by WhatTheNani » Mon Sep 26, 2022 7:53 pm
So really liking what there is so far. Obviously its still fairly barebones, but the conversations with the predators are enjoyable (the best part even) and the quest to collect garden residents gives a reason to revisit them plenty of times. That and I like the betrayals, those are hot. Looking forward to more predators, quests, garden upgrades, and maybe even some story, though really whatever direction you decide to take it in I am here for it. Also really looking forward to updates to the Chosen One and Vore Crawler. I was especially into the chosen one and, upon running out of content, actually went back and played the original (which I hadn't known about) but didn't get very far past what is currently out because the improvements to it were just so nice that I had trouble really getting in to the previous version when I was constantly comparing it with the upgraded one. Well, except for the grindy random encounter strewn part of the warp tower, wasn't a fan of that.
On the subject of things I wasn't as into, would like to see changed, I especially wish you had more space for party members. What predatorial feels most suited for is collecting and raising up a team of predators, having fun with stat builds and teaching them skills, while also collecting people to give to the garden. However with how limited the party is, you really can't do both. Hell, you can't even entirely do the collecting side, since if you want to have any adventurers that means you won't be able to get all the predators. With adventurers the ability to recruit them at your level eases this issue a little, but that isn't true for the predators, and regardless having to send someone you spent time and source raising, and possibly got attached to, to the garden because you need to make space for a new recruit (probably who will also be sent to the garden) just feels real bad.
My other major gripe would be the lack of vore in the actual combat of this vore game. It feels like in most cases the only time anyone actually gets eaten is when you get betrayed in the convo with a wild predator. The devour cost is so high that usually unless I am actively waiting around for the sp for it (and eating something has no gameplay benefits over just killing it normally) so long as I am at a reasonable difficulty level almost everything dies before devour is even useable. On top of that, predators are often weirdly adverse to actually using devour in a fight. Even if I stand around waiting for them to use it it takes them absolutely forever to do so, and that's assuming they even have built up the SP to do so. The ones with high cost physical skills seem to prefer to spend all their sp on those. To compound the issue, the success isn't guaranteed (feels like about 50% maybe?) and getting out is usually pretty easy so you basically never get the feeling of struggling against the clock as you try to escape before your predator digests you, unless you purposefully set up such a situation for yourself (which isn't even that easy to do unless you go in with pitiful physical attack against a predator with good physical defense in a difficulty that is too high for you, in which case you just get digested in like 2 turns anyways so you don't even get a lot of time to enjoy it). The only exception so far has been the witch, who you can only fight once, and even she can be pretty reluctant to actually eat someone sometimes.
I don't know how much can be done on the AI front to make them prioritize using devour more, but at the very least I think notably reducing the sp cost of devour would be completely fine.
I have a couple pretty minor issues: enemies resurrecting from death because they had someone in their belly who didn't escape upon killing them is bullshit (its mostly an issue with the snakes in my experience). Also kinda wish predators could eat more than one person at a time (I've actually seen a wild predator try to do that once but they failed and it seems like it won't let player characters do it). Also was saddened that the holstaur said she'd sell you some intoxicating milk but then doesn't. I don't know if that's something planned to be added or not, but I was looking forward to the potential of that.
Oh and found a crash in the vore crawler section. If taking the jerk option with the lamia in the diner you get an "unable to find file: Graphics/Faces/Lamia - Face" message and the game crashes.