I'd originally planned to play it for an hour but I ended up neglecting my responsibilities and playing it for 3 so I could wring every drop of content out of it. I took notes while I did so.
The writing reminds me of Slayers.
Just got to Elsa, and her leg animations don't look great when moving diagonally or holding shift. Arcana might've been the same, didn't notice.
The close up zoom when you enter the skills menu is nice, but the characters' faces really can't stand up to being so close to the camera.
That said, the gameplay itself feels gr8.
Voices are a lot louder than all the other SFX at the same volume level.
I clicked the restart level button while looking for the options menu. Probably needs a confirm.
Cutscenes are pretty low quality but they communicate what they intend clearly and I love them.
I fucking love the writing. The one eyed master marksman somehow manages to be the straight character.
Octavia and Fiera also have problems with their diagonal movement animations.
Just noticed the song doesn't loop cleanly. That's a damn shame.
Looks like if you use Fiera's skill that makes heart pickups explode, you can make hearts explode over and over and over
if you have full health. Not that I'm complaining, that's rad. Actually on further play I couldn't get it to happen again. Dunno what made it happen the first time. Maybe because I was alone?
These camp scenes in between missions are super soulful. Although it's a shame you don't get to see the characters interact in the Melkirian camp aside from Octavia.
I'm really feeling some good potential when I see the infinite missions.
Looking at it for a bit, i get that the missions are ranked bronze, silver, gold and red, but it'd be nice and clear if the difficulty was also mentioned in the description.
Maybe have characters revive faster/instantly if there are no enemies around?
After clutching my way through the first(?) Penelope fight with both Arcana and Elsa fainted, Arcana was standing up while fainted after the cutscene.
Okay so picking up health heals the entire party, not just the one picking it up. That's very important. Maybe I missed the explanation, but if it's not there, make sure it's there.
(found it later on a loading screen tip, but for something so important, maybe explain it when you first unlock party member switching?)
Nothing past Penelope for blue team? It is just a demo I guess.
Trying out the red team mission, it doesn't seem like Octavia's focus mode fire rate improvement works as advertised; I'm not noticing any difference whether I'm holding shift or not.
The difficulty so far has been absolutely amazingly tuned. I don't think there's been a boss where I didn't get scrape through by the skin of my teeth, but I haven't actually died yet (except for the necromancer).
The undead mikuni rangers are a pretty cool idea. Haunted forests are usually either wood critters, spirits or something, but having corporeal undead defenders I don't think I've seen before.
aaaand Yurie take 2 finally beat me. Good thing I can go straight back to the fight.
Yurie 2 might need a little tweaking. Her third stage is an absolute beast. Maybe I missed somethng that's suppsoed to make it easier, but it took me like ten tries before I managed to get through.
On the next (night) part of the stage, I aggroed some enemies through a wall in the area before the shop; that meant when the shop spawned, I was being swarmed by enemies. It doesn't seem intended.
I equipped a whiteflame on Fiera, and after I used her secondary attack, the particle effect on her right hand never went away. (tried it out on later missions and yep, same thing)
The night ambience is nice in the third part of the forest level, but holy shit does it get hard to see sometimes with all the particle effects and projectiles.
The Hanako and Yurie boss fight is great. I love it. Not nearly as hard as Yurie 2 somehow.
Gave the black wall and mountains a try for a finale. Also fun. I love the mountains' tileset.
All over impression; This is great. I love it. I wanna play more. Please work hard so I can play it more because it's great and I love it.
Graphics are basic, but aside from the faces during cutscenes, it's never a problem.
I hope you'll be able to replay story missions with the cutscenes disabled as the other team.
I also hope that there are more items planned that alter the characters' appearances; aside from Elsa's ribbon, it never happened again.
Finally, there better be a climactic point in the story where you get to control all six characters at once.
I've wishlisted it on Steam and I hope to see more of it soon. Thank you for letting me try it out.