wufff it's been over a week since i'd checked in here my bad
It looks great. Although I don't think I would be able to give accurate feedback, as I am not a fan of RPGs very often, but I had fun playing this. One of the things I could recommend working on is giving more details in the equipment selection.
Thank you for checking it out! Yeah, that's in my trello list lmao
Getting the equips functional took way long so I sidelined the effect display for later :/
So I decided to check this out on a whim, and I really liked it for what it was. I feel like there's definitely potential here depending on how much time you want to commit to the project. I'll provide a list of observations I made during my playtime to give some feedback. Keep in mind I played on normal difficulty, so that's the perspective I'm coming from when writing this.
Thank you as well! I was pretty excited as stuff was coming together but I had to take a break because working on this was turning into an all-day "table-every-other-responsibility-i-have" sort of situation. I'm about to jump back into it after taking some time to collect myself (and catch up on college work!! ahh)
- I really think you nailed the enemy encounter rate. I never felt overwhelmed by encounters, but I also didn't feel they were so scarce that I had to search them out to keep my levels up.
Great! I did worry for a bit that they spiked a bit in the southwest end of 2F, so this is good to hear.
- I'd recommend item descriptions being more readily available in the menu. You can't see how equipment affects your stats unless you're at the equip screen. You can only see what non-healing items do during battle. You can't differentiate between spellcards with the same icon on the equip screen. Those are the issues that come to mind, but they make equipping items more of a hassle than it needs to be.
Yeeeeah... after 6~8 hours straight slogging at the party menu's item and equipment screens I didn't take the extra time necessary to fully implement item information displays. I'm sorry! But this is on my to-do list.
- I'm not sure how I feel about having to equip consumables to use them in battle. I assume it was done to discourage item spam, but it feels pretty limiting. The reload mechanic is my main issue with it. Depending on the item it can take a very long time for someone to reload it (looking at the party healing item). This is a bit more personal then my other complaints, but the mechanic feels like a pace-breaker to me.
Items are designed to be a quick but effective patch over any potential holes in your party composition / spellcard loadout. I chose to give them an almost-immediate prep time and very low turn cooldown to distinguish them from ordinary abilities, and with that crossed with how efficacious they are, (and that they can't be blocked/sealed) I felt it would be good to gate them by giving them a stack count and reload time. I will concede that 200
time ticks is a very long time to take to reload the Okonomiyaki, though, lmao. I intend to revisit exact numbers later.
- I like the ability to see the enemies' ATB gauges and how they're split into different segments. It really helps you plan your turns effectively and let you know when a big attack is coming up.
Hopefully some enemies frontloading harsh abilities onto low-charge high-cooldown windows wasn't too rough? I had to nerf the hell out of mujinas because their attacks came out too fast and often lmao
- There weren't that many enemies, but I felt like there was a lot of variety in what was there. Most enemies brought something different to the table, and kept things from getting stale.
Also something I worried about! I'm glad it came off well.
- I really liked the first boss. It was good for her to be a bit on the easy side without being a cakewalk. Her attacks were varied, and that helped teach the player to respond appropriately to the situation.
- My only real gripe with the second boss was that I felt she had too much HP and the fight dragged as a result. Otherwise, the fight was challenging but fair.
re: Eternity: Great! To let you in on a little secret, I'm mostly using Lunatic as the balance point and scaling back for the lighter difficulties. If anything comes off as weirdly adjusted on Easy or Normal, this is 80% going to be the reason why
Ahh, yes, I'm really feeling the "Kasen's HP Is Huge" bit
and not just because i keep getting her to <200 on lunatic. Will address. Possibly will need to add more debuff cleanse items to the floor for her as well lmao
- On the second floor, I ran into a fight with a painting, a gluttonous spirit, and a nekomata. For some reason boss music was playing and I couldn't run from the fight. I encountered them in a 3x3 room in the East portion of the map. Glitch?
- While I was fighting one of the fat green enemies (I forget her name), she used her recoil attack and her ATB gauge never went down afterwards. All my party members got about five turns in a row with the enemy's gauge ever decreasing. Glitch?
Both intended! There isn't any event scripting on the second floor yet outside of the initial bit but basically you're supposed to go left first, to unlock a barrier on the right; immediately afterward you're set upon by new enemies that hint at the fact that the third floor is an entirely different setting, with more spirit-like enemies and the occasional beast youkai.
The Amazake Babaa's Topple attack has a cooldown of - really - 500 ticks, or, 5 full time bars. Once it uses it, it's basically a free pass to auto it until it dies.
Well, I wrote a lot more than I thought I would. Like I said, I think you have something pretty good for the time it took you to make it. I wish you good luck in your future endeavors.
The write-up is very greatly appreciated, thank you! I'll put your feedback to use.
