MV - Elidriel

Caracter should be "character" as its missing an "h"


I think "active" should say "activate", as once active further
is correct.


when I try to move the block, why is this spanish/portugese instead of English?


in the Menu to upgrade stuff, the Ranking is hidden, as it has to many icons? its not scrollable either,
so move text a bit lower can fix that or does so automatically after the last stats length?


you can loot from the other side of the obstacle instead of next to him!


this has 2 issues, the text is cut off [at]Ny... whatever it should say.
the red square is not passable but block the player on walking it (emperor room).

• Don't force me to play in fullscreen. Don't. I hate fullscreen to begin with, and it just made all the screen pulses and flashes even WORSE to play through.
• The way the tutorials are shown, with the lil scroll and multiple pages, with pictures and icons, is very clean and sleek. I would love to see a way to revisit these tutorials, as you do throw an awful lot of info at the player very quickly. In the less than hour I played, I had *deep breath* techniques, skills, combos, strats/formations, elements, element reactions, camping, cooking, equipment upgrade, on-map exploration skills, leader switching to use different exploration skills, and I feel like I'm forgetting one or two haha
• The menu UIs are sleek overall. Easy to look through and find needed info
• Your regular battle BGM doesn't loop properly; it cuts off, pauses, and restarts
• The parallel conversations are great; shows character without taking up game time. Plus, players can speed them up or slow them down as liked
• A couple lines aren't translated. Take a look at the first camping/cooking site.
• I am the LAST person who has any right to comment on grammar; plus, this is obviously translated into English. But just a note for your full game, make sure you get someone, ideally a native English speaker, to check grammar and flow of your dialogue :) All the translated dialogue I read was perfectly understandable. Just for future reference
• Looks like states are going to play a huge factor in your combat; I'd love a state tooltip in combat so I know exactly what each icon means
• Your combat has a lot of depth and mechanics to it, which I appreciate and was truly looking forward to...but I didn't need to use it. I got through even your A3 sentinels with just mashing attack. Your scorpion boss (FF7 reference?) needed skills, a couple potions, and some well-timed guards. I sadly didn't need to make use of anything else
• On a writing point: why do I care the emperor was killed? Why do I care about the three traitors? I felt connections with Ada and Helena; a bit with Kell, even if I didn't like him (personal, not writing issue) but there's no build-up to the coup. It just...happens, so it can move the plot forward

I think this is a rather ambitious project, and I really would like to see some more of the layers you've put into your combat system. But I can't. The forced fullscreen combined with the lighting effects and pulses and shakes and everything - it just makes the game too difficult to play. Let me know if you ever put options in your game to turn those things off, and I'll give it a good and proper playthrough.

+ Very cool art and menus all around. Music isn't half bad either.
(In fact, how did you pull the item/skill/main menu off? Especially the skill menu.)

+ You're not blowing my ears out with stupidly high volume :)

+ Cool scrolling image tutorials. How did you pull that off?

+ Ooh, minimap. (In fact, the minimap helped a lot more than just trying to find the path since the path was so dark I couldn't see anything...)

+ I do like the increased emphasis on combat, but...

+ I do like the "natures" for monsters where it tells you how they will approach you on the overworld. Not a half bad idea, actually...

+ Very nice that you took the time to add lil arrows for exits.

+ Ah, your scan screen is pretty cool too.

+ Ooh, you can swap skill types by pressing left/right?

+ Love the dragonbones animations for the enemies, they're very nice looking.

+ Very good thing that you put a "don't cross until you're ready" function before you throw the player against bosses.

+ I do think the overworld puzzle mechanics are neat. Especially the fact you can hide from enemies with Ada's skill.

+ Some of the overworld effects are nice, like the shockwave FX and the moghunter particle effects. How did you accomplish the spotlight effect of the AW3 enemy?

+ The cutscenes are very cool! They have a lot going on in them.

= Is this an MV game or an MZ game?

= I'd love a tooltip function that lets me know what states do too.

= A... hunger meter that prevents you from spamming overworld food. Huh.

- No Keyboard Configuration, which is an automatic big strike.

- No ability to control fullscreen outside of pressing F4. Also, please don't start the game in fullscreen.


- Whoa. @Cythera was not kidding about the visuals being overwhelming.

• The lighting is a bit much, especially when combined with the godray effect (that shows up at night for some reason?) and the blur that makes things in the distance harder to see.
• The flickering effect for darkness during combat was VERY annoying on the eyes, like it makes everything hard to see when combined with the night lighting.
• The chromatic abberation effect for criticals doesn't help matters either. I know the Olivia effects are very cool on a store page, but in an actual game they're a pain to sit through. (By the way, are you aware that Olivia Battle Effects actively halves your framerate? That contributes to the effects causing eye pain.)
• The game is VERY DARK. It's hard to see anything or get invested in the environment if I have to squint regardless of how bright or dark it is in my actual room.
• The screen flashing white when every fight is a strong flashbang effect when combined with how dark the maps are, like it actively made me not want to get into fights.

- The framerate chugged to heck the entire time I was playing.

- I do think it's very bizarre that you'll have all of these crazy art effects and pull out custom menus and stuff, but you still use the default victory theme. It's extremely unfitting and you should probably fix that.

- Satiety is a bizarre word. I would use Fullness over it, to be honest.

- I noticed that the Gab window(?) text was repeating when I was trying to do my first cooking segment.


