Flamberge

I agree with everyone else on most points. The game was best at the beginning, and gradually started deteriorating somewhere around the end of Purgatorio. Bizarrely, I thought the game was more fun when you had fewer options -- once you start getting the higher-level traces, battles just boil down to the same "use everything until you hit a weakpoint, then spam that, heal when low on HP, use Mana Thief when low on SP" strategy that we've seen in every single RPG ever. Some of the bosses did use rather original set pieces (I particularly liked the dragon), but they become more and more typical as time goes on. The final boss was particularly bad; the only thing he really has going for him is his massive HP total. His attacks are pathetic until his final stage, and unlike the bosses before him, he has no special set pieces or strategies. It's just attack attack attack heal attack. Endlessly.

As I've already ranted about, I echo the gross imbalance between physical and magical skills. It's not even Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards, it's like...warriors are a flat line, but are so high to begin with that they're only passed by wizards at the very end. They get the powerful Strike skill right off the bat, as well as Crit Plus, making critical hits even more overpowered. Next trace, they get Regen, essentially making physical skills free, as well as Venom Fang, which is far more powerful than magic against a single target on account of being double-hit. And it inflicts poison, too! Once they get Shockwave, the only advantage that spellcasters have over them (area-effect spells) is nullified. But after that...they're stagnant. All their future skills only change in utility, not raw power. Strike remains the strongest physical skill (well, I guess it's briefly surpassed by Shout, which becomes irrelevant after Pierce is learned...), and Bloodbath is really learned far too late; the endurance down effect is practically worthless when you have Cripple anyway. I was pretty disappointed by the final traces in general; their final skills are incredibly meh (the only one I used was Fatal Curse), and they teach fewer than any other trace.

I felt like there were too few skill slots. Maybe not on most characters, but definitely on Will. I suppose that's a symptom of him learning absolutely everything, though... I think the four-element system is part of the problem; since I made him a spellcaster, I felt he should have as much element coverage as possible, which takes up more slots than everyone else, who only have access to one...

Vene costs way too much for having the same power as the second-tier spells. The magic element in general is very underrepresented; only two people have access to magical traces, and only three spells deal direct magic damage, the only one of which is actually useable is Vene.

I also hated how everything became immune to status effects late in the game. I know it's because of Lethal Toxin and Nightmare; to be honest, I would have preferred you didn't include them if they're so gamebreaking. For most of the game, it's great how status effects are actually useful; poison in particular was very nice. Then once you get to Eden, you can just feel the game going, "Welp, so I'm going to need to give everything immunity so you don't instakill it with your broken skills, you naughty player." This makes getting Virus Cycle in Paradisio especially annoying, since it's practically useless. It's single-target, so it's only useful against bosses. If you want to do a status effect/instakill sweep, it's better to use Slumber Wave or Sidewinder. This also makes Aaron completely useless, since his entire schtick is status effects.

I think it would be nice if everyone got a third set of limited traces, like with Ethan. This would give important skills like Vene, Sanorhea, and the debuffs to more people, without giving them access to gamebreaking stuff like the Mana Cycle/Mana Flare combo. It would also allow for a greater deal of customization.

Oh also, I thought the three dual boss fights using Novodram was kind of overpowered. You aren't informed that they'll do that, and it essentially eliminates all of your progress. Furthermore, it makes timing ridiculously important, as you only have three party members, and random damage fluctuation can ruin you if you leave one alive with, like, single-digit HP or something. The Darkspawn Spawner used Novo and I thought that was clever without being broken, why not use that? It keeps the player on their toes without eliminating all of their progress.

Multiple attacks per round also bothered me, as they always do. I was first introduced to it in Final Fantasy III and I've hated it since. Surviving comes down to random chance; if the boss decides to spend all its attacks wailing on one person, no amount of HP or Endure is going to save them. But if they spread their attacks out, they're manageable. Magic/Strength Zone just makes things worse. You pretty much have to pray that they do something stupid and waste it the the next turn, because otherwise, you're pretty screwed. I think much of this is due to the fact that they use all of their turns at the same time, with no break in the onslaught. There is exactly one game where I found this tolerable, and that was when the boss' second turn was calculated into the turn order as if it had half the agility stat.

Like the gameplay, starts off great, then gradually declines. The fact that one of the writers dropped out partway through development really shows, unfortunately. The shift in tone, scope, and genre shifts so abruptly and in so short a time... It goes from survival, exploration, and inter-team drama to Biblical-inspired political intrigue with angels and demons??? And also sudden family drama. It really does feel like you were writing two completely different stories that were awkwardly joined together. The inter-group strife, interactions, and general character arc drama just seem to...end somewhere around Cocytus. Which is disappointing, because all that interesting plot potential is just hastily finished. The character arcs end halfway through the game.

