itch.io

Thanks. I realize that I was being a little bit passive aggressive with the last sentence (and that it's a bit self-serving to apologize only after you did the thing).

The keyboard worked this time, though there was still no mouse (intended?). I like that the layout is efficient, even though I didn't really make that much use of q/w/e/r. Having keyboard controls in non-combat menus might improve the flow further since I won't have to move my hands to the mouse. Some kind of skip input like common in VNs would have been useful too, since my main computer crashed during the last prologue battle so I finished it (and the new storyline) on my laptop and I had to mash space to get through the dialogue. My main annoyance UI-wise was that the character portraits when taking combat actions would cover up the action bar and status effects of enemies on the right side of the screen.

I've played RPGs a little bit and found the combat system easy to get used to. Since I couldn't get hard mode to work (see bugs section), I found it easy to keep everyone buffed / the enemy debuffed and found combat a little bit boring. I imagine that with hard mode working it would be more challenging, and the fights would be over sooner anyway since I would have to learn to play faster. On the note of balance, I didn't seem to need to mess with polarity very much to win the prologue encounters, other than keeping it near 0 to avoid surprises. Increasing overall difficulty might make it more important, but it could also be cool to have some encounters designed specifically to exercise polarity manipulation (this would also teach the player to use it effectively in future encounters). In the final chapter of the prologue the crew became less useful in the middle of battle because everyone was buffed, I didn't need heals very often, and the crew has low attack power. Even when I did need heals, I ended up with an OT surplus since Nostradamus was not needed often. Also, I noticed some attacks delivered "high" damage, and others delivered "large" damage. I wasn't sure what the difference was.

I like horny designs so that's a plus.

Bugs I noticed:

• First time I went to the settings I got a black screen and had to restart the game. Didn't happen again so don't know what caused it.
• I still had the issue where the settings page resolution would be different from the initial resolution
• I got a game over during the prologue and my mouse didn't come back like it usually does after an encounter.
• You can change polarity even when in menus, regardless of whether hard mode is on. You could cheese the game by keeping attack high and then raising defense only before the enemy attacks, and it would make the polarity effects of moves redundant.
• Hard mode setting didn't work (good thing for me because I spent a lot of time in the menus). The setting toggles but the meters still pause in menus.
• Hard mode setting toggles either when you enter settings from new storyline base
• At some point during the first demo battle I couldn't see Sparta's status effects anymore. They didn't actually go away and will display again sometimes when here status effects change.
• When selecting a skill targeting enemies, the menu sound effect would interrupt the BGM. The sound is also louder than usual so maybe there are multiple instances of the sound playing. I only noticed it in the Alcor battle after some time had passed, and it seems like the sound was getting louder over time.
• Sometimes bleed would be removed from enemies after attacks, not sure if this is because some enemies have faster recovery or something else.
• Impenetrable would reduce polarity but wouldn't raise defense.
• At the end of the prologue you can press space and the last line of dialogue would reappear and flash
• In the bestiary, if your mouse is hovering over an item in the enemy list, scrolling with the wheel doesn't work (at least on touchpad).
• Self-care didn't appear to distribute OT, at least not instantly
• Only left shift works for cancel (Though with the key layout left shift is nicer anyway)
• Dialogue doesn't appear after gaining 100% in the new storyline (but I guess that's probably just because there's no dialogue written for that part)
• The same flickering status bug that was already reported