As a person who suggested a little polishing up of the tavern job, I do think that focusing on more, new content is good in general.
I still think it could use it but if it looks like a lot of hassle or a rabbit-hole you’d end up falling into instead of working on the actual stuff you’d like to bring up, yeah, that should be put aside
It’s always a bit tricky to figure out exactly how much content one is supposed to have access to with these in-dev projects. Right now, the latest stage of the main quest is gathering the 4 void embers for Phanie (plus the one she presumably already has).
Of these:
The one in the Barbarian Order is okay and straightforward
The one in the Atelier/Factory cannot be accessed as the entrance is locked. There seems to be no way to open it currently (not that I could find) but the quest log for that area does show a couple of objectives that are supposedly available (Defeat the adjudicator and collect the ember). This area also has a Heart of Stone with two bugs. A minor visual one where it has the Hundswolf graphics but is a Vivi heart. And another bug where after interacting with it Luccia’s sprite fades away and you lose control of her. You CAN however still Pause and map out.
The one in Christmas Land tells me to come back after collecting the one in Cragshanty
The one in Cragshanty soft-locks the game during collection. After you get there with the All-seeing-vision, that cutscene has a little bug where the sprite for the ember no longer shows. During the scene, Luccia goes to collect it but once she reaches the pedestal the game is soft-locked. All current animations play but it doesn’t respond to any input, not even the pause menu. This is similar to the soft-lock with Priscilla’s Heart of Stone in Ebonveil (still present in this build).
Additionally, Phanie’s town (there are lots of names, I’m sorry =) ) has listed as an available objective “become a woman of the people”. Could be just me but I haven’t really found anything related to it and I do believe I’ve talked to everyone and have been everywhere there both before and after the party (no change that I could see).
A final funny issue I mentioned on a different thread is that all the way back in the cave with the ghost girl the map with the abandoned atelier bot (part of Orcosaurus’ quest?) has no environmental collision enabled (map transition triggers still present and working)
The gallery does indicate I’m missing the scene on the very top left so I’m guessing, yes, there IS more content I was supposed to see. Hard to tell what that is supposed to be, though.
I’ve mentioned some of these bugs in other threads but just thought I’d centralise what I found here. Sorry if spammy.
Finally I don’t want it left unsaid that this is looking pretty great. It’d been a while since I played, last time the game ended after the “baby metroid” scene. Some things flow a bit weird now with the complete skipping over Rhed saving the Barracuda, but it was a bit of an awkward scene. If nothing else, I think the game is better for you dropping the flappy bird section. And while the 2D platformer one was enjoyable it also kept bringing some showstopper bugs.
Really enjoyed all of the new content and the steady polishing of things like combat. Feels like Luccia transitions a bit better to defense these days from her long attack animations. WHile still a bit barebones the whole Barracuda and crew thing looks pretty promising. Maybe add a little “timeslot” indicator there? But cycling through the states and checking all of the events was fun and it looks good for when that gets a bit more fleshed out. Looking forward to future updates =)
In the scenes where Luccia is disguised as an Orcette, the confirm button (bottom button) is also toggling the disguise graphics. This happened both for Grobei and for Orcosaurus.
I’ve also had trouble moving around using the analog stick in general and had to overcome it by remapping the left stick to a d-pad (or sometimes WASD, the input method switch seems to be a bit finicky?)
Seems to still be present in [Full 0.8.11 Ending Arc I] which is what seems to be current on Itch.
Similar issue on the Heart outside the atelier, Luccia disappears for a cutscene and doesn’t come back. From that one you CAN menu out. In the Graveyard you’re fully glitched. Additionally, for the one in the Factory, that has the Hundswolf graphics even though it is a Vivi heart.
Minor feedback here, the Orcosaurus quest is confusing because of it being tied up to the unfinished quest so maybe some clarifying could be good.
