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Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Okay, more progress.

-BUG: Harvesting organs doesn't work on the rightmost bobby at the first fork in the path in the old town. You can select the prompt, but then it fails with no message. Similarly, "saw off his head" is an option, but it's grayed out even though I have multiple saws. Other bobbies work fine.

-Wow, walking around at night BURNS your sanity. It's like points every couple seconds, or something. It might be worth adding a recipe to one of the early alchemillas that lets you mix red herb + lavender for a sanity restore, or adding a few more alcohol type items to the barrel drop tables, or adding a Medicinal skill organ that restores mind, or adding a guaranteed pipe somewhere and bumping tobacco/opium drop rates, since opium pipes don't seem to be very much of a thing in this game, and running out of sanity consumables is way more of a threat than running out of food.

-Gasoline cannister'd a pillarman. All his parts broke. He hammerheaded Levi, killing him. Then he slowed down and ran out of breath. Then he died. All without me taking an action. Is this intended?

Edit: also Levi goes from high to double exclamation point withdrawal in like five minutes. This feels sort of nutty.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Ah, okay. It might be a barrel/crate ratio thing. I've also noticed that being able to recruit the engineer at the hatch makes a huge difference in terms of game balance. With a second party member in the early game, things feel tense but possible, rather than a series of potential softlocks.

I thought the train circle was the universal circle? The one that could handle new or old gods?

Wait, head-sawing doesn't perma-down a Bobbie? It feels like it probably should, especially since it's risking the saw (and maybe letting you farm heads, if that's how it works?)

Stunlocks are way less of a problem when you have more than one character. With at least a second character, they feel dangerous, but definitely not unfair.

I would never have guessed what betel's stone does, but that's a cool gimmick, and maybe super clutch for the occultist.

The woodsman is harvestable, just if you do it with medicinal first, I think it makes it so that you can't saw his head.

Overall, it still makes sense to attack limbs sometimes, especially when you have multiple characters, but overall the game flow is attack the most dangerous limbs => attack the torso => if the only way you can win the combat is with a single lucky strike, risk a shot at the head. I don't think that's actually a bad balance, it's just very different from original F&H which wanted you to always ramp up to attacking the head.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Okay, new run, new approach. Electrical engineering mechanic does not have a lot of things to actually interact with, so I'm going to try a medicinal doctor.

-The cross in the mayor's house above the dark priest's room, it's a passable object but the wall tiles next to it aren't, so you can walk down into it and then get trapped in combat with the priest.

-Anathomia doesn't seem to do anything in this game? At least, I don't have a skinning option when I investigate corpses, or any skin or hide recipes.

-The various organ-based skills through Medical should probably show the icons for the conditions they treat, since I don't know how else I'd know whether I have poison or toxic.

-Trap reclamation does not work. You cannot pick bear traps back up.

-Harvesting the woodsman with medicinal can make it impossible to harvest his head. Intended?

-Recruited the engineer as the doctor. Bed resting animation in the woodsman's house now shows the engineer, not the doctor. Intended?

-Currently, medicinal's major utility seems to come from the ability to harvest hearts. Being able to stop bleed in some way other than cloth patches, which drop rarely, makes rough combats more possible to recover from. Granted, the stuff that causes bleed tends to also remove limbs, so it's not a strong recovery, but it's a nice midpoint between highly effective whispers doc, and analyze doc.

Edits:

-Nvm, I *did* find the eagle key, it was just on the guard before I went into the moon dimension.

-Similarly, I've checked my inventory, and duplicate books don't seem to be dropping. Maybe it was in my head?

-Also, Needles is made fightable by having a second character and a gasoline can. You still have to hope he doesn't obliterate of your any limbs or pull off an infinite combo, but the game difficulty feels way more fair once you have a second character. To that point, Engineer might be the worst character in the current build because she has to get to old town to get a recruit (unless there's weird conditions I'm missing where someone else is recruitable.) I've messed around with her wrench throw a bit, and it's not terrible when it hits (especially since I've learned that Termina wants you to never target the head), but if you're a one-character party and it misses, you're boned.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Okay, a bit more testing.

