Gets too hard too fast.

[Turbo-Laser Ninjadragon]

I was passingly interested in this game but it just gets too difficult too fast. It should ramp up a bit more slowly because frankly it's not compelling enough to motivate a player to keep trying after execution, that's kind of a heavy loss and returning to the start of the round will never turn the tide of a play through unless you only made a very minor mistake and you know what it was...but of course there is no way to know since it's all intrigue wrapped in mystique.

the tutorial does not prepare the player for the level of challenge to follow and the challenge needs to increase more slowly.

too unforgiving.

[sazandorable]

Kinda disagree. I would appreciate an "easy"/"story"-mode in order to have more freedom to explore the myriads of story branches, or a multipe saves & load system (like many visual novels have); but imo, the game being immediately and randomly hard and unforgiving is the point of "The Sultan's Game": that's how you end up forced to do horrible actions.

+ with the achievements and the Fate shop, you are rewarded for playing a lot of games even if you died quickly.

+ the "return to start of today/previous day" buttons allow you to rewind infinitely, which I've absolutely done when I had a long and great game going and just messed up a short-term event.

[Turbo-Laser Ninjadragon]

So you disagree but then immediately admit that it does and claim that's the point.

[OnionBreath]

So as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the change notes seem to imply that when the full version comes out there's going to be more routes, more characters, quests, etc., as well as plans for tailoring certain questlines to not be so punishing and subject to luck (Nyla's for instance). This alone should hopefully make it easier to achieve a win without having to reverse 10 turns at a time.

As it stands, it's excruciatingly difficult to successfully rebel against the Sultan as there just aren't enough quest and character opportunities to collect Intent cards before the game runs out. Often, it's possible to be completely screwed out of this ending right from the first turn and not know it as time-sensitive quests can open up too early, long before you're ready or have the appropriate cards to handle them, or too late, when you're fast approaching your last Sultan card. You can get tens of hours into a run only to realize you were hopeless from the start and that no amount of redoing decisions will fix things. That can be incredibly frustrating, so I'm hoping there will just be more quests so that even if some aren't possible, you'll at least have other opportunities later, as long as you make sound strategic decisions. I'm not saying luck and RNG shouldn't be a factor (much of the threat and stakes are in having to make very hard choices with limited options), but the goal should be to make things more reliant on strategy than luck so the player's actions and planning matter more.

Aside from that, you are right that the tutorial really doesn't prepare you for what lies ahead. Sure, it introduces you to the Sultan cards and how they work, but the game fundamentally changes once we go from the Sultan's POV to the protagonist's. I think the UI needs to be explained more as I notice many streamers who blind play just never even notice the power of things like the "I am Thinking" section and end up getting frustrated, because they feel they have no options in situations where they have more than they think. That said, I don't want to see the game get too hand-holdy as part of the fun is that mystery of not entirely knowing what's ahead and having to make choices you don't want to make based on what you prioritize (i.e. do I use this gold bloodshed to kill my wife so I can continue the game and hopefully overthrow the Sultan, or do I escape with her and abandon that goal).

[Turbo-Laser Ninjadragon]

Originally posted by OnionBreath:

So as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the change notes seem to imply that when the full version comes out there's going to be more routes, more characters, quests, etc., as well as plans for tailoring certain questlines to not be so punishing and subject to luck (Nyla's for instance). This alone should hopefully make it easier to achieve a win without having to reverse 10 turns at a time.

As it stands, it's excruciatingly difficult to successfully rebel against the Sultan as there just aren't enough quest and character opportunities to collect Intent cards before the game runs out. Often, it's possible to be completely screwed out of this ending right from the first turn and not know it as time-sensitive quests can open up too early, long before you're ready or have the appropriate cards to handle them, or too late, when you're fast approaching your last Sultan card. You can get tens of hours into a run only to realize you were hopeless from the start and that no amount of redoing decisions will fix things. That can be incredibly frustrating, so I'm hoping there will just be more quests so that even if some aren't possible, you'll at least have other opportunities later, as long as you make sound strategic decisions. I'm not saying luck and RNG shouldn't be a factor (much of the threat and stakes are in having to make very hard choices with limited options), but the goal should be to make things more reliant on strategy than luck so the player's actions and planning matter more.

Aside from that, you are right that the tutorial really doesn't prepare you for what lies ahead. Sure, it introduces you to the Sultan cards and how they work, but the game fundamentally changes once we go from the Sultan's POV to the protagonist's. I think the UI needs to be explained more as I notice many streamers who blind play just never even notice the power of things like the "I am Thinking" section and end up getting frustrated, because they feel they have no options in situations where they have more than they think. That said, I don't want to see the game get too hand-holdy as part of the fun is that mystery of not entirely knowing what's ahead and having to make choices you don't want to make based on what you prioritize (i.e. do I use this gold bloodshed to kill my wife so I can continue the game and hopefully overthrow the Sultan, or do I escape with her and abandon that goal).

yeah that's all I was saying, but on steam there's always somebody happy to jump on a thread they don't even care about just to tell you you're wrong for I guess... the low hanging catharsis of it?

thanks for being an exception.

[Turbo-Laser Ninjadragon]

"I'm thinking" took me Sooooo long to try. I thought it was like ...idk...skeleton cards? some kind of extra deck with nothing in it yet?


there are a lot of deck building games where your dead cards go into a deck, exactly in that spot and that deck often has a death motif, so for this reason it never occurred to me to drop anything on it additionally it looks kinda like MAYBE if you do you might be killing that card.

I didn't discover that it had utility until I was actually so frustrated that I was TRYING to kill one of my cards.

weird.