I was replaying the game and was under the impression I had to find the answer to his healing all the way in the Atelier. This was a bit of a mix of the focus on the arm, the hint on the abandoned golem in the caves (also that room lacks environmental collision in current patch, which was kind of funny) which sends you on the quest for who made the arm… But since I couldn’t get into the factory anyway I rummaged around again and ended up finding the right steps to go through this. Not sure what’s the good way to get around this
This one stumped for a bit. You need to complete the investigation and one of them isn’t quite 100% working.
There is an interactable prompt in the lower left corner of the lower library room (the one with the Sophie pixel scene). This seems to be in a chair in that corner, ish. But it doesn’t show up with the sparkles sprite like the other interactables for that quest, you kind of have to rummage around to see it after interacting with Dog.
Once you complete that, the main quest is allowed to continue with the informant in the main hall
Regarding needing more events: Maybe? What was a bit frustrating was the lack of “agency” more than anything. “More stuff” is generally always welcome, for sure, but it was more that in playing the table-waiting mini game I had no way to influence it. There’s nothing to “get right” or “get wrong” about it. And I feel that in the context of the whole game, this could be an interesting and fitting first experience for Elena.
It’s confusing, frustrating, arbitrarily punishing… The feeling fits. But as a player, and maybe even from a storyline perspective, it would be interesting if, say, at least on a second day, Elena learns to read the room and you as a player have a chance to “be good at the job”. So maybe if you look carefully you can pick out a random complaint in the background noise “is my drink ever coming or what?” or maybe you can see that one of the patrons has an empty mug in his hands instead…
What I feel has been a throughline in the story so far is that Elena is, despite everything, adapting to her situation frighteningly well. She’s learns fast and she plays the role assigned to her. So this thing where she comes back and now she’s suddenly becoming a good waitress would fit her overall character and arc well.
This is all to say I don’t think it’s entirely bad to have this first experience be a bit frustrating.
The one thing, I guess, that did feel a bit awkward was the toilet scene but only because I got sent there twice and that repeat ended up feeling a bit much
With all that said, I don’t want it to be lost that these are overall small details and part of the normal iterative process for any project like this. In general this has been great. It’s easy to focus on what sounds like negativity, but really this is just excitement about things taking shape.
Excited about the new update, things have been pretty exciting so far.
I think you need to do a pass on the English translation rather soon, though. I guess there’s a lot of heavy lifting form automated tools and there’s a couple of awkward side effects:
First is that quite a few characters have inconsistent names. I think the cook is called like 3 different things, for example, and the tavern owner at least two
And second that some of the dialogue has the speaker mis-tagged. If I recall correctly, some of the gate guard dialogue has this where Elena is saying what are pretty clearly his lines.
The new content in chapter two is looking great. The one thing in the tavern is that the way it is currently structured, it is a bit repetitive.
As a player one doesn’t really have a way to tell which table Elena is supposed to go. No listening to dialogue, no watching for details. While this is interesting at first, it becomes a bit of a chore later on. Seeing all of the different scenes is nice but after you’ve done so, having to roll dice to get through it feels a bit grating.
Maybe the ideal way to go here would be to have Elena learn to pick up on these queues. So the first time (maybe even this first day) could be this confusing mess but later on you want to give the player some agency as to whether they want to be efficient or clumsy
Minor stuff in comparison to everything else, tbh. Loved all of the new characters and excited to see where things go
Got a similar issue during processing using Ark, on Linux. Previous versions worked fine, Ark errors out while trying to extract start_game.html specifically (well, apparently).
It claims “Compression method not supported” but I’m guessing this is straight up a corrupted file
UPDATE: Tried using a different archive manager (File Roller) after reading the forum thread and it worked out for me, even if I didn’t expect (was sure they’d be using the same stuff under the hood anyway).
Looks like it’s worth a try
Okay, I’m not gonna lie, I felt a bit cheated here.
