Where are you supposed to grind in the Garden?

[Otomon]

I just got to the garden which I could access next to where the elevators were in the Cathedral after a boss. So far the game had been challenging but doable... but now im in an area where everything 1 shots me (im level 14), I cant go back to previous area to grind, and since I cant safely defeat enemies, im pretty much stuck... wtf are ppl supposed to do here?

[rdein]

There are some parts of that area with save points just before a very long room, deeper down. Maybe it's not the best "grinding spot" but at least it's a save point with enemies around it. You could go in, kill some enemies, come out, save, and repeat.

Some enemies are also easier than others to defeat, I assume you are having trouble with the "knight" enemies. But the ones that are like ghost girls are easier to dodge/parry and give just as much experience.

In general though I'd recommend just exploring around finding items and playing carefully as much as you can (as in, saving often, etc.). At the end of the day, in this sort of game it's more valuable to learn the enemy patterns and your character's movements than focusing exclusively on outlevelling the current area's enemies. Levels will help for sure, but make the most out of the dodge roll's invincibility frames! That's my advice to you.

I hope this helps you somehow and I hope you are able to proceed despite this difficulty!

[Otomon]

Originally posted by rdein:

There are some parts of that area with save points just before a very long room, deeper down. Maybe it's not the best "grinding spot" but at least it's a save point with enemies around it. You could go in, kill some enemies, come out, save, and repeat.

Some enemies are also easier than others to defeat, I assume you are having trouble with the "knight" enemies. But the ones that are like ghost girls are easier to dodge/parry and give just as much experience.

In general though I'd recommend just exploring around finding items and playing carefully as much as you can (as in, saving often, etc.). At the end of the day, in this sort of game it's more valuable to learn the enemy patterns and your character's movements than focusing exclusively on outlevelling the current area's enemies. Levels will help for sure, but make the most out of the dodge roll's invincibility frames! That's my advice to you.

I hope this helps you somehow and I hope you are able to proceed despite this difficulty!

Thanks for your advice! It did help a bit, I wasnt even at the part where I could grind the ghost girl, since you need to beat the giant knigths to get there, but I grinded on a save point close to them with a little black dude. I did manage to beat them eventually and made my way to the save room next to ghost girl and grinded some more, and eventually another room where I can easily grind bugs.

I am lvl 25 now and I still have the same problem, everything still 1-2 shots me even 11 levels later...and im still not doing enough damage to kill any of the hard enemies fast enough before they can hit me.

Is there no way to increase attack or defence at all aside from the temporary buffs of incense? Leveling is literally pointless as you never actually get stronger, and thats the whole fun of RPGs....I even found a brand new sword and it literally had the same attack value as the standard one.

Sure I can learn enemy patterns and dodge, but a single mistake can be fatal... so "exploring" just boils down just dodge past every enemy, get to save point and grind the next room, not to mention aside from the unbalanced enemy stats, harder enemies give you almost the same XP value as an easy one...for example Knight is 21 and bug is 19.

EDIT: Okay I exaggerated a little bit, like you said... leveling did help kill enemies faster a bit, but very little.

[rdein]

This game is a bit more on the "action" side than "RPG" side. The levelling curve is there to add some sense of progression throughout the entire playthrough, and you can grind to add some survivability to your character, but at the end of the day it's the "action" part of the gameplay that counts the most.

I'd say level 25 for the garden area is a good benchmark, as in, that's the "expected standard" level. Some notes about the levelling is that it increases your attack power (including for spells), increases your maximum health, and also your defenses.

I will not pretend this game is perfectly balanced or anything like that. To be completely honest with you, we've had a majority of complaints and criticisms about the difficulty and other problems related to that about this game. We're taking that to heart for our next project, of course, not to repeat the disaster that was this one.

What I'm trying to say is that you are not alone in your opinion and evaluation of the game. For a lot of people, this is indeed a poorly made game with unbalanced enemies.

Lastly, I'm sorry you are not having a good time. I really wish this was an enjoyable experience for you. If you feel like it, and you've played less than 2 hours, I absolutely advise you to ask for a refund of your money. The game only gets harder and harder as you progress. If you're not enjoying it now, it's very possible you will like it much less later.

Cheers

[Otomon]

Originally posted by rdein:

This game is a bit more on the "action" side than "RPG" side. The levelling curve is there to add some sense of progression throughout the entire playthrough, and you can grind to add some survivability to your character, but at the end of the day it's the "action" part of the gameplay that counts the most.

I'd say level 25 for the garden area is a good benchmark, as in, that's the "expected standard" level. Some notes about the levelling is that it increases your attack power (including for spells), increases your maximum health, and also your defenses.

I will not pretend this game is perfectly balanced or anything like that. To be completely honest with you, we've had a majority of complaints and criticisms about the difficulty and other problems related to that about this game. We're taking that to heart for our next project, of course, not to repeat the disaster that was this one.

What I'm trying to say is that you are not alone in your opinion and evaluation of the game. For a lot of people, this is indeed a poorly made game with unbalanced enemies.

Lastly, I'm sorry you are not having a good time. I really wish this was an enjoyable experience for you. If you feel like it, and you've played less than 2 hours, I absolutely advise you to ask for a refund of your money. The game only gets harder and harder as you progress. If you're not enjoying it now, it's very possible you will like it much less later.

Cheers

Thank for your reply my friend, I did end up beating that garden area... and surprisingly everything after that tree boss was very doable and game provides plenty of places to grind, I ended up beating the whole game and getting almost all collectables :) So yes, I ended up having fun!

I know that this is more of an indie game and even big budget games struggle with balance, but I noticed once I hit lvl 50 it was the "sweet spot" where things weren't too easy but also not too hard and left me room to make a few mistakes without getting instant game over (and by then I had sufficient healing charges and tons of new skills).

So here is an idea...assuming you want this game to be enjoyed by everyone and not just the "Souls" crowd, why not have an "Easy Mode" option? All it would be is the same game and enemies but with your defence value slightly modified to allow n00bs to learn the ropes, and that way the people who enjoy the unfair difficulty can still have that. Probably too late for this one, but maybe in a future game....

Just my two cents... good game tho!

[rdein]

Hey there Otomon.

Well, that reply surprised me for sure. Congratulations! I'm very glad you stuck with it and were able to see through to the end.

About the difficulty mode options, first I must explain a little bit about my past game, Momodora Reverie Under the Moonlight. That game had several modes of difficulty selectable, but because the players were not given much context on which modes they should select, it turned out to be a source of the frustration for a lot of the players. People who picked normal would say it was too hard, people who picked easy would say it's too easy...

Naturally, that also frustrated me as a developer. For the following game, which was Minoria, I thought to give the players many more defensive options (the very spammable dodge roll, parry, etc.) and also a sort of feature to control the difficulty in a more organic way. This was levelling system you see in Minoria. Now you and I know how that turned out...

Minoria is, for better or worse, a done game, and we have no plans to modify it further. I feel like I've released enough patches to try to tweak and adjust this game since its original release in 2019. For now what I'm doing is using it as a lesson to be learned for the next game I'm working on.

Here's hoping for the next game I'm able to figure out a better way to handle this aspect. It's always a shortcoming of the games I make.

Thanks for your messages Otomon.
Cheers