Release Version Feedback/Suggestions/Bugs

[Mr. September]

Greetings! It took me close to 30 hours, but I managed to fully finish the game and got all achievements. It was quite the ride and there are a ton of improvements compared to the previous title, but I think some stuff can still be improved. I love the second entry, and it's my current GOTY of 2025. I really hope to see Ender titles again in the future. Great job!

WARNING: Very long post ahead! Expect nitpicking. Grab some snacks if you (for some reason) intend to read it all.

My difficulty settings for reference:

Maximum HP: 1.0
Attack Strength: 1.6
Break and Status Effect Resistance: 1.7
Break and Status Effect Recovery Speed: 2
Enemy Attack Frequency: 2

Disable Enemy Attack Tells: On

Fragment Bonus: 2.5 (max)

-----Feedback, Suggestions and Bugs Start Here-----

1. A slider for boss HP (and maybe boss damage) in the Difficulty tab would be neat for people who might want to make normal enemies OR the boss weaker/stronger without affecting the other. I would have slightly increased HP for normal enemies if there were individual sliders.

2. Difficulty tab has a marker permanently if enemy attack tells are disabled. I'm perfectly aware of the difficulty I chose, thank you very much. Please remove that marker (or just don't mark the tab when that option is disabled).

3. Muninn and Huginn should not deactivate after death, a boss cutscene, fast travel or a loading screen. Just keep them summoned until the player cancels the ability manually or unequips/switches the ability.

In fact, it would have been perfect if we had to hold the input for deactivation. I had them deactivate on accident many times in the heat of combat, especially during boss fights.

4. An achievement about getting all others would have been nice. The previous game didn't have this, either.

5. Levy has a typo in her English lines after handing you the Mutated Mineral when you find her in the mines (after getting the grapple ability). A line of hers goes "Who knows... Maybe I'll findsomething even better next time..." with "find" and "something" not having a space between each other.

Attire tab has some typos as well. Attuners' instead of Attuner's (or vice versa), for example. I don't even know which one is the typo because both of them can be used in this case, but maybe pick one instead of using both.

6. Homunculus enemies who wield a (shot)gun and a sword don't have any sound effects. No sound while moving about, and their attacks are completely silent.

7. The placeable map markers are low resolution (particularly obvious if you zoom all the way in). Not a huge deal, but still distracting. Would have been nice if they were higher quality.

8. Reinforced Lab Rats and Primordial Insectas can use a nerf across the board. Their health and defense should be lower. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I had to reduce enemy HP and damage multipliers while going through certain sections just because of these two enemies.

9. Declan's Ring costs 9 capacity to equip, but while upgrading it, it says 8 -> 7 which isn't true. It should be 9 -> 8, since upgrading it sets the usage to 8.

10. It would have been nice if Relics that gave conditional bonuses (such as "15% more damage at max HP") showed their buffs on the HUD or as distinct visual effects on Lilac when they are active.

11. Muninn's Seeker ability (when upgraded) sometimes won't shoot two (or three) projectiles for some reason. Seems to happen after I use the Attuner Art for Muninn. Seeker shot targeting also doesn't seem to be omnidirectional. It would be nice if the bird could shoot towards the closest enemy directly instead of shooting horizontally, though. It misses half of the time because of this unless there's a lot of space.

12. Carapaces should show the ability they provide by default when hovered over in the Craftory instead of showing their nonexistent stats. Their stats aren't relevant most of the time, so comparison menu being open by default is a strange choice.

13. Krios and Cetus (the Totems) should give you one-shot prevention unless Instant Death is enabled. For example, if you have 25% HP left and lose it to a single hit, they should still restore you to max and save you from death. There should also be an indicator on the HUD if they are currently active or not.

14. Iron Witch's healer Homunculus summon has too much HP even at 1.0, and I defeated her while I was as upgraded as I could get, which didn't make it the least easier.

15. Enemies with shields are ridiculously annoying. I'm not holding my breath here, but it would have been great if we could break their shields with certain attacks. If not that, at least let us deal Break damage when hitting their shields and break them to create an opening. I ended up skipping most shield enemies because they are just too much of a hassle to kill.

16. Tutorial entries related to elemental effects could be more descriptive. Adding in percentages about how Shock affects enemies would help, for example. We can use clarity for other stuff (like Relics) too. For example, Laborer's Tag reduces damage taken by 10%, but increases the odds of getting status effects by an unknown amount.

17. Trying to equip a Relic while all slots and capacity is full should let us swap a Relic with another instead. Especially useful when switching Relics for boss fights or when experimenting while having all slots occupied. Letting us reorder equipped Relics would also help.

18. Cain's Ring spams "zero healing" on you if you heal for less than 1. Please remove that. It's difficult to estimate how much you are healing from hits/kills when you are getting spammed by zeros.

