Game looks good, but some questions though

[zman9000]

I've seen a bunch of game play and stuff so i know a bunch about the game already, though i have some questions for anyone who has played it. little details i'm interested in, and that i've been discussing with other people that could influence me and them getting the game sooner but haven't really seen this info anywhere.

so first for game play questions:
#1 i was wondering how tight i-frames are on the dodge, and how big the window is on the parry? from an outsiders perspective it looks like the dodge is more forgiving then something like dark souls, with the parry being way tighter.

#2 it seems pretty clear that since its a "shooter" of a kind, that mouse for good aiming is highly recommended, but how are the other controls, and how do they feel to you personally? i know that run is on left control and as a toggle, seems kinda odd but it looks like it works ok for people, at least in videos i've seen. would you recommend some slight rebinding over the base controls or do you think getting use to them is worth it?

#3 it seems like lot of the character control and movement is pretty smooth, and easy to control, though part of me wonders if its the super clean animation that makes it look that way. how is the movement, slide, and direction change feel for you?

#4 what is the skill ceiling like for this game? it seems about on par for a souls-like, though i'm wondering just how much better you can get? i guess another way to phrase this question is how much variety is there to ways to play and how many little things can you pull together to improve your game play? it kinda seems like despite there being multiple spells, there isn't a ton of variety in this area.

#5 and i guess along those same lines, how easy is it to get better at the game? i've been seeing mixed reports from multiple people, sometimes the same people completely flipping opinion over night. some say its way harder then something like dark souls, other's saying its way easier. there's also people who say you can't even compare them at all, though i think that's a little...

and i have some questions on the visuals:
#6 so it all generally looks amazing, especially for an indie game, however i noticed that at times when shooting magic or or getting hit with a ranged attack, the screen can get quite busy, and it can look kinda bad with the frames and stuff. i was wondering if that's just because of video compression that it makes it look worse, or if its actually pretty much the same in game?

#7 also wondering if they plan on toning some of those in your face explosion effects down or not? seems like it causes quite a lot of blinding. not a deal breaker or big deal, but something i wanted to know.

Anyway, those are my questions.
any and all opinions on them are welcome!
I'm "for the most part" the kinda person who never buy's into early access even if the game looks good as is, though i guess you could say i'm nitpicking at this point to look for excuses.

so anyway, thanks!

edit: forgot to mention, reason i didn't go for the demo over asking some of the questions was at least from an outside perspective there seems to be some differences between versions. also some of the questions are for personal opinions on mechanics.

edit2: added some clarification

[RattyRattington]

Try the demo.

[󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡]

All of this was not well tested, just my feeling

#1 Some enemies in Advance NewGame+ have pretty tight i-frame, otherwise it's pretty fair for non-SoulsVets.

#2 You often don't need precision in most battles as your magic have pretty big hit box though there's a little aim assist which is little dot in your magic scope when ads that snap to the nearest enemy.
In my playthroughs, I only have problem with being to close to enemies and magic entity spawn behind them so it just go pass them without a hit. Yes, I played with m+kb.

3# They're very well crafted both visual and gameplay perspective. Movements are fluid and responsive. The looks are adorable and have characteristic. Except one flaw I personally have problem with which is input queue window being to wide (especially the 3rd to the 4th which doesn't match with animation well).

4# There are a few playstyles you can choose and every each can fluidly change mid battle so I say it's fairly high. But high level playstyle that maxed out dps is currently close combat only.

5# It's much more forgiving than Souls series though there's a few learning spike here and there which you can still scrape by even if you don't know. The best sides are that "Bonfires" are not too far apart and you don't lose all the souls you carried when you die. It's fair to compared the two as they are very similar in the way you tackle every enemies, souls currency and how enemies spawn but for what it is, it's not Souls-like. My thought is Nobeta have much more heated battles almost like DOOM2016 sometimes.

