The most soulful game on /agdg/.
I love the atmosphere and lore and would play for that reason alone. Overall this could always benefit from a higher lore:gameplay ratio.
Clicking during combat should skip to the next action straight away.
I am stuck here. Not sure if this is a glitch or the end.
So far all throughout the stages the only thing that has mattered for an optimal strategy was to speed up Mosca so that I could spam wait + heal as fast as possible. Since battles cannot be rushed to one cycle and there's no resources to exhaust or infinitely scaling enemy buffs to worry about, stable cyclical survivability is the only avenue for victory. As such...
1. Damage-dealing in skills is borderline useless, as it does not shift this equilibrium. This is not valued as such in balancing. Mosca's and Haydn's damage skills are sometimes useful for their additional effects, but their other skills are so blatantly essential you'd be insane to allocate any perk points to what concerns the former. There are attempts to punish low damage output with bulbs or cacti and such, but they are not tuned anywhere near where they would need to be to even have an effect on the optimal choice for their turns, let alone the player's build.
2. Speed is ultimately the only stat that matters 100% of the time in all circumstances for all characters. Max health is only circumstantially good as is Int on Mosca for the same reason. Not being able to pile points onto speed after a certain point feels like an imperfect solution to imbalance. Speed scaling should be clarified in its formula somewhere if it isn't already, and I personally did not find it if it is.
This gameplay gets a tad repetitive fast, but I guess it's how these sorts of games tend to work and people do enjoy them still.
The overworld map and fields are too timid in what their mechanics actually change about the game, and that's a shame, because the battles could use more variability.
Just looking at the pictures coming by and moving during battle is mesmerizing. If you wanted to add some more fluff, creating multiple portrait variants (low HP? MP?) for the playable characters could be an efficient way of doing so.
If you want to have some broader appeal you should probably polish your art to look more professional at some point, but that's only smoothening out the form of an essence that's already perfect.
The inactive hierarchy links on the perks screen are barely visible against the dark background.
Why can't I go from perks to shop?
It would be convenient if it were possible to return to hallowed ground from the map if you're still on the same spot.