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TheGeeb81

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A member registered Apr 04, 2023 · View creator page →

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The dev mentioned he's increasing the early access window (the time the game remains in early access). His reasons for it is that he needs money if he wants to develop the game full-time and by incentivizing more people to subscribe he gets exactly that.

He originally tried to do an early access release on Itchio as well but that wasn't exactly possible due to how buying games on Itchio works. He believed it was unfair for people to get infinite early access for about $20 on Itch while people on Patreon needed a constant subscription for the same benefit. He wanted to try and emulate that subscription on Itch but that didn't work because Itchio just doesn't work that way. So the increased early access time is basically his way to incentivize more people to subscribe so he can make more money and thus put more time and effort into the game, instead of whether or not he can pay the next bill.

I have two complaints about it. One is because I'm selfish and want it now but now I have to wait longer before getting it >:(

And the other is an ACTUAL, REAL complaint and not me being a selfish asshole. And that is that it isn't 4 weeks/28 days. It's instead 4 weeks + 3 days (so a FULL 31 days until the public release) Which feels a little extra annoying tbh. That essentially means it no longer releases on a Saturday like it would have before and it now releases on a Tuesday instead. Most people that I know of seem to have Saturdays and Sundays off which would give them plenty of time to play that update but almost nobody has Tuesday off of work. And since the game has decently inconsistent release times that means most people won't get to play the latest update until after they get out of work. I mean, I'd at least be a little disappointed if I checked Itchio, saw a new update was out, and then it was time for me to go to work or class or school or whatever. But that could also just be me.

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I just barely started this game, but I can say that you are doing some really unique things with the animations and transitions. MC jumping off a building, Iris pulling up the intro scene, the camera following the car and transitioning to 6 years later. All of them have piqued my interest because you don't normally see this many animations.

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Powerful women as in they all are very skilled in magic as well as high up in a political hierarchy. 

So far no femdom at all (other comment says there's one scene that kind of is, woops). Though I wouldn't doubt the possibility of there being some femdom in the game in the future, preferably optional. As it AND its maledom counterpart are surprisingly common fetishes in these games as I've discovered.

I do believe that there IS setup for maledom in the future though with a specific character named "Anwen" who has some fantasies about it. Oh and the game also includes a harem route. Also took a look at your comments and saw that you dislike lesbian content, so I should mention the game has setups for some of that too. When it reaches that point, I believe you can discourage and most likely prevent a "lesbian-yet-still-in-the-harem" style relationship between two of the characters. Where they are both with each other AND you/the MC.

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Putting this in markdown mode cause I don’t really want to spoil it for people who haven’t reached it yet.

SPOILERS For a Pretty Hype Moment in Part 4, relating to the Cenrics

When I got to that conversation (monologue) with Cyril Cenric himself, I was getting MAJOR Senator Armstrong vibes from him. I mean Armstrong only shows up in Metal Gear Rising for like an hour max, but Cyril here felt like a majorly enhanced/expanded version of him. And I fucking LOVED it. Cyril felt like what would happen if you took Armstrong and properly built him up throughout the ENTIRE game instead of only really at the end. Their goals both appear to be very similar; do evil shit, to basically REMOVE evil shit forever. Yet in that one conversation, Cyril had more lines and character building than I think Armstrong ever had. Cyril also seems to be an intimidating as fuck antagonist/anti-villain. I loved that conversation with him outside the ball. Really good scene!

(Clarification: MGRR is Peak, this is not me shitting on that game, genuinely a really fun game with a neat, simple, yet enjoyable story.)

Maybe you could eventually do what Story Anon did with Out of Touch and just add them later? Or commission/find someone to do them for you? Though that has its own problems like the cost and you have to hope whoever you pay can make them on time. Or just have them made and throw them in at a later date...

Ehh, I don't really care all too much about the animations. I just like some movement every now and then as it makes the game feel more alive. (Which admittedly you already do quite a bit of that with some of the stuff that goes on in the background as well as a lot of the conversations and expressions the character's have.)

And thank you for fixing it so quickly.

It works now. Thank you.

I even took the time to check EVERY character and they all worked.

I went into AppData and deleted all my old saves before playing the new update and I started playing from the very beginning. I got those errors whenever I tried interacting with those characters.

Just now, I started another new game and still got the same errors, so I don't really know what the cause is. In case it somehow matters and might be breaking things I choose the default name, pounds, and then centimeters.

