SOOTY'S PROFILE

Oh gosh! I said I'd help playtest, but I didn't think to check my mailbox. When I signed in to comment today, I have 15 messages from you Neok ;-; so sorry.

Anyway, definitely excited to try this out. Yay :D!

Edit: Loving the first secret entrance!

Edit2: First "bug"... The option to skipping cutscene shows the text "Skip Cutscene Indyand Erin"... missing a space there!

Heya, I sorta took a break from it after reaching the academy thing and played other stuff for a bit. When I go back I'll continue posting bugs and suggestions :D but... meanwhile, I remember not being able to find the Farmer and Teenager classes in the academy place. Are they recruited there? ^^|

Edit: And sorry about the nitpicks :p I just provide all the feedback I can think of!

Thought I'd give this a separate post because it's more of a request...

Any tips on how to beat Arena with a permanently cursed dragon? =(

I'm trying this now, and I already found a pretty deadly bug! Pressing shift while viewing weapons in the armory causes a blank box to pop up. And then the game essentially hangs since I can't do anything anymore >_<

I'm going to just keep editing this post as I find bugs or things warrant suggestion until you reply!

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Suggestion: Notebook is really hard to read because of all the overlapping words. Removing unecessary layers of text, or make them a LOT more transparent will be helpful.
Suggestion: Everytime it tells me there's a new entry in the notebook I strain to find it. Unread notes either need to be coloured differently, or you should put the latest entries at the bottom. And it wouldn't hurt to inform the player what the title of the new note is!

Writing: The note on Paralyzing has a weird second sentence that doesn't make grammatical sense. "It is better to regain energy then instead of DOING SO in a heated battle". X instead of Y, yes? :D

Bug: Or maybe it's a feature...? The enemy shades that you supposedly touch to trigger battles are not very precise. I guess it does add an element of suspense when there's no certainty you can get past troops, but well, your design decisions!

Hmm...

- Not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but characters gain AP before they use an attack rather than at the end of the round, or at the beginning. (i.e. Using an EX move now at 8/10 OR 10/10 puts my characters at 2/10 AP at the end). Feels a little odd, because the game functions as if the max AP is 8, and moves require X AP to initiate, but actually cost X-2 AP to use. Which makes increased AP/round effects a little less useful than if AP was awarded at the start or at the end of a turn.

- The 'boss not dying' bug I was talking about is actually not a boss bug, but a bug with the grenade items. After an item does lethal damage, the game continues for a while with them as alive, and they can even make a move before they die in some cases.

Edit: Another 2 more bugs


- Erin's Second Aid (the EX). I used it in the combat against the Rebel near the end of phase 2 while Jake was dead. She revived Jake, but didn't heal the team. Her EX was not deducted, but instead Jake's EX was deducted (he had 5 while he was dead)

- The equipment Pulsar doesn't seem to work correctly. I equipped it on Leon, so he starts with 3 EX, but when I try to use any moves that consume EX, he simply sits there and does nothing.

Edit:

NO!!! I finished the Demo! *cries*

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Edit again! So some final thoughts before I start waiting for when you're ready to have people beta test your new version.

Bugs!
- There might be a bug (or feature?) with the sync that sets your damage to 500. Occasionally I would do less, or more damage. And my violet always dealt 1500 damage on her last hit rather than 500.
- There's a treasure chest beside the save point in the dam facility that begins empty? Actually I can't entirely be sure. What I remember is... I saw an empty treasure chest and I thought I had been there before, so I turned around and explored other area. Later discovered I made a mistake, and I should proceed past the point where I made a uturn thanks to the empty treasure chest.

