Not a bad lil tale! Good story and some charming characters; a little disappointing the ace character didn’t stay ace but that’s dealt with early enough on; it works out in the end.
I think in the last tuning pass some endgame stats were missed? The difficulty spike in the Fire Ogres leads me to think they may have had their elemental weakness missed or have their stats tuned to the endless floors (pre final boss)?? They were almost impossible to deal meaningful damage to without Kat’s bleeds, and then once the last tier of equipment is unlocked they’re just extremely annoying.
Rikki (lv209) and Edna (lv174) also needed a shield to be able to live any of the last boss’s skills despite their two-handed weapons; Rikki can equip one first before her final weapon and still keep the stat bonus but Edna can’t equip any of the end-game shields so after getting walled on the last boss I edited the stat bonus onto her sword so she wouldn’t crumple like paper every turn. Maybe there’s a combination of further levelling or accessories I’ve missed?
It’s not an issue (esp. with the Guardian Ring), until the final boss or anyone who spams multi-hit skills so idk.
The last boss themself was way too much of a slog. It feels like we’re supposed to inflict a -HP regen on them, but Kat was the only character I unlocked skills like that with. Changing elements every 3 turns and seeing at least 6 repeats was just slow and boring. :c
Other than endgame balance, I’ll second this game is somewhat held back by a way to reinforce to the player that the protagonist has physically changed. Say a mirror in Titania’s Glade in lieu of a non-chibi portrait for instance; it was difficult to follow their transformations. Such things feel like they’re only mentioned once in passing if it’s relevant to an interaction and in this medium I don’t feel it worked well.
tl;dr good game, slightly wonky endgame but great characterisations and a decent story.