Amazing game but

[royba607]

This might be one of the most stunning roguelites I've ever played.
The combat is fluid, the enemies are unique and the mechanics are really well done.

I do have some issues with the balance of the game right now though:

-Susanoo is just not fun. He has seemingly undodgeable attacks, has a massive life bar and just spams attacks like crazy. The bosses in this game are one of the few flawed things in the game, but he is by far the worst.
-Potentials are a hit or miss, some are dead ass broken while items seem to do no damage or not even work. Some of the synergies also seem nothing to do with eachother, so you are forced to pick something that isn't in your build to enhance your build.
I do love the system though.
-Tactics are.....meh? They just seem to all scale off of 2 things per element, you grab fire dash? Not almost all talents are burn enhancers without any other way than dash to apply them. You just get flat bonusses on them without really giving more ways to apply the tactics. They also don't really feel like they do much compared to potentials if you get the right ones.
-Characters seem to be either really weak or really strong. Some characters I just won't play because their potentials just aren't good or worth it while others will 1 shot stuff with base abilities.
-Event rooms would be cool, or different modifiers than just heal 3-10% max HP.

This game has an enormous potential and these are just my takes on the game. It's an opinion I hope might help the devs in any way.
Anything to help the game improve.

[The nameless Gamer]

Susanoo has only recently been changed to what he is. Other than his newly added flame pillars on leap attack and that grab combo which kills you, he is okay... for a final boss. Anything harder would be simply too much for a normal difficulty.

[Smurf]

Yeah, I think you wouldn't be saying Susanoo is flawed if you were here for the previous version. Literally there was a week long discussion on the elevator boss being the most unreasonable boss since she was almost objectively harder than Susanoo.

Tactics I also disagree with. They scale off many different things and even have Dual Tactics that require you to be grabbing things from two types during the run. Additionally I've found the Tactics are stronger than the Potentials as a whole. The reason for this is that many Tactics are automatic, but even the ones that require action on your part are very strong. If I'm running fire Tactics, just as a counter argument to your experience, I get to the point where they are destroying the enemies before I get to them. If they kill Samples before I can reach them, that makes them generally stronger than Potentials. Potentials and the synergies of those Potentials determine how strong your character is, sure. But I've found they mostly determine your playstyle and how your run might look for things you can even do vs things you would ever want to do.

Ragna is a very good example of that last point because with certain Potentials, his neutral Special (Carnage Scissor) I can see anywhere between 3 - 5k if I hit an enemy using the midair version. But with other Potentials I may rarely use it in a run because I don't grab what makes it stronger, but something else entirely. It now might not put me back to the 50-60% sweet spot. Or now I have more focus on his basic attacks because of what I picked up.

Meanwhile I can have Tactics that can do 1 - 2k every few seconds without me attacking. These will make up for just about any Potential build, you just have to know what you're building toward. Thankfully the game absolutely picks up on what you're leaning toward and will rotate more of that kind of Tactic in to select. That's my experience anyway. But it's good to see a different perspective so the devs can work hard on delivering the best product for its official release down the road!

[The nameless Gamer]

I also disagree on tactics being weak. They can completely change the outcome though some are definitely better than others. I found myself very fond of fire, poison and rend tactics. Fire and poison can deliver insane amounts of DoT, rend is pretty good against bosses who move around a lot like Susanoo and Arakune (not so much against NAN-01 though, but that's what fire and poison are for). Powerful Mend greatly improves the HP mixtures. The Slime summon is underwhelming as well as the Virulent Bomb but the Land Mine and Umbra Tentacle are great summons. Blade Tactics are horribly weak. Ice tactics... are in the middle. Not bad but not great either. Good against non-boss enemies, somewhat less effective against bosses.

[royba607]

I've had fire in all my early runs and stopped taking it because the game kind of only gave me fire at the start. HP mixture heal full is an auto pick for me.
But what I meant with tactics not doing anything is that it seems to push you into 1 direction and forced you to go there.
You picked rend? You only get rend enhancers. You picked shadow, you only get shadow enhancers. After getting a fire dash, I never get any other way to enable fire anymore, only more fire enhancers.
If I get 1 light spear enabler, I only get light spear enhancers and no other way to summon light spears.
And when those are maxed, I don't get any light tactics anymore at all.
The crouch ones also just feel extremely clunky to use in fast paced combat like this game (later in the stages, early stages are slow)

[Gnodab]

I like this game a lot but there are a ton of flaws. This is a bit of a rant.

1. Bosses are full of artificial difficulty, like attacking you as soon as you enter the arena. New Susanoo in particular gives me nightmares of old school fighting game bosses with blatantly cheap mechanics.

