Very promising but the rhythm aspects are cumbersome

[FPzero]

I really enjoyed a lot about this demo from the traversal and exploration to the characters and dialogue. It was a lot of fun to platform around flipping gravity every which way to solve puzzles and make it further in.

However, the one consistent problem I had was dealing with rhythm and combat. This is coming from someone who does generally have a sense of rhythm, but I think you may have gone overboard with some of these features. The parry eye walls work well in fours, but adding triplet and quintuplet groupings is a bit much, especially the latter. That's not easy for not-rhythmically minded people. Beyond that, it felt far too difficult to fight most enemies when they are constantly attacking on beat, especially in regards to attack telegraphing. The knight automaton in Greenbelt by the red torch lighting puzzles was a big culprit here, having two different attack strings with different rhythm patterns that both start the same. The hitboxes of swings were also frequently much larger than I thought they were, or seemed to track my location more heavily than I expected.

I got to the Doctor but did not beat him because he is so aggressive, attacking constantly with functionally no window to land an attack once the music kicks in. The idea of a boss attacking to the background music is very cool, but the problem is that I feel like I need to know the music before I can fight him so that I'll have an idea of when his attacks are going to change and how.

As it is right now, I feel like the combat is too difficult compared to the general feeling and exploration of the rest of the game. I hope some steps are taken to make it either easier, less rhythmically intense or give the player some accessibility options, because I really do want to keep exploring this game when the full version releases.

[Kiavik]

You don't need to attack the Doctor. Just parry or dodge everything he does and run until he gets tired and then you just whack him until he's dead. You can hit him before he gets tired, but all it does is it fills up a bar that gives you back one hp every time it gets completely full. I wish the game made that more clear because this is an awesome demo otherwise.

[FPzero]

Well thank you for that knowledge! I did manage to survive him by focusing on parrying and dodging. Like you said though, it's not clear at all that the boss isn't meant to be fought like every other enemy. They all require a proactive approach, where he's purely reactive. It was a cool fight to witness but I still hope some better accessibility or signposting is implemented.

[EPICVJ]

i agree that the rhythm needs tuning, some time physically blocking the projectiles is awkward and inconsistent, most of the damage i took was because it looked like i was parrying but it wasn't on time so it still hit me, i get the rhythm angle, but there's a little common sense lost because of it, you either have to make projectiles consistent on sight or sound, not to mention they often track through walls.

[Reimu Hakurei x3]

Originally posted by Kiavik:

You don't need to attack the Doctor. Just parry or dodge everything he does and run until he gets tired and then you just whack him until he's dead. You can hit him before he gets tired, but all it does is it fills up a bar that gives you back one hp every time it gets completely full. I wish the game made that more clear because this is an awesome demo otherwise.

Wait, you can dodge him?! Oh fudge yeah.

Nvm I died tragically.

[Au Ellai]

They rhythm aspects are like 80% of the game. That's like the one thing they *can't* reduce or it'll destroy the soul of the game (okay, one of two things, alongside the cake). There's a ton of different design aspects to help, and I can see them refining it to make it better/easier, but reducing the rhythm aspect just can't be an option. If anything they just need to go in on it even harder.