I wanted to like this game and I tried to give it a chance, but the dev just keeps running it into the ground, so I honestly can't recommend this game to anyone in its current state. They just keep nerfing everything into oblivion while not changing the parameters of the monsters.

So yeah, imagine you're having fun, clearing some floors, exploring deeper and whatnot, then suddenly you become 75-80% weaker (yes, it's that bad) and all of the monsters still got to retain their damage while you were forced to try and kill them with a nerf bat. Random encounters are fine, it's whatever, but it's the witches that roam the floors you have to watch out for.

You can't escape them (looking at you, floor 7) because they'll just PULL you towards them even if you try to run by (another thing the dev needs to fix is if you're at least 1 tile away and try to get away from them, stop magnetizing your party to the enemy and giving them a free ambush, just let us run, man). Look, I get it. It's early access. Things change.

A lot of us are just disappointed at the moment (also why it currently has 'Mixed' reviews and has been stuck that way since day 1) because the dev doesn't seem to know what they want to do with the game. They keep changing so much and making the experience worse for the players.

I'm uninstalling. Good luck with your future projects, Stromatosoft. This will be the last product I ever support from you.

EDIT: I should also mention that this isn't my first DRPG. I've been playing games like Wizardry since the 90's or so. I generally try and compare new DRPGs to those I've played in the past. I also wanna use this as an opportunity point out that there's another weird design choice for this game.

He specifically designed the game with only 5 party members, yet we have 3 empty spaces for the front row and 3 empty spaces for the back row. Whenever you return from the dungeon, you can't form 3 groups of 2, so you're forced to do something like:

Train - 2 people
Gather - 2 people
Cook - 1 person

Why is it not 6 members...? Why is it always 1 member left out, feeling like an extra wheel? You'll understand why this becomes a problem when you play the game because that individual will always want to try and tear apart your partners and ruin their relationship whenever you come back from a run because they don't have anyone.

It's a terrible system. You want a good DRPG? Just go play Undernauts. That's my recommendation.

From what I've played so far, Witch & Lilies lacks a lot of polish in its current state for me to fully recommend it... But it still has a lot of potential to be a good game given the proper fixes, and I don't think it deserves the rating it currently has.

If you've played through Etrian Odyssey games (and more particularly the very first one), lots of things should feel familiar. It's a good thing in a way since it provides a solid foundation in terms of gameplay, but at the same time I get why it might be a bit disappointing since it doesn't feel as fresh as it could be. Plus it's lacking in the QoL department (no bulk sell, no "2x back" in town to leave for the dungeon, the UI cursor isn't repositioned where it last was, no "tips" for button prompts...), and balance doesn't seem too great from what I've played and read. The only real novelty element is the yuri relationships between your party members, but even that feels a bit half-baked at the moment with too sudden developments, repetitive scenes, and apparently even nonsensical situations later on.

The English translation, as far as I can tell, ranges from "pretty good" to "obviously machine translated". Some bits seem to have been properly translated by an actual human being (though I haven't cross-checked with the Japanese version), while others are much more stilted or sometimes just painful to read. There's also a few bugs related to the English script like broken UI elements (guild, skill tree), untranslated text (in the options, in scenes after getting back in town...) and even missing text (looking at you, "job.change")... And that's not even talking about typos and other "typical" errors. Overall, playing it in English is not a smooth experience at the moment.

There's also quite a number of glitches that are visibly independent from the English version, like the UI coming back up too early in town, the UI confusing an enemy for a dead one, some obvious light leak on the very first floor, long loading times (granted I installed this on my HDD but come on, this is a DRPG, not the latest AAA game)... These are minor issues mind you, but they add up to contribute to the feeling that this still lacks polish.

Another problem is that graphical options are lacklustre. Resolution maxes out at 1080p, there's only a v-sync toggle and off you go. It sucks because the game's art is actually one of its strongest points, but it's stuck at 1080p. And I'm not asking for anything really fancy but things like anti-aliasing, texture filtering and arbitrary resolutions based on the monitor's are definitely feasible.

As said above the game's art direction is pretty good and seems to indicate that it has some production value, actual love, or both put into it. Character designs are good and colourful for the most part (though I have to wonder why they all seem to have yellow-ish scleras?), backgrounds are absolutely stunning, and monsters are uncanny. On that note, the art style for enemies clashes with the characters'; it may be intentional for all I know, but it's a bit jarring. The UI however needs some extra polish: some parts feel a bit bloated, some are not displaying properly in English, there's a lack of consistency in how text is handled, and things sometimes lack readability (especially during fights: no background for party status, elements getting in the way of seeing enemies). Last but not least: the music is pretty good for the most part. My first impressions are that the soundtrack is not as great as I hoped it would be when I heard the main theme, but it still gets the job done.

All in all, I still feel like there's a genuinely good game deep down, but it's definitely rough in its current state and I wouldn't recommend it unless you really want to play a brand new Etrian Odyssey-inspired DRPG. Otherwise, just stick to more popular DRPGs.

This isn't ready.

The idea is cool, but between utterly terrible class mechanics, bad balance and a number of untranslated sections and bugs I can't recommend it. EO developed classes to synergize and work with the system. This is just a lot of stuff pasted together to look like EO.

It's gonna need every bit of the year of Early Access to fix this mess. And maybe more.

Oh and the Yuri elements are... bad. The ones in your team are rushed and flimsy (and require knowledge of Japanese to get the slightest bit of value out of). The quests are honestly creepy. It gives off a very 'straight dude's fetish' vibe. I could overlook it if the gameplay had some oomp. But it doesn't.