I've been playing a number of monster tamers since I'm building one and I'm having a hard time finding the fun in this.
Here's a few notes:
1: give the player the option to fight an opponent when you interact with them. If you're just going to have a a bunch of people that are 30 levels higher then you in a different screen and call that a puzzle, it's not very engaging. Dying and coming back just because you spoke with the wrong person, sure you learn not to go there until you are much stronger but if you just showed the an average level above the opponent when you walk in front that would do the same and be less frustrating.
2: I'm not sure if it's placeholder art but since you have it on steam I would consider changing some of your art. you're going to get a lot of criticism that it's ripped right out of Pokémon. Just because you redrew Red/Blue from Pokémon with sunglasses and different colors does not make it not Red. If you were able to draw the Lnx.
Now I played this on two separate occasions. I beat Goldilocks. and then couldn't beat anyone else. I get that the battles are suppose to be a puzzle as you wrote in a message below. I would reconsider in how you teach that to players. And I don't mean putting a tutorial. Everyone has played the OG Pokémon. You could give the players a few wins to get them engaged in the world and the system before you give them harder battles. I could be wrong and I could be the wrong audience for your game but just something to consider. How are you communicating with your players in game no body is ready the itch page, or the steam page?
Thanks for the feedback! The first time I bought Bloodborne - at full price on the day of release - I was filled with regrets. Now it is my number 1 game, tied with Sekiro, which I also hated, after discovering it is different from Dark Souls 1 to 3. When I bought Dark Souls 1, I tried to like it but I could not get into it - if the Asylum Demon was giving me extreme stress, how much more so the next boss? I am sharing this because as creators we have to make decisions on the kind of experience we want to share with our players. This is exactly the experience I chose. For them to hate the game if they are not yet ready for it. That is why I shared in my Kickstarter page - I could no longer get into other games after what I experienced with Hidetaka Miyazaki's games. About other aspects of Neuralnx - the graphics, I could easily update - the character images etc. I am 100% sure, if you could not get pass Nicolas and Siegfried, there are at least 3 others that will frustrate you more - even before you reach the true challenging parts of the game (that is, starting with Zeus). But if a player gets passed Siegfried, and likes the experience, there is the treat that is very hard to find in monster collection games.
I’m trying to be helpful, and not trying to change your vision. I love all the Miyazaki games and they’re a big influence on my game designs as well.
I'd love to hear out the design philosophy you're using here. What tells players that each battle is a puzzle you're suppose to take in a specific order? If you challenge one person and die, then you try another one, until you figure out the one you are suppose to beat and then repeat this again to find out who the next person you are suppose to defeat?
Because you brought up the Asylum demon, before you get to this enemy, players are able to try out the game and play test controls and figure out how to play the game with a few enemies before they have to engage with this larger foe. Sekiro is very similar, especially since it is a game that came out 8 years after Dark souls and they've been able to refine and create a specific experience since they had released so many games in between. It's all about the experience you are creating to the player. In those games if I try hard enough I can beat the Asylum demon with a broken sword, in your game there's no way I can beat a level 30 with my level 6 frog.
Dark Souls can be completed on RL1 because mechanical mastery supercedes the need for numerical advantage. But in your game, it seems like you need to have a) mechanical mastery, AND b) numerical advantage in order to win.
When you died repeatedly to the Asylum Demon in DS1, did you need to come back with more levels? No; it was a lesson that not all battles need be tackled head-on.
When you lose in NeuralNX, what’s the lesson? If the AI is just going to crush you optimally each time, I suspect it’s not the same challenge as Dark Souls, and it will feel distinctly unfair. If you didn’t even see their kit and abilities, do players even have the tools to learn?
I recently released an abstract strategy game with a powerful AI, too. It started out with pure minimax and topographically sorted heuristic factors. This squeezed the fun out of the game as it was way, way too hard.
I eventually switched to a weights-based heuristic so I could use softmax over the results. This produced N different-feeling variations of the AI, and let me variably weaken by nudging tau.
What kind of knobs does your AI have? In my experience, full blast mechanically optimal AI is distinctly unfun.