19. Carapace counterattacks should be omnidirectional and home more aggressively. Some bosses can't be hit by those projectiles as it is now.

20. An option for faster death (and post death) animations would be welcome. The "slowly getting up" animation is only nice to see for the first fifty times or so. It would especially be helpful when failing the same boss over and over again on harder difficulties.

Same for Hati's petting animation after defeating Veol in Crimson Forest. It's nice for the first hundred times, and he's the goodest of boys, but making that optional would be nice.

21. Arcane Turret lasers linger after they die, which looks goofy. I'm not mentioning this because I got hit by them, mind you. I just don't think a laser projectile should outlast its source.

22. There should be a faster way of reaching Velius' and Reibolg's arenas. Maybe teleporters? Perhaps other shortcuts?

23. Fast travelling shouldn't reset your SP bar state. Currently, you lose all SP after travelling, but resting won't reset them.

-----Feedback, Suggestions and Bugs End Here-----

If you got here after reading everything so far, congratz! You are either a dev, or you really like reading. Either way, I hope my feedback ends up being useful. Cheers and have a great day!

[Zunde]

I'd also include the absurd material cost scaling for the final stack of Magic Vials. If you're looking for 100% you're going to want to buy out everything from the shop for maximum upgrades and that means the 20 Vials added by the final shop grimoire.

The issue is the scaling on this stack of vials is actually absurd starting at a little over 8,900 for the first one and I'm at 12/20 bought and the 13th one is costing 76,830 and it's jumping up 10,000 - 20,000 with each one bought.

It's an excessively mean grind for minimal gain that in general the average player won't care about but for those looking to complete everything it's mean for no real reason.

[azuarc]

3 - yes, please
4 - no, thank you. The only achievement I'm missing in Afterimage is the "get all achievements" achievement. I've done two full playthroughs.
12 - I have absolutely zero idea what carapaces even do. The first one you get doesn't even have any text or stats.
13 - yes. I'm fighting a boss right now that has a tendency to two-shot me. The effect never triggers. I go from 50% to dead. What's the point?
14 - That healerbot is simply unkillable without chasing it down for a full 15 seconds. In the meanwhile the boss gets healed and you're getting blasted in the back for not watching the boss carefully.
16 - I think more than that, we should be introduced to player-dealt effects that inflict status effects. Maybe it's my lack of experimentation, but I've only noticed one attack that had a status effect (freeze), so I've just completely disregarded the mechanic and wonder why there are so many relics related to dealing status effects.
23 - that does seem like an odd choice.

Originally posted by Zunde:

I'd also include the absurd material cost scaling for the final stack of Magic Vials. ... costing 76,830 and it's jumping up 10,000 - 20,000 with each one bought. It's an excessively mean grind for minimal gain.

This sounds awful.

[Mr. September]

Yeah. The vial cost gets ridiculously high when you have about 15 left to buy, but I found out that having max capacity (50) doesn't really change much since I wasn't even using more than 35 or 40 at a time even with a glass cannon build.

I ended up cheating the Materials in because I didn't feel like breaking boxes for an hour or longer, . I did the same for the Scraps too, after I got all Relics. Relic upgrade costs could be reduced a little too, actually, now that I think about it.

[Zunde]

It's beyond awful. I have 6 left to buy and just buying 2 more it jumped from 76,830 to 110,630.

[B_50P]

Adding feedback on the sound volume of some abilities:

i immediately noticed the first Yolvan ability having reduced sound compared to the early access, which i absolutely agree with! it's much pleasant to use the ability now. Although, it seems the other pressure & auto ability were forgotten somehow

- Most egregious is Luiseach's first ability, it's VERY Loud for a pressure ability, very uncomfortable to the ears
- Less than that are all of Lorna's abilities, but still loud on the ears
- the 2nd & 3rd abilities for both Yolvan & Luiseach are more reasonable, but still a bit louder than Yolvan's Barrage, which i hope will be the golden standard for the aforementioned abilities

Originally posted by Mr. September:

it's my current GOTY of 2025. I really hope to see Ender titles again in the future

man that'd be awesome for it to get nominated for TGA
can't wait for what the devs will cook next

[Mr. September]

Originally posted by B_50P:

-snip-

Huh. No wonder I didn't notice that. I basically didn't use those two Homunculi abilities, so I didn't notice how loud they were.

However, I'm not surprised to hear that there are sound balancing issues (on top of the current sound-related issues). They really need to take a good, hard look at whoever is responsible of the sound design. The previous game was also lacking in the same manner. Someone's slacking or not taking their damn job seriously, and it's too obvious. I can understand half-assed sound design once, but how did it happen twice? Really makes me wonder.