6# It's pretty chaotic at times but it is help selling the game experience. You are a magician and magics have to be flashy. I don't know about performance as my rig is i3 6th gen with GTX1050 so I capped it at 60 frame though I never once experienced a single frame drop even when enemies and spells are barraging at me.

7# You can turn down `Camera Shake` and `Hit Stop Effect` in Setting > Game. If that's what you meant.

[zman9000]

Originally posted by DeadlyCreature:

Try the demo. :eli:

oh lol, sorry i meant to put a disclamer in my post about this. the reason i have some of these questions is actually because there appeared to be some differences between the demo and the current full version from things i've seen. one being that some of the spell effects seem to be visually toned down in the full version. (though i personally wish they were more so cause it appears like they still cause some vision issues at times

[zman9000]

Originally posted by Hey, Handsome:

6# It's pretty chaotic at times but it is help selling the game experience. You are a magician and magics have to be flashy. I don't know about performance as my rig is i3 6th gen with GTX1050 so I capped it at 60 frame though I never once experienced a single frame drop even when enemies and spells are barraging at me.

7# You can turn down `Camera Shake` and `Hit Stop Effect` in Setting > Game. If that's what you meant.

sorry if i didn't explain well. i mainly meant that from at least an out side perspective, it seems like on the demo, firing charged shots and getting hit not only causes you to be blinded by the spell, and for a long time at that. it seems less bad on the offical version but still kinda noticable.

i was wondering how much it effects you and your gameplay, since it seems like firing a spell can some times basically blind you for upwards of 2 seconds.

[melphel]

Originally posted by zman9000:

Originally posted by Hey, Handsome:

6# It's pretty chaotic at times but it is help selling the game experience. You are a magician and magics have to be flashy. I don't know about performance as my rig is i3 6th gen with GTX1050 so I capped it at 60 frame though I never once experienced a single frame drop even when enemies and spells are barraging at me.

7# You can turn down `Camera Shake` and `Hit Stop Effect` in Setting > Game. If that's what you meant.

sorry if i didn't explain well. i mainly meant that from at least an out side perspective, it seems like on the demo, firing charged shots and getting hit not only causes you to be blinded by the spell, and for a long time at that. it seems less bad on the offical version but still kinda noticable.

i was wondering how much it effects you and your gameplay, since it seems like firing a spell can some times basically blind you for upwards of 2 seconds.

I didn't find the spell visuals to be too detrimental to my ability to react. Counterattack magic is pretty flashy, but you're invincible the whole time so it doesn't really matter. Fully charged fire/lightning are flashy too, but if you're close enough for that to take up the whole screen then you're close enough for the blast to kill you.

[zman9000]

Originally posted by melphel:

Originally posted by zman9000:

sorry if i didn't explain well. i mainly meant that from at least an out side perspective, it seems like on the demo, firing charged shots and getting hit not only causes you to be blinded by the spell, and for a long time at that. it seems less bad on the offical version but still kinda noticable.

i was wondering how much it effects you and your gameplay, since it seems like firing a spell can some times basically blind you for upwards of 2 seconds.

I didn't find the spell visuals to be too detrimental to my ability to react. Counterattack magic is pretty flashy, but you're invincible the whole time so it doesn't really matter. Fully charged fire/lightning are flashy too, but if you're close enough for that to take up the whole screen then you're close enough for the blast to kill you.

oh really? huh. the one i had in mind was actually arcane, since it was extremely flashy in some of the recent demo footage i found, basically firing off a single shot blinded you for like 1 - 2 seconds, with release version footage seeming to be toned down a bit.

[Remin]

Originally posted by Hey, Handsome:

#1 Some enemies in Advance NewGame+ have pretty tight i-frame, otherwise it's pretty fair for non-SoulsVets.

I-frames don't change at all with NG+. I wouldn't imagine difficulty affects it either, but I'm not 100% on that since the lower difficulty is extremely boring and too easy for anyone on the middle ground or higher in terms of desired challenge.

