Following a previous save file, reached the end of the current version! Terrain work keeps being great and there's plenty of awesome special effects like the animals moving around the forest, very nice balance of plot/combat/puzzles/exploration. Didn't manage to beat the special optional forest battle at the end though, they just kept curbstomping me. ><
Couple things that I'm not sure if a bug or intended:
-The first time going explore the Dark Forest, we're supposed to have the fancy monster-repellent, but swamp tiles would still trigger encounters which would often one-shot Angel who was usually at 1 HP because of said swamp tiles.
-The metal slimes which usually would reduce physical damage to 1 (and thus take 3 hits to die) would take 3-digit damage from a character attacking them with a scepter and die right away
Now for some more personal comments:
-The new main menu, although nicer-looking, felt a bit worst gameplay-wise because I couldn't go left to loop around to reach the "save" option faster, meaning I needed a lot of presses each time to save the game.
-Some later bosses feel too-limited puzzles in that there seems to only be one correct solution and the game mechanics will prevent any other way of defeating them, like the bronze soldier that starts by casting their mega-reflect that's so hax it's dispel-immune and even Angel is scripted to call them a cheat if she tries to use dispel on them, with the only way to actually defeating them seemingly being tricking them into casting shadow on themselves. Ditto for the mom battle where she opens with her ultimate and the only right move seems to be to defend right away, then needing to spam vampire to keep up with the following damage race. Thankfully death in this game places the player right where they lost ready for another go (also what's up with multiple single parents rising their kids to become combat machines while not properly explaining their origins?). Either way, although it's fine for a boss to have some super-weakness to cheese them, IMHO they should still be defeatable through other means.
-Hidden money on the dungeons often felt pretty disappointing being just 1 or 2-digits worth of gold.
-The tone shift from "charge into a goddess's realm and challenge her to single combat!" to "go collect some regular berries" felt somewhat abrupt. Like there's even the dangerous monsters roaming around in the same area, shouldn't they be the main priority and collecting berries the sidequest? At least make them fancy magic berries that even gods enjoy?
Some particulair details I loved:
-Puzzles just popping an help manual if you screwed up with them too many times.
-The lottery prize prediction being real and giving enough gold to basically buy whatever I wanted (also fortune fairy out of nowhere, hope we get to see more of her in the future). Actually got around trying new clothing for Angel!
-Prisioner just walking around unconscious and tied up along the party.
-All the pseudo-italian, nice to see the distant foreign land actually have a more foreign language.
-Fabiana rocks, hope she'll stick around with Angel longer than average!
Keep up the great work!
