Thoughts recorded during my playthrough
+ = I liked it
- = I didn't like it
* = Comment/neutral
====================
+ Nice title screen
+ Nice custom window skin & font
+ I'm liking how this game looks so far.
+ I like Erriga's design, both in bust art and character sprite.
+ I also like the tileset. Looks futuristic.
- Erriga thinking to herself "what is taking so long" followed by her saying to Damian "what took you so long" felt redundant.
+ Bust art continues to look good.
- "Garret! I knew you guys were here." That said, it's kind of a weird thing to say to someone when you approach them at a grave site. I guess it works if he's supposed to be oblivious to social norms. If he's being respectful he could say something like "Sorry, am I interrupting?"
- Something about the writing just feels *off.*
+ Nice custom menu
- Small critique: The SP bar gets kinda lost in the characters because they are both are very blue. Like, I can see them fine, but if I'm just glancing at the menu the only SP bar I can easily see is Garret's due to the color contrast.
* I just noticed that the BGM stopped. I guess to show that this is a cemetary and we should be moving on?
+ BGM resumes in the next area. Yay!
- Comma after "here" is redundant. I'm also noticing the occasional extra space in the text, such as between "here, and." I suspect you are using word wrap (and if so, hooray!), so when you are writing the dialog and you need to go to a new line don't add a space at the end of the text. Alternately, you could set the "LInk Break -> Space" parameter to "false."
- "without" is misspelled.
- Should be "Your."
+ Props for including an automatic heal at the starting point of the battle zone.
+ The battle layout is cool! I love the not-first-person front view. The characters even get their own attack motion animations.
- It's nitpicky, but it should be "you'd." They figured it out, so now it's in the past. You *would,* rather than you *will.*
- I don't really ever get enough overdrive points to use the overdrive skills. In fact, it seems like the battle strategy basically boils down to spamming Attack and occasionally popping a boost. While the battles overall are not long or hard, it just feels bland.
* Garret's AOE spells are pretty strong. This is good because it means I can speed through the battles pretty easily, but the drawback is that there's still not much strategy.
- Couldn't get a screenshot of it, but it's spelled "electrocute."
- Boss just nuked Drago out of nowhere and there's no way to revive him.
+ At least he gets revived at the end of the battle and still gets the XP from the battle.
* Would be nice if the KO'd characters had a different pose
- It would be nice if we could go back to town at any time during the mission, not just the end.
- While the battle layout generally looks great, there are issues like this: the turn order UI gets in the way of the enemies' HP bars.
- My battle strategy now is "everyone guards while Garret spams OP AOE spells." While I appreciate that this means the battles go pretty quick, it's pretty boring too.
- The power up animation that plays before every spell gets annoying after a while too.
* Lava boss just nuked Garret in one hit. At least Drago was able to revive him right away.
- Inferno hits for way too much damage.
* At least Magic Reflect seems to be effective
* So the lava boss is a one-note encounter. It's a *different* note from the other battles, which is good, but it comes across as unfair until you figure out the secret, and then it's just uninteresting after that.
Watch out for spacing issues when using word wrap. This happens because you typed this:
"A bangle enchanted with protective
magic."
But because word wrap ignores typed "enter" keys, it merges the text together. You can fix this either by adding a space before pressing Enter when typing descriptions, or by turning description word wrap off.
* Aside from accessories, most of the equipment we get from treasure chests are parts for Rane. Why not something for the rest of the cast?
- There are accessories to guard against status ailments, but I'm on the ship and I still haven't encountered any enemies that inflict those statuses.
- "Star" has too many r's.
- Not including a screenshot for this next one as it is a spoiler, but there's a big reveal at the end but it's got some typos and grammar errors. Message me if you want the details.
- It's a nitpick, but the credits scroll is pretty slow.
Summary
This game has some cool concepts but it's otherwise painfully straightforward. It seems like most of the development time went into making the game look nice but the actual gameplay wasn't really thought out. I recommend focusing on making gameplay interesting first, then layer the look and story on top of it.
The story is OK too but the characters need more personality. Keep working on ways to express character through dialog and actions efficiently, and consider giving the characters opportunities to experience some growth and drama.