. Sure you can craft some armor, but it is FAR inferior to what it used to be. Also why do bandits drop only mage armor??? And with this newly-supernerfed equipment, certain fights (like the mimic before the demon bosses) are barely beatable, especially with the unnecessary level cap system. Also Medea's weapon says it steals life, but it doesn't. The dialog in the athantia graveyard section is different, and it feels like someone reading dialog from a script instead of something improvised by a human. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the dialog before, so I see no reason why you had to change it.
It seems you are attempting to hide these flaws with shiny new features like tooltips for status conditions or better AI (I liked my stupid enemies thank you very much), and it definitely looks like you did not playtest it at all before releasing it because the intro to the game being that messed up is definitely gonna turn people away from your game.
Well for starters, a lot of the dialog just runs off the screen, even in the tutorial. Something that is NOT found in the browser demo.
All instances of text cutoff that have been reported have been fixed. This was caused due to a feature called "Word Wrap" not functioning as it should.
Additionally, the tutorial boss, Mammon, seems to use only skills that have no effect, ALSO something NOT found in the browser demo.
This was an oversight on my end as I had implemented one new skill for Chapter 6, which shifted all T6-T10 skill ID down by 1, which normally would not be an issue since most of the skills in a particular tier is premiered by the same Chapter with the exception of the 4 skills used by tutorial Mammon, as well as the elite in the tutorial zone Mammon's Acolyte. Their skills had been shifted by 1, giving them a set of skills that were not actually implemented yet.
Both of these problems were not present in the browser demo because the browser demo is a vastly reduced version of the game with only the skills needed. It is a separate build from what I work in and so any changes will not be reflected in that.
Also the new gear system seems highly unintuitive and it seems much more difficult to acquire something passable. Sure you can craft some armor, but it is FAR inferior to what it used to be.
This is because back when I first implemented the equipment, I did not originally want this many pieces of equipment in the game, but as development continued, it felt silly to repeat the same thing over and over. "Oh boy, new town. Craft new gear, and now we don't have to worry about gear until next update." The way it is now I feel is better down the road as now I can add certain gimmicks to weapons such as life steal or elemental weapons that I could not before because it was your only option for a weapon, which further allows for diverse builds and more experimentation on replays.
And with this newly-supernerfed equipment, certain fights (like the mimic before the demon bosses) are barely beatable, especially with the unnecessary level cap system.
This encounter was probably the one thing I was not fully proud of simply because it was held together by hopes and dreams. Did it work as intended? Sure, somewhat. Were there many problems with it? Absolutely. Should timers in RPG Maker MZ do more than just end the battle with neither a win or a loss? Also yes. Anyways, this encounter is receiving an overhaul that does not include a timer, so the battle will hopefully be improved by this change.
Also the level cap system, like I mentioned in two devlogs, was always intended to be in the game, and it was for a short time until I implemented the class change system which broke my original method of level caps. This allows me to better balance the game around a set level range instead of people just being "oh, fight too hard? lemme grind xp for an hour to get +20 levels". The content is beatable, you just need to use all the tools you have at your disposal.
Also Medea's weapon says it steals life, but it doesn't.
This was my fault because I used the wrong note tag for post damage evaluations. And also because I forgot she even had that weapon, so when running through the game, it didn't occur to me to double check the life stealing properties of the weapon. Regardless, I have fixed this issue and it will work as intended on the bugfix release.
The dialog in the athantia graveyard section is different, and it feels like someone reading dialog from a script instead of something improvised by a human. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the dialog before, so I see no reason why you had to change it.
This is probably one of the biggest moments in the game as you can probably imagine, and I felt the original dialog I had didn't properly convey the story I was trying to tell. Even after the original release of Chapter 4, I kept revisiting that event and constantly coming up with new dialog and scrapping it until I finally settled on the lines you now see in the game.
It seems you are attempting to hide these flaws with shiny new features like tooltips for status conditions or better AI (I liked my stupid enemies thank you very much), and it definitely looks like you did not playtest it at all before releasing it because the intro to the game being that messed up is definitely gonna turn people away from your game.
The stupid enemies always bothered me as it felt like you could just pray for a dumb enemy to secure an easy win. Also I like the state tooltips, and I had to write them all out for over 80 different conditions. Also I did playtest the game, but at different stages of development. On my initial run through the intro, everything worked fine because I had not made any changes to the skills yet, and the word wrapping was working, so everything seemed fine there. Then I made the aforementioned changes, but continued on the same save without expecting anything averse to happen to the stuff I have already cleared.
tl;dr
A lot of the stuff you have mentioned has already been fixed and will be available when the bugfix release goes live. Sorry you do not like some of these changes, but I hope when the bugfix goes live that you will give the game another chance.
