BEREGON'S PROFILE

Spoilers:

Ok, so first thing: What is the solution to the 8 lever puzzle in those ruins you go to after your audience with the king? Because I couldn't get past that one.

I wrote a review sharing my experiences pretty much as it happened, but to summarize it. First, the things that could use improvement:

- Encounter rate is way too high, I was actually scared to venture even a few steps out of the intended path on the world map as that could significantly increase the amount of random encounters. And it was even more annoying in dungeons where you don't know where to go and if you missed any treasure. So, you have to backtrack and deal with even more random battles. Aside

- I know it's sort of standard to have walking forced for world maps, but together with the constant random encounters, it's seriously annoying. If the teleporting crystals didn't exist, it would be a nightmare.

- With the ridiculous encounter rate comes hand in hand the XP and gold rewards. They are too low. I fully explored every dungeon I went into (except the last one), got all the out of the way treasures and backtracked a bit and with fighting all the random encounters on the way, I was still 1 level below the bosses. You can't afford to ignore any battle. And you get into a random battle every 5-15 steps. That's just ridiculous.

Gold-wise, even with all that grinding, I was lucky if I could replace the sword and spear of Eldric and Xavier with whatever the best in shop one was. The rest of the party was out of luck. As for the armor, that one was so expensive and the effect so minimal that it seemed like there's no point to even bother. Even when I replaced it, I didn't notice any effect.

My suggestion is to lower the encounter rate drastically, adjust the XP/gold rewards to compensate and then increase that amount by atleast 50% (even more for gold, atleast 100%).

- I appreciate the amount of work that went into ensuring that each and every cutscene can be skipped, but it really breaks immersion during certain points in the game and becomes really annoying, as it interrupts the game.

Even worse when it asks you twice during what's technically the same cutscene (most likely due to map change). Like the opening cutscene. That one really doesn't need to be skippable. Holding down enter the whole way versus selecting Yes to skip only adds up to a difference of a few seconds. If it has to be in the game, it might be better to limit it to pre-boss cutscenes or some overlong ones (none really spring to mind though).

- The main character is seriously too one note. He could use more humanizing moments and less brooding deathwish ones.

- Xavier is the best character and I really like him. However, he could use a bit more characterization during certain moments. I shared more thoughts in my review.

- The whole story so far seems like an overlong fetch quest with largely unconnected events taking place (or atleast, events that appear to be largely unconnected). I get that it's essentially Act 1 of a 6 Act story, but I feel that by the time you get to the king, you should atleast have an idea of what you are fighting and what the stakes are. So far, the main characters only learned that the monsters are intelligent and can talk. Also that the king is kind of a jerk.

- I have to mention that the scene where Eldric discovers his Limit skill due to his determination to avenge his parents was hard to take seriously due to the fact that those cute rabbit enemies were the catalyst.

- From when I got Xavier all the way till I got the third companion, monsters seemed to exclusively target Xavier for some reason. Eldric only ever took damage from AoE. Afterwards, it went to normal. Dunno why.

- The game froze two times. Once during one of the early cutscenes at the Academy, then in a shop window, with the travelling merchant in the flooded tunnel.

- The character abilities seemed pretty well balanced and everyone felt like a valuable team member. The only issue I see with the character balancing itself is that everyone's Limit skills (except the Healer's) seemed to be only useful in random encounters with lots of enemies. Maybe give Callie an AoE light damage Limit skill as an alternative for random encounters and everyone else a single target/utility Limit skill as an alternative for boss fights.

- The bosses had way too much HP. Especially the Wyvern. Once you knew what to do in that boss fight, it was just doing the same thing over and over again for 10 minutes.

- Speaking of bosses, some could use more. Maybe that Skeletal Dragon could summon skeleton minions, maybe Lord Attidas summoning those fire orbs could actually matter. Certain ones were made absolutely useless with Xavier's Blind spell.

- It feels a bit weird that Poison does so much damage against the boss monsters, yet Bleeding does so little. Bleeding Status could use be a bit buffed.

- I am not a fan of sudden mandatory puzzles being introduced so late in the game. Or mandatory puzzles in general, unless the whole game revolves around that or they are easy/have hints available. The ruins you go to after your audience with the king suddenly throw in two sets of spikes that need to be lowered to access the rest of the dungeon (and most likely the boss). The first one with 3 levers is easy, you can do it just by randomly mashing levers. The second one suddenly escalates to 8 levers and I just couldn't manage to get through it.

You can't even reset the levers to their original form, so if you want to retry, you better save beforehand or just get frustrated. That would be a great addition to the final version.

As for the puzzle itself, either have it guard some optional area with great treasure or provide an alternate route. Maybe instead of those spikes, it's a door and somewhere in the dungeon there's a key to them if you don't manage to solve the 9 lever puzzle. And said key is guarded by some optional to make it actually challenging. And solving the puzzle could give bonus XP to the party. Just an idea. I don't like it when I get stuck in an RPG due to a mandatory puzzle like this, not to mention the progression is more than a bit steep.


Anyway, I see a lot of good things here and I hope you finish this game! Maybe if you tell me the solution to that 8 lever puzzle, I will try to play the demo again fully. Most likely after the grinding is lessened a bit.