Demo Feedback

[PodX140]

Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of the Atelier series and the Dark Cloud games, so this game should be right up my alley.

Unfortunately, there are so many issues that are holding me back from properly enjoying the game.

1. The control scheme is one of the worst I've seen in any game. If I'm using the mouse I can do _most_ things, and yet can't interact with shops without clicking a tiny button at the top right. Why can't I just click on the sign? At times escape isn't even the key used to back out of a menu, which is a cardinal sin of UI design, not even in just gaming but anything to do with computing at all.

2. The battle transitions are downright obnoxious. The pacing is completely thrown off by them, instead of combat flowing, I'm constantly waiting on the exact same 'cutscene' to play multiple times a turn.

3. When gaining mana, why do I have to spam click on a skill to then have it enabled to use it? There should either be a phase here where you select what skills you want to use, or simply make them use automatically when they have the mana. Missing a skill activation because you failed to click on a skill after gaining the mana for it feels awful.

Honestly, the control scheme alone might be enough to prevent me from getting the game. Add on the glacial pace of combat thanks to the obnoxious phase transition cutscenes (and seemingly no way to speed up any of the animations), I just can't remotely get into this game despite it sounding like a dream combination of games.

Please please please review the above and fix them, because this could entirely be a fantastic game, but I and many other will never even know before bouncing off from a horrible first impression.

[Llyes]

+1

Even with 2x speed battles are entirely held hostage to turn transition scenes

edit: not that I expect any developer to ever see this

[Axariel]

1. It is pretty awkward, and I would say it probably was a somewhat bad design choice, but I have managed to adapt.

2. All of the transitions are kind of off-putting. The in-battle one is probably the most bearable one. The loading screens during fast travel and the initial transition to the puzzles really bother me.

3. I don't really mind this. You can queue up a skill after you transfer mana by pressing the button once. You can also do the same to queue up a cast in the middle of any action prior to the end of turn. Auto-casting would take away a useful strategic element. Spamming is not helpful and may un-queue your cast.

Still, I think that the game is pretty good for the devs level of experience with this type of game. So many first- or second-time JRPGs from lower budget dev teams are significantly worse. I think it is especially commendable given how original the mechanics and/or their implementation happen to be.

[Fazh741]

3. spamming to perform skills is bad and that's why I'm not going to purchase the full game.

[Llyes]

Originally posted by Fazh741:

3. spamming to perform skills is bad and that's why I'm not going to purchase the full game.

They clearly knew it was a problem since have a 2x speed option, they even almost remove the forced pauses if you turn the battle text to "simplified" in options, but it's still a complete mess, I have no idea what they were thinking. Especially since turning the puzzle narration off does absolutely nothing to improve that part at all, at least they don't play the (skippable) goddess room puzzle intro every single time.