This post intentionally split due to length limit (1/2). Typos to follow. Chapter 3 completion update:
EDIT: Clarified. Also I just now noticed that you fixed the victory music. Nice!
I managed to beat Chapter 1 without repeating a level. The freezer battle was still tough, but not actually as tough as the Underground Lake, where Aika survived on 1 HP thanks to a lucky miss... There's definitely no impossible level, but I still think the lake and freezer are a bit of a difficulty spike.
I then reloaded my Chapter 3 saves and started playing around. The new bronze star reward is really neat.
Random thought: Bianca's Cryostasis could probably cure Burn. Doesn't, though.
Amara's second tier weapon, Bright Saber, has less attack and magic attack (but more AGI) than her basic Light Blade? Bianca's purchasable Diamond Sceptre is cheaper and weaker than the Queen's Sceptre, too... don't know if that was intentional.
Lots of fun references in this chapter (Etna, Kaguya). And I had my "nooo, bad idea" moment.
Same thing happens if you beat the Demon Queen as if you lose? Aww. She got me with the one shot kill dark spell the first time, but I beat her the second time (killed her before she could use it, but not before some people got impaled). Can't wait to see the stats on those items in Chapter 4...
That said, could you consider changing her drops so the unique ones (spear, crown) are either 100% or 0%? Otherwise I'm going to feel compelled to save and reload until I get them.
Bugs:
- The support grimoire has the wrong script assigned. It consumes a healing grimoire and tries to teach a healing spell.
- Amara can learn Mysterious Medicine from the healing grimoire multiple times.
- Attack spell scrolls can only target allies, instead of only enemies. They do work, though I think
somemost of them might be casting the wrong spells (since they all use the pillar of flames animation, at least)? - Chapter 2 does not seem to appear in the teleporter menu after completing Chapter 1.
- You can't escape from most bestiary categories (for example, the fey section). It needs either a back option in the sub-menu or a way to cancel - cancel currently selects the second submenu option, where present, which is not helpful when that's, say, the catfish entry. You can escape from the demon category, but it just leaves you stuck on the bestiary picture the same way the teleporter menu used to leave you stuck on the tower picture, and you can cancel out of the (demons, fey, undead, beasts) menu without problems.
- If it's something you can change (maybe have it target all allies?), Sakura's Guide to Monsters probably doesn't need the player to choose an ally to use it on, since it doesn't matter who's reading it.
- Bianca doesn't have a magic tab in the skills menu, only in combat.
Bianca, according to the text, learns Amara's Mysterious Medicine grimoire-spell from healing grimoires (even though she already has Cryostasis). She doesn't get anything, though?- My mistake, was seeing the second bug on this list and not paying enough attention.
- Are body warmers supposed to be in the item shop? I have one because I imported my chapter 2 save with a crafting book, but I can't buy them.
- I formed up into a block and used Flash Slash on the Demon Queen after paralyzing her with Thunder Roulette and the game crashed. Looks like a null-reference...?
Like the plot and setting, the bestiary is... surprisingly dark, really. Odd when the demons are the nice monsters. And it seems like Sakura particularly dislikes (disliked?) necromancers for some reason.
P.S. Please add a save point at the end of chapter 3, so I have something to load for the next version? Even though I'm planning to use the save from chapter 1 when you fix the teleporter bug in chapter 2, not the save from chapter 3. :P