-Drawing Rher's sigil in the train circle doesn't let you go anywhere. All-mer's does. Bug? Un-implemented content?

-This is probably a minor note, but the firearm shot sounds sound good. They really stand out against the ambient soundtrack, and they're harsh and sharp and sudden.

-What exactly is Daan trying to do in the moonscorched village on day 2 morning? Is there a quest there that I'm missing? Is he just meant to help you navigate the area? If so, why's he there on day 2, and not day 1 when you'd actually benefit from walking around the zone with him? Also, he should probably signal that he's not actually *joining you*, joining you, so you don't equip anything useful on him.

-Oh, so the bobbies get back up if you don't remove the head. Honestly, that's pretty fair as far as F&H monsters go.

-BUG: Alchemillia 3 does not give you all of its recipes. "white powder + murky" does not appear as an option in your craft list, possibly because this game uses grenades instead of explosive vials? (edit: I think alch 3 doesn't actually give you *any* of its recipes. I don't think I see the others in my recipe list either)

-Heroin might be bugged for the soldier, or it might be bugged to non-soldier characters. The soldier starts in withdrawal, and loses the benefits from taking any heroin lighting-fast. Engineer, on the other hand, took a syringe of it by mistake a while ago, and has been high for multiple rests and a LOT of exploration. Honestly, I feel like the marksman soldier should start high, not in withdrawal, and should remain high longer than other classes for balance reasons---or at least have some method for managing their addiction. As is, it's not the end of the world when they're a support character, but when you're playing as them the speed at which they churn through heroin compared to anyone else is kind of run-torpedoing.

-In the church, "the air is filled with absolutely disgusting scent of gore" should be 'the absolutely disgusting scent'

-Falling from the church rafters deals 20 hp damage and removes a leg? This feels pretty harsh, especially compared with the ankle injuries you got from falling in, like, full plate in the previous game. I think just the hp damage is punishing enough.

-It is *really* hard to gauge where the crawling sprite is in relation to the rafters. Trying to get correctly positioned frequently leads to me crawling onto a space that looks correct but is actually not, and then I take another 20 damage and have to repeat the whole process.

-Getting stunlocked by enemies doesn't feel great. Maybe do what darkest dungeon did and give you a degree of stun resistance once you've been stunned in a battle? Pillar man combo'd me for four rounds without me having an opportunity to act.

-Falling damage can't kill you? This one seems a little weird, since unlike truck gun guy, it *is* avoidable.

-Fell with no legs. "You hurt your ankle pretty badly!"

-I dig the soundtrack in the church a lot.

-Not actually sure what the Betel's stone does. No stat change from putting it on.

-Brown vial uses .303 ammo instead of gunpowder? This seems strange. Unless it's like a fancy shot and you're supposed to drink it out of a rifle cartridge for the full effect.

-Brown vial is not useable outside of combat. Intended?

-Well, the crimson fathers are super cool.

edit: also, the locked door on the right side of the first floor of the bunker, doesn't unlock when the power's turned on. Is this content that hasn't been implemented yet, or a bug?

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Wait, barrels only give you food items? That would explain why I have more food than could ever be used in a single playthrough. It's also a little odd to people who played the original F&H, where barrels didn't have that restriction. There's tons of barrels in this game, and I thought my drop tables were just bad.

It might be worth having both barrels and crates have the potential to drop anything, since right now the player is inundated with food, and hunger isn't really a game mechanic unless there's *some* scarcity.

Plus, there's chantrelles and penny buns as guaranteed wild drops (and legs and arms if you get desperate,) so even with bad rng, food only becomes a concern, not a run-ending condition.

Shifting topics, for books, I think it might just be the newspaper articles and kaiser letters and stuff that I'm getting duplicates off. Useful books, I don't know that I've seen repeats of.

I think a limp is probably the best way to handle an injured leg without creating a need for weird situational art (for example, what happens if you're missing a leg and equip a rifle? A crutch would make the rifle-holding sprite look really awkward.) Honestly, the game kind of treats wounded legs as just injured, not fully cut off, when characters are in combat anyway, so it could make narrative sense.