[sazandorable]

Originally posted by Turbo-Laser Ninjadragon:

So you disagree but then immediately admit that it does and claim that's the point.

What I said is: I agree that it is hard. I disagree that it is too hard and that this is an issue that should be changed. I think it being unreasonably hard serves the game, its mechanics and its story.

(But I am also in support of accessibility and no-frustration modes in general. I am Not Good at a lot of games and many of my friends are disabled in ways that prevent them from playing many games to completion.
So, I suggest alternative modes and aids that one can choose to use, rather than removing the difficulty entirely.)

[Turbo-Laser Ninjadragon]

Originally posted by sazandorable:

Originally posted by Turbo-Laser Ninjadragon:

So you disagree but then immediately admit that it does and claim that's the point.

What I said is: I agree that it is hard. I disagree that it is too hard and that this is an issue that should be changed. I think it being unreasonably hard serves the game, its mechanics and its story.

(But I am also in support of accessibility and no-frustration modes in general. I am Not Good at a lot of games and many of my friends are disabled in ways that prevent them from playing many games to completion.
So, I suggest alternative modes and aids that one can choose to use, rather than removing the difficulty entirely.)

It sounds a little like you're addressing my personal skill as a gamer rather than the point.
I don't have an issue with difficult games, but there's a curve of adjustment, follow? this game basically doesn't have all that much of one. We're basically talking about a square wave here.

Learning fast? I don't have an issue with that either but there's a difference between a FAST transition from one phase of gameplay to another and a sudden change of state.

[JackPhoenix]

I've been playing the demo. I don't mind the game being difficult, but the randomness that can screw you over with no way to mitigate it isn't difficulty, it's just randomnes.

Nyal's event that require specific card in a specific quality to resolve... and has a time limit with no option to get her to wait until you can actually do what she wants, as you only have one option to change the card is a good example. Same with other cards that require you to get a specific event to use. If you get golden extravagance early, you can throw a pile of gold at it to upgrade your estate, and getting the gold is the difficulty (not that it's particularly difficult). If you get golden carnality, you better hope the [gold rank person I won't name because spoilers] will randomly show up in [location] within the 7 days limit, or you redraw something you can solve, because you won't get another chance. You can't even save scum what card you get, as (from my limited testing) the order of cards seems to be pre-determined.

[sophiemich]

Originally posted by JackPhoenix:

I've been playing the demo. I don't mind the game being difficult, but the randomness that can screw you over with no way to mitigate it isn't difficulty, it's just randomnes.

Nyal's event that require specific card in a specific quality to resolve... and has a time limit with no option to get her to wait until you can actually do what she wants, as you only have one option to change the card is a good example. Same with other cards that require you to get a specific event to use. If you get golden extravagance early, you can throw a pile of gold at it to upgrade your estate, and getting the gold is the difficulty (not that it's particularly difficult). If you get golden carnality, you better hope the [gold rank person I won't name because spoilers] will randomly show up in [location] within the 7 days limit, or you redraw something you can solve, because you won't get another chance. You can't even save scum what card you get, as (from my limited testing) the order of cards seems to be pre-determined.

I don't think the cards are predetermined, there were several instances when I redrew a card, realised I couldn't use what I got, so before I accepted it, I exited the game, loaded the game back, and it gave me a different card when I redrew the first card again.
Also, I agree with what you said, several of my playthroughs have ended because I couldn't get [specific rank person] in [location] within seven days.

[JackPhoenix]

Originally posted by sophiemich:

I don't think the cards are predetermined, there were several instances when I redrew a card, realised I couldn't use what I got, so before I accepted it, I exited the game, loaded the game back, and it gave me a different card when I redrew the first card again.

Hm, I haven't tried to restart the game to see if the RNG changes, but I've tried to get rid of a silver conquest, got stone conquest on multiple tries, even when I did different stuff in between, and then got the stone conquest when I eventually solved it (yay to random event allowing silver conquest appearing on he day before the execution).

[shinigamikitsune]

the issue I think isn't necessarily the difficulty, but the randomness - you could easily get screwed right from the gate if you end up with a Gold Conquest or Bloodshed as your first round draw and there's very little to mitigate the high-tier cards in the demo.

So primarily it needs a more extensive tutorial on some of the mechanics, and more mitigation options for badly timed draws, which I think the full game might address.

[Shapeling]

Originally posted by shinigamikitsune:

the issue I think isn't necessarily the difficulty, but the randomness - you could easily get screwed right from the gate if you end up with a Gold Conquest or Bloodshed as your first round draw and there's very little to mitigate the high-tier cards in the demo.

So primarily it needs a more extensive tutorial on some of the mechanics, and more mitigation options for badly timed draws, which I think the full game might address.

You can protect yourself from an unwanted early Gold Card by redrawing another card the same day. This means that if the new card turns out bad too, you can do another swap after 7 days and still be able to break the third card.

Personally, after playing the demo for 70 hours, I would say that Silver Conquest is so much worse than the Gold one. Yes, it does suck that Gold Conquest has currently only one (?) way to be resolved, but it can be planned ahead using Shama with 2 passion already taken care of by the player. This allows you to trigger her Gold Conquest at will, once you have secured other pieces, such as the Large Tornado troop. On the other hand, it is very easy to run out of opportunities to resolve second Silver Conquest when you play normally. All of them except one are put on a timer when they show up. You can somewhat play around this by delaying your visits to the Bathhouse, but can be awkward.

If you are lucky, the Gold Bloodshed Card can be used at the Palace. If not, you can use your Wife as a last resort. If you start the game with the Charm Amulet, you can quickly turn your Wife to the gold tier just in case, by resolving her repulsion with any gold jewelry.