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Oh my, oh my... Do I have a MAJOR problem with this game. The sad thing is... it have a lot of good ideas! I love to be able to change forms! I love to be able to live different stories which are somewhat connected! Stephanie is a cool and fun character (at least outside of battles)! And the boss fight in the sci-fi world was competent! But there is something... Something in this game that ruined all the fun I could have from it... One thing I'm going to talk about in my last point. But first...

- In the sci-fi world, there is at one point a rope the player can climb to. But it blends into the background. Honestly, I just discovered this by accident, I thought it was a bug or an oversight at first. You maybe want that rope to stick out of the background so the player can clearly see it.


- The items... they doesn't work! The apple, the oil, the fish... None of them work! They just make you lose a turn in battle! Why?

- Ok, now I'm going to tackle the biggest problem of this game by far: the final boss. I may be exaggerating here, but this is one of the most unfair bullshit in RPG Maker history. Now, people might be saying "he is just hard" and "I haven't tried enough", but no! There is a difference between being hard and being unfair! To tell you how bullshit this boss is here are some quick math! Assuming I did 32 points of damage to the boss which, if you follow the game, is the kind of damage you should deal to him, you deal very little damage to him. Actually I made a screenshot of his life bar so I can use my image manipulation software to calculate how much it was.


Around 3 %. From there I estimate the boss should have around 1066 HP, that's a loose estimate. So with just that it already sucks. But it's not over! Because one of the signature skills of that boss "My Story!" is a healing skill, healing him above 90 HP. Well, that really sucks... But it's not over! Because his second form have ANOTHER healing skill which heals him for above 270 HP! So how do you win against... this thing? Good question! Actually what you have to do is take the right path with some obscure conditions filled. Among these conditions is being in spirit form. A form that you can only achieve by dying. And once you're there. You grind. For hours. Real-life hours. To give you an idea, you're likely to be at level 13 at this point. I had to grind at level 20 to win. Level. 20. How can balancing a boss go THAT wrong is beyond me. The first time I even thought it was an unwinnable battle and losing will lead me to the rest of the game. It didn't. The game expected you to win against him. And the only way to beat him is mandatory real-life hours worth of grinding and make death something you need to accept. This is stupid and unnecessary. The game would have benefited greatly if the final boss was properly balanced.

Now... What made the sci-fi boss work is that you could use good timing in your damages, buffs and heals to maximize your damage and survivability in order to win. The problem is this is something you cannot do against the final boss because he heals and hurts way too much. He have a permanent buff to his Attack and Defense. And there is little to no counter play to that except overpowering him by grinding. It's no longer strategy, it's a numbers game. The one with the biggest numbers win. And that's not a good boss design. And the fact this is all mandatory doesn't make it more fun.

With that said, I like the ideas you had for the game. The major problem comes only at the final boss and once passed, I liked the ending, it made sense and it was impactful. I hope to play more, better games from you. You have potential.

Best of luck! ^^

(+1)

Thanks for the comments! Your critique is fair. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the final boss is a bit broken as of now. Unfortunately, I ran out of time (based on my schedule not the event), so I had to release with a number of things not implemented. Cat/Dog/Spirit are lacking additional skills that would make the boss more manageable. At present the Robot form is the only way to efficiently beat the boss (i.e. without grinding), since it has a full skill package.  (Spoiler the boss has about 1800hp. If you use skills effectively the robot can put out around 2-300+ points per turn, circa level . The spirit form takes half damage from physical attacks (most attacks), but also deal half damage to physical enemies, so that's why you're seeing such low damage. Without the added skills that would certainly require the grind you mention.)

I debated nerfing the boss in my last passthrough, but I preferred the challenging version when robot, and the broken other forms combat for initial release.  Perhaps this was the wrong choice. However, I completely understand how this is extremely frustrating when you try to play other ways (which you should be able to). 

I do plan to patch in the additional skills and maybe balance the boss a bit more after the event. 

As for the items issue, I'm not sure what's going on there. Did you play in Browser or download?  I can't replicate the issue, though from other comments, it seems to be an issue with browser play, so I'm looking into it. They should work!

If you want to play a better game from me, I recommend Opal! :D Which is a full game developed over a long time instead of 12 days haha, and much better balanced (though combat is still very challenging, however there is no real way to grind in the game, so it's mostly learning the skill system).

(+1)

You're welcome! Thank you for understanding! :)

About the item issue, I played the browser version. I was trying to use the items, but they wouldn't work. I just tried on the browser, but the items still doesn't work and are just consumed upon "use" without anything else happening.

Thanks a lot for your recommendation. I'll make sure to give it a look after I played the different games of the game jam. I don't mind challenging battles in RPGs at all. Quite the contrary actually, I love tough turn-based RPG battles. ^^