That's the error I get for Venom, Whatever Mei's new name is, Scarlet, and Gwendolyn.

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A bunch of the characters seem bugged. Whenever you click on the "check" button for any character in the east side it gives you an error saying that the label "Scarlet" (Or whatever the character's name is) cannot be found.

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So I'm just gonna try and erase this game from my memory because I'm finding absolutely zero ways to reliably deal with some of the shit this game throws at you. 

Catzilla has to be the worst boss I've ever faced in any game I've ever played. The wandering/random bosses (sometimes) annihilate you unless you're prepared specifically for them, The Hunter was the only one I found actually manageable. And the most recent one I encountered, The Factory, seems like it matches Catzilla in it's bullshittery.

If you grind early game enemies for money and xp, Catzilla comes up when you hit level 50 and takes HALF of whatever you gave to Hizi if it wins (It WILL win and you WILL lose 300K+ xp). So you try to keep yourself below level 50 until you have enough items and throw whatever xp puts you over level 50 into Hizi, but surprise! The Factory (which IS an optional fight) levels itself up to MATCH Hizi's level... Cause why not... And the items are completely random and require absurd amounts of grinding in order to choose what rarity you get. 95% of the common items are either jokes or completely worthless, the rare items kind of help, and the legendary items are actually game changing but good luck getting them if you have real shitty luck.

If I EVER come back (highly unlikely), it'll be because I grabbed the cheat codes from the discord and only wanted to see what they did. As well as what the rest of the game is like. I originally wanted to play it legitimately this time around but... just read the like 10 comments I posted recently on this game and you'll find out why I'm actually giving up on this game. 

TLDR for those comments: Balancing's pretty bad. Difficulty spike is vertical and NEVER stops going up. The enemies get more resources and tools than you EVER do. Dev's response was basically him completely ignoring all talks about difficulty with what is basically a "git gud" Lord Farquad meme.

Edit: Replaced/removed unnecessary swears. I'll admit, this was uncharacteristic of me. Yet what I said still holds true. What I said were still valid criticisms, they were just hidden underneath a small cloud of rage from me writing them immediately after playing the game and getting screwed over by it. And I will not be taking them back. If you enjoy this game, then good for you. But I genuinely do not and every response I've gotten has been ignoring that fact. The fact that I find everything that this game does to you, a detriment to the player's enjoyment. That is all.

Hang on a minute. You thought losing HALF OF YOUR META PROGRESSION (Hizi's levels) and Catzilla returning "Stronger" was "recoverable?!" 

Level 55 -> 27 is  OVER THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND (300,000) XP LOST TO A RANDOM BOSS. A boss which you CAN BARELY PREPARE FOR. I mean, you know its coming but your prep time is completely rng dependent. 

I say this with the most amount of respect I can muster. You HAVE to be a masochist... There is no other explanation as to how you find something like THAT "recoverable." Because in ANY other game THAT is game ending. Better off starting from scratch. THAT is equivalent to your 4 best soldiers dying in XCOM and you losing everything they had equipped to them (your best gear).

I mean, it's not entirely "random" as it shows up when you hit level ~50, so when you hit level ~50 you KNOW it's going to pop up. But whatever fight it takes over IS completely random. 3 tanks? You're fucked because everyone's bleeding now. 3 drainers? Manageable. 3 Healers? Manageable. God forbid you get ANY fight with a tank or tinkerer in it because starting the Catzilla fight with bleeding AND a 50% heal reduction is a guaranteed loss. Not to mention in its second stance the Head removes one of your characters until the stance ends IN ADDITION to draining A PERCENTAGE of their xp. You can technically free whatever character it steals if you damage it, but oh wait. You can't! Because BOTH of the Hands are taunting and have about 2K health... My Red was level 62 and she was losing over 8000 xp a round. Enough to level up ALL of Catzilla's parts INSTANTLY. Not to mention IT FUCKING HEALS ALL THE PARTS FROM IT TOO. The fuck am I supposed to do to that? I can kill the tail the next time it cycles back to the first stance, but by then each part is over level 60, and all of my characters are bleeding, crippled, burning, and half health. Meaning I have to choose between mending, defending, or taunting. All of which are almost guaranteed to do nothing to help fend off my impending demise.

