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Been playing a little bit beyond the sisters in Chapter 3 on my (so far) no reincarnation save. The difficulty definitely ramped up immediately with new enemy types, but I'm loving the additional characters and reveals of all the horrible things that have been happening at the Asylum. 

My Academic still gets one shot often with around 100 hp. Maybe it's low resistances on the gear she's wearing? Gabrielle has resorted to 'seemingly' betraying the party almost every battle despite me trying to pre-cast every anti-mind control magic I know, and these horrible tentacle monsters can often one shot my tankier party members, or just drag them out of reality entirely. Luckily they die to a few good crits. I just have to get lucky and finish them off before they attack too much. 

I've discovered that the door next to Vissago goes to the East Wing of the hotel, but haven't found a way to open it yet.

If I can't make much progress soon, I'll probably commit to a swap to the occultist and see how things go trying to get back from the beginning. 

Good news! 

I've managed to get past the sister fight on my academic play through using two methods: Combat, and trial and error-ing my way through the conversation system.

For combat: This was pretty much a toss of the dice every time and not in my favor. I went in with three baneful dust of Hermes Trismegistus, and Eight Molotov Cocktails. 

I had to focus on defense for the first phase, trying to conserve my item resources as much as possible. When the sisters split and start phase two, everyone in the party is healed and at full Sanity and Power, so you simply have to ensure you make it to that point. I used  therapy on the academic to keep everyone topped up, guarded as much as possible, and weaved in first aid where I could. Getting past this phase probably had a 90% success rate, so it wasn't too bad. 

The second phase is absolutely brutal. I focused on tossing out items for damage, and trying to play whack-a-mole with curing whatever thing was on fire in the moment. Considering if I got lucky they could: Two shot me, Make me go insane with one spell, inflict multiple debuffs, inflict lots of bleeding, I had my work cut out for me. Eventually through pure luck Gabrielle ended up being the only character left alive and sane (as she's the only character in my party with a natural 0% sanity degradation at this point), and somehow survived for three turns alone. She was able to finish off Cassilda with a lucky Cranectomy critical when Cassilda was at 9%. 

P.S. Strange Magic is such a good song for this fight, that I streamed it to one of my friends with no-forewarning and she immediately told me to tell you, "I like their music!" It's absolutely criminal if someone stumbles through the conversation successfully and doesn't get to hear it at least once.  A lot of the older but thematic music choices for the game are very well done. My compliments for choosing such a wide and interesting variety among investigation A and B that I've heard so far. 

For the conversation system: This took me more tries to brute force than you might suspect. Maybe I just had a bad recollection of the choices, but their responses were often not what I expected for everything except the 'authority' option. I'm unsure if the conversation is intended to work this way, but here is how I cleared it in the last couple of turns:

My sequence went something like Compassion -> Intellect -> Compassion -> Intellect -> Intellect.  My memory isn't perfect on this, so the order of the first two or three may be swapped.  

Near the end of the conversation challenge, I ended up using the Intellect option and asked them who their father was twice. The first time Camilla moved to the left, then after repeating the same thing and hesitating' the bar moved back to the middle and the fight ended. 

Besides providing the same question and response as the previous round, I wonder if this was a bug? I'm not sure if it was intended to try the same method of conversation and get the same result twice in a row. If you try doing this at other times it heavily sabotages their attitude toward you. 

Overall really enjoyed the fight, and it's probably one of my favorites in the game so far even though it felt *very* difficult. But this was perhaps a symptom of how I built and equipped my party in general. 

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In other news I also investigated how things change after doing some of the reincarnations. Going Academic (no Deaths) to Academic after my first death wasn't as brutal with the tips you provided in the other thread, but I did struggle to get enough items to beat the twins and eventually decided to tackle them on a no-death run. 

I'm fascinated by what might be behind that force-fielded door in the trio that wasn't there pre-death, and wonder if it will be back later.  I assume getting it open has something to do with going insane enough and talking to Vissago. Will definitely try that at some point either on a reincarnation run or a new play through where I let myself skirt into the higher ranks of insanity. 