Dodge i-frames feel fine. I haven't seen/played Dark Souls in forever, but I feel like it's about the same i-frame duration, possibly slightly longer. Backstep dodging (dodge without directional input) has a veeery slightly shorter animation, but the same amount of i-frames I believe. Parry window is somewhat small, but I wouldn't say it's as strict as Dark Souls from what I remember, at least compared to the stuff unspecialized for parrying. It's much simpler, all you need to do is do the regular melee swing within like 0.1s before any kind of attack whatsoever hits you. No other factors to worry about like which part of a parrying animation a shield/weapon is in, or if it's magical/physical/melee/ranged. You can even preemptively attempt to dodge cancel the end of the parry window to give yourself a huge safety net against pretty much any attack.

Originally posted by Hey, Handsome:

#2 You often don't need precision in most battles as your magic have pretty big hit box though there's a little aim assist which is little dot in your magic scope when ads that snap to the nearest enemy.

The little dot isn't a direct aim assist, it's an indicator of where your shot will hit. If you're aiming just past something, you'll see it move or "snap", especially when aiming to the right of your target. Think of it as the staff's laser pointer.

I don't know how controller feels though, only played with mouse and keyboard so far. I've seen comments saying aiming down the sights with controller snaps the aim right onto the enemy though, so I guess there's that? But yeah, M&KB definitely king for precision, since it's basically a shooter most of the time.

The latest update also added an option to make sprint a hold action instead of toggle, if it's what you'd prefer. I haven't tried it yet myself, but haven't had many issues with the toggle (not to say there's no room for improvement though). One tip I have for toggle if you're already sprinting is to tap it (or the walk key, don't know if controllers have that) before you let go of movement, or else you'll do a slide to a halt, which very briefly freezes all your controls other than directional dodging.

I'm otherwise perfectly happy with the default controls except for melee attack. I set that one to a thumb button on the mouse. The default ctrl to sprint and shift to dodge is perfect as-is too, since shift is easier to quickly press thanks to the pinky always comfortably resting on it. Never really a need to very quickly press the sprint button so ctrl is great.

#3: I think what the 1st big comment reply above is talking about here is the queue window for followup swings with the melee combo. Basically, the window is as long as the entire swinging animation, so chances are you'll often end up doing an extra swing that you didn't want to do. It's especially noticeable from the 3rd to 4th swing, because it takes a long time to do the final 4th swing. As long as you don't spam the melee button though, you can instantly shoot magic as soon as the damaging portion of a swing ends (queued melee prevents this). All melee swings can be dodge cancelled (the sprinting melee attack can only be directional dodge cancelled though for some reason). Pretty much the only time you can't dodge cancel is when you're firing charged magic. That and also the bug that I've been meaning to mention where you can't seem to dodge if regular magic fired out of your staff at nearly the exact same time (you'll notice this most easily when firing ice, which is basically a machine gun). Game is pretty fluid otherwise (if framerate gets too low though, sprint's halting slide animation seems to often interrupt sprinting when trying to turn too sharply, which is likely a bug as well).

#4: I'd say there's not terribly much variety, at least in the end, since "the best way" mostly boils down to spamming charged magic of any type while parrying everything to keep your mana and health maxed. So in the current game the challenge mainly eventually comes from learning enemy movesets rather than your methods of attack. There are times where bosses are resistant to being staggered by charged arcane and leveled-up Counter (name of the parry ability) though.

#5: It's as easy as how quickly you learn the moves of enemies. Tania (2nd boss) had particularly troublesome combo potential (but ultimately fair even with minimum stats) with one of her moves, which was changed (overly so, imo) in the last patch to address that. For a new player, pre-patch, it basically had a 38-55% chance (yeah I did the actual math on it haha) of happening at least once, which would do about 120-160 damage with no chance of escape if you got hit by the first/second hit, which is likely to happen for a player seeing it for the first time. Basically a 38-55% chance of encountering an insta-kill/extremely high-damage combo. Even if she didn't do the troublesome combo, two other alternative attacks would make that damage range be 80-100 if caught, which would raise my calculated % even higher if you're just looking at very high potential damage. So that might be part of the reason people "flipped opinions overnight" and such (or they started getting good at parrying, thus staying topped off and annihilating everything with charged spam), who knows. Nothing else in the game needed such high technical skill to safely avoid (without parrying anyway). I'm hoping a harder difficulty gets implemented that re-adds the troublesome combos, perhaps as dedicated new/merged moves.

