tgcidolfus wrote:After getting as far as just after getting water lily ability, ill do my critique of the game so far. The game is a solid JRPG style game, meaning that it is hard and some grinding must be done at times as every level Ammy gets is massively important. The actual need to use potions is a rarity in almost any RPG anymore and for me, shows that game is hard, but not too hard in most cases for players with that mindset in mind. The forest dungeon series, a timer displayed would be very helpful for how much time a player has left until dark. (if there is a time out sequence and not just a scare tactic to make a player feel rushed) I will say though, the encounter rate is slightly high all around as taking 1 step after an encounter and getting another one can be frustrating when you are just spam running trying to get somewhere. During the 1st true boss encounter when you are tiny, I feel that the boss should have 300 hp and not 500 because at that point its just a time/potion dump as players should have figured out the mechanics by that point.
I really liked in the 1st town, despite it being a vore game, if a player actually shows trust to some of the npcs they are greatly rewarded meaning a player needs to have some level of faith (or a recent save file) with many of the npcs in towns.
On to the brush techniques I cant applaud you enough for the creativity in them being able to power up further through use (or just afking on the world map to let Ammy take her sunbath) While I haven't finished leveling up all of them, I will say the rewards upgrading them are very much worth a players time, even if multi-powerslash feels like its broken as it hits every enemy on screen 4 times, and not just 4 150% strikes, it was really broken for the orc boss battle. (and redid the fight without it, and it is still very doable, as I didn't even need 1 potion for the entire fight using holy light and poison/sleep and blind combos to destroy the orcs even when my attack was reduced to nothing)
Bugs I've noticed:
In the 1st summoning tower near the 1st save (by the 1st high summoner "boss" encounter) if you go back up a screen the map no longer follows the player and they can go off screen and the screen seemed to stop following me until I restarted the game.
In the forest north of the 1st town if you follow the right sided path until you get the open area where you had to count the plants if you go back (I did this as Ammy) enter the room (to the left of the counting area) you appear on top of the trees, but can still walk to the exit on top of the trees
After defeating the orcs, I went back in to see if I could use the nuisance enemies to farm up some bloom levels since its one encounter per step and they cant really hurt you, after going back south of that room the screen turns completely black and never corrects itself even if you can keep moving and even get into a battle, the screen stayed pure black.
After doing Gem's event in her house, you are unable to leave as it appears something invisible is blocking the door.
Overall this is a top quality and enjoy every second of this
Ill edit this post further with any additional bugs I find, unless you want me to just make new posts for anymore that I find.
Well, to be fair, some of the upgraded Brush Techniques are designed to be a bit overpowering as a reward for the player putting in the effort to learn them. Then again, you're also intended to acquire them as you play, and even by the end of the demo while using the necessary skills rather regularly I still haven't quite yet acquired any of them (although I also knew exactly what level I want to be at where, so I wasn't doing any excess grinding out of uncertainty). In fact, at some point I may even reduce how long it takes to acquire Holy Light, depending on how far along it reached by the end of the game on my end. Needless to say, the enemies thus far aren't exactly equipped to handle those skills, but of course that also makes them all the more rewarding for the early effort. Also, Multi Power Slash isn't supposed to hit all enemies, so I'll have to look into that. I must say I'm actually thankful that you learned it early so that can be brought to my attention sooner rather than later. Lastly, at some point (since it's looking like you may acquire it) I may be changing the unlockable Bloom skill all together if I can come up with a good alternative.
Regarding the forest. It used to have a timer, giving the player a solid 90 minutes to pass before game over. However, in the current demo I decided to take a slightly different approach to make for a more unique experience from other possibly timed segments later on. Making it so it simply gets darker perpetually, and the player basically has the option to give up if they feel it has become too dark. Granted the dimming light still technically runs on the same sort of timer, it's made invisible because it's only a minute long, and keeps resetting to control the darkness level.
As for the encounter rates of the game, some of the early encounter rates are a bit misleading. Most dungeons and areas won't have nearly as high encounter rates as the world map, and the North Forest. Both of those have high encounter rates for a reason, though. The world map has an ultra high encounter rate because everything is so cluttered together that if it weren't that way, you'd never get in any battles between locations. As for the forest, it's designed to use that aggression to build some tension for the (at least original) time limit, while also hastening any grinding the player may require for bosses without running out the clock. Either way, there should be plenty of time to clear the forest, so it's more there to build a greater sense of tension than what actually exists.
Thanks for pointing out those glitches. I don't know about that Gem one, but the others I definitely understand what's happening with them because of oversights to necessary adjustments regarding changes that were later made to the game. They shouldn't be too difficult to fix. Also, regarding Gem:
As for further comments, please use new posts. I'll probably miss edits, or at the very least won't know they happened until somebody else posts to bump up the thread.