This game could be so much more
I just want to say that I finished this game in around 10 hours during two sittings. I was engrossed with the story. I felt like the game heavily encouraged the greediness & temptation that it created. I felt like the entire time, the cat was taunting me and I found myself more than a few times clicking on him, hoping to get his help. The shudder the player character receives made me feel uneasy as I wondered what I was even doing, confused in a distant land.
Unfortunately, this game weirdly feels as though it is contorting itself to the idle game format. It does this, only to switch after the first playthrough, encouraging you to finish the game as quickly as possible with each subsequent playthrough. I happily played 8 hours in my first sitting as I had the day off of work. I truly beleive if the first playthrough was 4 hours and not 8 hours, this entire game could be significantly more approachable.
Overall, this game just feels so important... Until is didn't.
I felt like my character was losing their humanity. Before my first reset I was so curious about all of the, what I assumed was intentionally vague text on the side of my screen. On my second reset I remember audibly saying "oh" because now all of the game dialogue was contextualised. On my 10th, I was baffled by it's importance.
Unfortunately, that last stretch to harvest Soulstone was so tedious and un-fun. I used an autoclicker the entire playthrough and it made the world of difference. So when I say an autoclicker barely made a dent in collecting soulstone, I mean it.
In conclusion, my gripes with the game are:
1: Story was fantastic but the cat should be involved ever so slightly more so the ending feels more impactful. Even if just on the first playthrough.
2: Specifically the first playthrough should be shortened to ideally like 4 hours. I get it's an idle game but shortening it will make it significantly more accessible. This game could be so much more but the long time frame makes it so hard to get friends into playing as well as almost removing the ability to replay it entirely. A perfect example of this is I would love to see if changing your deal with the cat at the games start actually does anything later into the game.
3: I used an auto-clicker and one should be enabled by default. Clicking hurts after a while so if you just had to hover your mouse over the enemies to do damage, that would be so much more accessible!
4: Soulstone takes far too long to harvest, even in the super late-game. The first 8 hours felt so short compared to the last 2.
5: Please add an ending. I've done both endings and have been disappointed by "thanks for playing" each time.
6: Absolving gives virtually no narrative significance or reward. I tried absolving almost every enemy I could and it did less than if I just clicked on the bosses to kill them myself without and autoclicker. If absolving enemies impacted the game in some way regarding story or ending then that would be a significant improvement!
7: Experience system doesn't feel like anything is progressing. It feels like it just sits there and does nothing.
This is the first game I have completed in a long time and I mean it when I say - The potential for a truly great game is here. Things just need to shuffle around a little.
Please keep making games this one was really neat!