Good grief, your post is long.
I was going to leave Arc to answer it, but it seems like it overwhelmed him too… (I know from experience that the more I type, the longer it takes him to answer)
I’ll try to address some of it as brief as possible.
Act 3 is really different from before. It’s the big turning point of the story, cat’s out of the bag, cue other metaphors.
But also the story in terms of storylines it’s going to be shorter than act 2.
Plus, conveying a full-on war and then you taking over the town in just scenes like a regular VN would’ve been difficult and probably taken too much time.
But yes, Arc is a big fan of Sengoku Rance. At this point he’d probably insist that if you play Rance you get the fan translated version. Because the MangaGamer translations were made by someone who clearly didn’t like the series and interpreted the dialogues in a really mean-spirited way.
But yeah, he once said that the combat system as it stands it’s like Sengoku Rance but made by just one guy, so it wouldn’t be as good.
Add to it the fact that the engine isn’t really made for much more than regular Visual Novels… But eh, every tool is a hammer.
Balance is indeed an issue that will have to be addressed at some point. But don’t expect that much depth, after all it’s still just one guy working on it.
But are players incentivised to turtle?
I don’t know about you, but I took Jessica’s advice to heart. That tanks are weak to seduction attacks, so I went with that in mind.
So for the most part I just went in blindly, spamming seduction attacks until I won. No blocking, no heals, didn’t even pay attention to morale.
With the exception of Noelle, since she uses seduction I figured she’d be weak to physical attacks… Which was correct.
Later once I figured out how stats work, I had also learned that Chloe is much better frontliner than the MC (makes sense, MC was out for 3 months and he’s not as much of a fighter as Chloe since she’s an actual ex ORG soldier) I just kept up the same strat but with slightly better results.
Up until the two duelists… I ended up using Hazel as frontline and just followed the simple strat of:
- If they attack, attack back.
- If they counter, use the PHY boost skill.
- If they impale, block it.
I wonder how much more difficult will enemies get, but probably we’ll either get better characters or the MC will get stat boosts on story events.
Because as you noticed, leveling up characters just raises their HP and WP.
The rehab centre was added way after the dungeon and the shatter win.
It was initially much simpler, considering it just did what the dungeon does but in a less questionable manner.
People complained it was too simple. Arc made it more complex, people complained it was too complex.
And now Arc isn’t going to keep retouching it forever so it’s stuck like this for the time being.
There have been talks of extra scenes for not using the dungeon, but also it’s not the idea to railroad people into certain choices.
At least it’s not a request as ridiculous as that one guy that was asking for a reward for picking the option to execute the girls… yeah…
A summary could be:
- Arc is just one guy, working on everything.
- New content takes priority over tweaking existing stuff.
- Things like the combat system and rehab can’t have that much depth either way (see point 1)
Feedback is really appreciated. But don’t expect miracles.