Love the full release, played the shit out of it, probably more than I did the first time I got my hands on the demo, and that's saying something. I'm going to have a lot of little suggestions, but that's not to take away from the experience that already is there; it's great.
So really only 2 major problems:
- So I have yet to unlock any playable preds except Bella, despite beating all of them with the book and even doing a few extras, like beating double random pred, beating the fairy with the book as Bella, and beating the fairy by eating her as Bella (really nice interaction btw, loved that). Thus I have to assume that nightmare mode clears are the way to unlock the rest, and I am STRONGLY against that. Nightmare mode is waaaaay too much for my taste, I just don't enjoy it. Which is fine, it's a super hard mode made for people that want a serious challenge. However, I do not think any major unlocks should be gated behind it. I suspect that beating it would require many hours of attempts and would largely come down to the rng of how fast I found the exit key, and that does not sound fun or worthwhile in the slightest. Escaping with the book is a fine enough challenge to have to unlock playable preds.
- The ass has been censored. I'm not kidding, I think this is a major problem. It's not too big of a deal on Tulpy (though I still don't like it), and obviously doesn't matter for Ligeska, but it looks really weird on Bella and Satie. Satie's ass is massive by default but instead she just has a weird dark void and her skirt magically sticking out. Meanwhile if Bella gets fed enough you can see her cheeks peeking out from the void, which looks bizarre. Plus, the asses were just really nice to begin with. Unless the censorship is there to meet some requirement, and I've seen much more explicit stuff on this site so I doubt it, losing out on the asses is genuinely one of my biggest problems with the current version.
Now just some minor things:
- Satie's deal seems like its supposed to be that she's fast but easy to track. However her increased traversal speed means if you hear her without immediate cover you are probably screwed, and if she spots you down a corridor before you can hear her you are screwed. I found her to be the most difficult to beat pred by a decent margin, and that's nothing against Ligeska. Ligeska is my favorite pred, she's fantastic. I just think Satie is a bit harder than probably intended.
- Tulpy's digestion could maybe be slowed down a tad. With other preds you can feed them a couple students to take them out for longer, but Tulpy feels like she just churns through prey at record speed. And since the best way to deal with her is to bait her into eating another student then getting as much done as you can while she's out, it might make runs vs her feel a little less like they are reliant on finding the key quickly or risking just randomly run into a near untrackable pred and losing.
- This is a positive point, not a suggestion or criticism: I love that you can bait a pred into eating another pred in the 2 random preds mode. So far I've only pulled it off with the fairy, but in theory there should be other possible combos. Regardless, it's a really neat mechanic.
- It'd be nice if student preds were just a little bit more aggressive about targeting other students when hungry. It seems like you have to run straight into them to get them to eat you, and I've only once seen the aftermath of one eating another rando student (didn't even get to witness it). It's a toggleable mode, so don't need to worry about it messing with the difficulty either, and I think a lot of people would appreciate it.
- The ability to move the camera when eaten, as well as the drawn out defeat screen, are much appreciated. However, it'd also be nice to be able to rotate the camera vertically as well as horizontally, and to be able to do a full 360 around the pred when eaten but not yet digested. Oh, and a 3rd person mode for viewing ourselves when playing as pred would be real nice, too.
- As far as I can tell, Bella is the only pred with weight gain atm. I really miss having it on other preds, or at least having it be VERY noticeable, like with Bella.
Also PLEASE, at some point in the future, add a sandbox mode of some kind. Let us do stuff like customize stuff like the number of students and the number of preds, let us play as the pred (not just the character, but the one hunting the students with their full size and abilities and nobody hunting them), and maybe give us an observer mode (possibly toggleable while active in game) so we can watch things unfold. I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is the kind of game that can benefit a ton from letting the player have a bit of fun with it, and I know a lot of other players desperately want this mode as well.