2. Overblown visual effects so you can't see wth you're doing are another problem. It's like the art took precedence for being beautiful, with game readability not considered. With the game's frenetic pace and flashy effects it's hard to notice important information. For instance, enemies that have super armor have a tiny white outline. I never would have noticed because this info isn't in the tutorial. Doing a dash attack build with Ragna? Your giant red drill effect will almost completely cover many human-sized enemies, including Oread and Susanoo.

NAN-01 has a teleport ability where she faintly fades in from the background. Good luck seeing it though with all the bouncing projectiles, electric effects from the floor, vanishing platforms you need to time your jumps to, and all the other stuff going on from your own attacks like Bladestorm and Legacy sigils.

3. Attack warnings lie to you - when my eyes flash red, it means I'm either going to attack you instantly, or possibly wait longer before attacking you. Watcher is especially guilty of this. He has 2 red flash attacks where he attacks instantly, one where he waits 1 second before attacking, and one where he waits 2 seconds before attacking. That is nonsense.

Tree of Origin has 2 abilities. The first ability he uses when you enter the arena and is a giant explosion you have to dodge. The second ability has an almost identical animation of powering up and sending out a green explosion, but it doesn't hurt you. It just revives his minions if they're dead.

It's stuff like this that drives me insane because it doesn't make a lick of sense. It just makes me run in terror from the boss because that's the only solution when the boss' cues aren't reliable at all.

4. Enemy projectiles, as well as outlines for enemy lightning or flame pillar attacks do not have the hitboxes you would expect. Even enemy melee attacks, like the one in this video.

https://youtu.be/9BsVypmGaFE?t=56

At 0:56, watch the shield guy. Attacks with a hitbox that reaches above his head that doesn't match up with the actual shield he's using. By slowing it down and watching in slow motion, apparently the barely visible energy shield effect is the actual hitbox. Another visibility issue.

[Smurf]

Publicado originalmente por Gnodab:

I like this game a lot but there are a ton of flaws. This is a bit of a rant.

1. Bosses are full of artificial difficulty, like attacking you as soon as you enter the arena. New Susanoo in particular gives me nightmares of old school fighting game bosses with blatantly cheap mechanics.

Attacking as soon as you enter is not artificial difficulty. You know you can dodge them or hit them before they can even try to attack you, right? On top of this, the first attack of literally every boss is the easiest thing to avoid.

Artificial difficulty would be like if a boss did a full screen attack with no warning. Or a better example. Different game, but Trails into Reverie is a JRPG that has a particular boss early on that does an attack that lowers everyone's HP to critical levels. Not just that, but it causes a status effect that would allow the boss to pick off everyone if you didn't carry an accessory to prevent that ailment. What makes it artificial isn't even the ailment (since it can be prevented). It's the fact that the game hands you things to work around it like being able to absolutely reflect everything for a few turns, but this move goes right through it. Unless you bring a specific character, there's no way to avoid the move entirely. You just have to eat it.

But back to your point, new Susanoo is somewhat SNK boss syndrome. Really my only gripes are the fact that you can catch (hit) the lanterns when they're coming down from the sky and his dumb stun combo. Everything else seems fine to me and can just be dodged or it's pretty predictable. Personally I just keep feeding him because of the lanterns or he is trying to stun combo and catch me as I'm reaching the lanterns and manages to catch me.

[royba607]

Somehow I found the second Susanoo stage the easiest, used all my potions on the first stage and then died when he was at 300 hp xD I did have a AOE skill build though, so I guess clearing them was just very easy.

I do think visual clarity is a problem yeah, though the FX also are what makes the game stand out so much.
Guess most of my gripes could be cleared by making the player's attack visuals appear behind the enemy, so I can easily read the boss's patterns when they attack.
Susanoo just has a lot of FX himself, that + the player FX is just a lot on some characters.

[royba607]

Publicado originalmente por Smurf:

Yeah, I think you wouldn't be saying Susanoo is flawed if you were here for the previous version. Literally there was a week long discussion on the elevator boss being the most unreasonable boss since she was almost objectively harder than Susanoo.

Tactics I also disagree with. They scale off many different things and even have Dual Tactics that require you to be grabbing things from two types during the run. Additionally I've found the Tactics are stronger than the Potentials as a whole. The reason for this is that many Tactics are automatic, but even the ones that require action on your part are very strong. If I'm running fire Tactics, just as a counter argument to your experience, I get to the point where they are destroying the enemies before I get to them. If they kill Samples before I can reach them, that makes them generally stronger than Potentials. Potentials and the synergies of those Potentials determine how strong your character is, sure. But I've found they mostly determine your playstyle and how your run might look for things you can even do vs things you would ever want to do.

