3 Easy Steps that Could Improve Combat in the Game ALOT~!

[Polyurethane]

Hey all,

I just finished this game, and I want to start off by saying how much I appreciate this game. I can see all the love and care that was put into the world and characters, and I had an absolute blast.

I can tell from what I experienced that you have an excellent writer with experience with dialogue, an amazing level designer with an immaculate eye for making things detailed and varied without shoving too much on the screen, talented digital artists that can bring a whole world to life through quirky art styles and incredible facial animations, and (ostensibly) no one that's a fan of classic of JRPG Battles or even seems to understand what makes them fun.

It's really crazy to me, because this game is so fantastic and amazing in literally almost every other way, but then when it comes to the combat you could tell it was a blind spot. Half the boons/statuses don't seem to work properly, Loaf's special abilities get out-scaled moments after you get them, you're forced to use your sidekick as a human shield, the interactive combat elements are haphazardly placed and overused, the enemies have secret armor levels that you can't see without a boon, the enemy resistances often completely undermines the benefit of enemy weaknesses, for some reason the last third of the game is only 1 enemy per combat after the rest of game being 3-4… I could go on and on and on. The new elements to this combat are, unfortunately, more annoying than innovating. I don't want to sound mean about it, but it was bad enough for me that I view it as a detractor for the game, and while it would take a lot for this game to be the next Final Fantasy, I think there's a few choices that could improve the variance and choice pool in combat a lot.

1. Combat Should have a static Turn order/ Defend "Taunts"

I really wonder if this is a bug, but as it is right now, the enemy always go right after your partner. If you skip to the your partner and use an attack, the enemies will get an attack before Loaf, essentially skipping your turn. If Loaf defends, the enemies will attack as per normal, and then when the partner attacks, the enemies will get a second attack. However, if Loaf attacks, and the Partner defends, the enemies will only get the one attack sequence.

This is serviceable combat until the game warms up, and what happens is you have to have at least one player defend or you will take too much damage, and since the enemies always go after your partner, it means your partner is always defending. This is much too convoluted and Janky. Even when combat is going in my favor something doesn't feel right here. It's almost like the game is forcing your partners to perpetually be a shield for Loaf, especially when Loaf has the higher HP values through most of the game.

The answer to this is to just have a classic turn order and then grant an inherent "taunt" mechanic to defend. E.g. If Loaf defends, he will get a defense aura and all the attacks would go to him, but the attacks wouldn't go through until after both characters have acted. This will grant you the ability to shift where you want the combat focus to go and will make sidekick abilities much more viable. Also, under this system, if neither the player nor the sidekick defends, I think the enemies should attack a random character instead of only Loaf. If both characters defend, it naturally increases the amount of WP restored by 1 for each successful block.

2. Block Should be a 50% reduction, not a flat amount.

The timed interactive block events reduces damage you receive by 1. That's fine when enemies are doing 1-3 damage, but when you're being shot with 3 fireballs that do 8 a piece it feels woefully inadequate. If you succeed in blocking an ability, you should block half the damage, at least 1. The only blocking that's worth doing in the second half of the game is through defend, and that puts extra reliance on the sidekick to be a defend bot. With a better block amount, there are more opportunities for you to do something else with your sidekick.

3. Scrap the armor system, make it legible instead.

It's frustrating to attack an enemy only to have no conceivable reason that it takes less damage than the listed amount with no symbols or explanation given. It's different if all the enemies have a general defense stat that's varied. This game doesn't. If something takes less damage than the listed amount, it should be clear why. I don't even get some of the math half the time because I'm attacking enemies with their weakness, but I'm doing normal damage because they're also armored. I'm not sure if I missed it in the beginning of the game, but I don't remember the game telling me about armored enemies.

The background armor should just be removed and instead those enemies should come into battle with a visible stacking armor buff. This armor buff removes a stack after every instance of damage, and each stack lowers the total damage by 1. Meaning if you did 4 damage, they would take 3 damage and a stack would be removed. This means multi-attacks would be great for getting rid of armor quickly, and large attacks could be used to kill them with less effective health, giving a variance of strategy.

This will also keep combat in motion and working towards a goal, whereas right now armored enemies often stall out and take forever if you haven't found a great weapon for them. It gets really repetitive really quickly.

Final Thoughts

I ended up writing a lot more than I probably wanted to about this subject, but that's frankly because I love this game so much. I could definitely write a lot more on the subject, but I'm not sure it's worth it because there is the potential for my thoughts to be taken very negatively and I'm not really here to hurt anyone, so I'll just leave it with the easy stuff to fix.

Despite the janky combat, I would still have played this game another 3 chapters because it's so everything else is so charming and wonderful.