I like that Needles shows up multiple times, and I think he can be genuinely menacing with a little more setup, but maybe if you encounter him in the bunker on day one, he just coin-flips to see if he can inject you with something nasty, and then vanishes? That way the idea that he's Bad News is established, and when he shows up in the old town you know to run, but he doesn't just torpedo your playthrough right there.

I was able to get past Needles with luck, a boobytrap, and extremely tight kiting, but even if one character gets super screwed on that encounter, the bunker is needed to progress, so it would still make Engineer runs a lot less viable without some balance tweaks.

Having to wait multiple days to unstick a softlock feels a little weird. Even waiting a day feels a little strange and punishing, since you miss content. Maybe have an option at rest spots to wait multiple 'rests' in a row, and recover health if you do? This mitigates another potential softlock (bad healing rng), but it does so at a cost (missing encounters,) so it feels more like a choice and less like a punishment.

re: items that might not be on the drop tables: red vials. Haven't seen a black vial either, but compared to their frequency in the first game, I've yet to see a red vial in any playthrough here.

For bear traps, I think target has at least one uninjured leg => trap removes both their legs, target has no uninjured legs => trap kills them would be the way to go. Granted, some enemies should plausibly be immune, but otherwise two bear traps for a kill is a pretty significant investment.

I think if truck guy can miss some shots like river guy, and if he can run out, that area would be more reasonable to traverse. As-is, it's just guaranteed hp loss forever, which feels a little strange.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

And more feedback:

-The tiles to the left of the ladder under the filthy shack are passable and shouldn't be.

-Using heroin as the engineer causes a message that says it "made Daan numb". Intended?

-The ritual circle under the bunker doesn't have a blood portal, but it's still a teleport. Intentional?

-The coded letter is by the NLU, and I'm playing an engineer that was trained by the NLU, but I don't have a way of decrypting it? Am I missing a starting item?

-The HR Gieger style info conduits are really neat. I'm sort of hoping the horror of the third game will run a bit in that direction.

-Are some items not on the drop tables? I haven't seen a black, yellow, or red vial in any of my playthroughs. Honestly, having a way to craft them from herbs might be useful if they're going to be both rare and a component of crafting recipes.

-Is there a way to hatch your own ronteal from a rust-covered pearl?

-So when you get out of tunnel 7, the lieutenant says that you found the key for the gates, but I definitely didn't. I did not find a key while I was down there. But also it's in my inventory? Bug?

-I did it. I finally found my first pressure plate. Had to clear the entire first section of the game to do it. Also, bear traps costing 3 scrap metal seems a little intense. Scrap metal is a more frequent drop, but not so frequent that I could craft a second bear trap if I wanted to.

-Levi joins you in stage one of withdrawal, despite you having just given him heroin as part of his join condition. Intended?

-The bobby has a super cool sprite.

-Bear traps disappear when you walk offscreen?

-When Levi dies, you can't loot him or saw the head?

-Gunshots on the map can't kill you. Intended? Truck guy never misses, and fires one round per two seconds or so, and I've taken at least twelve, and I'm at 1 hp, but haven't died.

-With pocketcat, "I don't remeber seeing you" should be remember

-The circle in the train erases any sigils that were in it when you revisit the train. Intended?

-Daan's dialog when examining the body in the shack makes a bit less sense if you stomped that body to death earlier.

-After giving the woodsman's head to the guy who wants it, he still asks for it.

Edit: @volke, I think by saying it's a lot more prevalent in the game, he's just saying it's a lot more prevalent in the game. And I'm inclined to agree it's much more prevalent in Termina, since I don't know anyone irl who's been lost to Pocketcat.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Okay, more feedback:

-In The Kaiser Critique, the phrase "jumped the shark" is jarringly modern. It's also kind of weird to have a phrase that originated from Happy Days show up in such a serious, pre-Happy Days setting. Also later in that article, you have "Bremen pig" instead of "Bremen pigs". I like that it's by Karin, though.

-Night is deeply terrifying. I dig it.

-Drawing All Mer's sigil in the train cabin creates a blood portal. Intended?

-The southernmost shelves in the woodsman's basement cannot be investigated. Intended?

-There's a "saw off head" option for defeated headlesses, and I have to wonder how that works.

