itch.io

4/5, for sure.

100% the whole game in hard mode (well, I "think" I did), and I don't regret it.

Few issues:
- The game has a slight chance to crash whenever a fight or a screen transition happens. Was somewhat rare, but must still have happened more than 6 times total.
- Dialogues and overworld movement is very slow. The name of the location popping up every time really slows you down, and there really should have been a way to move more than 1 tile at a time in the ancient archive/cara's archive.
- The meaning of stats really need an explanation. You take some time figuring out that "wits" is "special (non-physical) offence", and "smarts" is "special defence". Went through the whole game and I still don't know what "luck" does, exactly. Is it affecting drops? dodge/hit chances? or is that one affected by speed?
- There also seemed to be elements?? Poison, ice, fire and lazer?? And two types of physical, blunt and slice? Enemies seemed to have various affinities to those, but it's never really clarified...
- The fox appears every time you sleep, was that intentional? It really feels like it was supposed to happen the very first time you visit a campfire and that's it, but it always happens, making every stop at a campfire a good 15 seconds...
- Cara is pretty obviously a last-minute addition.
  - No way to tell which skill you already have other than checking every CD manually. This is probably a bug? Considering how some signs had duplicate skills attached (some even in the same door number), I'm guessing the skills are randomly assigned? Maybe something went wrong and the part that was supposed to indicate which skill we have got messed up...
  - Some skills are USELESS! What's the point of cara-adrenaline and cara-riot if sleep and silence don't carry outside of fights?? There's not even a reward for getting every skill.
  - What's the point of showing cara's sign in combat if it doesn't also remind you its meaning?
- There's way too little incentive to use other party members. The party changing mole takes *so* long to pop out, and members not in your "active" party don't get any XP, so if you switch, they'll be behind... You only use them to rush to a point that requires their field skill, and that's it...
- Same issue with pills. I refused to use them until the very end of the game because of the fear that they would be wasted on a character I'd end up benching for the rest of the game. Even then, I notice that you can't buy speed pills. Also, why can't xp pills also give xp to benched members??

Music's dope. The music player's a nice touch, too, but I have a feeling that not all the musics are in there? There's definitely a slowed-down version of "Truth Tango" that is in some fights that wasn't included.

Awww... it gives something for our troubles :>

Ffffffffrik you, man ;(

Thought I was smart to remember about that door...

aaaand with it happening again on my 3rd attempt the next day, I come to the conclusion that it's inevitable. Sad.

...and again...

You dick...

Thoughts/review: the end was kind of uneventful. Predictable, if you want. Truly, this could be seen as a praise: I guess I'm just used to how much of an ass corporations can be, and this just... replicates/predicted it perfectly.

Gameplay-wise: the labyrinth layout is a PAIN to go through...

When the monster first showed up, it was a definite plus. Kept me on edge, and the times when he saw me definitely gave me a rush of adrenaline... until it didn't.
You see, I don't know if it's intentional, but there's just one issue... the monster doesn't seem to have footstep sounds..?
Well, he has "some", but the only times I ever heard them was when he was actively chasing me. Even then, I would stop hearing his footsteps, keep going for a few seconds, stop, turn around, and he's still chasing me! No footsteps!! How do you know when you're safe??

This made it impossible to know where he was until the proximity alarm turned on, and even then, there was no way to know if he was in front or behind me. Was he going towards me or away from me??

What's the point of hiding, too, if you can't hear him??
"Once the creature sees you, you can't hide"
Then what's the point? You can't hide after it saw you because it won't leave your hiding spot, but there's no point in hiding before because you don't know if he was close in the first place, when he's passing by, or even when he's comfortably far, either!

On top of that, the map end up being so convoluted... I ended up playing on casual. I just can't imagine going through the whole game and looking for every single electronic part/valve with that guy around...

Also, "placebo buttons"? F- U, man :,c  (not actually an insult)

This is so dumb...

This is so dumb...

THIS IS SO DUMB!!



I'M LAUGHING SO MUCH RIGHT NOW LMAO
This took 70 turns to achieve.

UPDATE! I found more about the bug/glitch. It's linked to pausing!

That thing took me on a weird, wild ride... At first, I thought it was linked to how LONG you stayed paused (don't start looking into it right away, that's not actually it; I was mistaken). I paused, waited, looked at the time, unpaused, and there it was. I paused, quickly unpaused straight away, and it was gone.