You SHOULD be mad at this fight by the way. In my opinion this is the epitome of bad design. It's not difficult in any way that actually matters. Nor does it have any unique mechanics other than the dual stances. It's just "difficult" for the sake of being difficult. The tail and hands all have about 2K health, the head has roughly 3K AND drains AND applies the stolen xp to EVERY SINGLE PART (meanwhile your drain doesn't do the same, despite it making sense for it to do so. I mean it's technically a SINGLE entity. If it copies the stolen xp and gives it to each part, then each part should LOSE any xp drained by me. I shouldn't GAIN that xp as it'd mean quadrupling the xp I get from draining it and making it the best farmable enemy in the game, but the parts should still lose it.) AND heals every single part for HUNDREDS of health EACH TIME IT DRAINS YOU, the tail also applies AOE burns to your whole party, and heavy hitting single target burns as well, one hand applies burn (because there isn't enough in the fight as is), and the other applies bleed (yippee), the legs have roughly 3 - 4K hp as well and deals about 350 damage a hit. 

It's a fight basically meant to fuck you and put you back to the start of the game. If the dev's intentions were a "Mr. X" type of impossible fight it could've been done WAY better than this. As it stands, the Catzilla fight isn't "recoverable" because that would imply it doesn't click the "reset timeline" button FOR you. Taking away HALF of Hizi's levels is way too harsh of a punishment for losing what might be a quite literally impossible fight. Not to mention its horrible balancing.

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Running or reloading every fight until you get one that's actually manageable ISN'T FUN. It's not really all too upsetting it's just NOT FUN. Every fight shouldn't require you to retreat, refresh, or trudge through it to squeeze out a win. You also shouldn't have to min-max a standard fight either. Almost every single average player is being pushed away from the game because you NEED to min-max fights just to win.

I mean, how am I supposed to deal with 3 Tipsy Ghosts (all with a 35% chance to dodge physical attacks) at the same time? It's doable, sure, but it's just NOT FUN TO DO. That fight requires constantly taunting with Vix and Sam, draining them as close as you can get to level 1 with Red, and then either killing all 3 at the same time or killing 2 of them 3 times so they can't be revived anymore.  Items make that SIGNIFICANTLY easier to deal with but in order to get them, you gotta win fights and grind for money, then gamble on lootboxes for one of the very few items that actually help you. 

It's just not a good gameplay loop imo. It's an infinite uphill battle where the enemies constantly have the advantage over you. Even if YOU somehow gain the advantage they just take it back through some random bullshit. You can and will eventually win the war of attrition but dear god is it painful, not fun, and just straight up bad design. There's very few fights that actually FEEL like fair fights, the rest are just you punching a brick wall until your hands shatter, waiting months for them to heal, returning to punch the wall again, and it EVENTUALLY breaking down after years of punching the same wall. Or (after punching a few walls down) walking into Home-Depot, buying a random toolbox, and HOPING it comes with a sledgehammer in it.

If you enjoy min-maxing every single fight. Making sure that EVERY SINGLE action is used to the BEST of its ability then sure, have fun. But the majority of people don't. Especially if it's quite literally fight #3 that requires min-maxing. You're supposed to be slowly lead INTO that. Library of Ruina for instance starts getting complicated as all hell past Urban Plague and it SLOWLY leads you into upgrading and perfecting your decks before that point. Every fight in that game gives you MORE resources and tools at your disposal. Meanwhile this game actively gives them to the ENEMIES instead and just hopes you can figure out how to deal with it. 

The dev's recent response makes it even worse. A meme that can basically be summed up as "git good," ONE actual balance change (big rat spawnrate), 3 tutorial prompts, and then text pretty much saying "Instead of voicing your concerns on Itchio (AKA a public space), go to the Discord, that I own, full of people who will (probably) vehemently defend me, so I can (maybe) kick you out if I don't like what you say." I've probably taken too many embellishments with this paragraph so far but that's just how it reads to me. That post really drove it home, it wasn't the dev saying something along the lines of "yeah, ok sure, I GUESS I can add some stuff to make it easier for you all." Instead he basically said to just deal with it. He can add/change things to make the game easier without ruining the overall experience. Hell it doesn't even need to be forced on you, just make it all optional. Summons were optional in Elden Ring. The Scadutree Fragments are technically optional too in its DLC. They are there to make the game easier for those that want to use them. They don't compromise the vision of the game at all, they're just there for players to use if they want to.