Last time I played content ended after being pulled into the manhole
Since then I read “the story has actually been complete” so was excited to check it out and… replayed from the beginning to see… 30 seconds of one additional scene that’s just a cliffhanger sequelbait. What a waste of time u.u
Also in “tactical mode” or what have you the scaling is a bit rough. It’s proper hard to get your footing in the game these days
All in all, we’ll see what happens when we get to KP2, tho. The game itself is generally pretty good and there’s a lot of care put into good places
As a returning player (and someone who really enjoyed the first one), I really like the direction this game has been taking. Some rough edges here and there, but nothing major and/or unexpected
My one current major gripe is that it’s really hard to tell when you’ve run out of content. I THINK I have after getting Kuro and doing both her quests but there’s no real indication
As a minor one: In this game’s setting it feels a bit weird to only be allowed one spouse (though I understand the gameplay restriction)
Overall, this game sucks me in an unreasonable amount. Great stuff
Was about to comment on the stray pixelation that made it to one of the scenes but saw that already got caught.
There’s also a couple of typos here and there on the English version so another pass might be a good idea when there’s a chance. Didn’t end up noting these down, unfortunately, but know for sure one of the offenders is that a “faith” made it into what was supposed to be “fate” instead
Anyway, this is looking pretty great so far
Definitely disagree with the “looked like a boy”. With the colour I felt it was more in line with the rest of the game, in the dark pig sty and whatnot, so that’s actually one of the things I preferred. New Swinky stands out more in a way that doesn’t seem to fit quite as well with the rest of the art
I can see the argument of her new face being a bit more in line with Nancy’s design, though I liked that they were different, reinforcing the cows vs pigs dynamic
It’s not a “omg this sucks” type of situation, for sure, and I can understand others preferring the new style, I just found the original had a bit more of its own character. Swinky always has been, and still remains, quite the cutie
hmmmm Still haven’t played the new content but from the screenshots I think I prefer the old swinky. New swinky feels more generic like one of thousands of “she’s really 300 years old I swear” megapack characters kind of deal. OG swinky has a bit more of a distinctive stubborn piggy vibe that is, imo, pretty unique
It’s been a while since I’d checked out how this was going and the answer is: Still good, it seems =3
Had a good time with all the new content. Really excited about the idea of building up Greenwood and then moving against the Earl later on =)
Other users mentioned but maybe some better in-game signposting and/or guidance requiring content progression could be welcome. I ended up never getting Az’ea’s 4th scene even though it’s listed in game so presumably it exists. She had all stats basically maxed or at least nearly maxed and her room was fully upgraded so at that point I just kinda gave up
The notices for the Chapel and the Lab imply there’s already some content for Beth and Delia but that doesn’t seem to be the case, as indicated by the content tracker so it’s a bit unclear. There’s even one afternoon event that requires you to have progressed Beth’s quest
Gameplay wise things progress pretty slow at first and later, mostly because you run out of content, there’s nowhere to go. Additionally, getting additional villeins is pretty tricky so at times I was just covered in gold but didn’t really have any way of spending it, which was a bit frustrating
Conveniently, ritual seems to be clearing out much more of the portal energy than I’d expect from the displayed numbers. You get shown 3 and 6, and then it’s being cleared about 15 points at a time
While the date graphic is nice and useful, it does linger for an amount of time that ends up being annoying
And, finally, I did run into a couple of technical issues (Linux build). There’s a minor inconvenience where the message box for the events seems to not scale to the full height it could on the whole banner graphic. Very minor polish thing
More annoyingly, sometimes menus will overlap and reasonably often, sprites won’t clear or show in the right side of the screen during conversations.
Menu overlapping seemed to be particularly common with the dungeon menu not going away. What I’m guessing is that this is a timing issue with the fading in and out of things. Sometimes you misclick a room and while it’s fading in you want to “oopsie, no” and back out. But it could be that the fading animation blocks the removal action from being performed if it is still in progress, so that menu never gets cleared. If this really what’s happening, it shouldn’t be too annoying to track down. It was never a permanent issue, though at one time I did quit to menu and reload to clear it. No idea if the conversation problem has the same root.
