Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• PRESENTATION
  

  Graphics were very polished and looked good, too. The menus were well laid out, and you could understand most of what was there at a glance once you knew what you were looking for.
  It would have been nice to have a power triangle somewhere on the main battle scene to make it even more apparent what was strong against what.

  There were some issues with visibility when it came to enemies - some bigger ones came to the front and hid smaller ones behind them. Since targeting the smaller ones was best for gaining points for skill use, it was a bit annoying to find you could have targeted a weaker enemy in order to heal.

  Writing wise, there were some explanations that didn't make sense - whether because they ran off the screen or because it seemed like they were saying the target of a skill was one thing when it was another altogether. This bogged me down a bit, sadly.

  What writing was there was fine, but I kinda wished there'd been a bit more characterisation put into the actual team you play as. They felt like nothing so much as archetypes, not actual characters, just faceless soldiers that were there to kill and/or die.

  Which didn't gel well with how they were designed - as they were really cool looking and had some neat animations and imagery.

  That said, there wasn't much in the way of story since this was more of a boss rush, so I can't really score that aspect.

  Instructions could have been a little clearer but it didn't take long to pick the feel of battle up and figure out what needed doing.

  Music fit well and sound effects were decent. Kudos for not starting at 100% sound by default (though I find 60% to be a good pick over 80%. )

  GAMEPLAY
  The gameplay was all battle - a boss rush.

  The idea was to kill waves of summoned enemies and deal damage to the boss where possible. The boss had certain stages that evolved over the course of the battle. Monsters were spawned in, growing stronger each time. In order to proceed you needed to kill off the summoned enemies in order to attack the boss itself.

  Each time you killed an enemy you got two points (for a full amount of 10 points at most) and used those to cast healing or learn new skills. One issue I had was that you really only learned one skill (the b skill didn't seem to work) and while there were other 'skills' shown, they couldn't be learned (or at least I never got the chance to learn them), which was a pity because the skill you got for each character was basically the same with slight differences - based on your HP% vs the enemy HP%, it either just attacked normally or did something extra. It was a bit underwhelming.

  The healing, too, was a bit of a bother as you'd have to wait until the turn of the person who needed healing in order to do so as the healing skill was set to only user heals. At the cost of an enemy death each time, I had an issue with it.

  There was a fair bit of lag towards the end of a fight, which was a bit annoying. I've got a pretty beefy computer (easily able to play games like Witcher 3 on high settings with no lag) but battles got quite laggy enough that I had to wait a few seconds for the commands to go through, even having to click them a few times in order for them to be 'read'.

  You only really had two bosses to fight - one being the tutorial boss and the other being the 'first stage'. At the end of the first stage battle you got a scored rank (I got an A).

  ENGAGEMENT
  I'll admit that I'm not really a big fan of long fights, HOWEVER, this was actually pretty enjoyable as long as the lag was absent and I knew what to do. There were a few issues that dulled my enjoyment, though:
  = The lack of being able to heal others.
  = The description of the healing skills meant that initially I thought the skill healed others but not yourself. This found me incredibly frustrated when those I was trying to heal kept not healing. I thought it was a bug - and lost the tutorial battle - before I realised that it was healing yourself. Even then for a while I thought it was doing other stuff based on your current stance or character (as in, it was healing self if you were swordsman/triangle and healing others if you were Rogue/square.) It was around halfway through the second attempt at the tutorial boss that I finally twigged about it healing self but buffing another.
  = The lag towards the end of the battle.

  THEME
  The theme of the game was conquest and it worked well enough. The battles were suitably challenging and interesting, though when I think of conquering a monster it's usually in a more grand way and a much bigger monster. Think Shadow of the Colossus, where you feel like you achieved something huge when you down one of them. I didn't feel so much as though I achieved some great goal as I did feel relieved that the battle was over - even getting an A rank didn't feel like an achievement as I'd actually thought I'd have gotten a C rank or the like due to how long I took. Maybe I just did really well, but it didn't feel like I did, so I was under-whelmed by it all.

  
  

  Score: 61/80

• 
  

  Theme 

  A boss rush game with a twist.

  Gameplay 

  The battle system is confusing and buggy at parts.

  • Use cheer, it lets you target anyone else but the user but heals the user anyway?
  • The rogue attacks a dead enemy during one of its perks of DATA thus wasting turns?

  Otherwise I think the game is still in its early stages to be judged properly on its gameplay. But so far it is promising.

  Presentation

  For a game that focuses on battle, the battle system movement feels incredibly sluggish. The camera moves around too much and it causes motion sickness for me. The battle animations aren’t very convincing when it hits the enemy or the sound. It doesn’t “feel” good to play and needs more polish on this department.

  Engagement 

  The game has some promise but a lot of faults for a battle centric game. Some of them are as follows:

  • Hitting the enemy doesn’t feel good because of the animations.
  • The Battle Track doesn’t get blood pumping and just contributes to the sluggish nature.
  • The camera needs to be faster or balanced better. As it stands it causes motion sickness because of the way it moves around way too much.
  • Cheer’s bug causes my party to die.

  Total – 60/80