From the start I would say this demo felt much more enjoyable compared to the previous beta, as well as more as its own thing and I have some fun playing it. It's quite a cool concept but I feel you could play with the top-down sections a bit more in the future, since they feel somewhat "weaker" compared to the metroidvania parts.
Still there's some things that could be improved.
First of all it's just cosmetic stuff but I feel like animations could use more polishing since they are fairly static. (Sorry for complaining but animation is my hobby.)
Also I would love some transition animation when you switch between top-down and platformer parts. Like a small camera spin or something.
Sometimes when you enter some of the specific rooms , the player almost walks into the spikes by himself.
The enemy "death" animation is too long and sometimes obstructs your vision. I would shorten it to 2 seconds max and maybe make it slightly smaller.
I would say that some controls are quite bizarre and unintuitive ,since you attack and heal using numpad buttons, even if they work fine, most people will have to go to controls to see how to do it as well, and some laptops don't have a numpad so it might be a problem.
(also on the side note, should you be able to dash? it's listed in controls yet i can't do it, is this a bug or is it not working in the demo yet?)
At the beginning it feels like there's too little healing, maybe enemies could have a small chance to drop additional healing.
Playing with the Stick feels frustrating with its small reach and low damage (you have to almost stand in the enemy to hit him).
I felt like the game became much more enjoyable as I found the old sword (with longer reach) that is only found at the end of the demo. (I would suggest to either buff the stick a little or move the sword to some earlier location)
I have some problems with the stone enemies .They attack instantly as they notice you. They could use a short delay with animation before attack, or maybe small surprise animation as they spot you, since it's almost impossible to sometimes trigger them without getting hit. also they stay knocked out for a bit too long in my opinion after hitting a wall.
The harpy enemies feel probably the most hard to deal with (especially with the stick) because they dodge in air a lot. They also should in my opinion indicate better before they attack or have slower projectile speed.
Boss fight with the guard for most part was enjoyable (when I finally found the sword) but there could maybe be some atack indicators for the spears coming from the floor or just give a longer break when it's done multiple times in a row.
Some quality features that could be useful to add:
- ability to skip forward dialogue so you don't have to wait for it to write itself.
- that pre-boss fight dialogue should be skipped after the first time, since it's painful if you die many times and have to read it all again each time.
-The game could use more sound effects in general, in a way every action that happens on the screen that is important to the player should make a sound in my opinion. ( like when enemy notices you or when enemy shoots a projectile or any action in general that player should react to)
Good luck in the future development.