Going academic to occultist at the beginning was a little rough as I felt like I was missing extra sanity. If I I started playing the occultist as my third reincarnation after dying twice on the academic and learning as many mythos spells as possible I'd often have a maximum sanity value in the single digits despite the academic having 30-40 or so before her death. You can imagine how horrible that was. Though I suppose it would provide incentive to try and get to Egypt as fast as possible. 

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Speaking of Egypt I tried quite a few of the different rewards (though not all of them). There is an interesting selection of options that will probably benefit people who do a better job of managing their sanity before getting there. Some were kind of underwhelming (like the phylactery). I enjoyed the top-down perspective switch and the transition effects for all of the locations I was able to visit. 

I know it's probably mentioned elsewhere in one of my notes, but on my very first play through I had the weird reincarnation bug where Quentin showed up in the Occultist party after I went Academic -> Occultist (Died to Minotaur) -> Agents (Purposefully died because I hit a dead end and couldn't get out or back into the hotel) -> Occultist. Quentin showed up in my party at the very start of that final occultist run since we never got out of the hotel.  He had zero speaking lines, and I got all the way to the asylum, but was a fully functional character. 

Thanks! I'll get back on all this when I can, but it might not be till the weekend.

The hounds have not started bothering me yet. 

Missing image in Investigation A - Chapter 3 - (Game Version 1): 

Trying to post an 800kb png but the forum won't let me. So I'll do my best to describe the error verbatim. 

Clicking on the portrait to the right of the red arcane circle when you first enter the trio room in Chapter 3 gives the following missing file error: 'Failed to load:img/pictures/art%20-%20Rosa%20Temptation.png'

If you attempt to continue playing by dismissing the message, it will constantly retry loading the picture and then failing every five seconds or so with the same message. 

This can be bypassed by not investigating the picture, and there is no issue if you open a portal to the market, as that functionality supersedes inspecting the painting which is in the same location. 

I seem to have lost access to all the original comments I wrote down giving feedback. I was hoping to transfer some of those notes over.  Hopefully you can still see them somewhere. 

After getting insanity to IV thanks to looking at the Yellow Sign and spending a good amount of time going through options provided by the trio (Including finally visiting Bast once my insanity hit level V) I moved on and got to the confrontation with the Morgenstine twins, but ended up failing the conversation portion. 

It was a close fight after they split, but they ended up killing me (first death on this save).

The silence song ended up hurting me quite a bit early on, but I just started lobbing all of the explosives I had. Sadly by the time they end up separating and getting serious they made short work of me before I could get one of them down to about 50%. 

Which gave me a unique opportunity. I chose to  restart in the same body.
Surprisingly this put me at the hotel's position in chapter 3 with almost none of my gear, not quite as many SP as I once had, and (most?) of my levels and stats. A nice surprise but... 
The door is locked behind me and the enemies are absolutely brutal for the gear we have equipped. 
I did notice I still have the manuscript to learn spells (hooray!), and the detectives started with different guns (including a nice shotgun).

Everyone missing a good chunk of active and passive skills at this point in the chapter because of a lack of SP definitely feels bad. You kind of have to sacrifice between active skill synergy or passives that you had before. And splitting up SP to get some passives and some active skills just leaves you a lot weaker and ill-prepared.

I was also hoping I could go back to earlier sections and pick up some of our previous gear - the academic in particular lost basically everything she was wearing. RIP my enchanted magic knife, amulet, and nifty Bast skill - but alas the door was locked behind us after we went through.  

I wonder if picking the Occultist at this point would have also had different starting changes?

I may reload before the twin fight and see what happens next time I die, but I do need to talk to the nice woman in the wheelchair now that I've died to see what else she says.

On another note, I enjoy the spell learning process out of the manuscript. It's really well done. 

Also the twins themselves are great, as much as I complain about them being very difficult. The whole encounter just oozes the right kind of atmosphere for the king in yellow. 

Ran into a missing file issue when examining one of the paintings. The itch comments are being ornery and don't want to allow me to upload a screenshot. It's the Rosa Temptation painting in the room with the trio. 

Notably this is before you open a portal that takes the inspection button's place. 