Meanwhile the closest you get in this game is Gaze, where it feels like you'll get screwed over and locked into a bad ending for using its mechanics to get stronger. That's not the same as the ones in Elden Ring. There should be an opposite to Gaze where you get substantially weaker buffs for sparing enemies instead. Hizi technically works for that but she requires so much XP for any meaningful benefits and half of them are just random chances anyways whereas Gaze's buffs are actual flat stat increases. Significantly more reliable than Hizi's as they don't trigger off of random chances.

I promise I have not been thinking about them in singular terms. It's just incredibly annoying when every enemy has about 3 to 5 counters to anything I do. Whether its to them or someone else. 

The fights shouldn't be a constant back and forth and the enemies shouldn't have infinite loops that can only be broken by completely rng stuns. Multiple enemy comps can only be defeated with extra turns or powerful items which require you to defeat enemies to get. And the random boss encounters are sometimes instant losses because you just straight up aren't prepared to fight them. 

Every enemy type has their weaknesses that you can exploit but every enemy type shores up the weaknesses of another and sometimes multiples of the same type completely negates their own weaknesses. Tinkerers are the biggest offenders because they literally fill all roles at once. Drain totems are immediately your #1 priority as they drain from everyone and funnel it into a singular enemy which powerlevels them, barricades next as they completely gimp anything you want to do, and mending totems are actually worthless and I usually ignore them as I can easily out DPS the healing they do. The overhealth cap helps a little with infinite healing loops, and the revival cap helps a shit ton as it means you can permanently remove enemies without breaking them. 

Every single fight I've done so far in this update, I've won by focusing them down one at a time until they literally can't be revived anymore. I stun whatever enemies would screw me over the most in the moment, divert attention to my characters with the most health, drain the most annoying enemies as close to level 1 as possible, then one or two-shot them as many times as I can as it distracts every enemy in the process. I save-scum the hell out of the game every single time I encounter a composition that is actual torture to fight or a boss I just don't want to deal with. If it's 2 healers (or mages/drainers) and a tinkerer and the first thing the tinkerer does (assuming both of my stuns failed to land) is shit out a 1K health barricade, I refresh the page because its genuinely faster and more rewarding than retreating or trudging through that fight. The enemies are too widespread in their skills, this wouldn't be a problem if there were more ways that the player could use early on to get stronger. But there aren't. Magic attackers are ALSO healers. Buffers/Supports are ALSO drainers. Tanks are ALSO damage dealers. And Tinkerers are the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen and I hate them with every fiber of my being. Every single enemy can counter roughly 3 of the actions you can take with each character each turn and the only way to do what they do to you is with items. 

I think its mainly that the early game is just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with and it just doesn't feel fun. It gets better as you go through and get the ball rolling but it takes considerable effort to actually GET that ball rolling.

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It was the only way I didn't have to slog through hours of fights just to experience a miniscule amount of the game. Basically what I did in version 1.1 was get Red to level 100 as quickly as possible by mass draining everything. Then I swept through every fight getting Sam and Vix to level 100 as well, drained every boss as close to level 1 as I could get them, killed them all normally, and THEN broke them just to see what would happened. The result was the fight against Darkness. A level 100 superboss that drains the fuck out of your whole team every turn and by like turn 10 or something you're either dead or level 1 again.

No clue if that whole thing was changed in version 1.2 though.


Anyways I just don't think that's how the fights should be. A constant back and forth of

->Drain ->get drained ->repeat

->Damage enemy ->enemy is healed to full ->repeat

->Do anything ->thing is countered by enemy ->repeat

Is just not very fun. I mean I've played games where the odds are as stacked against you as they could possibly be (Evil West on Evil difficulty for instance) and that was WAY more fun than this because no matter how hard the enemies hit me, no matter how many times I got my ass whooped, I still felt like I had a chance against them. Sure the enemies were tanky, sure they could heal to full in seconds, but I had the tools I needed to counter them and it DIDN'T feel like a never-ending pointless battle, every kill, every action I took made ACTUAL progress in the fight. The fights were actually tense and thrilling (which is admittedly hard to do in a text based RPG so that's a moot point) and not a boring back and forth.

This isn't a bad game per se, but it needs balancing imo, it needs some more stuff to give the player some extra OOMPH. And I think that every enemy shouldn't have a counter to every ability/strategy that YOU have. Each enemy needs a more PRECISE specialization and YOU need to figure out what abilities YOU have that counters THEIR'S. NOT the other way around. It's like it's trench warfare and I'm fighting for hours, sometimes DAYS, just to gain a single foot of ground at the cost of thousands of soldiers. It isn't fun. Plain and simple.