- There's no build up to the betrayal scene. A few factors:

• We never met the emperor or the three council guys before, so their betrayal comes out of nowhere. Likewise, since we've been in exactly two places (a simulation and the ruins of the empire building) there's no impact to their words when it comes to political talk. In fact, it feels like we're in the middle of the plot instead of the beginning... in a bad way.
• I would have liked to see hints of them being evil beforehand while you are forced to work under them so there's actually some build up.
• I feel for your writing to really flourish you have to show off some regular missions before the world goes to heck - to establish what is normal for Ada, Kell and the pink haired girl.
• It's also important for showing the lore terms before they become relevant... which is a shame because it's an extremely cool set up if you do it properly!

Here's the thing - it's a very cool game. It has a lot going for it, and there's a lot of variety. Unfortunately, your normal attacks are so reliable that you can just spam them and ruin the game's balance entirely. They shut down everything and it doesn't give me a reason to test things like elemental combos or stance changes, especially once the enemies stagger and if a critical hit lands.

The only other move I used was the combo attack between Ada and Kell that does like, 4000 damage because it makes everything comically easy... and the Protect spell that fully heals Kell and makes him practically invulnerable.

The lighting and the Olivia visual effects also made it hard to stomach - I can't imagine playing this for more than an hour without getting migraines, so they need to be trimmed back.

The plot doesn't have the proper build up, which is a shame. If it did, I would really be into this! Cause like... a sci-fi fantasy story with political intrigue? That's right up my alley!

That said, there is an incredible amount of potential here. With proper rebalancing, this combat system might actually be very cool. I wish you luck @gabrielschade , because deploying a game to Steam is not easy.

Tutorials
Maybe there is too much tutorials, but that's a demo version to show what you can do in the game. So, since loads of the game innovation are on battle, all mechanics (or almost all mechanics, there is no summon in the demo version) are quickly introduced and they will be expanded over time during the game.
One thing to notice, that doesn't fix the issue, but maybe is able to mitigate, is the fact you have the option to turn off the tutorials. You receive the notification and they are stored in the quest log normally, but they are not shown during the gameplay.

BGM and SE
There are loads of audio placeholders, like the victory SE definitely isn't the one that will be used in the final version, so there is not much to comment.

Parallel Messages
The parallel messages will repeat if they are visible when the scene is changed, it's just to avoid to lose them because you open the menu or start cooking. Maybe I change this behaviour and store them in a log, idk yet.

Too Dark/Hard to see things
In the first scene, the whole idea to have a blur to make distant things hard to see is part of the setup, the characters mention it and they had to get closer to check it. The idea was to give the feeling that you are in a dark night at a forest (the light rays are suppose to be moony beams).
About the general feeling that it's too dark, I think I'll test it in different screens, some people are complaining about it while others are totally fine. Maybe make it a little brighter wouldn't be a setup killer and can improve the experience.

Battle
Regarding the balance and difficulty, well, I have to say that I'm kinda surprised, my previous feedbacks regarding it are very different, but anyway, the idea here is to be a demo, that's important to highlight. This is not a version where I'm showing everything that is ready so far in the game (I have ~20h ready), it's made to be a product demo. So it's meant to show the game and its mechanics and usually it's not expected to test the player skills (at least I don't recall any demo that I play in quite a few years that is not fairly easy). Besides that, you the player really want there is the challenge mode, which is way harder than the regular mode.
One thing to consider here, is update the name of "battle" difficulty to normal and create a new "battle" difficulty to be the same as challenge mode, but enabling the items, this would provide a more challenging battle without restrict anything (plus, it would be insanely easy to implement).
Btw, the boss was a reference for FF7 :biggrin:

Reduce the critical hit bonus and the skill variance are good suggestions, I'll definetely make some tests, although, 20% variance is not as much as you make it seem, considering that the regular damages are around 500 it creates a 100 variance, I agree that it is maybe more than it should, but I disagree that it's something that make a skill unreliable.

Also agree with the casting animations, they are kinda slow indeed and they will be speed up. (It's not a fix, but as a mitigation you can speed animations up via options).

Writing
That's a point that I think it's on me, I was trying not to spoil anything not present in the demo (still trying), but let's see some points:
There was no build up for the coup:
Yes, you are dead right there isn't, but it is intentional. The idea of this beginning is put the player in a situation where it feels kinda lost, because well, it's a coup and the world of these characters are going upside down.
The coup is the trigger to start the plot, not something in the middle, for the porpuse of the story I want to tell, it's way more relevant to see the impact of a tyrant being idolized and changing everything upside down than what lead to that, which btw will also be covered, but during the gameplay after that using flashbacks, memories and etc. The story won't be told in cronological order.
In short, the idea was not present the traitors as regular empire soldiers and show how they create these conspiracy, it's more to present the villains and tell the backstory afterwards.

"why do I care the emperor was killed?"
That's actually I very good question, you don't and you shouldn't. The story that will be told is about the idea that the empire didn't became evil after the chancellor's coup, it was already evil, just got worse. It will explore the impact of an empire in a society, when people are explored and how a lot of good people like Ada are part of the issue without even realise it.

"Why do I care about the three traitors?"
Like a said before, it's a introduction of those characters that will be present along the whole game.

"a bit with Kell, even if I didn't like him (personal, not writing issue)"
Can you elaborate here, maybe there is something I can improve.

"but there's no build-up to the coup. It just...happens, so it can move the plot forward"
Well, I don't want to sound defensive or anything, but that's how coups are done, usually they just happens.
I agree that I can throw some tips as: "The emperor is suffering some pressure from the people since the peace treaty, the food is more expensive now and etc", that's a good idea, but I don't want to put a scene to let the player knows that there is a conspiracy going on while the characters don't know anything about it, you know?