Overall Game Feedback

[Nitroglycerine]

Finished my Iron-man run on very hard with 100% Achievements acquired, so time to offer my final feedback!

Let me just say I really enjoyed the game.
But these were some thoughts I had while finishing the game.


1. The game was probably the hardest early on, and got progressively easier. I would say the toughest phase was during the 3*-5* missions (roughly level 6-14). That was when you kind of lacked the AOEs/skills to eliminate the huge swarms of enemies you would be facing. So I ended up fleeing a lot, which was very effective because the game makes it very easy to flee...

2. I didn't really use the Church early on, so early game was all about mages (who stand back and are never injured), and cycling lots of melee adventurers to protect said mages, as they would get injuries. This eventually built up a massive reserve of gold (over 100K) which let me plow through the rest of the game without worry.

3. Bard broke the game at level 16, and totally broken at level 20.
- Map-wide spells that restore BP/SP, and 3x Encourage (30% damage increase).
- Even crazier is when you reach lv20, and unlock the Party Perk "Groupies" which doubles the Bard effects.
- From then on, every enemy died on turn 1 (including the Emperor, and Vorathax!!!). The sole exception was the Emperor's Champion, who took 1.5 turns (needed my Monk's True Damage to kill).
- They are OP to the point that I seriously considered replacing my lightning mage with a 2nd Bard, so that it can help keep BP up, and cast the Level 20 "Act Again" spell on one of my primary DPS. The only reason I didn't was because I didn't want to spend the time building a 2nd Bard to level 20.

4. Beyond Limit is just too good when combined with a Bard and the "Cloak of Bravery" Accessory.

5. Monks with True Damage is probably too good. Specifically, Ki Strike has no cooldown, allowing you to spam the skill and dish out insane single target damage if you can get into range.

6. The Party Skill "Move Together" is crazy.
- Since everyone's movement is set to the leader's movement -1, you just need to max the leader's movement. Which is easy for a Bard because:
- Quick +1
- The Title "The Trickster" gives +1
- Scout Armor (Rare Leather Armor) +1
- Pathfinder Skill +1
- Finally, there are 2 Epic Equipment that give movement: Scoundrel Mask and Boots of Mobility. So with everything, you can have your party's base movement at 8!

7. Linked to #2. So early-game was all about mage firepower. But by late-game, the enemies were all killed before my mage even got to act. 🤣
My standard battle ended up as follows:
- Bard casts BP increase and ATK increase (30% ATK)
- All characters will use Beyond Limits to get up to 6 additional AP to keep attakcing.
- Daryl Ranger/Beastmaster is a Nightshade with Steady Aim (30% ATK), casts Shadowstep (30% ATK), Poison weapon, Adrenaline (reduce AP of skills by 1), teleport forward (artifact), and then launches Multishot, Rain of Arrows, and kills whoever is left with Poison dart or the other ranged strikes.
- If there are any enemies remaining, it was easy to mop up with Misasa (Reaper) or my Saint (Doctor of Death, casting Cleansing Firestorm, Mass Heal, and Heal for damage).

8. There are no end-game staff for mages that offer increased spell potency? So the rare staffs are basically comparable to the Legendary staffs (since increased potency is comparable to magical penetration in terms of effect on damage output, the only difference would be 2 additional gem slots).

9. Same thing with accessories. My mage carried a Token of Thunder and Gauntlet of the Lightning Mage the whole game, eventually replacing the Gauntlet with a Ring of Teleportation.

10. Due to equipment, it feels like only 2 of the mage paths are viable:
- Lightning has: Thunder Queen Title + casting Lightning (Range) and Chain lightning, and the craftable armor gives +2 movement. I ended up with 135 Lightning Potency, which was clutch in mid-game (for comparison, Dark Potency seems capped at 60?).
- Fire (Craftable Phoenix Robe offering Fire penetration, and the possible Ifrit trait).

11. The ability to endlessly scout and fight the various monsters made legendary gear feel very generic instead. And it was honesty unnecessary for my party on Very hard (they were dying in 1 shot with rare/epic gear, so no reason to upgrade).