So my theory was that it was linked to how long was your latest pause. The shortest time it took for the glitch to happen was 15 seconds ("wow, that short!??", I exclaimed). So if your latest pause was > 15 seconds, looking around would not slow down time. If it was shorter than that (or if you had not paused since entering the game), it would.

So, I tried to set up a recording of this. Set up a chronometer hooked to the "Escape" key, and used a program to record my screen, with the chronometer in sight.

I pressed "z" to un-pause (I was paused, and pressing escape would have started the chronometer; I wanted it to count when I was paused, not the other way around), and used C to look around. The game wasn't slowing down. Unsurprising, I thought, since it had been paused for a while now.

So then I pressed "escape" to pause, and waited 5 seconds. pressed "escape" again to unpause (also pausing the chronometer in the same keystroke, now displaying 5 seconds), and used C to look around. Time was slowing down as expected.

I continued, this time waiting 10 seconds. Looking around, time was slowed down. Nothing special here, only building up to when it WOULD slow down.

Again, this time waiting the dreaded 15 seconds. Looking around, time was... slowed down?? O- okay? Maybe I was wrong and the trigger was something like 18 seconds? Let me try again, this time waiting 20...

So I did, waiting 20 seconds... Looked around using C... time was slowed down. Huh???

Did it again, this time 30 seconds. It was STILL correctly slowed down.

At this point, many questions were running in my head. My first thought was: is either the recording software of the chronometer preventing the glitch from happening?

So I closed both, waited I-could-no-longer-be-sure-how-long seconds, and unpaused...

The time

was NOT

slowing

down.

I was now about to rage about the time I wasted setting all of this up since it was now useless, but it barely took me about 2 seconds to realize what I had just done...

I used Z...

to unpause...

Dumbfounded, I tried it again. Pressed Escape (pausing), then Z (un-pausing by selecting "RESUME")...

Looked around with C...

The time was NOT slowed down.

This glitch is not triggered by how LONG you last paused, but by HOW you last UN-PAUSED

Un-pausing with Z (i.e. "selecting RESUME") triggers this glitch

Un-pausing with Escape makes things go back to normal

The only reason I came to my previous conclusion was because when I would want to quickly pause-unpause, I would double-tap Escape

However, when I left the game paused for a while, I would obviously put my hands away from the keyboard, and once came the time to unpause, hitting "Z" would always be easier than having to reach for the "escape" key again...

... I feel dumb :|

I... legitimately never noticed that! I guess it's because of how much importance I put into keeping a "safe" distance from enemies; if I get closer than the distance I'm used to, slowly at that, it only means they would easily be able to get at "hugging distance" if they detect me.

It did, after all, take me a really long time to notice that "hiding" worked on every enemy (which, I must add, made the game WAY more interesting once I started using it); I spent a long portion of the game thinking hiding was only used to hide from the facey-mc-face thingies. The first time I tried it against a "physical" enemy, I came to the conclusion that it didn't work on them when I saw that they were still headed towards the dumpster...

By the way, another thing I noticed: I have really no idea what triggers this, but from times to times, using C to look around no longer slows down time. On my first playthrough, this happened very rarely, and I think, if I recall correctly, was only happening on a look-around per look-around basis? (i.e. it would happen once, then you'd look around again, and time would be slowed down as normal again?)

I'm on a new playthrough on the "madness" difficulty (though it could be caused by v1.0.3 instead?), and this time, it's happening way more frequently, and once it happens, it stays like this for the rest of the session (until I go back to the main menu). You can easily detect this by holding shift before looking around, and looking at the speed at which your character tippy-taps.

It's... not actually something that's "that" bad... sometimes, you want to wait for things to happen at a distance (like enemies moving out of the way). Maybe use "shift" as a way to control whether or not time is slowed down when looking around? Doing this could also solve this very issue; if it happens, one would just need to toggle the slow down off and back on again to re-force it on?

It now "works", but only up to 25 HP, rather than the claimed 25 "percent" (my max is currently 200)... Was it changed, or is it still an issue?

By the way, is there ever a reason not to run? I feel like running should be default, and shift should be "walking"; holding shift 24/7 is giving me cramps...

HP regen seems to... not work? I'm talking about the buyable bonus that's supposed to regenenerate up to 25% of your HP.  Just not doing anything.

