While this wasn't exactly a Phantasmagoria-like experience like the first time I played my favourite TF games, I'll have to admit I grew a little attached to the overarching plot of this game. Well, that, and furry games don't usually appeal to me - but I'll attribute that to the degenerate furry games. This one's art direction is the only thing that gives me pause, which, again, I'll attribute to the degenerates.
I'm definitely looking forward to a full release.
There are a few things I want to draw attention to though. Bear in mind, nearly everything I don't bring up is good, or enjoyable even.
- The Mouse form does not care which difficulty you're playing on. If you play your cards right, every battle, especially boss battles, are equally difficult across all game difficulties (There is no difficulty). Personally, I feel it is too easy to rid yourself of the tiny mouse debuff. The mouse has all the tools it needs to get there. A guaranteed dodge and combining blind and accuracy down with evade up for a few turns. Moreso when transforming into Mouse, you shave off one turn from the warmup skill. All this culminates into Big Punches, which will let you stack a ridiculous amount of stun on any enemy, especially with the Mouse accessory (I have yet to find one immune to stun).
This had me gravitate away from other forms which had none or little access to monster incapacitation. That being said, Kitsune was fun. Sad there wasn't really any highest tier earth or wind spells. Water Danmaku did a good job as a catch-all twincast spell though.
- The dialogue felt... well I'm not sure how to describe it. I couldn't enjoy much character from each character. I think this was most apparent in the earlier parts of the game, which I'd expect has outdated writing. On the other hand I can't recall if the feel of the dialogue ever improved since I mainly focused on the beats of the story over the characters driving it forward.
Rewriting it all is an insane task though, and while I want it, I can't in good conscience ask for this.
- The hints for each new form spoiled which form the hint was for
This... is a me thing. To me it's like having your present labelled with its contents. I was able to enjoy the hints by blurring my vision when opening the chests and covering the parts that would spoil when reading them.
- It feels somewhat weird to me that the dialogue portrait of Nana's human form doesn't match the cute sprite in battles.
- A lot of the roads are absolutely ginormous. Which wouldn't bother me as much if there was a lot of traffic, which- right! The phantasmal war! These roads look absolutely pristine as if they've been regularly maintained over the past 500 years, which doesn't exactly seem plausible what with all the monsters about - but I digress, majorly.
My point is I think you've done a decent job at filling the maps with stuff, but there's still a lot of empty nothing you're trotting through. Bless the players that grabbed the speed boots early and god help those who bought them late.
- I savescummed to make the goddess tell me all about the hero and his party. There has to be some consequence to your choice of dialogue here, otherwise the "I'll only answer one question" feels like a pointlessly anti-fun feature.
- It was not immediately apparent where your property bought was located. This was a major roadblock for me, and what really felt bad was when I bought the teleport crystal for it to find I couldn't teleport there because I hadn't visited the map yet. Some amount of additional clarity hand-holding on where your first home is located would probably do good.
- Quite a few interactables that dispense items don't have twinkles, leading me to try and interact with every possible container, be it empty or not. I feel this is a lot of time wasted not playing the actual game. A fun idea might be to give a form (early game) a passive/active field ability to give all interactables that do dispense an item twinkles. Tying a TP cost to the ability would again dissuade players from using it though, and pigeonhole many into playing the scavenger minigame instead.
Scavenger. There's an idea. Raccoon.
- Ranks for the guild.
It was stressful not knowing when the guild would allow me to take on more requests. The reputation numeric sure was there, but I could not truly understand what the numeric meant.
- Cat lady request came too early.
It is impossible to do anything related to the northern part of town until you've got slime unless I missed something.
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But with all that said I think this is probably one of the best TF games (free) that I've played. I really hope this project gets finished!
Viewing post in Feedback (Demo & Public Versions)
I am happy to hear that you had fun with it^^
And it seems you played through it very thoroughly as well! Also I absolutely can understand that, pretty much all furry or tf focused games are pretty degenerate or at least very nsfw which I am also not a big fan of. I do think tf games have potential to be much more than just some degenerate stuff!