Teething and balancing issues really just standard for an in-progress project but, as I mentioned, there’s nothing particularly egregious and even at this stage, things already look great and are quite fun to play through. Can’t wait for what’s coming up next
Discipline gain through sources, at least other than “Explain:Chores” seems to be bugged in 0.8.3h
Could be I’m just immensely unlucky, but I’ve got a couple of important slaves I’m improving as mistresses and they’ve been locked onto 38 and 60 discipline for ages now despite, fully upgraded horse riding, high affection and happiness…
Also a minor bug is that the “inventory” button on the followers menu is not working, so the player needs to go through the full-blown NPC screen
oooohh, nice stuff
A bit sad in principle to see the stool go but, honestly, I never managed to make it be useful in any way so, definitely understandable
Going through the game at this point I think that what I’m missing the most is some sort of infirmary? There’s at least one point in the game where running the Redhaven Girls ring is by far the best way to profit but this becomes high maintenance with girls having to recover. If a player wants to keep going at it, they need to manually buy soothing salves at the general store and manually go over each girl to apply them. If you have 30-40+ girls this can become super cumbersome
Building an infirmary where you could assign nurses sounds like a predictable solution. Caitlin herself, when acquired, bargains for her position within the house and her own personal plans using her Medicine knowledge as the stakes: “I’m good at medicine and can be very useful for someone like you”
But as far as I can tell, we can’t really get any use out of her Medicine skill directly? Though she does have the most involved and, perhaps, most rewarding character quest. Being able to invest in automating this… worker care would be pretty helpful
Back to this game after a bit
Excited with the new changes but the game feels way harder now (maybe I just botched it). I was struggling to get on top of stabilising an economy (still having a good time, mind you)
One thing that remains an issue, IMO, is the lack of information within the game. Masters of Raana is a game that is very intense on management and decision making. Even if most decisions are small, you’re making them all of the time (what actions to take, what tone to take, etc…)
But a lot of these things are hard to grasp/understand: “Raise fear of a slave”… okay, do I WANT their fear to be high? Why? I can’t tell. Similar to other stats, like willpower. Someone mentioned that, in combat, it’s hard to tell what weapons to use for best capture chance and the only real hint I got is at one point during the tutorial(?) it’s mentioned that the whipping cane is the ideal, but I’ve also noticed that pistols MAY not be too bad, as Bud seems to incapacitate more often than others
A round of “adding a help toggle” and/or extensive use of mouseover tooltips would do WONDERS for this game. I remember having a hard time telling if I was actually doing well the first time I played this game and this still remains
FINALLY: the “advance another day” button in the new day report being a little house right next to the “okay” button has made me accidentally click it a decent amount of times
I’m getting a bit confused with the business model here and couldn’t quite find clarification
I’ve purchased the original version way back, actually could never manage to get it working but it was being worked on so I decided to just wait
The new version/remake seems to now be well under way, which is good BUT some of the language around Q&As here seem to imply that this new version will be available on steam but not on itch and that for people in my position, a steam key will be offered so they can add the game to their libraries
I think the first question is: “is that all correct?” But, if so, what are the alternatives, because I do not want this game on steam, I’d like to just download a DRM-free binary, actually, this is what I purchased
Hijacking this a bit.
I’m on 0.65 and this part of the quest seems to be stuck for me as well.
I gave him the glue and he might have glued himself to the house because he’s never left….
Definitely been more than 3 days, I can’t seem to find him in any of the usual places. Maybe some flag got weirdly crossed because I gave him the glue while in the tavern at night?
UPDATE:
Nope, wasn’t that. I reloaded a previous save and did all of that during day time. This locked me both out of finishing the house as well as out of progressing the main quest as I cannot gather the signatures for both the drunkard (who’s missing entirely) as well as the barkeep