The story in general also seems to suffer from something I see happening with saddening frequency. It's hard to describe because TV Tropes doesn't have a name for it but it's basically when your audience's imagination eclipses what you actually have planned. Many stories that are based around a central mystery or plot mysteries (such as this game, where the pre-Eden plot centers completely around simply what's going on and what chain of events led up to it) end up feeling disappointing when the big reveal is finally...revealed...because the audience's expectations are built up so much. You get a kind of "...that's it?" reaction. It doesn't help that many of the revelations are so anticlimactic. Loki going "so hey I'm going to be Mr. Exposition now for your convenience", Deus Ex Machina guy we've never seen before going "so hey I can show you your lost memories with a snap of my fingers, did you know that?", and particularly Aaron's vision...I was expecting so much more from that than just "Loki did it". It just doesn't seem to match up with his behaviour in the early sections...I don't see how simply being told they were sent there by Flamberge would send him into such a panic. He also seemed to know what was going on, somewhat -- he frequently says things that imply he has foreknowledge, like "this is the right way to go", "we'll be facing stronger things up ahead", and so on. And why would Loki not want him to tell them about Flamberge if he wants them to fight him? I suspect this may be a symptom of the writer swticheroo, though.

Something else that bothered me was...well, the entire Empyrean section, really. Wonderfully atmospheric, but it really did feel like you just said, "Okay, screw it, let's just end this already." The rapid-fire boss fights felt anticlimactic, ironically. Venominon is barely better than a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere, and everyone else except Loki is just introduced way too late to have any dramatic impact. They've gotten like 10, 15 minutes of screentime prior to this, and then you kill them. I actually had a similar problem with Loki -- we never learn the exact extent of his plan or...anything about him really. He suddenly spills the beans about his plan (which is disappointingly simple and cliche, I thought), then a few boss battles later, you kill him, the end.

I also feel that showing demons as actual sentient creatures, some of which could be perfectly reasonable and even honourable, really makes for some cognitive dissonance. Flamberge does have a point in his pre-battle cutscene; you did commit mass murder of definitely sentient beings. In self-defense (questionably), but...still. It made me feel horrible about giddily looking forward to getting my next set of traces.

I echo the sentiment about Raymond feeling way too obviously tacked on. I think it would have been better to keep it in the background as a disturbing subplot. But I'm sure you've already heard enough complaining about this.

Also, they keep their powers when they return??? That cannot end well! No, France, you do not show off the fact that you can wantonly break the laws of physics, that draws attention! D: What happens when the government decides they're too dangerous to exist, or worse, the allies of those criminals catch wind of it? And how are they going to explain Raymond's disappearance? It...just doesn't seem like a very satisfying ending. I can only see the aftermath going horribly.

And...do the dialogue choices ever have any long-term effects? I was kind of hoping for an alternate ending or something if I was nice to Raymond, but no dice. If not, it does make them feel rather artificial... It's still a nice compromise between silent protagonist and static-character protagonist, regardless.

Positive things: I did really like the first three areas (and even Purgatorio was fairly good). You nailed the atmosphere perfectly, and the characters felt real and relatable. It felt kind of like the story was originally going to be a deconstruction of the "kids/teenagers from Earth get transported to a fantasy world and somehow everything works out fine" genre, which I think would have been awesome. The Beautiful Void thing you have going on in the early stages is really great. I felt the inter-group drama was well-done and realistic, and I would have liked to see further investigation into the characters' friendships breaking down and having to be reforged. I think it also would have been nice if the only other character you saw was Loki (and possibly some other antagonist, if Loki wasn't going to be the main antagonist). Having to rely entirely on a single viewpoint of questionable validity would have definitely increased drama.

I also really like how well gameplay and story are integrated. TV Tropes has a term for "gameplay and story segregation", but it seems to only refer to cases where one explicitly contradicts the other. I think there is a much more general trope of gameplay elements simply existing in a completely separate world from the story -- they don't explicitly contradict, but nor do they ever reference each other. So I really like how characters are explicitly aware of (and even discuss) things that seem like gameplay abstractions, such as pits, traces, and motes. (It does raise the question of how the trace limitations work, though -- is it that they can't equip trace sets other than their given two, or simply won't because it conflicts with their chosen fighting style? The help text seems to imply the latter, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.)

Anyway...so the narration in the beginning is supposed to be Loki? That...caught me by surprise, to be honest. It definitely seems like his character arc went in a different direction than originally intended.

And one last question: In the intro fight against the zombies, Aaron heals everyone after the zombies knock them out...but he doesn't know Sano at that point! CLEARLY THIS IS A VITALLY IMPORTANT OVERSIGHT AND I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION >:U