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La_Fafafa78 days ago(+1)

Played for a bit. Video:

My save was gone, so I had to play from the start. I speedrun the game to try to get back to where I was as fast as I could. Some notes:

The game crashed 3 times on the last map I played. The crash is very consistent, so I will wait for an update to try completing this area again.

The cactus enemy that has a second life is very annoying to deal with. I haven't found a way to handle it, if I try to rush damage from turn 1, it does it's special move turn 2 and just outright kills someone. And if I wait until I can kill it in a single turn it still dishes out absurd amounts of damage. And it is very tricky to decide when to kill it since it's egg state is so short so I might kill it but I don't have anyone nearby to destroy the egg.

The mana rain battle field feels like a coin toss. I have lost battles just because the enemy team manages to use an ability  all their turns thanks to luck.

I found a bug when using a respec. I put some perk points and want to change something, so I pressed discard changes and the game put the perks back on how it was before using the respec. As a result the perks ended up how they were before and the respec point was gone.

About the respec, I'm not entirely convinced about it. Thanks to the nature of the skill tree a lot of time you end up with perk point that you cannot really use that stay in the inventory until you level up again.  With the old system, you could adapt a different build so the point had a temporary home. Now that is much harder

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Bakar78 days ago(+1)

Thanks for playing. Could you describe the crash in more detail? I can't pinpoint when it happens in the video and I can beat the level during testing just fine.

The respec bug is a good catch, since that's a recent change I haven't had that much time to test everything. The issue with the old respec system is that it removed all commitment from the equation which is a cardinal sin of RPG design. With the new mechanic the player should get 8 per character over the course of the game which I think is fair. I also believe that having trade-offs is good too and it's another way to indirectly balance strong 3 cost perks like Sword of Michael or Supreme Fighting Spirit. Maybe I could award more respecs some way for people who really need them.


The pariah has low maximum health and their damage is largely determined by how much health they are missing. The trick to dealing with them is to burst them down in a single turn. They are also rogues so they are more likely to attack  weakened party members and will actively try to score kills whenever possible. Their offensive skills costs half their MP so they can be bullied with MP drain skills or items such as mage leather.

The bulb they leave upon death turns into a fresh pariah in 3 seconds if not killed. The bulb has 10 health so it can be killed by a basic attack from anyone except Mosca who starts with 3 STR.

I really like these guys and I deploy them quite often. I hope you find this information useful and thank you for playing again.


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La_Fafafa74 days ago (3 edits) (+1)

Sorry for the late response

Thanks for playing. Could you describe the crash in more detail? I can't pinpoint when it happens in the video and I can beat the level during testing just fine.

It happens when you lose a battle. You can see it at 1:20:48 and at the end of the video. I did say it happened three times, but maybe  it was that I restarted the game 3 times (once for going before the respect bug). Maybe it has something to do with the swamp battlefield.

Thanks for the info about the pariah. It's like I imagined about bursting them down, I don't know much about MP drain since I must not have reached that part of the game yet. I don't think I have ever beaten a team with 2 of them, they just kill someone in the first 2 turns if I don't use an item.

About respecs, your game is more similar to a puzzle game than an rpg. In an rpg  there is always the option to grind for items and levels to beat any encounter while in AG you have no way of gaining such an advante. The only thing you truly can do is adjust your skill points to find a better strategy. Giving it a hard limit to that is taking away options from the player. What if the player tried different builds, none  of them work and they run out of respecs? Im currently stuck on level 7 and if none of the strategies work and if I run out of respecs, I would have to restart the game (I can just edit the savefile, but still). 

Talking about that, the difficulty in stage 7 is brutal.

A way to forfeit a battle would we welcome since many times I know I have no chance and just want to restart.

Also one thing that I forgot to mention, if you look at 1:28:14 I do damage to an enemy but it is redirected to Finnegan!

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Bakar74 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

More feedback is always welcome. In my last playthrough I only lost twice and neither were at stage 7 so that explains how I missed it.

There is a way to grind by resigning the stage, that lets you restart the level and roll new encounters but keep the experience sorta like in Shining Force. That's probably why they give the player a dedicated "leave battle" spell now that I think about it. 

I know that limiting respecs makes the game harder but they need to have some cost for reasons I've outlined before. I'd rather think of a way to give players extra respecs instead.

Gazia redirecting hits to Finnegan is normal, she can force enemies to defend her when she is below 50% health and has a bias for picking Finnegan for this purpose. A mechanic that all Desert Guardians share is that their skills change depending on their total health. As an example, pariahs gain more damage and their skills carry an additional HP cost, but you already noticed that one.


Also, you can mouse over an enemy with the little shield icon at any time to see who is defending them.

Thanks a lot for playing the game.

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