itch.io

as i posted it the thread, i replayed it from start to finish. it took me about 6 hours to do it, and it was a blast. by this point you know i love the game, so i wont repeat myself and instead i'll focus on the few negatives i found. i think the review will be too long to go chronologically, so i'll go by orders of importance.

Obvious Bugs and Crashes:

in previous versions, you had the fullscreen toggle on the main screen. this helped me tremendously since my old and oudated pc/gfx card doesn't like a lot of indie games. i have two monitors so it is unsure on which to put it, causing flickering and the game switching between monitors. this is fixed by making the game windowed. this isn't an issue of the game, but more of my outdated build, but this change hindered me specifically. if possible, include an options menu or the fullscreen toggle in the main menu again.

in 2nd fight with goon god, his basic attacks do no damage? description says it should, but HP is the same.
bug on loading save on the first "Arena" level, the one where you start in the middle and have branching paths leading East. died in the middle of the level (between the first and second hallowed ground) and reloaded, but the game places me on the first tile and doesn't let me move. resigning fixes it, but causes unintended EXP issue i'll cover later

major bug
Inost's face says it all. in the 2nd wave, killing a pariah and spawning an egg triggers a "New enemies approach" popup, which spanws a wave. this is already the 2nd wave, so there shouldnt be more. this softlocked me once since i couldn't target enemies, but I was able to cheese in on a second attempt by targetting all enemies with Ernmine and Peter. The bug happened again on that run, for a total of 3 waves worth of enemies on screen.

another big bug:
dying on the first fight and loading puts you in the first tile (the one you lost the fight and reloaded from) but the menu appears and is cropped. this isn't me not screencapping the full thing - this is how it looks. resigning fixes it.

Resigning and item/shop bug (?):
Resigning and restarting keeps your EXP, Money and Items. this is bad, since after resigning once my EXP messed up. i no longer level up before a rest zone, instead doing so at random intervals, throwing off the intended balance. i also ended up getting major upgrades (mosca aoe slow) before the intended times, making some fights trivial. same with the shop - reloading should return the money i had and return the inventory to the state it was at that time. the main issue with this would be attempting a fight with good items, using the items and losing the fight. loading now puts you at a disadvantage - your items are gone!

Other bugs: 
last level, the paths in the teleporters aren't highlighted, making it confusing from which direction you came from. picking the wrong direction then messes up the level completely, since you now can't access some portals for some reason. resigning and remembering the path fixed it.

there is a crash on the final level if you use Brunner's heal on Mosca if Mosca previously died but is currently alive (and just needs a heal)>

dying in the final fight also softlocks the game (yes, dying twice on both non-mosca angels since mosca doesn't have that park). if everyone really dies, the game halts and the enemies are on their turn, but they have no targets. the game therefore halts and nothing can be done. closing and winning the fight fixed this.

dying in the final fight and resuming sometimes would prevent the cutscene music from playing. might be caused due to alt-tabbing since i was taking notes.

Minor annoyances:

Enemy death sound plays with a 1 second delay compared to the animation, seems a bit weird.
level up sound is much louder than other sounds, but only in combat (post combat, i guess). the one in the stats page is fine volume wise.
the new warhound sprite is too nice looking. some players (read: normies) might not want to hurt a normal looking dog. if i thought of this, i am sure many more will do so, since i generally don't care about this sort of thing.
should be able to mouse-over your own inventory items in the shop screen
Desert description might be unclear for ESLs. for swamp + the poor man's iron levels, it's clear who benefits/is hindered. saying "attackers" in the desert level does make sense, but i can see how it might be misinterpreted. this also might just be my own ESLism speaking.
loading the game resizes the window. sort of annoying.
on poison ground, if you click attack while the poison info is still being processed (i have a fast Haydn), the health bar will disappear for the target enemy. this is fixed by just reissuing the command
Peter's checkered background (someone else also had it but i forgot) reminds me of the missing-texture background from Source games. i'd change it in some way (maybe make the checkers more visible towards the center or away from it) so it doesn't make people think of errors or transparency in image editors.
type in the end of demo screen ("EHopefully it was...."). end of demo screen is also identical for both ends until you input the password (nice password checker, by the way :^)  )
for the guessing game in the forest level, if you get a few directions correct, the second line will overwrite the first one but you can easily get lost/confused due to no indication of the current input position. to clarify. typing in the first input as ENWS, with NW correct, E is blue, S red.
second input is NNWE, with the first N correct. typing NW again (or just N) has no visual change, so then somebody could get confused as to their current input position ("do I put in W or E now?"). a simple underline or square frame fixes this.
sometimes in the forest level (with multiple waves, before Enkidu) enemies would have no death sounds.
the level coated in darkness with goons only has one fight type (2 demi goon jellies and a hybrid). it's a bit repetitive.
in combat, clicking the skills button should block clicks on the attack/wait button. i accidentally would click Wait when meaning to target the enemy in the bottom row right above the button.

Misc. Notes:

hard to tell the result of Mosca's slow's gamble effect. should be more apparent when you deal more damage and when you deal less. maybe a sound effect? a pitch change?
portraits have different expressions in dialog, but some are very minor and hard to tell. Mosca has one that's "sad", which is obvious, but the rest are hard to notice. Finn has only eye changes, and i wouldn't have noticed it if i wasn't familiar with the game.
the Brunner cutscene/mutation effect is downright excellent. it's only missing sound, but it's really great.
targets with long names like the Pachycephalosaurus have their names split in the text window. it's ugly - perhaps send it to a new line or add a dash
enemy AI improvements are obvious - i also like their priorities. Gaz 90% of the time starts off her final fight by slapping Mosca - it's excellent and hilarious. sometimes enemies do the dreaded "double wait", which makes their fights trivial. perhaps prevent that move unless i do a mana drain ability (i never did). only one fight was i think decided by luck (compared to many in the last playthrough, so this is a massive improvement). it was against enkidu, who did a double wait (instead of blowing up mosca like he did on a previous attempt), which allowed me time to motivate + slow, which trivialized the fight.

the list of complaints might be long, but rest assured i am a massive fan of the game and i am only trying to point out every minor issue i stumble across in hopes of improving the game further. excellent work, and i hope to see more in the future or on release.