okay so i just beat the 2.5 alpha, firstly the difficulty needs a bit of work still. most things are still ungodly hard and make you fricking fight for your life.
but the new combat system feels like black souls crossed with fear and hunger meets harem collector climax. gauge based, with an array of free abilities that are really useful in a pinch with near unlimited build variety, though now miracles and sorceries being separate make it so some otherwise useless characters are worth using now.
nothing feels super broken so far, trip works just often enough it almost takes the place of what parry used to be. and now parry and evade are both viable options. but for completely different reasons.
parry is great against any physical enemies because the chance of it working makes it a good enough reward to justify working less often than evade. and evade working against magic too make it feel super strong.
guard is brace now and that makes it cooler, it recovers mind too which means its more like a move to fall back and take a breath with no risks.
taunt is really situational but its saved more than a few runs. it all comes together to form a combat system better than just about any other rmmz game i've ever played.
to sum it up. if i had to argue with someone about it. i'd say this game has both the best cast, worldbuilding, writing, and combat of any rpg maker mz game i've ever played at least. or at least on itch.
i can safely say this is the best RMMZ game on itch in my opinion. if only because it handles dark topics and comedic ones with a level of separation that feels like it doesn't hurt the quality of either. the combat which was one of its weakest links is now one of the strongest...
games like rise of the unfelled which use similar levels of depth for their combat end up feeling boring, unfair, and slow, but this being so fast paced means you have none of that. and by knowing the odds and betting yourself. a loss turns into a near miss. and a win turns into a gamblers high. overall i can say even as a bit of a biased critic, this shit slaps. lighting and visuals are also insane for rtp. not quite wildsilver but close especially considering how little parallax they use...