Ragna is a very good example of that last point because with certain Potentials, his neutral Special (Carnage Scissor) I can see anywhere between 3 - 5k if I hit an enemy using the midair version. But with other Potentials I may rarely use it in a run because I don't grab what makes it stronger, but something else entirely. It now might not put me back to the 50-60% sweet spot. Or now I have more focus on his basic attacks because of what I picked up.

Meanwhile I can have Tactics that can do 1 - 2k every few seconds without me attacking. These will make up for just about any Potential build, you just have to know what you're building toward. Thankfully the game absolutely picks up on what you're leaning toward and will rotate more of that kind of Tactic in to select. That's my experience anyway. But it's good to see a different perspective so the devs can work hard on delivering the best product for its official release down the road!

I get what you meant now, I've done my first run since unlocking legendary tactics.
And for the first time the game gave me more ways to apply burn except for dashing.
Just wipe enemies left and right.
It seems like all my runs up till now were just very lackluster in terms of RNG

[Smurf]

Publicado originalmente por royba607:

I get what you meant now, I've done my first run since unlocking legendary tactics.
And for the first time the game gave me more ways to apply burn except for dashing.
Just wipe enemies left and right.
It seems like all my runs up till now were just very lackluster in terms of RNG

I do think the RNG got a lot better when I unlocked every Tactic. Now that I think about it, I think I felt the same back then. Like I was starving for more and I knew it was there. Just had to find it.

When the game rewarded me with a Prototype currency to unlock a character, that's when I started noticing the Tactics not only keep the runs fresh, but can be the backbone of the builds because of the way they work together, regardless of if they're the same type of Tactic. The same type (element) does get very wacky at times though. I don't think I'll forget the run I lost because I wasn't thinking about exploiting what I had.

Basically I was Lambda and one of my evotype inheritances was Dodge Virulent Bomb. This makes it so it drops three balls of poison that explode for damage and venom. I picked up regular Virulent Bomb I think to access this (and this is when I learned before the recent patch what causes those inherited Tactics to activate). Soon after, something I picked up made Virulent Bombs split into two more smaller Virulent Bombs. So now the regular version dropped three, the dodge version would drop nine. Then there was something that made Virulent Bombs bigger, so my screen would be loaded with bombs and they'd destroy everything.

I lost because I prefer a ranged playstyle with Lambda. But the thing I love about this game is the salty runback. I put her into a Mind Challenge and practically exploded whatever advanced boss it was at the time. I think it was Arakune.

I regularly just pick up Tactics I've never collected before, because it unlocked more early on as a reward and you never know what can work unless you explore. Currently the only time I've ever beaten Mind Training's final boss is with a build full of Tactics I'd never seen or used and with Mai, a character I never used before and haven't used since. Everything about that run was a learning experience and yet it's the only time I've won. I know more wins are in store in the future, but that got me really pumped for collecting every Tactic!

[N.O.X]

Es is Crazy against Susano’o, if you could collect his data at the end of the run and play as him, that would be cool, that’s just me making up ideas

[Ace]

Honestly, I've been feeling the "Potentials are a mixed bag" ESPECIALLY badly on Ragna.

His whole thing is lifesteal, yet they made his attacks take more HP than they give back, even when you hit large numbers of enemies. It'll take like 40HP and give back 30HP (A net -10HP loss) when you have the bigger, stronger, ranged death spike potential. And using Blood Kain is just a death sentence for any run. The minute you pop blood kain, you're just bleeding HP for every attack you make unless you're hitting 5+ enemies and even then you're putting yourself in the negatives if you whiff or need to launch a heavy attack (Which causes you to swing a normal first) at a range with the death spike potential.

He just feels bad to play because he's constantly bleeding health for no real reason. It just makes your skills feel worthless against bosses, unless there's some double-up to healing I haven't seen yet but after about 6 hours of play I've still yet to find anything that makes Lifesteal actually worth it.

It absolutely needs a little tweaking. You should be punished for missing, but you should at least come out in the positives, even if only by single digits as long as you're landing your hits. It shouldn't take more HP than it gives back unless you WHIFF .

[Ace]

Publicado originalmente por N.O.X:

Es is Crazy against Susano’o, if you could collect his data at the end of the run and play as him, that would be cool, that’s just me making up ideas

Or maybe have a mode where if you mix Terumi + Hakumen "Data" he becomes Susan?

Or like a legendary Hakumen potential that lets you become him like an install? That'd be awesome for the slower paced, defensive Hakumen to have an "Aggressive" install mode, while also encouraging more people to play Hakumen as....currently he's kinda just okay lol

[la creatura]

Susano'o is actually pretty fair right now in most cases, even if his individual hits deal frankly absurd amounts of damage if you aren't playing Hakumen and pretty much only Hakumen... the issue is that it's really hard to learn how to actually dodge him in the first place, but it's very possible to avoid his attacks, although some characters will struggle more than others and triple dash is a lifesaver.

