Ah man. I really wanted to like this, but It's just not working out for me here. I really didn't have a very good time playing this at all.
The artstyle is great, don't get me wrong. It looks fantastic and the controls are perfectly fine. But good artstyle alone does not carry a game.
When I got into the game and got going, It took awhile to get to combat. "sure" I figured. Slow burn, gets into combat later, sounds cool. Just like Persona 4. Buuut, that just wasn't the case. This feels overall, like a visual novel with a *sprinkling* of combat. 2 hours in and I've only had 3 fights- that's pretty lacking. I mean, the debate system and deckbuilding is one of your biggest assets here, and alongside the lack of combat, even the deckbuilding feels severely limited. Not much to really work with, you feel me? And even then, the options aren't all too stellar when all I have to pick from are a bushel of "delete two, gain one if option fufilled" and maybe a couple of barriers and buffs. There's just not enough in here yet to build a satisfying deck. Not to mention It's hard to understand what I'd want to choose for my next target when I can't see what I've accumluated for reach color during picking a choice. That- and why does my accumluated rhetoric just go poof when I pick a new arguement? That just kinda stinks and serves to extend what's already minimal combat. Not to mention that it seems like shielding is generally excrutiatingly high cost. Popping up a shield usually means I get smacked twice for doing so.
And I need to impress this- the music just isn't doing it. It's flat, bland and doesn't have any oomph. I'm just not feeling any of it, especially the regular combat theme. There's no energy to what I would expect to feel like intense combat, and the bass feels irregularily flat. A rework of that would be pleasant. Then, with most other themes, they feel like they don't have enough length into them before they loop, leaving the player with just not enough out of them.
And then with the visual novel parts- I'm sad to see so many screens left black to convey a transition. It just feels like missed real estate half the time. And when that's not an issue, I'm regularily faced with dialogue that seems clunky, narrow, and spaced. like. this. all. the. time. Not only am I sitting down for hours having to read "huh" and "what" being thrown out half the time, but it also feels like there's just way, way too many moments of "..." added in as well when I'm internally yelling "please speak".
The protagonist comes off as a bit of a clueless ditz and then when invocating, becomes serious. What's with the sudden hot and cold? Is she smart? Is she a klutz? I don't get where the character is going with it all over the place here. For a game where mystery is key, it feels like everybody else is putting two and two together and I'm just along for the ride. For example, my character background picked was a receptionist at a pharmacy. So why is it that we utterly bumble around when speaking to a receptionist at an office like that? Shouldn't we have some tact with the situation due to prior experience? The protagonist feels incredibly weak most of the time- yet she's lived a decent portion of life having a background that never ever seems to come into play. Hapless, witless and really lacking identity most of the time, is how the writing comes off to implicate her. Even when using evidence during a cutscene, it felt like there was no bonus to picking a correct answer, to having tact and wit to point out what was wrong or right. You would think that it would have an effect, especially in a battle to have strong evidence rattle someone.
I'm also very disappointed about how money was perhaps seemingly going to play a rather important role with equipment, and then I find only one equipment slot. That's okay I figured, restrictive at first maybe. I think I gained 1 piece of bare bones minimal equipment at best and then for the rest of it, nada. That whole section feels like an afterthought.
And why, dear god why, are the free-roam sections so badly wasted? You have all this majestic, beautiful looking archetecture to work with, all these gorgeous sprites and we HARDLY ever get to see much of them. I'd love to explore more of these buildings, but it's almost overswept entirely by the visual novel portions. And inspection of things seems to only be good for gaining evidence or having some dialogue to enrich the world- which, I like that- but I'd also really love it if you could find cards this way.
Overall I feel like this game has an identity issue. It feels like it wants to be a Visual novel but then got a little lost along the way and decided it wanted to be a card battler but also a mystery puzzle.
Regrettably, this game requires a lot of refinement before it can shine. It has a lot of potential, but it feels like it needs more polishing before it's good to go. So I'm glad that this is just in-dev right now. I would very much like to see this improved upon and made to shine.
I apologize in advance if this all seems harsh, but I really wanted this to be something great and it fell pretty hard from my expectations.