Couple of suggestions for the devs

[torquemadaza]

I’ve really enjoyed the game, I’ve put 40 hrs in and I have a couple suggestions.

Put a skull (any indicator) above dangerous enemies, especially in the over world.
There comes a time when you can go just about anywhere super quickly. So you do. Then you find something huge to fight and what do you know, you killed it before it could even take a turn. Then you go up against the next big thing and it wipes you. Like it wasn’t even close. You avoid that one,although it’s hard to remember exactly which ones you fought (sometimes their size isn’t representative). And then you find the next one, and it wipes you too. And this is repeated. you waste time engaging these enemies if you’re not ready for them, trying your best and realising you’re under-powered.you cannot flee (for some reason this isn’t always an option, and even if it is, it’s not 100% reliable), and then get put back at your last save point. This is unnecessary. Some portals are marked red. Why? Cos they’re above your power, so you don’t waste time engaging. Same same for big (chromatic) overworld enemies.

Gradient counter tutorial
This tutorial needs to be much clearer as to when you actually pull the trigger on the controller. There’s such a loooooooong slowmo windup, that you can press it at the start, just after the start, nearing the middle, at the middle, just after the middle, towards the end, right before the end or actually right at the end, but the game never teaches you to wait right to the end… because the tutorial pauses the wind up and asks you to pull the trigger, so the teachable moment is only to pull the trigger. This made something supposedly “cool”, a new way to counter these powerful attacks, feel incredibly frustrating. And they don’t happen often enough in the mid-game to actually learn from. When I got it right, it was a happy mistake. I had to go outside the game (after 30 hrs because of the second fight with R) to actually be succinctly told what the timing is.

Didn’t see it coming
When you don’t know what’s going on at all in the over arching plot, it’s hard to invest in the characters. This is how I felt going into the end of act 2. It was all vaguely interesting and of course obvious parallels can be seen, but as to how it all fits wasn’t at all clear until it is all explained in a single scene. Some love twists they are surprised by, shyamalan fans, others like myself, like to have my intelligence rewarded for figuring it all just before it is revealed. Despite being really engaged by the world building and characters this didn’t happen for me. I spoke to every npc, hit max levels of connection with all, played 40hrs in a week, and still didn’t see it coming. In fact I was so wrong footed by certain scripted events I thought I got a bad “ending”… and then it just kept going and going. There’s nothing to fix for this game, it is what it is… but for whatever it is worth, consider more narrative clues for those paying attention for your next masterpiece. ;)

NPC connection levels
This game is gorgeous. It’s art direction. The art technique on display. The music. The graphic design. The effects. And yet… the npc connection levels being just a bold number on the screen… wow. Very, very boring and unthematic. When you consider that it could be a graphic that builds with each earned connection level, a flower with petals, even a number in the style of the paintress, or literally anything that their art dept. could rustle up in a week. In a game so lustrous, this bald and bold number (is it Arial?) stuck out like a sore thumb. As implemented it feels like a late game mechanic to earn the thing, instead of something more intrinsically woven into the fabric of the game. The rest of the UI is serviceable although the picots do become hard to manage late game.

I’m still playing, exploring, and still in flow state, seeing if I can actually defeat some of these titans or level up enough to reshade red portals yellow. That said, if I keep running into things I have no hope of defeating and not find the content that is suitable for my level, I can’t say I can see myself suffering through it. Maybe at this point I should just drop the difficulty.

Thanks for the fantastic game. I wish you and your studio heaps of awards and future success.

[Ratsplat]

General overworld enemy groups are pretty much made for your level the exact moment you have access to them. As for the actual bosses and Chromatics, there's really only 1 of each so if you die from one, you're not just gonna run into the same one next door. And even if they did have skulls above them, it's always worth fighting everything just once as soon as you see them, since you never know. You may end up surprising yourself beating something you had no right to.

A better gradient tutorial won't make sense since later on, gradient attacks become much more varied, and they really just become like any other attack to parry. Watch animation, learn when the attack would actually hit you, hit W at the right moment. They are much easier to avoid than standard parries anyways.