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raghunandan97 days ago (2 edits)

First, congrats for making this game. It feels ambitious, and you’ve executed it very well. I played for a bit more than an hour. Save/load doesn’t seem to be working (related to the permissions problems from before I guess), but if I do play more I’ll update this feedback accordingly.


What I liked:
Although the scope is big, there seems to be a clear overall vision and the game is directed towards that.
The intro story is quite dramatic, but leaves questions unanswered (intentional I guess?). I do want to know what it means and how Angel discovers it.
The characters and effort put in to make them unique and memorable.
Battle music that sets the right mood for a fight.
Special effects in battle. I can see a lot of effort went in here. Temporal Rift effect in particular is very cool.
The little bits of conversations with other students that explain the world, characters, battle systems, etc.
Teleportation crystal. Nice and natural movement mechanic that exists within the game world itself.


What could be improved:

In the initial intro ‘Esc’ should go to a menu. Right now it progresses the dialogue.
Option to skip the initial cutscenes would be useful for a second playthrough onwards.
One should be able to access the pause menu from a battle.

In the intro I thought I was Helen? Why am I controlling the Captain’s character? This felt a bit odd.
History of the Tower of Knowledge excerpt: hard to read as the text colour is similar to the background colour. Same for Quest text against the scene background. Maybe have a panel behind this text.
For the Student who says “Edwin, I bet 100 chips...”, the dialogue is triggered automatically when you run into them. Instead this should be triggered with Space like the others.
Found it odd to keep finding cash lying about: at home (in a shelf I think; the one where the father explicitly mentions is ok), in the gymnasium, etc. Would be nice to complete some task and gain cash instead. (Maybe this is how it is in RPGs, if so then it’s ok. I don’t play these a lot, just felt off to me.)
The battle system seems too detailed and tedious for this game. Is this kind of system standard in this genre? I can see the battles and character skill progression is a core part of the story, so I guess it's ok as well.

Overall this is a big project, and you seem to have made a lot of progress. Wish you the best!

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Fortunastreet97 days ago

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! 🧚🧚🧚

Concerning the save/load issue: could you describe me what problem exactly you had? Given the game auto-save itself each time you change map, you wouldn't have been able to progress much if it was just the permission issue.

To follow up on your comments:
-I didn't understand what you meant with "In the initial intro ‘Esc’ should go to a menu. Right now it progresses the dialogue." Do you mean you would have expected to be able to access the main menu during cutscene/dialogues, like in a visual novel?
-On a second playthrough, you can skip most of the intro if you have the achievement you get at the end of the intro (as those achievements are global data). Dialogues can also be skipped using the shift key.
-There is no pause in battle, but the battle won't progress if you don't select an action either, so a pause button would be redundant.
-Seems like you were a bit confused by the change of character. May be their battle portrait should be less dark so one can easily understand they are controlling someone else?
-I will have to try using different text colours
-That student had the wrong trigger for years, and I never noticed it. Thank you for catching that. 🧚
-It is quite common for heroes in RPG to get stuff by just searching through random place (to not say stealing). There are already a few optional quests who give you cash when completed.
-Concerning the battle system I would say (from my biased point of view) that the game is somewhere in the middle in terms of complexity for a JRPG. What elements exactly gave you the impression it was too complex/tedious? The combat tutorials? The starting enemies?

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raghunandan97 days ago
  • The save/load issue is that the game crashes if I try "Continue", but only works with the "New Game" option.
  • I expect 'Esc' key to bring up a menu of sorts, at any point during the game.
  • Shift to skip dialogue sounds fine.
  • By Pause Menu in Battle, I mean any sort of menu to Save, Exit the game, etc.
  • I did realize that I'm controlling the Captain. The question is why. Since my point of view was mostly that of Helen, I expected to control her.
  • Regarding battle, I didn't get to any real enemies. Only completed one tutorial in the gymnasium (plus one in the intro). But turn order with delays, transforming equipment, different types of attacks (spells vs regular, melee vs ranged), different weaknesses of enemies to different types of attacks, wound types (cut, stab, bash), seemed like an in depth system. I do expect this detail in a strategy game. But as I mentioned, I haven't played many RPGs, so I don't have a good point of reference. If this is around mid-complexity for a JRPG, that's fine I guess.
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Fortunastreet97 days ago (2 edits)

That's definitively weird you can not load any save file.
I added a new build who I hope will fix the issue.

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