- Other than the things that were mentioned earlier (like the un-equip all tip) that you might want to include in the tutorial or personal device help file...
---- Front row vs. Back row and how it affects Attack/Tech/Spells. I never tested it but I'm presuming it doesn't affect spell damage?
---- I'm not sure if I missed it, but there are no secret rooms in the very first level? After I saw the tutorial message about there being secret rooms I tried to press up/down on every unmarked door but I never found anything, and later on I just forgot about there being secret rooms at all. I would suggest putting a secret room near to where the tutorial first mentions there being the possibility of secret rooms so that people aren't discouraged from spending their time looking.
(On a side note, I found one... just one... secret room afterwards, which led to a weird glowing thingie that did nothing when I activated it lol)

- On enemies...
---- The enemy variety actually felt kinda poor, despite the presence of various types. I can't remember any field enemies that led me to doing anything other than attacking normally once/twice and then using the EX move which did most damage. Mostly... Leon's FOR/PSY move, Scott's Risky Shot and Violet's FOR/FRZ move (or later just her 3hitx500 normal attack). The only thing I really did as a result of various types of field enemies was to equip my characters to in general deal with the kind of troops in the area (e.g. if there are no humanoids I would just swap out force, and put in something else. This is sorta a repeat point from above I guess, since the stale field battles are essentially also the result of not having much choices in combat.
----- Then again, field battles are so sparse thanks to the encounter system so maybe it's not really a real problem. Perhaps the depth of the combat mechanic would be better explored in either your postgame content, arenas or bosses.
---- Boss fights have slightly more variety, although towards the end they didn't feel that interesting anymore because they were too easy. Perhaps I was overlevelled, or the fact that I was playing in Passive mode. I ended the demo with Leon at level 22. I'd love to see a few more gimmicky/puzzle-y bosses, although they might be stale if they're used as repeatable bosses.

- I love the level design! They are really believable, and the maze-like exploration is fun, never bordered on tedious. I'm personally not too fond of overly puzzly dungeon design myself, so I was glad to not see any overt puzzles. (The passcode puzzle at the bridge was nicely done though, thanks to the clues about it being an animal starting with the letter J. But I'm glad I went to look for Fred because he was hilarious.)
---- One aesthetic suggestion... there are a lot of broken ladders in the dam facility but the ground doesn't have ladder parts although it has other debris. Maybe you can add some ladder fragment graphics.

- On the story...
---- The plot is really interesting and dialogue rather well written. The cenematics are of course unparalleled. Haven't seen any other RPG here with such level of visual detail. Really impressed! I was really sad when the demo ended where it did ;-;
---- There's is one cinematic which was confusing to me, when Kugar and Sylvia first appeared. There was one particular scene where a bald guy was pointing a gun at a fallen guy with a girl standing in front, and for that particular frame I could not really tell which dialogue to match with which person.
---- May I suggest in cases where the bosses is not really defeated when you reduce them to 0 HP, that they don't also appear to die within combat? This includes Black, Ghost and Jake/Dread.
---- On that note, it would be nice to the bosses which don't already do so appear on screen before you enter into combat. This would apply to Ghost, the pair of wolf-like creatures, and the 3 bike-looking creatures.

- On skill balance...
---- The set your damage to 500 sync might be a tad bit too powerful at the stage it's available (on Violet).
---- Risky Shot just seems to outclass Focused Shot in damage as far as I can tell. So much for risk!
---- Jake's EX ability just seems awful based on that one battle I can use him. The description says freeze for 3 turns, but really what this means is that he gets 2 extra moves before everything starts moving again. And since he loses all EX, you can't really do any damage with him in that extra time.
---- Hawk looked interesting when I got him, but to have to use an ability which does nothing just to enable the one which did more damage than his regular attack made me pass him over, because it just meant he would kill enemies slower than other characters. Might want to take into consideration how fast field battles finish on the average - they are typically finished on the 3rd turn for most of my battles - in order to balance Hawk's usefulness.


So that's all I can think of/remember. There are definitely a lot of random aesthetic-y things I mentioned up there which aren't really all that essential to fix at all, so don't worry about not implementing them - I'm just too much of a perfectionist to not mention everything I could think of which I believed would make the game more polished.

Anyway, what are you moving on to? Another project? :D