Re: RC 1 feedback
Posted: 26 Nov 2014, 03:03
'Finished' the game in about 3 hours... or maybe not?
I cannot leave the map after touching the crystal. The characters say that they should go to the village, but the map has no exit. Is that right (i.e. the end of the Episode I)? In this topic I read about skeletons, better sword etc... I've not encountered any of those.
Also, there is a 'hole' in the 'crystal' map that lets the party leave to the right empty area.
The game feels very nice. I liked it.
Few IMHO ideas:
1. Start is too slow. There may be no action, but there should be some content not just running around the village and probing all the walls searching for a hiding kid. E.g. background of the key characters. Simple logical starter quests. Maybe, a better variety of items.
2. Too much money. I ended up with over a 1000 drunes, with everything to buy in the shop I got being able to pass through the second forest map. Moreover the items I buy are 'significantly' better than mine. I.e. too little items variety and too large change they bring. The equipment should be slowly constantly improving in my opinion. Moreover, some equipment should be 'specialized', i.e. no 'super armor' but different armor being good for different purposes.
3. Too high respawn speed. The first battles are just a 'EXP grinding' until you can survive at least 4-5 battles. And actually having no idea 'weather to save the potions or not' makes me saving them. Moreover, not knowing how quick the pace will be makes more like grinding for EXP. Maybe, the monsters should also become stronger with character level, e.g. the final battle with the wolf was no challenge at all. Another idea here - most of the game becomes 'running away from foes' because of constantly respawning enemies slowly drain HP not letting the party to go to the new area.
4. Too ineffective 'shield' against 'first aid'. Actually I didn't see shield do anything at all - the character still was hurt and the damage was not reduced significantly to be noticed. While 'first aid' makes 4 to 5 new battles winnable without use of potions.
5. No in-game description of the mechanics (i.e. what is the difference between protection and defense).
6. Few battles need any attendance from the player. It's usually smashing the first opponent, then the second, etc. with the same hits. I.e. if this is the feature, then the characters should 'automatically' repeat the previous (or default) action, without need for the player to aimlessly press 'F' 6 times for each round and around 70 times per battle. Or, better, make the battles strategically-dependent. I.e. that every turn requires thinking and planning - that is to provide with more options and more challenges (e.g. one monster immune to arrows, the other to the sword, the third to the magic or specific attack style... many weak monsters vs area damage, some monsters are low hp, but high atk (should be taken out first), while the others are high-hp but low-atk, etc. / ). There is also no obvious way to estimate the enemy 'coolness', i.e. does the spider have more HP/ATK than the slime?
7. Not too obvious that some buildings have hidden upper entrances (like grandmother's) to be found by accident. Also the fact that to speak one should face the NPC. The wolf's necklace is also an non-obvious find, because before this all the items were stored in the chests. And it's hard to predict which tile is an item or not, I was clicking many times at a caterpillar in the second part of the first cave.
8. I still couldn't find out how the passage in the second part of the first cave was opened. No items to interact with (which was referred to as a mechanism). I was just walking around and the characters told that something has fallen. Neither any idea on how to get to the chest in the upper left island.
9. After opening of the forest pass in the second forest map, it does not show in the map.
10. The save points distribution is too uneven. Sometimes they just 3 to 4 battles away from one another... sometimes it takes a few dozen minutes before the player can save and postpone the game. Moreover save and rest places should not necessarily be together.
11. Chests/drops contain no interesting loot, e.g. no unique items which cannot be obtained the other way. There is a cool idea around that some items have attached skills/spells to them (e.g. like summoning an ally monster once per battle), not only defense/magical defense.
12. There is too much information during the battle. And with attention concentrated mainly on clicking 'F' as needed, it appears to be not used - i.e. neither action sequence, nor the specific damage need to be monitored - the 'remaining HP' is the only thing to take notice of. It would be much more interesting if the player would need to analyze this data, e.g. try to attack the creatures that move first to kill them before they attack.
13. Still can't figure out the meaning of blue crystal appearing near the character while speaking (along with understandable exclamation mark, question mark and three dots).
14. 'F'-'D' sequence in the party menu/inventory is very irritating. Forward-backward, no, not this submenu, back... Maybe it is still a good idea to implement mouse? It's very complicated at the beginning to get used to the process.
15. At the beginning of the game I tried for about 5 minutes to equip the helmet and other armor in the inventory, until I understood that they were not real items, but 'sort/filters' (still had doubts that I just didn't figure out how to do this until got the first 'other' item).
16. I have no idea how I came up with idea that to select the main menu item I have to press 'F'... For about a minute or two I was just cycling left-right keys, trying enter, spacebar, up/down... Mouse would also be helpful here.