12. After my characters hit level 15, everyday I would just heal my core 6 in the Church, paying them a bonus to keep them happy, and then jump into a battle with them. The sole exception was when 1 of them "Disappeared for 9 days".

13. Needing to bring a Shieldbearer to save Nora was silly. I literally brought 5 of my 6 main characters, and a level 1 Defender.

14. In end-game, the classes that can attack with 2AP are ridiculously good. That's:
- Ranger/Beastmaster, Monk, Assassin/Reaper, and Saint (with Doctor of Death Title so heals do damage). Dragon Knight, Swordmaster and even the WItch weren't close to comparable (all 3 were tested in my party, and dropped. Well, in the case of Witch, I simply switched back to using lightning spells, but she was generally to slow to participate).

15. The mission to reach the "Widely Known Rank" was really tedious! Just keep trying again and again until you figure out the right order through the 7 gates, with no hints as to what you were doing until you went through it a few times and realized!

16. I feel like your starting 3 adventurers should be fixed, rather than randomized. Just so people don't have to "save scum".

17. Crap. There was one other important feedback... but I can't remember anymore. 😭 If it comes to mind I'll add it later.

[TheGreenGuy]

Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you did enjoy it. But, I can see that there is still balancing left to do.

[Cutlass Jack]

Originally posted by TheGreenGuy:

Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you did enjoy it. But, I can see that there is still balancing left to do.

Just don't overdo it. Not everyone is a min/maxer and heavy nerfs make things less fun for everyone.

[Pure_Poetry]

Good feedback imho. I concur with all the above with some minor addendums :
- General / disclaimer : the game has sooo many layers that you should feel immensely proud @Greenguy to have make such a good and balanced game overall so far. Yes there are many "small exploits", but this is to be expected, and will be regularly need to be re-balanced so that there is no perfect meta going forward. The more people play the game, the more feedback and the more balanced it will get. No surprise there.
- I won't re-stress what Nitro mentioned as it is all accurate imho with the following comments :
10. to me swiftcasting > elemental titles. Overall titles are really great addition to the game and offer great variety. Well played.
13. Shield indeed brings a new option, but is not mandatory AFAIK to save Nora
16. I'd just disagree on this one, but it is a personal opinion. Randomness is story-friendly here imho. It is already partly scripted (1 trait for each), and I personnaly dismissed 2 of the 3 starting adv. in my current +70/+70/+50 run. Feels OK. And you can still scout then if needed.
General 2 : your meta is close to mine but class-wise we diverge, showing that there is sill lots of possibilities and good balance overall, despite some OP/broken combos.

[Hans]

Originally posted by Cutlass Jack:

Just don't overdo it. Not everyone is a min/maxer and heavy nerfs make things less fun for everyone.

I'd like to second Cutlass Jack, trying to balance around metagamers in a singe player game is not needed. There are plenty of ways in the menu players can self-nerf or buff the enemies or edit the configuration file to make things prohibitively expensive.

The sheer amount of traits/feats/abilities is absolutely amazing and gives players practically endless options to deal with enemy encounters. That alone is amazing, but the BP system addition is genius and adds a layer of depth other games from large studios can't scratch.

To approach "balance" would be to introduce an equal level of cheese into the enemies that spawn or disable some of the systems. For example:

- Enemies that share a massive HP pool. You have to fight all 20 until their collective HP is gone.
- Elites that reflect damage. You can no longer go Super Saiyan and burst them down without certainly murdering yourself.
- Enemies that stay hidden and have 100% chance to avoid/dodge AoE spells. You can only single target them with true sight activated.
- Elites that are immune to all but one damage type.
- Enemies/elites that are immune to being taunted.
- Vary the enemy AI. Bandit maniacs/ranged units could be coded to always target the lowest HP party member.
- An improved version of impatient, enemies ALWAYS go first every round.
- Disable the BP system completely. No more guaranteed hits etc.
- Remove death resist completely. Players can already set this to 0 in the config file, default is 50 percent and seems to scale past 100 late game. If you hit 0 HP once, you're dead.
- Conversely, give all enemies death resist. Some enemies currently survive with 1 HP once, but they would get the same mechanic the players do, a base percent chance to survive a deathblow and heal back a percentage of their health.

