Alright, I finished the stream and I enjoyed every minute!
-I'll touch on the elephant in the room first, the "Deep Forest" area and balancing. The original path of progression was meant for players to visit the armory in "Wood Town", complete the quest you receive from there, gear up, and then proceed into the "Deep Forest". It was my mistake for pushing the player too hard to enter the "Deep Forest" early. This is something I would've never foreseen if I didn't watch your playthrough! In addition to this, I agree with you on the balancing issues in some places, especially since I designed many encounters to be close calls. I also noticed a lot of frustration as a result of that. This is on my end because I thought "Difficulty = interesting combat" which looking at that statement now, is completely false. That final fight was especially painful to watch because it was the pinnacle of all the issues you were having with this game. I'm not gonna lie, seeing you trashing on that fight had me rolling on the floor!
-Next thing I'll touch on is the intractability of the world. I noticed that a lot of the time you'll attempt to talk to the NPCs or interact with interesting looking objects but most of the time you can't interact with them at all. This is also something I did not see coming because as a dev, you already know what you can and can't interact with. It created a weird illusion for me where I believed the world was very interactable. I also agree with you with graves not having text! It's a massive sin!
-The last thing I'll touch on that I noticed is that I failed to inform the player to play aggressively. I balanced everything around "skill blocking" the strongest attack and "counter kicking" the "stances", and then focusing on DPS. I noticed you playing very defensively which prolonged and increased the difficulty of many encounters.
Also the level 20 battler only having 2 skills is a massive oversight by me!
-Overall I really enjoyed the stream! It gave me a whole new perspective. Many of the issues we both noticed is the difficulty and balancing. I'll tackle many of the major issues you've experienced and update the demo accordingly. Thank you for your playthrough and feedback! Not only will these criticisms benefit this project, but it will also effect all of my future projects!