Ah, that explains it. I was waiting for the second part of the patch before playing but I guess I might have taken that too far, hah. I'll be happy to give feedback on 0.7 when it comes out and I'll try not to write a mini-novel this time. Looking forward to the next patch.
Regdren
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A member registered Jun 15, 2020
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My pleasure. I wouldn't expect an individual response to everything, especially the "hey I liked this" notes.
For the personality traits, I understand that players will optimize the fun out of games if given the chance, so the way you're doing things makes a lot of sense.
Same goes for the stat respec; we don't want a situation where players can reset their stats so often that there's no weight to the decision. It seems pretty difficult to balance so I don't blame you for being careful about that.
Sorry if I was confusing with "code" and the super accessories. I thought they might already be in the game files because they could be bought in the earlier demo. If they're not ready yet then I take back what I said about them.
I hope you get good feedback from other players too, there's probably some things that I missed along the way.
Hello again! here's my feedback after playing through the new demo version starting with psy-fire. Nearly all of these are personal opinions about the feel of the game rather than concrete bug reports. Most of this concerns version .53 except for one incident which I will point out when we get there. Get ready, this will be kind of long.
Good:
Game feels a lot bigger now. Seems like we're starting to see the foundation for the full game, which is pretty cool.
The wider variety of skills makes the gameplay more varied than "save up for energy claws every time" which I like a lot. I like that that mana potions are cheap but kind of awkward to use mid-combat. The flow ended up being "use skills to survive but you're in trouble if you run out" which is as it should be in my opinion.
Starting with two accessory slots is good for the demo, it gives a lot more ways to customize with gear. With one slot I felt like I could only use the scarf or later the belt and nothing else because not dying in a 1 character party seems pretty important.
Fake Attack is much better without (I think) being overpowered. There are a lot of situations now where it reduces the number of turns needed to kill an enemy which wasn't the case before, making it a useful option if you pay attention and experiment. Also like saving up to combine with Energy Claws against bosses or other tough fights, which I never did before.
Energy Claws costing 25 TP is balanced and fair and makes a lot of sense. I know it's the right kind of nerf because I feel really sad and disappointed about it while also still using it pretty often and surviving the encounters without a problem. So, good job.
The difficulty feels more in line with the "moderate" goal now than before. I didn't realize that I had forgotten to use food for the plant core and ???? bonus fights until after they were both completed. I had used other preparation items though. The fights are still challenging but feel less like you will lose if you aren't at the theoretical maximum level of power the game allows, which I think is about right.
Speaking of the ???? bonus fight. I think the things you did with the game engine, especially the extra party slots, were creative. In general you seem to avoid simple boss design, which is a decision I agree with for a game like this.
Adding a powerful skill based off of defensive stats for a character that mostly scales off magic and attack seems like an effective way to make build decisions tougher and more interesting.
One lucid potion and two fights where you might really need it seems like the right kind of resource rationing. I genuinely like being forced into those kinds of decisions.
Neutral:
It looks like once you buy your stats you can't reset those purchases ever, which seems constricting but also really makes the player think about what to buy. I felt a bit nervous because I didn't know what would be important later. Ended up doing just fine though. Guide writers will make "THIS IS THE OPTIMAL STAT SPREAD! USE THIS OR DIE" guides for people who can't make up their own minds no matter what, and so the cycle continues.
No indicators for how your personality is being affected by your decisions, or what kind of moves might become accessible. This will give the online guide writers something else to do and is generally a time-honored video game tradition so I can't really get too mad about it. In my own playthrough I had no trouble unlocking extra skills by the time I needed them so this didn't really hurt me.
"help the original GM destroy all anomalies" seems like a main quest disguised as a side quest which is pretty funny.
I miss being able to sprint like before, though that probably made the plant timing minigame too easy. Being able to at least sprint in town would be nice. Overall not a big deal though.
Could be improved:
It might be better if the advanced potions required loot items from more advanced monsters rather than just a lot of red/blue goo. The way it is now, it's best to skip the crafting recipes for early potions because they're cheap to buy already and you'll need the goo for the really strong consumables. Either that or walk around auto-killing a bunch of goonies which I wouldn't describe as fun gameplay.
In addition, if there are loot items that you explicitly intend to be sold to the shop instead of saved for some later crafting recipe, something like "not useful for crafting" in the description could be good. Unless you want it to be a mystery, which I admit has been done in games before. (shoutouts to anyone afraid to sell their gold slime)
If you're implemented the code for those super expensive accessories in the stat shop, it might be good to give practical access to them somehow so we can make sure there aren't any bugs with them. Maybe as a reward for surviving the ???? bonus boss or something.
Was the "weaknesses only" artifact intended to take damage from the burn status? Right now it does. Also, when it was in Aerial Mode my psy-wind didn't do anything (that happened in version 0.5, not sure if that was changed.) This is understandable because a potential 4 damage in one turn might be too much but it was a bit annoying to use a weakness and get punished for it.
That's it for now, I really like the way you're developing the game. Looking forward to finding out where things go from here!
Things I noticed after playing the demo for a bit:
Some kind of mention that the game tracks turns outside of battle would be good. I thought potions would be useless except in battle because I didn't know that the recovery over time worked and would happen as I walked around. It also opens up stuff like using a potion right before a tough fight so you get the regen without using a turn, that's pretty cool.
Along those lines, Lucid potion would be a lot better if it could also be used when you were outside of battle so you could bring status immunity into a fight. Don't know whether that would be overpowered or not, so if it was your intention to make it always cost a turn then I guess it makes sense.
Tried the 50% strength antidote ring and got poisoned with very high reliability, poison also did full damage. I don't know if my luck is just really bad or the antidote ring is meant to be used alongside the "inmunity" ring for full defense. Using the inmunity ring alone also does not seem to provide a chance to avoid poison.
Fake attack seems extremely bad. A 2 turn debuff where 1 turn is spent using the non-damaging skill seems like mostly a waste. Early in the game I didn't really face anything that needs a defense debuff to handle. Later on, considering how valuable TP is the moment energy claws are unlocked, I can't really justify ever using it.
As others have noted, the cave boss is a large difficulty spike compared to the other enemies in there. You've already noted that you will provide more ways to advance before you have to fight it in the full game, so I just want to know if improved food can be unlocked before the boss. I wasn't sure whether beating the boss was what unlocked it or not.
Now for some of the stuff I liked:
Energy Claws feels really good to use. It's cool to have a move like that which you can anchor your strategy around in most battles because of how reliable it is, where you can't use it every turn but you CAN use it every battle due to how TP works.
Most encounters feel pretty well-balanced, in that they are not easily cleared unless you're very over-leveled but there's pretty much always a way to deal with them if you explore your options. Good stuff.
Artwork is high quality as expected. Does a lot of work towards setting up the overall feel of the game.
And finally...
thanks very much for doing this, I hope you can keep going with this project because it already has a lot of enjoyable things in it.