like, Im torn. The game looks nice, it sounds nice. The writing, I like the writing, but the gameplay... it's hard to find a place to start. just to be clear, I didnt finish the game, I made it to hatate, but... I wasnt going to go through another 30 runs of the the section, trying to get good equipment rolls and hoping rng blesses me with good item and enemy encounters for that run. I guess this is a case of making sure you properly test your game which as the jam page itself states, was not something that really happened. Regardless, might as well sum up my thoughts.
The game goes hard into making every equipment you pick up, every item you grab, rng, rolled from a table, which, by itself, isnt bad, it could work, much harder to balance and tailor an experience to but workable, HOWEVER when the game lacks enough ways to get stronger *outside* of rolling equipment, well, you're just trying to redo floors until you get good equipment, went soooo long before nitori started having damage numbers above 1 or 2 and from my friend who was also trying it it seems my experience was not solitary in that regard. There doesnt appear to be any leveling so the *only* reason you'd want to fight enemies is for money or for the fishing drops, however you lose half your money when you die so its not very reliable. A response might be just "dont die", but past the first floor, the RVs dont backtrap to the lobby, the only place you can heal, you dont get another heal point ever and aint no one climbing down the whole tower just so they dont eat a death which will likely come anyway with the amount of encounters you get climbing down, better to just climb upwards and take the death when it hits you and hope the RV checkpoints will be enough. Now, one might think you can circumvent this rng slightly by stockpiling items. Youd be wrong, all items that arent equipment are taken from you on death / lobby visit so you better rely on whatever the rng table blesses you with. This and the fact that enemy encounters vary so wildly difficulty wise and are also so rng dependent means that just making it to a boss fight isnt enough, you have to make it to a boss with GOOD rng otherwise you'll just die because you lack the hp and or items for the fight. Just the act of placing a healing fountain before each boss would help soooo much to make it so less painful, hell even just allowing hina's heal to be used outside of battle would be a blessing.
Now, there are other things I could get into like how speed affecting accuracy fucks over encounters like the hoop snake (because again, speed is an equipment stat and even then it might not be enough), or how it's possible to get your money to glitch to "a lot of money" and you never know the money you have again, etc etc, however Id rather return to my opening train of thought. If the game wasnt so heavily rng focused, it would be a much better game and its frustrating that a game who excels in every other aspect is held back by its gameplay. I may try again at a later point save scumming every encounter and chest for a good run just to finish since I feel I was so close and if I do that I may edit my post, but for now I hope my words are sufficient.