It would be really useful if SPACE could be a permanent shortcut for Transform. Currently, space does nothing if you have talk or examine selected; it only does something if you've selected transform, so why not make it constantly "act as" transform??

bug/glitch: I found 5 tablets, then closed the game for the night. When I boot it back up the next day, my progress was properly saved, but all the collected tablets respawned!

I re-collected 3 of them, and am now at 8/7 tablet. This either means I'll be able to cheese the tablet requirement, or I'll still need to collect the missing two without a clear way to know which are missing (besides remembering which were collected based on their location)

p.s. a map would be handy... ._.

update: I think it caused a lot of things to glitch...

A LOT of dialogues just don't appear or are replaced with "not very talkative"...

I think I'll have to start a new game :<

Pretty weird glitch I found:

*contains spoilers*

on ----BRIG----, here is, frame by frame, the path of (S)ecurity guard, when going from terminal 1 to terminal 2:
(I set the links so that they open in a new tab)

NOISE1_S_path_step_1.png
(I apparently skipped step 2)
NOISE1_S_path_step_3.png
NOISE1_S_path_step_4.png
NOISE1_S_path_step_5.png

Should seem pretty normal. Now, please note that @ is on the left of X.
Here's what mysteriously happens if @ is on the right of X (easily done by telling X to go to terminal 3, then back to 2):

NOISE1_S_glitchpath_step_1.png
NOISE1_S_glitchpath_step_2.png
NOISE1_S_glitchpath_step_3.png
NOISE1_S_glitchpath_step_4.png
NOISE1_S_glitchpath_step_fiv-waitwhatwhatwhat.png
NOISE1_S_glitchpath_pleasenopleasenopleaseno.png
NOISE1_S_glitchpath_why_sad-face.png

So... anytime @ is on the right, S seems to... conveniently think NOW is the time to check on terminal 2???

So far, this had been consistent: any time @ was not on the right of terminal 2, S would never go through there. Anytime @ WAS on the right, the whenever S would go in front of terminal 2, he'd do a detour.

Now, I wanted to check if the same thing happened with Terminal 5 and...
Upon marvelling upon how hard it is to go to the lower part of the room, these things happened:
S casually checking terminal 5
S casually checking the... fax????
S casually checking terminal 2 (you may notice that the commands on the right are no longer there. Did I do anything? NO, S CAUGHT ME (us... them... whatev.)! I-DID-NOT-MOVE!)
S, which was midway through... goes BACKWARDS??? [...]
[...] IN ORDER TO GO CHECK ON TERMINAL 5??? MAKE YOUR MIND!

Finally, THIS gem
What is the last one, you ask? I just go caught is all? Notice the lack of commands on the right. I-DID-NOTHING (again). S DECIDED TO GO CHECK THE ROOM!! CASUALLY OPENED THE DOOR AND FOUND ME!

Besides when @ is on the right of X, "these" seem to pretty much only happen when TAB is held/used to speed up everything, so it's maybe linked to that (and the randomness of H's path?) (or I'm just too impatient) Either way, PLEASE don't tell me it's intended behaviour...

Why is there no option to rebind "map"? having to go from WASD to L every time I want to open the map, with my keyboard, is... uh... quite irritating... especially with how maze-like things get sometimes...

<3

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uwcBg_InwFK1k0iziJ8z1Wi2GdjbX3LZ/view I'm stuck :c

The 2nd issue seems to have... fixed itself... after I restarted my computer..?

2 issues, the former possibly being a source of the latter??

Context: I use keyboard (only controller I have is a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, and... yeah, windows has problems with that one :| ), and set my keys so that:
LB=>F (bring up upgrade menu),
Y=>K (arcshot),
B=>L (backdash/cancel),
X=>J (shoot) and
A=>space (jump/select)

1st issue: every time I open the game, "jump/select" is un-bound from space (and not re-bound to default "V"; just "nothing"). Not that big of a deal since "enter" is also registered as "select", so it's still possible to navigate the menus to rebind the key, so in the case it's not changeable, it's ok, but would be nice if it was.

2nd issue: this time, way more... crippling...
I left the game on a while to enjoy the music, then closed the game by clicking the top right "x" (telling this because it may matter).
Now, next the next time I open the game (and every time thereafter), the "select" input (NOT the "key") seems to be... permanently stuck in a "pressed" state?? But also no because it contradicts some other observation??

I gave up trying to explain this any further via text and just made a video instead:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10GuduSQNbt_aOBYt3twNhm4Fs0UvxNX_/view