Finally made it to the trio and got to try out Egypt.

I also tried to go to 1892. She took the LeMat revolver from me but then nothing happened. If the whole Egypt trip never happened I'd feel ripped off! :P

Very excited to see where things go next. 

Oh yes, the minotaur was very strange. Got him down to 0%.

He spent a few rounds after that on fire, bleeding, and stunned while I attacked him. Still didn't die after the stun wore off and a full round passed. At that point I had to run away, because he can easily one shot the academic and possibly get lucky enough to take one of the detectives down at the same time. If I have more time to play today, I'll try it again to see if I can reproduce the issue. Maybe something has changed since I was able to flee and go back to the hotel. 

*Update*
Attempted it again. He finally died after about three rounds of everyone going insane and punching about randomly while at 0%. 

I guess I was just too hasty with my retreat earlier.

Also the blessing of Bast is my favorite thing. Love cats <3

Oh before I forget, minor quality of life thing but it would be nice if going back to the hotel refilled all of  your HP / Pow / Sanity. It doesn't always, necessitating walking out one room, then coming back again. 

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It seems very inconsistent. Might be related to debuffs and status effects on the characters at the time, I'll pay more attention next time it happens. 

Thank you so much for the tips! 

I somehow have managed to miss the janitor entirely (unless they are also in the basement). Once I do find them I should have piles of cash, because of how much gear I've collected from grinding the first couple of areas in the asylum.  

Right now my permanent insanity is at II. I've been save scumming to avoid having it go up too high. However, on a previous play through it was at IV, and yeah I basically had to pump resolve every level to even be functional. 

I have yet to discover how to visit Egypt, but I did see there was a learnable Bastet occult skill. I may just grind out SP and get a few more things to help out. 

Finding the janitor is a must though, because I've run out of cloth to make molotovs with, despite stocking up on piles of alcohol. Unless there's a way to tear down clothing I've missed, that would solve that problem. 

Update: I got the Minotaur to 0% with some grenades and dynamite i found and he didn't die :(

Also I found the janitor. I could have sworn I checked in this room, but apparently I missed it. 

Update 2: Finding the janitor has given me a massive power boost considering all the equipment he has access to. I've finally been able to make significant progress (Who knew star vampires were weak to being shot in the head with an SKS?). 

The basement in investigation A as the academic is absolutely killing me. 

I got past the amoeba easily enough after one retry.  

I even spent some time farming levels / skills on the upper levels once I got access to the hotel. But it seems like everything has far more health down there - even though I have my academic set up with decent dex / int and supporting skills like bless weapon, a rapier, and decent equipment on my other two characters - we just take too long to kill things. Using therapy in combat to try and stave it off really just makes the death spiral start sooner. 

My in combat sanity restoration items are limited enough that I can never end the fights before someone goes insane, and the permanent sanity reduction makes the loop even more punishing. 

I may need to just farm money and buy a bunch of alcohol at the hotel to be able to continue. Items seem a lot more scarce in the asylum compared to the amount of things you find in Investigation B. 

Aha, I knew the skills I was picking for her probably contributed to part of her low damage.

That makes a lot of sense. I'll keep an eye out for those better melee weapons next time, though I think I'll try and get through Investigation A with the Academic first. 

You did! I actually enjoyed it. Helped set the atmosphere. Was a very pleasant surprise as I wasn't expecting any voice acting at all.  

Is Chapter 3.(B) a dead end at this point in the alpha? I got the chapter title to display but can't seem to do anything except go one screen forward and fight the Lamprey once I go into the Warrens. At that point I appear to stuck as there is no exit or way to backtrack.

Anecdotally there were a lot less bugs that I encountered in Investigation B so far. Everything seemed well polished and laid out with a nice assortment of supplies that kept my party going before I could get back to the hotel. 

I really liked the themes here and the enemy variety. Combat felt tense and very resource draining, but not insurmountable with the shotgun and a later secret weapon you pick up from a certain room. I may just be bad at building the Rogue, but it felt like her knife skills really couldn't keep up in damage with basic attacks from other characters. This was ok, because she definitely had other benefits. The amount of extra items you can acquire with Vivienne in your party is great, so she doesn't need to excel at everything. 

