Hi GrenadeKitten, thank you for the game. I played your game through to ending C, and this is what I have to say regarding your queries:
It depends on your intentions and target demographic exactly, but from my assumptions playing it appears that the difficulty level is probably too hard, but it's not strictly too difficult. The difficulty level is balanced in an unconventional and therefore counterintuitive way to the expectations of most people. In other words, the difficulty is frontloaded very heavily towards the beginning and middle portions, and becomes easier towards the end, rather than the difficulty curve being soft at the beginning, increasing, and tapering off towards the end being the most difficult. This early to middle section where they player feels stymied; without many cards and unable to beat the majority of battles without some difficulty is where I felt the most frustrated and would consider stopping the session. The game appears more difficult than it truly is because of the burden of expectation that is set on the player. They are expected to realise immediately and without guidance the following:
- Not all enemies that can be immediately encountered are capable of being beaten at the player's current strength, so the player must decide battles wisely. Many JRPGs are much more linear, especially at the start. which is what may have been anticipated.
- The player is expected to learn enemies and prepare an appropriate combination of decks and skills in order to defeat them, from beginning to end. Even if numerous ways exist of overcoming a single enemy, the margin for success appears to not be very lenient. So in all, when a player is still becoming familiar with the battle system, they are already facing enemies that expect an intimate knowledge of its workings.
- There is a small potential for players to get completely stuck; making assumptions of what will work, but in fact will not - selling and upgrading cards that don't synergise of function as anticipated. As cards are only really acquired through defeating enemies or by proxy (spending money earned for cards), and they sell for less then they buy, a player can simply softlock himself by buying and selling cards.
As a specific example, there are many abilities accessible both to the player and the enemy that burn cards, removing them from the hand or deck. When a player runs out of cards, they are not reshuffled, so the battle is a forgone conclusion and normally a loss for the player. This I did not realise at first simply due to the first encounters being relatively simple and not requiring my entire deck to overcome. Then having sold my cards in order to upgrade some and maintain a slim and tidy deck, as well as spend my ability points, I encounter a fight that would require stalling with cards to beat at my current level. Suddenly finding myself helpless and out of cards, needless to say I had to return to this fight later.
I should also note that I don't feel as though the system is too complex for the majority of players to comprehend. I just believe that they are "chucked in at the deep end" as it were. If this is a prelude to a larger project as mentioned elsewhere, effectively a test on the system and the world of yours, it may have an adverse effect on players. A main game seems unlikely to be so difficult from the offset, and many players having become interested from the prelude will suddenly have an off putting decrease in its challenge, having been made to spend the time in this short game.
To demonstrate where your game felt much more enjoyable and to consider player expectation and difficulty with it, where adjustments could be considered, let us consider the boss battles. These themed fights against a single opponent were far more fun than having to overcome the general enemies. This is because the former gives the impression far more of a puzzle to solve where the player is able to manoeuvre many pieces. Should they fail, actions are still being performed and the system utilised, and corrections made. The minor enemies that come in packs don't demonstrate this however, it is all too frequent that the player should feel inaction instead. Many fights give the appearance of restricting and tormenting the player rather than allowing for expression, which seems to be because of the overtuned difficulty, ability to immediately face hard opposition, and ruthless action economy. In effect, the player is a single unit against 3-5 enemies; and with a single turn a player must balance all the following (potentially) : rejuvenate health and mana, shield the player, attack the enemies, buff the player, debuff the enemies, and spawn allied units. When most enemies in the game kill the summons in a single turn, often before the summon is even able to act and thereby wasting a very valuable turn, it gives only a sense of exasperated helplessness. The summons act as an alternative to the party which one would find in a standard JRPG, so constantly being denied from even using them can be frustrating. There were numerous level unlockable player abilities that appeared completely useless because of this. Suddenly the divine wind squadron was more appealing.
As a knock on effect, as the player can only handle specific sets of enemies at any given time, it artificially constrains the variety despite it being reasonable. Every enemy kills all my units, so I'm both using using fewer strategies and fighting one type of foe in a row, then being more powerful I can fight the next one type, etc. Having said that, the usefulness of certain cards went underappreciated, making a return in the latter portions for greater expression.
Interminable complaining is simple enough, but realising how to fix them is more difficult. Even a small rebalance that strengthens the player's summons could make the entire thing trivial. But there are some considerations that could be made; giving the player greater strength early, making them "feel good" as what they figure out can beat the enemy in front of them, then increasing the required precision later on. To supplement this perhaps increase the players or summon’s defensive statistics by level up or by the addition of further early acquired items, which again would be by a small amount overcome by later enemies once the player has discovered strategies, unlocked defensive tools, etc. There are 5 resistance types after all, and guard only reduces one. Early on, most enemies could deal physical damage, or perhaps guard could increase all defences as an example. Another possibility would be to adjust the level design; more linear early, and again broadening later. But this is for you to consider what is best, continuing to adjust many factors by small amounts until the balance you desire has been struck may be all that can be done.
Here are some additional miscellaneous things you may wish to consider altering:
- Increasing the clarity of various descriptions: For instance, dealing "strength +1" damage means little when the player cannot see their strength in battle, and the value of the damage dealt is not displayed. "[value]([formula])" as a format for all may be useful.
- Reducing the ambiguity of various descriptions: For instance, Healing "1/2 of strength and willpower" can mean both 1/2 str + 1/1 wil or 1/2 str + 1/2 wil; "stealing 1/2 mana" has the same issue - current of maximum mana? The previous comment also applies here.
- When altering my current deck or levelling abilities, there is no revert option should I decide against a prospective choice.
- Left click both advances text and attacks, leading to unfortunate mistakes.
- Despite your efforts, it is still possible to instigate the dialogue of Louie to receive multiple 100xp drops. I think after winning a battle his dialogue can be activated again. Saving, quitting, and reloading back in works as expected.
- The in battle camera jumps around a little recklessly. This can be best seen when multiple foes all buff themselves in succession; say five school girls. The camera is set to blink and center on the unit performing its action, which works fine when attacks are being performed; the camera follows this unit forward then returns to the next unit in the action queue. Five stationary units on the same side of the field don't recquire this effect.
The only thing I didn't like is an unfortunate knock-on effect of you working alone and the theme of the project being a Dream-world I should imagine. With the backgrounds being mostly static and having one visual appearance, the humanoid character models another style, the 2d drawings another, the enemies a further, and so on, you run a potential risk of the work appearing incongruous. If you'll forgive me for saying so, these combined factors happen to have connotations shared with a unity model dump game which you may wish to take some additional care to avoid in the future.
That's all I can think of for the moment. My Regards.