-Maybe engineer should have a recipe for pressure plates? I'm not sure where they're placed in the game's drop tables, but I've yet to see one in any of my playthroughs. Being able to make one out of scrap metal and duct tape feels like it could be reasonable, and it would give the trapper build something they can actually do with duct tape.

-Okay, so needles is still there in the bunker after nightfall of day 1. This creates a weird progressability issue. Either you do the bunker without having saved once, or you brick your playthrough unless you get lucky or have a very specific build, or you spam a save point until day 2?

-Also, the generator says "you poured both gasoline canisters", but you might have more due to item drops. Alternately, if you use your canisters in combat, you can brick a playthrough and make yourself unable to progress here by not having enough.

-First turn against Needles: needle whip, mystery injection, needle whip, mystery injection, needle whip. Full hp to dead before I could act.

-There *is* a spot where you can try to kite him if you plan things just right and have a boobytrap. You have to run by him while he's sawing and fix the generator, then wait a little ways to the left of the gen so that he runs straight at you, and you have one square of distance to the east and to the south. You drop the trap, step east, wait for him to run into it, circle past him, and if you're fast enough he encounters you again when you're on the other side of him. However, this method relies on running away from him working, and he's so fast that you might have to do it several times in a row.

Edit: also boobytrap gives you like a half of a quarter of a fraction of a second to work with. For something that's just meant to stun, it is terrible at it.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

re: wrench toss, my issue could be that I've been approaching combat the way F&H wanted me to (target limbs, then go for the head when there's a chance of hitting), and Termina really doesn't want you to do that. In termina, you disable limbs if there's nothing else to do, but you attack the body. Wrench toss + body might be the correct way to use it in the current build. I'll have to check.

I really like the train as a hub. This game feels like it's more about the group than the individual, and having a clear hub reinforces that.

I think making the first save anywhere not advance the clock might confuse players when their second save *does* advance the clock, but having a one-off non-clock-advancing save point that's only available the first time you come off the train (and that doesn't send you to talk with Rher) might be a good way to handle a few problems. For one, if you do something like a campfire, you can have it burn down after the player has left the screen and come back, and you can have footprints leading from it to the door of the train. Or something in that style, where you drop some breadcrumbs to clue the player in that the train is re-vistable. Alternately, even a dialog hint that some group members are going to hole up in the train might be enough to get the player on the right track.

Yeah, a clear status effect for when you glass an enemy in the face would help. As is, it just shows 3-4 damage, and then the enemy hits me anyways. Also, if there's a default fail chance for inflicting that status, you might want to do something to tell the player that the status inflict chance is even there. Otherwise, you have a good chance of the player correctly throwing a shard at an enemy's face, hitting, dealing negligible damage, *not inflicting* the status, and deciding never to use glass shards again because they don't know it *can* inflict a status. If the accuracy debuff from being glassed is too strong, it might be better to make it a little weaker and make the status inflict chance 100%. That way there's still rng involved, but the player knows they've at least done something when they use the item correctly.

Situational loot does solve the rng items problem, and makes the game a more curated experience---which I think works in its favor. Although there might be another way to do it, depending on how your looting system is built. Like, if you open a crate and there's a 60% of food, 30% chance of ammo, and 20% chance of a weapon, you might be able to code it so that for every three food you draw, the next time you would draw food, you instead draw ammo. Or something like that. Still technically random, but weighted. This might be harder to implement than just making some drops non-random, so I'm not necessarily suggesting this, but it would be another way of controlling rng in runs.

I've been getting a lot of repeats of books. It wouldn't be as noticeable if I wasn't also getting lots of useless newspaper articles about the kaiser.

And if I ate the leg, that means leg removal is not showing correctly on at least the engineer's sprite. There's no visual indicator that it's missing.

I genuinely like the time system, although I'd kind of imagine it's a nightmare to implement. It adds a level of deep replayability to a game that's already quite replayable, and I think it will make it so that there's always something slightly different to try during a playthrough. It *does* create a risk that recruiting other characters will be ridiculously inaccessible, though, if the recruitment relies on one specific time-based encounter or series of encounters. It might be worth being kind of forgiving and have multiple opportunities to recruit each character.

