MV - Elidriel

I haven't played your game yet, I just wanted to reply to this;

Your demo should be representative of what the final product is like. If players are meant to take away that your game is "easy, thoughtless, spam attack" then show that in the demo.
If you game is meant to have thoughtful skill strategy, show that.

Dark Souls isn't going to have a demo when you have infinite stamina and 1 shot every enemy & boss. It's going to have a demo that shows the game has punishing difficulty.

And maybe this is being pedantic but you should clarify the terminology.
Demos usually are bite sized chunks of a finished game for the player to try before buying.
Beta tests are usually early access to the development build to receive feedback. (and more accurately, likely "alpha" would be the correct term, but we're adding pedantry on top of pedantry, so let's leave it at that)
In the RM community, I've come to expect most people to just call their early access games "Demos", but it can lead to an impression that what people are playing is mostly finished, ergo no placeholder stuff.

If it's necessary, and I advise doing so: Add a message at the start of the game reminding folks: A) This is a development build, and B ) all of the current things to expect and not expect, such as placeholder assets or balance changes and missing content.
Concerning the tutorial, if it is not meant to be frontloaded as you have done so currently, I would highly suggest informing players of that (again, just a little message box, "due to this being an early build, I will crash-course you on the important tutorial information" then remind them how to access that information again in the future, "please go to x menu to read this information again in case you forget it."
The main point is: Just make sure you are communicating with your player what it is exactly they are playing.

Best of luck. I may check this out in the future.

p.s.
Speaking of pedants, No idea what @RCXGaming and @Cythera are smoking. Outside of RM, most AAA games automatically launch in full-screen. This is one thing I think they just need to learn to deal with. That said, most games have an option to change to windowed mode in the options, so it's a good thing you added it.

The funny part is that the systems for deep combat are there, but they're completely sidelined by how efficient it is to go into "mash attack and heal occasionally". This is the reason I hard punish or just straight up stop the player from using the normal attack / best skills for everything.

Like in this game in particular, I (think) I suggested putting counterattacks to stop you from farming the stun meter on enemies or making it only so certain attacks raise the stun meter, I dunno.


In hindsight, "don't start your game in fullscreen" was a bit silly, because I was writing my critique of the game as I was playing, on a notepad file to collect my thoughts so I wouldn't forget them when it came time to post. But generally speaking I'm not opposed to a game that launches in fullscreen.

But I still very much stand by the whole "allow me to control fullscreen in the game itself" bit.

I can't vouch for Cythera herself tho - maybe it was all of the filters on the graphics that made her eyes hurt, idk.

Hi there!
Let me give my view on these points:


I understand what you said, but there is a fundamental difference between Dark Souls (or any souls like) and my game. Difficulty is part of what Dark Souls is and propose to the player, a Dark Souls slightly easier, isn't a Dark Souls anymore. However the same thing doesn't apply for the majority of the games, most of the famous JRPGs could be slightly harder or easier and being pretty much the same game.

My whole point around it is: yes, when difficulty is not one of your selling points, I really think the game demo should be slightly easier than the actual game. If you recall, the og FF7 demo was in the first quest of the game, but you had Aerith, Tifa and Summons with you, all things that aren't there for the actual game, but they were showing what was possible to achieve and what to be expected in the actual game.

I appreciate the explanations, but I'm very aware of what Alpha/Beta/Demo means.
As I stated in one the previous post, this is not a development build, since there is ~30h gameplay already developed, this is indeed, a demo.
My argument was, the demo is not the actual game (as I mentioned early in this post). I honestly don't think it should be considered Alpha version, because I will change few sound effects in the final version.

Regarding your advises, I'm pretty much already doing that...
- There is a message in the begining of the game saying that this version is a demo and the sequence of events and tutorials are not the same as the actual game.
- In all points, including the options menu it states that you can access the tutorials outside the initial popup whenever you want.

If I may, since we are all doing suggestions, I'd recommend to at least play a little bit a game, before write advises or suggestions to the developer, and this is not just for me/my game, but for any game at all. I understand that there is a good intention on that and we are all busy and sometimes it's hard to find time to do it, but at least for me it seems to be reasonable to consume something before write a feedback.

I think it's a valid point about your experience playing it, but as I state in my super long previous post, the difficulty isn't exactly the selling point, for the ones that want a more challenging battles there are options for that in place.

Regarding the fullscreen thing, I think you were more than right to complaing about it be forced and there was no way to change it, that's why I put the option in place.
Really appreciate the whole feedback and the fact you spend your time to play my project :smile:.

Major Update
Elidriel just got a major update in its Steam demo.
The tutorial system was rebuilt to improve the game pacing.
Character's individual techniques now have a quick time event system, where you can receive a damage bonus to enemies HP or Resistences.
The B.E.E device menu received a new section called Battle Trials, where you can test your battle skills to accomplish trials and receive rewards!
An optional boss fight was introduced for the ones that like more challenging boss fights!

Finally, the brand new graphic resources were created, the menu art of all characters were updated and each individual character now has a brand new battler with its own animations via dragon bones.

I played the demo. Glancing at the previous comments, it seems the part of the game that the demo covers was changed(?) Here's some comments:

The most obvious issue that others have already stated is the English grammar and writing. It's not at a level where the game "could be taken seriously". A big part of the text would have to be corrected/edited and personally I'd make that the first priority (unless you're happy with just the Spanish version).

The graphics and mapping seemed nice and the sprites did some pose changes and emoting which is a good bonus. The music was good, but personally I felt the cave BGM sounded a bit more like a 'cozy tavern' track or something (might be just me though). The volume levels were set really low at the start though, I couldn't even hear the title BGM before rising the option settings.

The battles had a lot of different mechanics, but like some people mentioned, it was too easy to win them all just by making basic attacks. Even the black slimes that were said to be highly resistant to physical attacks died just after a couple of normal attacks (at least from the spear dude and red-head). Even after Helena joined the battles there was still a troop with only one undead knight, which poses no kind of challenge at all. Also, enemies spending their turn to heal for 100-200hp, when they take 1000+ damage per round is just wasting their turns. The battlers did look nice visually though, but I think the spell animations were too small compared to the battler sizes.

A couple of random comments:
-the main character didn't turn toward the enemy sprite on the map when the text about the black
slimes started
-i didn't see the cooking tutorial before cooking for the first time (it only asked if I wanted to see it after failing)
-when interacting with the campsite for a second time (after short resting after Helena joined) the game asked me something in Spanish
-and also the wind spell battle description was in Spanish

Good luck with the project!