Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
So I want to like this game. I do. It looks like it could be a lot of fun. However, as it is right now I find it's just... not fun at all. I'm going to structure my notes in a relative order of smaller things to bigger ones.
To start off, I find the audio balancing to be just awful. I use a GoXLR to manage my sound meters and have some pretty good default levels to ensure most things should be audible but not too loud. The in-game music is incredibly loud, though. Like, excessively loud. Even in other games where they have volume controls set to max, nothing makes my OBS audio meters read higher than -30 dB unless I have it turned up. Normally, I aim for -36 dB for game audio. The music in this game sits at -24 dB as a standard level. On top of this, there are voice overs that, even when the music is completely off, I can barely hear. If the voice overs were making it hit -24 dB and the music was on the quiet side, that'd be more acceptable because voice overs are not constant.
Next, several times I was trying to read boxes you would pop up for tutorial purposes but they would go away on their own rather than when I told them to do so. As a streamer, I'm constantly looking at chat and talking with my audience, so missing this sort of information can be crucial. These sorts of things should never go away on their own. You'll be able to see in the VOD where this happened, but I recommend checking everything to see where it happens.
One thing I found weird was how the enemies talk in a way that doesn't make sense. I noticed this when one enemy said to me "Stop your little dice games and face me." I mean... what? The dice is a representation of combat, not what my character is actually doing in world. Why is the enemy talking about the gameplay as if it's an actual thing? This would make more sense if you were trying to break the fourth wall, but this makes more sense if the game was more comedic in nature rather than the serious design you have going on. This should be fixed.
I recommend making it that if the player gets a piece of gear for a slot that's currently empty, that new piece of gear should be automatically equipped. In addition, if they get additional gear for that slot then they should be prompted if they wish to equip it right away. This isn't like a normal RPG where upgrading your gear right away isn't going to harm you so negatively. In this sort of game, changing gear right away is integral and the game should constantly be ensuring the player isn't forgetting this. In my first run, it wasn't until I got my second piece of gear that I realized that the first piece didn't equip automatically.
Now we're starting to get into the more serious stuff. I'll be starting with talking about the dice and rings. I found the speed of which these all start to be incredibly fast. Also, despite reading the text talking about how to do dice rolls, I found it wasn't clear the first few times I rolled. It took me a few rolls (plus paying attention to what the computer was doing) before I started making sense of it. Because of this, I would suggest making this slower and to make it more clear in the text on what the player has to do. In fact, I would say that for the player's first time ever doing a dice roll, the game should guide them more specifically by preventing them from being able to miss. By this what I mean is that instead of being told how the dice roll works entirely upfront and then throwing the player into it, the player should just be told that when they go to roll the dice, a ring will appear and start shrinking. Then during the dice roll, the game specifically pauses when the ring is in position for a 5 or 6 and tells the player to press space right then to get a higher roll. That way, they press Space and get that 5 or 6. After this, they then do the second die and it repeats again. Afterwards, they can be told how the smaller the ring is, the higher their roll will be and that if they don't hit it in time, they'll fail to seal the roll and it'll be a 1. Finally, I think the ring speed should be slowed down a little... at least early into a run. I could see it getting slightly faster as you get further in, but to start off it should be slower to help the player out.
Speaking of rolls, I feel like the rolls of enemies aren't all that random. In fact, it almost feels like the computer will often roll at similar strength to me. While I utterly failed my first few rolls, so too did the computer. Yet several times when I would get 5-6 rolls, the computer followed up with 6-6 rolls. It also felt even worse when this happened multiple times when I would hit the Bet button on my winning, get a high roll and of course the computer beat me with a perfect roll. I know it's the nature of the game, but when it happens as often as I saw it for how short a time I played it feels pretty garbage and makes me suspect that there's coding in the game to let the computer cheat. Even if not true, this can negatively impact my enjoyment of the game and even drive me away from playing.
My next issue sits in a similar vein to the speed of the rings but is something I see on a higher level. After some (but not all attacks) there are suddenly additional things that the player has to do in a limited time. These equally go fast as well. However, I find the issue with these isn't the speed they go but rather the suddenness in which they appear. While the one that appears if I take a killing blow is at least consistent, the other one I encountered was not. Yet even when they were consistent, I found the speed of which they appear and start to just throw me off. I would like to suggest that these things take a moment before they start up, so the player has time to recognize "oh, I have to do this now" and is more mentally prepared. It doesn't need to be a long period of time; even one second before things start moving would work. It just needs to be long enough for the player to recognize what's going on and be prepared for what they have to do. Then if they miss, it feels more like their own fault for messing the timing up rather than feeling like it was thrown at them so suddenly.