I finally got to try out a little bit of the crafting system. It worked well, and molotov cocktails are a bit OP if the initial hit doesn't miss. They definitely saved my investigators more than a few times. 

The boss fight here was great, and I enjoyed the world building with how Vivienne knew who this guy was. He also seemingly comes back at some point, but I ran away before seeing if it would trigger another fight. 

The amount of keys you pick up was a bit confusing at first, but since you can brute force what door they go to by looking for the icon change, finding my way around was manageable. 

Loved all the 'evidence' you collect to bust the family running the graveyard, but haven't figured out if there's anything else you can do with it. 

Overall, really loving my time with this game, and it's clear you put a lot of work and love into it. I'll definitely revisit Investigation A and see if I can make my past the problem spots with a bit more planning.  

I'm also a huge fan of the music! Very darksynth and gets your blood pumping for combat, with old timey creepy pieces mixed in for exploration. I think it works great together but I have strange musical tastes according to my friends.

It's Quentin. After I had died on the agents, Quentin started in my party from the beginning of the cycle in the hotel. He was in the second party slot. Ryoko, Quentin, Vivienne.
 

I'll try to reproduce if I have time, but this was after three or four deaths and I had played the occultist once without Quentin being there.

I think my party choices went something like Occultist (Died to minotaur) -> Academic (Died to cultists) -> Agent (Purposefully died after getting stuck with no exit to hotel parking lot) -> Occultist. 

I had just played the agents previously (female agent), died in combat because I couldn't get to the parking lot and going back into the hotel caused a black screen.

If the save file would help, I can upload it somewhere for you to nab. 

No worries! I think it was one of the call of cthulhu oriented subreddits, but I can't remember for sure . 

It's honestly a crime that more people haven't played this. I left a review but I'm not sure they're posted publicly? The atmosphere and world building are very well done, and the difficulty reminds me a bit of Fear & Hunger, which I love. 

I got out of the hotel into the asylum with both the psychologist and the occultist, but the difficulty bump is a bit insane with that one section, as it's possible to go in without weapons, up against some tough enemies.

I think there was a funny bug with the agents, when you get to the exit of the hotel there is no option to leave and if you go backwards you end up in a black void unable to move, so I purposefully reloaded a save and got myself killed.

However, when I switched characters one of the agents showed up in my party as a third character (Occultist, Agent, Rogue). There was also a test message I found in the asylum after I helped break the doctor out, but I died after running into three or four groups of cultists as I ran out of resources.

I still have the save if you'd like me to send it to you.

I love that you can customize characters by learning new skills with AP. There are still some mechanics I'm not sure about (crafting, how to learn new spells, and what the exact limit is for reincarnating - past a certain point it doesn't let you do anything but load a save when you die. I think after 5 spirals?) but overall I'm enjoying it a lot. 

I'm planning to play a bit more of it when I have time and try out other characters that I haven't gotten far with, and see how investigation B compares to A. 

If you'd like to pick my brain more I can send you my discord info. 

*Update*: 

Got quite a bit farther in Investigation B in the graveyard. It definitely seems to be a bit easier than the second half of investigation A. Will try and advance some more when I have additional time.


The door at the bishop's house which the butler answers keeps opening up a prompt to use it even though there is conversation occurring after the butler retreats inside. May be because I was clicking on the door itself to try and advance conversation. I eventually got past it and was able to get quite a bit further. 

Hi Tabula Rasa Games. Just wanted to thank you for advertising on reddit otherwise I never would have found this. I've only put about an hour into this game, but I'm absolutely loving it so far. 

As a fan of all things lovecraftian this is basically my dream game. I love the premise of being able to switch between the different characters on death. And I appreciate that you provided two different character options for each archetype, both with slightly different backstories despite having the same equipment and statistics. 

I'll try and leave a more detailed review up once I've got more of the game explored. But if you're on the fence about trying this, give it a shot.

It's name your own price so there's nothing to lose if you want to try it out before donating. 

Thanks! This is amazing.