Small key works for every locked door in the mayor's house, and in the section of town below.

I think the thing about Needles that seems weirdest to me is that, based on most of the early game experience, human enemies aren't super strong in termina. At worst, you've got vile and woodsman. But Needles is head-and-shoulders above them. So when you run into him, it's a moment of "wait, so am I supposed to just treat every generic enemy like it might be an end boss?" Maybe a little bit more jumpscare music, or having him do something creepier after he finishes sawing the head, might do more to signal to the player that he's supposed to be on the Crow Mauler level, not the Trotur level.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Okay, more feedback.

-Small Key doesn't get used up when it's used. Intended? Honestly, this kind of works, since useful drops are so extremely rare in termina.

-Is there a "correct" series of answers to the mayor's dinner questions? I mean, not just answers that will get you the key, but that get you something else as well? Because of where my save point is, I've been through that section several times and tried picking most of the reasonable options, and all I've gotten is the key.

-Using a beartrap on a crawling character triggers the trap, but does not seem to deal any further damage. Since they're setting it off with their face, maybe this should be a kill?

-There's no point at which the headless becomes full? I'd like to think that after five rotten meats, four dried meats, and six meat pies, even a hole into the beyond would be a little stuffed. Although I guess if they're the God Of Fear And Hunger version of a moonless, they might theoretically have infinite appetite. That said, being able to get a second party member would do a lot to ease the rng pressure in the early game. Just having something else for enemies to occasionally target is the difference between "die to knife girl every time" and "maybe survive with a missing limb 50% of the time"

-Needles is certainly a nasty surprise for the Chaugnr bunker, and I think he's a cool addition to the area, but he has mostly the same issue as the vile, knife villager, and the moonscorched villagers---he's blisteringly fast, and you can't beat him without spending resources, which you don't have. And unlike the vile, knife villager, and moonscorched, he's in an area where you can't kite him to a safe corner of the map, screen-transition, and then just stay away from the place where you left him forever. Also, his whip hand can survive at least two bayonet attacks, and might benefit from nerfing.

edit: there's posts on the previous page, too

2nd edit: non-marksman shots from the rifle don't work on the woodsman at all. Marksman shots work fine, but even if he hasn't been hit with a beartrap, regular rifle shots go straight through with no indication that they hit.

3rd edit: in chaugnr's area, when you activate the generator, the electrical panels still say the generator is off.

4th edit: I guess all of Needles' limbs have rather a lot of HP? And needle whip sometimes acts multiple times in a turn? He also polices the corridor to the generator very effectively, which means he has to be dealt with to progress. This means there are basically three options I can think of for handling him: marksman rifle soldier, beartrap and circle-kiting, and occultist + gor-goroth affinity + rare soulstone drop for Hurting. Two of these are class-dependent, and all of these are rng-dependent (soldier only because of their heroin habit.) It's possible Needles goes away if I advance the timeline (thus making the correct order bunker first, then village), but in that case I sort of don't understand the point of him? The encounter itself is set up in a neat way, but I don't get the intent of it mechanically.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Okay, going to do a few more runs until I get lucky enough to have a viable start position.

-On the train, after talking to Marina, she goes back to being "the sleepy one" if you talk to her a second time.

-Pressure plates are an absolute resource bottleneck for the trapcraft engineer. It might be worth starting her off with a couple, since otherwise it feels about as likely to find a beartrap as to build one. (edit: confirmed. I have a beartrap, but have yet to pick up a pressure plate in any playthrough)

-Getting repeats of books feels really bad, especially if it's something like the newspaper article where it does nothing to begin with. It might be worth letting the player reroll the item if it's a book duplicate.

-Using a blue vial boots you out of the menu for some reason. Other healing items don't.

-I lost a leg, and then used a leg item. No changes to my sprite either way. Did I patch the leg onto myself, or did I eat it?

-Resting but having your sleep disturbed by a combat encounter does not advance the clock, right?

-What circumstances are supposed to lead to the soldier appearing in the two-story house? I think the trigger for it might be broken.

-Shooting at the crawling woodsman (after you've hit him with a trap) does nothing.