-Since mouse forms play style is pretty luck based I never was sure if it was too overpowered but thanks for the feedback. I will decrease the accuracy of the accuracy down debuffs and give more enemys a stun ressitance and some immunity like bosses. And then see how it will play then. And if needed make more changes.
At least none for the demo, I do plan to add them in for those two magic types as well.
-Yeah I definitely get what you mean, I think. A lot of the dialogue is more short and tight and strongly focus to advance the plot and not give the characters much time to show more of their personality. At least I think that is the problem. Unfortunately I am not good at putting the ideas I have for dialogue in nice sounding sentences. And english isn't my native language which probably doesn't help. Writing isn't my strongsuit but I defintiely try to improve on it.
Rewriting the dialogue isn't a difficult task, time wise at least compared to making other stuff and I do revisited some dialogues in the past and changed them to flow better.
If you have any tips what could be changed to improve it i love to hear suggestions^^
-Yeah I can absolutely see that reason. I tried as best to not spoil anything since I also don't like spoilers but I didn't even thought about that. Thanks for telling me. I will changed the names to make them not spoil anything!
-It's a leftover since Nana original had another battle sprite that I scraped and redrawn into the current one. Making facial expressions for each sprite takes long so i just left the original face sets instead of redoing them as well. Might changes that later as well.
-Yeah I made them this big on purpose so I can later fill them with more stuff for future tf's field abilities so they do appear a little bit empty right now in the demo. But that is a thing that should fix itself over time once more quest and tf's are in the game
Also that actually is a pretty good point never thougth of that xD
I will change the road as well.
-Yeah you are absolutely right and I would love too but I didn't manage to come up with a way to prevent that yet. It's hard to do something about savescumming since it is pretty impossible for the game to tell if a player reloaded a safe.
Also nice job on finding the secret area!
-That also is a very good point. I think I already have an idea to fix that. Once the player bought it, he get shown a picture of the location, giving them a clue where the location is and how does it looks.
-Actually there is already a feature programmed in that does exactly what you described. I just haven't included it in the demo since I still was thinking where and how I want to put it in. But I defintiely plan on adding such a feature. I am just not sure about the details on how to make it. I also was thinking if I want to tie it to a tf form but wasn't sure. Maybe it will be a buyable/reward key item that is just permanently active once you got it.
-I do like the idea of a rank system but there would be not an easy way to display a players rank in the main menu so I went with numbers instead. But I could add a text messages that gets shown once new guild quests are available. This is very possible but might b a bit immersion breaking maybe, don't know?
Nope you didn't missed anything. I planed for another way to access the nothern part of town but it isn't in the demo. I think it can't hurt to put the quest a bit back to make it unlock later.
Glad to hear that you enjoyed your time with it and thanks for the kind words^^
And also thanks a lot for the detailed feedback, this definritely helps a lot in making it even better in the future!
A-
I just remembered a point I forgot to bring up!
I was thinking about the biggest victim of the varying balance for each form (Looking at you, Mouse), which while very cute, my Squirrel form was only level 3 when I challenged its demon.
The demon bosses - These kind of ultimate fights were, to my playthrough, not a culmination of what Nana had learned on how to fight with each form, but a showcase that all the party members needed from Nana were that she used her unique skill to make the demon susceptible to their attacks for only and precisely 5 turns.
I was rocking Lima and Serina because they're the cute members.
Back on topic - Because the reward is further 'mastery' of the form you're locked into using for the fight, I would've liked for the fights to focus on the player having mastered their play with each form. My simplest suggestion to achieve this would be to make them solo fights, however that can be explained story-wise.
Kitsune has no demon in the demo, right?
I understand what you mean. It's true that the demon bosses arent tailored specific for the form they need to be fought with. That is something I will keep in mind and change. Thanks for pointing it out.
It certainly would be possbile to make them solo fight.
Yes that is right, kitsune form has no demon to fight in the demo.
"I do like the idea of a rank system but there would be not an easy way to display a players rank in the main menu so I went with numbers instead. But I could add a text messages that gets shown once new guild quests are available. This is very possible but might b a bit immersion breaking maybe, don't know?"
Maybe there some device that connects adventurers with the guild, even allowing to check for quests in the middle of nowhere?