Slimes

I thought the tutorial was weird in that it taught you the basics of the game but since every attacks miss it's hard to get the feel for the damage numbers and the correlation of the usefulness that way. It's kind of neat that the tutorial and the story were melded together but at the same time it felt like it broke the narrative a bit for something potentially serious.

Wasn't really sure about the difficulty modifiers, again hard to get to know unless I've gone through a gameloop of the game. I picked the heal after every battle option and the not needing to rest thing, just cause the battles felt like a self-sustaining system anyway. But ultimately I think the existence of the option is a bit confusing.

The rock puzzle at first I didn't realize would be block pushing, I just assumed I had to wait for the rock slime to wander onto the switch and then kill it on the spot. Wasn't a big setback or anything, but I didn't comprehend despite given a tutorial on it for some reason. Maybe a clarification on "move them after they're dead" would improve it or I just misread something.

I like the general flow of things, clear the entire floor and get optional story content etc. I do feel the dialogue has some exposition problems. In that characters for a moment will stop acting natural to explain something to someone they just called an idiot to. Idk something just doesn't quite work, I find the story reward flashbacks to do a better job at world building since you kind of expect that sort of stuff. Some of the flashbacks with direct dialogue (that isn't a monologue or narration) is kind of weird at times like for example: "I did some research beforehand", there's just some redundant lines here and there. As far as the actual cutscenes involving the present main characters I think it's fine to favor Julius commit to being an asshole more, it just seems odd that he takes a moment to explain his backstory to someone he dislikes. Maybe that's just me, but I find myself valuing character driven prose more where maybe a character keeping to themselves makes more sense than letting the audience know what's going on. It's okay to give a bit of mystery! That said I do like the dynamic a lot.

The boss needs... a bit of work. I literally gave up not because I even lost but neither the boss or I would die (or it just felt like it was taking forever). The healing slimes are a bit much, not only that but they revive... I think with RPG bossfights there's a feeling of piling on damage and going all out, but to have that constantly undone feels pretty miserable. I think it also reveals some of the issues with the combat as you have to switch, reload, then finally use the skill to go between AOE and direct damage. The healer has to concentrate, then heal. There's just really unfortunate circumstances when the rotation doesn't quite line up. The regular battles I didn't have a problem with, but I do feel like the reloading dynamic might hit a wall somewhere in that regard. I thought I was gaining headway with the shotgun stun but it didn't have enough ammo to make up for the damage I wasn't doing by canceling the healers.

But uhhhh yeah I like the setting and the simple premise of a slime epidemic involving a weird cultist turmoil. Has some neat potential.

I've gotta say, the white/black/red style in this actually had me in awe. It really looks better than what you'd expect tilesets and other sprites to be.

I, for one, like how Julius calls the healer a fucking idiot and then he's like "Look, my son".

This may be a bug, but if you roll a boulder over that slime enemy under some long stairs, at the end of the battle you don't get healed on "Heal after battle" option. (I can give you a screenshot of the place if this is too vague.)

There's also a small bug in the tutorial, cause like, when it asks the player if they want a gun tutorial, and they choose "yes", a small bit of dialogue will replay.(I used the warning shot skill on my first turn, but it shouldn't be the reason)

The 3 play styles for Julius are easy to pick up, and I gotta say, switching between Revolver(air slimes)/Shotgun(slime mass)/Machine Gun(aoe) was so fun in the boss fight.

I liked every bit of dialogue in this tbh. And that's thanks to the jokes here and there that you made.

tl;dr This is cool.