And the last and most important issue I had... there's too much information being thrown at the player in a short period of time. One thing I pay close attention to when playing any game is how well the game teaches me how to play it. I look to see if things are taught in an organic manner, aka through the gameplay. When I booted this up and the first thing I saw was it telling me to read the Codex, which was just filled with so much text, I was worried this wouldn't have any organic teaching. This concern was heightened when I chose to immediately exit the Codex (Because I'm not going to sit here and do 30+ minutes of reading when I'm only giving a maximum of 45 minutes to play the game to write this feedback) only to find the game say something along the lines of "Did you read it all? If not, don't get mad at the dice because you didn't know how to play." As an aside, this is also a dumb thing to do. If I wasn't dedicated to playing as many games as I could in Feedback Quest, I would've closed your game right then and advised others to not play it either. Players are allowed to get mad at your game if you don't do a good job teaching them how to play.
Anyway, I was happy to find that the game DID make the attempt to teach more organically as I got playing. Yet my relief was quickly washed away when I realized I was being thrown tons of information very quickly. First I was trying to learn the different primary stats and how each affected gameplay, then I was learning about the classes and how each plays, then there's the instrument and its effects, then there's Reliquaries and Mastery, then Sigil Hunts and all of that information, then there's the Map and all of the information about that, then there's the actual combat and me being fed TONS of information about specific things. All in all, it got to be so much that I retained basically nothing. Instead, I had to just do things one step at a time to figure out on my own, only looking at something new once I figured out the previous thing through playing the game.
All of this is to say that you should take more time to teach the player. Don't give them access to everything from the start and then dump it all. Instead, only give them a few things at a time and use subsequent runs to teach more. I'll describe what I would do if I was making your game and hopefully this'll make sense.
First and foremost, I would start by not letting the player do stat allocation right away. Instead, I would give them a specific class to start their first run. I'd make it someone whose focus is on health, physical damage and physical defence, then make it that the only enemies the player would encounter in the first few parts of the first run would all be enemies that deal physical damage as well. From here, I would only let them do rolls. The first roll would be rigged to always be a good roll, while the enemy would always do a worse roll. That way, they start with an immediate success. In their second roll, I would let them try to do a roll on their own. After they roll, I'd tell them about rerolling (but not about the punishment, which doesn't happen in this first fight) and would advise them to do a reroll if they rolled below 6. Why 6? Because again I would force the enemy to do a low roll that can't exceed 5, so a 6 would ensure they also win that second roll. If they reroll and still get a low roll, the computer could beat them but it does low damage. I would then only progress the tutorial when they get another decent roll (which I would view as 6+). No matter how they roll, the fight can't end until they've done the next primary part of the tutorial. So if the enemy reaches 1 HP, it will stay there until after they've done the next primary part of the tutorial. If the player's health gets too low (below 50%), I can throw the item healing tutorial at them but make it that any items they have are free to use.
Once they've had two decent rolls, I'd then use their next roll to teach them about that additional mechanic with the dial that spins around. Like the first time they rolled the dice, this would be rigged to ensure they have a great success. AFTER doing the dial would they be told about the different results they can get. At this point, the enemy can now be killed and the player can move onto the next fight.
To start this fight, I'd tell the player about betting and tell them to do a Win bet. When they roll, the computer always does worse to ensure the player wins the bet. After this, I'd tell them to do a Lose bet. When they roll, I'd make it impossible for them to roll 12 and ensure that the computer always wins by 1. However, since they did a Lose bet they'll gain +2 and win overall. After this, I would reveal the consequences of failing a bet. I'd then let them proceed through this fight on their own, throwing in the item tutorial whenever they drop below 50% health.
At the third fight, now I'd teach the player about the limit break thing. First, I'd have them take a negative effect in the first turn that will last for a few turns. In the second turn, I'd have them use the limit break so that in the third turn they remove the negative effects. Finally, I'd teach them about Dark Seal skills - again, making them use it so they see how it works - and then let them finish the fight. From here, they continue the run until they die.
Once they've died and they start their next run, NOW I give them stat allocation and tell them about classes. I would also unlock instruments for them and let them take the Lute, but I wouldn't do the other stuff. Instead, from each one function will be unlocked for each new run they do. So their third run would give them the Reliquary/Mastery page (and they would have their first mastery already waiting for them), and their fourth run would give them Sigil Hunt. Thanks to this, they've had a few runs at the game before they've been given access to everything. With everything gated in such a way, the player is able to focus on each part on their own.
And now, to cap it all off... If the player has no existing save data when they start the game, they'll be asked if they'd like their first runs to have tutorials. If they say yes, cool. If they say no, you warn the player that if they're new then it's recommended they do the tutorial. If they still say no, I'd then let them start the game as normal and not give them any tutorials. This way, it's 100% the player's fault if they say no.
Now obviously I wouldn't expect you to do things the way I described. Again, this is just how I'd do it. However, I do recommend having some sort of guided experience to make learning the game easier and to get away from massive info dumping. It'll make the game far more approachable.
And that's all I got! Let me know if you update the game, as I'd like to see how it improves. :)