(Version 1.0.0. 4 sep 2014)
I cannot leave the map after touching the crystal. The characters say that they should go to the village, but the map has no exit. Is that right (i.e. the end of the Episode I)? In this topic I read about skeletons, better sword etc... I've not encountered any of those.
Also, there is a 'hole' in the 'crystal' map that lets the party leave to the right empty area.
The game feels very nice. I liked it.
Few IMHO ideas:
1. Start is too slow. There may be no action, but there should be some content not just running around the village and probing all the walls searching for a hiding kid. E.g. background of the key characters. Simple logical starter quests. Maybe, a better variety of items.
2. Too much money. I ended up with over a 1000 drunes, with everything to buy in the shop I got being able to pass through the second forest map. Moreover the items I buy are 'significantly' better than mine. I.e. too little items variety and too large change they bring. The equipment should be slowly constantly improving in my opinion. Moreover, some equipment should be 'specialized', i.e. no 'super armor' but different armor being good for different purposes.
3. Too high respawn speed. The first battles are just a 'EXP grinding' until you can survive at least 4-5 battles. And actually having no idea 'weather to save the potions or not' makes me saving them. Moreover, not knowing how quick the pace will be makes more like grinding for EXP. Maybe, the monsters should also become stronger with character level, e.g. the final battle with the wolf was no challenge at all. Another idea here - most of the game becomes 'running away from foes' because of constantly respawning enemies slowly drain HP not letting the party to go to the new area.
4. Too ineffective 'shield' against 'first aid'. Actually I didn't see shield do anything at all - the character still was hurt and the damage was not reduced significantly to be noticed. While 'first aid' makes 4 to 5 new battles winnable without use of potions.
5. No in-game description of the mechanics (i.e. what is the difference between protection and defense).
6. Few battles need any attendance from the player. It's usually smashing the first opponent, then the second, etc. with the same hits. I.e. if this is the feature, then the characters should 'automatically' repeat the previous (or default) action, without need for the player to aimlessly press 'F' 6 times for each round and around 70 times per battle. Or, better, make the battles strategically-dependent. I.e. that every turn requires thinking and planning - that is to provide with more options and more challenges (e.g. one monster immune to arrows, the other to the sword, the third to the magic or specific attack style... many weak monsters vs area damage, some monsters are low hp, but high atk (should be taken out first), while the others are high-hp but low-atk, etc. / ). There is also no obvious way to estimate the enemy 'coolness', i.e. does the spider have more HP/ATK than the slime?
7. Not too obvious that some buildings have hidden upper entrances (like grandmother's) to be found by accident. Also the fact that to speak one should face the NPC. The wolf's necklace is also an non-obvious find, because before this all the items were stored in the chests. And it's hard to predict which tile is an item or not, I was clicking many times at a caterpillar in the second part of the first cave.
8. I still couldn't find out how the passage in the second part of the first cave was opened. No items to interact with (which was referred to as a mechanism). I was just walking around and the characters told that something has fallen. Neither any idea on how to get to the chest in the upper left island.
9. After opening of the forest pass in the second forest map, it does not show in the map.
10. The save points distribution is too uneven. Sometimes they just 3 to 4 battles away from one another... sometimes it takes a few dozen minutes before the player can save and postpone the game. Moreover save and rest places should not necessarily be together.
11. Chests/drops contain no interesting loot, e.g. no unique items which cannot be obtained the other way. There is a cool idea around that some items have attached skills/spells to them (e.g. like summoning an ally monster once per battle), not only defense/magical defense.
12. There is too much information during the battle. And with attention concentrated mainly on clicking 'F' as needed, it appears to be not used - i.e. neither action sequence, nor the specific damage need to be monitored - the 'remaining HP' is the only thing to take notice of. It would be much more interesting if the player would need to analyze this data, e.g. try to attack the creatures that move first to kill them before they attack.
13. Still can't figure out the meaning of blue crystal appearing near the character while speaking (along with understandable exclamation mark, question mark and three dots).
14. 'F'-'D' sequence in the party menu/inventory is very irritating. Forward-backward, no, not this submenu, back... Maybe it is still a good idea to implement mouse? It's very complicated at the beginning to get used to the process.
15. At the beginning of the game I tried for about 5 minutes to equip the helmet and other armor in the inventory, until I understood that they were not real items, but 'sort/filters' (still had doubts that I just didn't figure out how to do this until got the first 'other' item).
16. I have no idea how I came up with idea that to select the main menu item I have to press 'F'... For about a minute or two I was just cycling left-right keys, trying enter, spacebar, up/down... Mouse would also be helpful here.
(Version 1.0.0. 4 sep 2014)