[Nitroglycerine]

Originally posted by TheGreenGuy:

Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you did enjoy it. But, I can see that there is still balancing left to do.

It's an impressive game as it is!
I would offer this idea for consideration: Balance is not necessarily fun. Thus, balance isn't truly required for a single player game. Fun is the main goal. However, I do feel like end-game was a bit tedious and boring, because it became way too easy. So it's not necessarily about balancing the game, but making things more interesting/challenging later on.

For example, that could involve reducing the amount of "Beyond limit" AP you can receive and such.

And also, I just remembered what the last feedback was!

#17: When giving up the tier 3 item. It should only downgrade them to the tier 2 class if you're in that tier 3 class (ex: Swordmaster > Monk, Dragon Knight > Knight, etc.) If they are in a different class, don't force the class change!!!

Example: My Misara was a Swordmaster, and then became a Reaper. She got the Title "The Weapon Master". When one of my main characters had disappeared, i decided to remove the Swordmaster tier 3 item so someone else could potentially equip it.

It changed me from my Reaper class to Monk, and even worse, removed my Weapon Master title since Monks don't use weapons. So I had to re-grind the Title from scratch.

#18: Scoundrel Mask is way too OP, since you can activate it at the end of your turn to make your characters impossible to attack. Very few enemies have True SIght to be able to target your hidden characters.

[Nitroglycerine]

Originally posted by Pure_Poetry:

10. to me swiftcasting > elemental titles. Overall titles are really great addition to the game and offer great variety. Well played.
13. Shield indeed brings a new option, but is not mandatory AFAIK to save Nora
16. I'd just disagree on this one, but it is a personal opinion. Randomness is story-friendly here imho. It is already partly scripted (1 trait for each), and I personnaly dismissed 2 of the 3 starting adv. in my current +70/+70/+50 run. Feels OK. And you can still scout then if needed.
General 2 : your meta is close to mine but class-wise we diverge, showing that there is sill lots of possibilities and good balance overall, despite some OP/broken combos.

10. For end-game, I do agree, because swiftcasting with the final tier spell (that uses all 4 elements) is really powerful.

However, I do think Lightning Queen has its benefits in the challenging mid-game portion.
So before level 20, you would end up:
Lightning Focus: Chain lightning hitting 4 targets, wearing an armor that gives your mage +2mv and +50 dodge for 2 turns.
Swiftcasting: 2AP attacks with -10% magical attack and 30% less potency than Lightning Focus.

13. It's not required? For you to block the 2nd arrow?

16. I see it as being a new type of start, where there are say... 10 fixed starting parties you can select from. That way, they can be designed with interesting traits and relationships and such, and allows players to decide how difficult they want their starting game to be based on the starting characters.

Also, I played without scouting as an option (which is the way TheGreenMan felt the game should be played), and that was why I used Elan, Alissa, Dylan, Misara in my party. They were far above and beyond any recruits I saw in my 160 day campaign, except for 1 talented character I got near the end with STR, DEX and INT growth all at 50.

Oh, the last 2 in my main party were: Bard, and starting mage turned Saint (she started with Talented 🤣).

[Nitroglycerine]

For what it's worth, here's screenshots of my party's final stats and traits!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243242052
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243242033
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3242960812
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243242063
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243241969
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243242010

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243247456

[Pure_Poetry]

Originally posted by Nitroglycerine:

13. It's not required? For you to block the 2nd arrow?

You need a shield to block the 2nd arrow but you can still save her if you don't.

Also, nice screenshots btw. Where did you get the blessing of Fenrir and what does it bring to the table ?
Also, what's the horn epic accessory (Misasa's) ?

[Nitroglycerine]

Fenrir was from an encounter in the Tundra. I had my character chase after a mysterious figure it saw in the tundra. The blessing gave something like +20 or 30 endurance growth and +50 or 100 ice resistance.

Horn was +30 bleed chance and poison chance, and increased damage for each. Useful for ensuring cultists die rather than having to make 2 attacks to take each one down.