It's very pretty. Is there a way to hide the UI/text (to just see the background and characters) during dialog scenes? I'd love to get a full view of the lovely art.
The story looks to have good potential though it's fairly generic so far. I like how the dialog choices allow the player to project some of their feelings into the MC's personality a bit.
Games with this level of visual quality usually perform better on my laptop and don't heat it up as much as this one did, but it's fine as it is.
Some criticisms:
- I feel like there's too much talking in places, which is made worse by all the redundant dialog from talking to everybody until their indicator changes. I don't want to skip the story, but I also don't want to feel like it's a big wall between me and being able to move around and do stuff in the game.
- It's too easy to accidentally select dialog choices (though this is how most VNs function). One solution is to make no option selected by default, so if the player is clicking or pressing enter a lot, they don't end up automatically selecting the first option. Another is to disable selection for a fraction of a second after the choices appear.
- The combat feels kind of "impactless", probably because the way the character effortlessly pushes enemies around and is pulled forward by their own attacks. The pull forward also makes me miss attacks, especially combos. Maybe it shouldn't pull you past whatever you are hitting.
- I find the guard counter and speed roll timings very difficult to pull off. Enemies have a long tell, but then they attack so quickly that there is still very little reaction time.
- I feel like mage goblin poison breath might be overtuned. It's a high damage long-lasting ranged unblockable field, and when you have several mage goblins in the area (as well as a bunch of other enemies), it just feels unfair.
- I also feel like enemies in general dish out too much damage - which would be more acceptable and fun to me if I had a heal spell to help occasionally counter it some.
I'm only average at combat like this, so I don't know how much weight my opinions have, hehe.