Tactics are also pretty strong, it's just that without some luck they can get boring. I've noticed that a lot of the cooler ones are either duos (so rare) or have multiple prerequisite tactics you need to pick up, which can feel really bad when you just end up not getting them.

As for characters, they're actually fairly well balanced assuming you get optimal loadouts, from what I can tell, but some are way, WAY more reliant on hitting good potentials/potential synergies as far as I can tell. You can take someone like Hibiki or Hakumen further than Noel or Ragna with far more ease if you roll bad potentials, because their base kits are just... much easier to use and hit harder, so they don't rely on massive stat boosts from potentials or the absurd base numbers that some can have. Ragna's a particularly awful offender, though, because his whole "trade HP for lifesteal skills" thing doesn't even work unless you're on death's edge already, since it just takes so much HP and heals so little without potentials boosting it a ton.

The game is still in early access, though, so hopefully most of this can be fixed up - most of it's just balance or more diverse tactics selection before a run hits it's late stages. My biggest personal issue is visual clutter on certain characters - I had a Kokonoe run that was actually going pretty well, but there was so many lasers on my screen that they were completely covering attacks and telegraphing from almost every enemy in most rooms, and god forbid bosses - and they weren't doing enough damage to kill them before they attacked, which is fair enough - but the fact that my optimal damage made it impossible to see what my enemies were doing ended that run pretty fast. Kokonoe in general is awful for visual clarity, even if I like what they were going for with her kit. Something has to be done about the ability to actually see what's happening in some scenarios, and I do agree that some bosses have far too similar windups for different moves sometimes, or just moves that are difficult to see in general, although that is obviously dependent on which boss we're talking about.

[The nameless Gamer]

Publicado originalmente por la creatura:

Susano'o is actually pretty fair right now in most cases, even if his individual hits deal frankly absurd amounts of damage if you aren't playing Hakumen and pretty much only Hakumen... the issue is that it's really hard to learn how to actually dodge him in the first place, but it's very possible to avoid his attacks, although some characters will struggle more than others and triple dash is a lifesaver.

Actually, he's not fair. His attacks have to be dodged in specific ways but they can't be told apart. And even though there is a thread stating that clearly, nothing was done about it. I've fought bosses which literally OHK the player with certain attacks (Momodora - Reverie under the moonlight, Minoria, Anno: Mutationem on Hell difficulty, Frontier Hunter - Erza's wheel of fortune on maximum difficulty) and they all have one thing in common: the player KNOWS which attack is coming and can evade accordingly. With Susanoo, that is NOT the case. He just walks around or stands and talks... then without any sort of startup, he just unleashes an attack which has to be dodged by an extremely narrow margin in a very specific way or frame-perfectly. I understand that there are people who find this game's hard mode to be easy but they don't make up the whole audience for it.

[la creatura]

Publicado originalmente por The nameless Commander:

Publicado originalmente por la creatura:

Susano'o is actually pretty fair right now in most cases, even if his individual hits deal frankly absurd amounts of damage if you aren't playing Hakumen and pretty much only Hakumen... the issue is that it's really hard to learn how to actually dodge him in the first place, but it's very possible to avoid his attacks, although some characters will struggle more than others and triple dash is a lifesaver.

Actually, he's not fair. His attacks have to be dodged in specific ways but they can't be told apart. And even though there is a thread stating that clearly, nothing was done about it. I've fought bosses which literally OHK the player with certain attacks (Momodora - Reverie under the moonlight, Minoria, Anno: Mutationem on Hell difficulty, Frontier Hunter - Erza's wheel of fortune on maximum difficulty) and they all have one thing in common: the player KNOWS which attack is coming and can evade accordingly. With Susanoo, that is NOT the case. He just walks around or stands and talks... then without any sort of startup, he just unleashes an attack which has to be dodged by an extremely narrow margin in a very specific way or frame-perfectly. I understand that there are people who find this game's hard mode to be easy but they don't make up the whole audience for it.

Are those attacks hard mode exclusive? If so, I've just started doing hard mode today after getting a pretty clean clear on every character (0-1 HP Mixes used, minimal rests outside of entropy clearing), and if they actually aren't readable, I suppose I've just gotten lucky. It has felt like at least on normal, they've been manageable and follow a fairly consistent rhythm, and the fact that you can iframe (or parry, in Hakumen's case) means that it's easier to avoid damage regardless of which direction he's attacking. If it's actually unfair on normal, then that's my bad and I've just been very very lucky, I suppose, but it's seemed more than manageable for the most part. If it's hard mode only for those attacks, then I haven't noticed it because I wasn't playing hard until I got more confident in my ability to actually play the game and had a bunch of higher end evotypes to inherit passives from, but it should absolutely be changed in either case.

My bad.