The art is lovely throughout, with lots of detail and color. The backgrounds are gorgeous and the character designs are interesting and distinctive; no two look alike yet. The story is set in a fantasy world with magic, and you get to see a few spell effects and some rather elegant scenes. The interface is unique and in keeping with the overall style. You get to choose the main character's first name and hair color, and the purple was too pretty for me to pass up - but I'm a purple fan in general, and it seems to be used often in the demo, which made me happy.
Most aspects of the story and characters didn't surprise me yet, but that's okay: I was interested in where the visions were going and totally fine with letting Keldran charm me anyway. This is also a brief demo; there's a lot of room for growth.
I liked that there were mouse-over glosses for people, places, and other important aspects of the lore. It helps you keep track of all the new terms (along with First and Second Empresses, Princes, etc.).
I had a few technical issues with the version I played on Steam that I wasn't able to resolve:
- The sound blip whenever I moused over a clickable element was driving me batty, but I didn't turn it off completely because I wanted to hear the other sound effects. Please, please, make that an option we can turn off on its own.
- The volume of the music and voices was too low. Even when I set them to max levels and wore headphones, I couldn't get a good level of sound. What I did hear sounded pretty good; I would have liked to hear more of it. While I do have some noise issues because of fans and AC running, I am not hard of hearing, I checked all sound settings on my system more than once, and I haven't had this issue with other games or programs.
- I couldn't use magic during the first round of combat for no clear reason. The Talk option made it seem like Keldran could/would heal the main character, but he didn't.
I have to admit, I'm new to the hybrid visual novel that intersperses combat with narrative scenes. In general, I'm someone who can enjoy older RPG games and simpler styles, but I just don't know if hybrids are going to work out for me. Even though the combat layout and sprites looked good in Dual Chroma, the fighting just didn't draw me in. There were so many extra clicks I had to do to move things forward, such as every time anyone takes a turn, that rounds became tedious. I'm glad there's a story mode option to skip battles in Dual Chroma, so people can play in whichever way suits them best. The project is off to a good start and I hope it does well! I'll be posting a quick review to my website in the hopes that others check it out.