#6 & #7: I can't really recall any times where I was blinded by magic when it mattered. You can't dodge out of charged casts either, so seeing (or not) an attack coming at you immediately after firing won't do anything useful for you. At that point, unless you were in a good position, you're either getting hit or hitting them. Maybe both.



The game is fun though. Counter is way too powerful, especially once you've learned the movesets, so it's possible you might find more enjoyment out of not using it after gaining experience with the game. Might be neat if Counter was instead an on-demand spell that needed some kind of recharging to use again, with less recharge needed if you block at least one attack within like 0.1s of activation or something to still reward great timing. Because as it is, it's your literal "do everything" mechanic. Nothing else is needed at all, and it can be spammed infinitely.

To give a full description of what Counter does: Lasts a couple seconds upon success (+1ish second of directional dodge-cancellable ending animation); nullifies + absorbs 50% of the base damage of the initial hit & any other received attacks as HP & 100% as mana while active; regens some mana (ending animation also contributes a tiny bit more regen if you don't cancel it) + much more bonus mana if the Counter circle hits stuff; allows spell charging to continue during the Counter animation (assuming all the absorbed/bonus mana doesn't instantly fill the meter up); and lastly, at level 2/3, the final tick of Counter's damage staggers enemies/bosses with almost exactly the same strength as charged arcane… Those're quite a lot of benefits.

Also, charged ice gives you damage resistance and super armor while charged, and since parry absorption is based on base damage, going for parries while that's active basically makes the risk/reward to your health an exact 1:1 ratio or better at lv.3 ice (that's the max level for everything in the "elemental magic" menu; in ice's case, it gives 50% damage resistance vs. everything while charged, as well as subtracting about 40 points of fire damage after that reduction).

Nothing else in the game heals you except items and to a small extent breakable objects and tough enemies. Spell charging is paused during any action aside from walking/sprinting (though mana orbs and melee hits will instantly convert to charge meter). Dodging an attack only gives 50% of the would-be damage as mana. Whereas Counter does all that+negates downsides and more.

Currently, I think that's not so bad for new players going through for the first time, but for the experienced, it's insanely broken. Especially if you "buffer" your Counter attempts with dodges for those just-in-case moments of too-early parry attempts.



Realized I talked a bit too much about Counter there rather than the rest of the experience, but for the price, the gameplay so far is definitely worth it. You're not likely to be a parrying god right away, nor a even dodging one, so any arguably brokenly overpowered things won't matter much in a first/second-ish playthrough. But lightning magic, which is the final attack magic that you normally won't get until you beat all the bosses, is another overpowered thing compared to the rest. It'd at least be less so if the slow motion while charged was completely removed…

Anyway, nothing else to add right now other than that I think if something along the lines of my suggestion for Counter were implemented (the paragraph after my #6 & #7 paragraph if you need to find it again), it'd help a lot towards balancing it for both new and veteran players. I made a similar suggestion somewhere else about having "Counter orbs" to spend that'd be refilled by doing damage+perhaps very very slowly over time; something like that could work well alongside my Counter suggestion here. It doesn't have to be my way, but Counter needs limiting in some kinda way.

You can also still download the 0.03 demo on the itchio site which has all the attack magics + Counter, but no stats/levels. Not a whole lot is different compared to the latest version of the current game, so you can get a decent feel for what it's like to have everything. You'll need to do NG+ on Normal difficulty of the 0.03 demo before it gives you the other magics + Counter (Easy offers them right away, but I wouldn't recommend that difficulty at all).