As there are a large amount of aspects to the game to learn, the manual was the most helpful aspect. There's a lot of onboarding needed, and there's quite of bit of text to read through in order to grasp the the game.
I like how the manual had some of the key terms underlined, as it highlights that it is important to know about (although this may be a side effect of wanting to indicate to players that they can click the word). I have mixed feelings about being redirected when clicking an underlined word: I think it's useful when I don't know what the term means, especially as a first time player. However, that meant having to return back to the page I was on, and find my place on the page again. This did contribute to my slow uptake of the game mechanics. Perhaps instead of redirecting to the relevant page, a tooltip could appear and provide an abridged description of the keyword.
The manual pages that had images were easier to follow, and helps break up the large walls of text. For example, in the Time Units page having the icons for common time units would firmly link the concept of time units to the actual icon. I think this would be useful in other pages too, especially in the Stagger, and Stamina pages. I only understood what the examples were trying to explain after being inflicted with 8 recovery tokens - I initially thought the game had glitched until the game mechanics clicked in my head and then I was able to understand why it happened.
Another area where images would be helpful would be in the Game Flow page. The concept of a time tray wasn't highlighted. As I was primed to look for underlined keywords, I mentally skipped over the term. In the stamina page, I misunderstood how stamina was recovered when I read the Stamina page. I thought stamina is recovered was when a new time unit was placed down. This misunderstanding was eventually cleared up in round two, but that did mean having to endure some confusion for a little while.
I like the planning aspect that the timeline element introduces. It allows for planning ahead and picking moves to suit the situation at hand. I think the variety of moves was just about right: There's enough differentiation that you can come up with different strategies with the cards you currently have without simply hoping for a particular card in future turns, yet there wasn't too much variation such that it felt like you wouldn't see a particular card as often.
Although I read the rulebook before playing, the first round was still confusing and a little bit slow as I tried to get to grips with everything. Most of the game mechanics only started to "click" in the second round. The game became a bit more straightforward as the planning aspects started to become apparent, and then it became enjoyable.
The tooltip that appears over the time unit tokens is especially useful when trying to plan out the next few moves. Daybreak did feel like the simplest and most suitably designed for beginners to learn the games, having a straightforward pattern of advancing forward and attacking with few gimmicks to think about. Playing Cadence straight after was a little bit difficult, as I had to think about zoning and distance due to the moveset being more varied and the Appeal mechanic factoring in some of the cards. However, it was extremely rewarding to be able to use the Finale move and inflict the slew of recovery tiles that I had experienced earlier. I'm curious on how the other characters would play out.
I like the boardgame-like UI and theming.
Overall, I like how the planning aspect allows for strategizing, and the current set of characters and their movesets feel well designed. The manual is extremely useful for onboarding, though it could use some improvements to help make it more digestible.