After completing a couple runs of the first 3-floor dungeon (and dying on floor 1 at least 3 more times in between) I can say this game is quite addictive. It's also very, very random, and there seem to be few guardrails preventing the character from becoming horrendously underpowered or overpowered, depending on what rolls you get. For the genre, it's "fine". OP is fun, and if you get bodied in the first 30 seconds, you can just reroll.
ASCII Terrain gets some getting used to, even with the text legend that says what each tile is. Incidentally, the icon for Mist doesn't match the actual tile on the map. Icons themselves are well done for the style, despite not being my taste, and I like most of the music tracks but some of them are grating, particularly when the dynamic stuff happens (low HP and status ailments for example can get quite manic sounding).
I do wish for some quality of life stuff:
- Controller support please!!
- It took me a while to find the "I" key for inventory. I wouldn't assume players know this is standard practice for these games, since even with some prior experience I forgot to try this until halfway through the second floor. I could have done the tutorial but I had assumed that would be more about explaining mechanics than explaining controls.
- Holding the move key down makes stuff go extremely fast. Unintentionally so, especially in combat. It would be nice to be able to move quickly, while also not "fast forwarding" through turns, though I am not sure how this could be implemented.
- I second the suggestion made below to give the player an overhead HP bar.
- Damage dealt to players and damage dealt by players should be different colors in the combat log. Heck, an option for damage pop-ups would be nice, if it's feasible.
A couple gameplay notes:
- Ice effect stunlock is extremely powerful both against and by the player. Though in the latter case it's kind of annoying to break out of especially when it's a single ice archer and all they can do is stall you, with no other threats around to inflict damage.
- Random teleport on equipment is super annoying, I wish there was a cooldown or something, haha.
I haven't used any of the Villager stuff yet and don't quite understand what it or the Upgrade orbs do. I assume that will be explained in time or I'll figure out on my own at some point.
All that being said, pretty solid game, I could see myself coming back to this to do a deeper dive once I've played all of the FQ9 games on my short list.