Still, it's more balanced than Tales of Mystra though. Once again, those who know, know. And I will not elaborate.

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Add Catzilla to my list of grievances. A boss (seemingly encountered at level 50) that TAKES OVER the current encounter with little to no time to prep for it, burns the fuck out of you, and has a consume move that drains THOUSANDS of xp per turn and gives it to all of its parts is really fun. It should give you a full round to buff and prep for it as it "walks" up to you, the head shouldn't be able to attack AND have someone "consumed" at the same time, and the burn attack needs a cooldown as the only way to cure it is to wait for it to wear off or defend which wastes a precious turn that could be used for DPS or stuns instead...

Also, another good point for this game. The Hunter's Flashbang DOESN'T create a blinding white light, it instead makes the screen completely black for a bit instead. Thank you for that, it's actually really kind of you. This part is not sarcasm even if it sounds like it due to the previous paragraph.

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Ok after playing 1.2 for a bit, I've come to the conclusion that none of the strategies work because every enemy has the ability to undo ANY progress made in the fight in a single turn.

Every fight's basically a puzzle instead of a fight but they're all REALLY annoying puzzles that take actual years to complete. Complete, not solve. You can get the solution in a few seconds, but it requires a trillion turns to successfully do. The enemies ARE predictable... until they aren't. Taunt enemies most likely taunt once someone reaches 50%, mage enemies barrier with the same trigger, healers heal on it too. Healers seem to prioritize reviving over everything else but that'll never happen because the second someone reaches half health, a taunt gets put up, a barrier gets applied, the guy gets healed to 150% of their max HP, and the rat builds a fucking barricade with almost a THOUSAND HEALTH at level 16. (I think there can only be 4 enemies at once so that technically can't happen, but barricades taunt and there's enemy compositions with a healer imp, a slime mage, and a rat so the point still stands) 

The ONLY way to deal with half of this shit are with items. Items that you only get from winning fights and buying them from the shop. Which usually take 50 bajillion turns to win because every enemy can do 5 different things to counteract anything that you can do. 

It's not really a good feeling at all. I mean, I just had a fight that I THOUGHT I could win until the rat shat out a 950HP Lvl 16 Barricade which gave the mage enough time to drain the fuck out of my team... How is that even fair? I need money to counter this shit, but in order to get money I need to win fights, but winning fights requires countering this shit, and in order to counter this shit I need items OR to gamble and hope I hit a 25% stun 80 times in a row (statistically impossible btw) before the rat/tinkerer completely removes any and all strategy with a SINGLE barricade or structure. I can no longer decide what to do because I HAVE to attack and kill the barricade before I am allowed to do anything else or I NEED to kill the drain totem or else everyone hits lvl 1 and I die.

The game's unique in it's concept but I can't say that the execution is good at all. It needs some heavy balancing or something. I mean you've put effort into it and it looks good and all, but dear god is it painful sometimes. I find myself refreshing the page every time I get a wandering boss because it's a guaranteed loss without the proper items. Like the tutorial pretty much says something along the lines of "prioritize your targets" but that's completely irrelevant when EVERY enemy is top priority. When EVERY enemy on the field is level 20, and EVERY enemy has 10 different ways to screw you over, how do you decide which one to kill first? There are NO weak links, no weaknesses to exploit. And the ones that are there take a long time to actually exploit them. And increasing you level barely helps at all because the levels of the enemies you fight is the AVERAGE of yours. I feel like a complicated math equation is probably required to determine the level of the enemies.

However, I do have to give this game props on a few things. This game's balancing is STILL better than Tales of Mystra's balancing (Those who know know). And no I will not elaborate on that. The idea is also very cool and I DO like that about it. I also need to mention that it's probably not a very good feeling seeing someone write all of... this. About a game you made, but at the same time it's necessary. It's a necessary evil because you, as a game dev, need to know what went right and what went wrong so you can improve. User feedback is incredibly important even if you don't always look forward to getting it. I'm sorry.

Gonna be honest. I wish there was a gallery of some kind. I remember in the first version you could open the images into new tabs and that made it super easy to see all the difference between stages and make comparisons, now you kinda just have to give and take xp from your team and there's not an easy way to do it once you reach the extreme xp totals later on.

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Your comments helped me here. I was literally about to ask if the dev rebalanced the game or added some form of difficulty options to give the player a fighting chance. But after reading your comment it sounds like they didn't.

The game's neat and all, and it's honestly the only one of its kind that I know of, but dear god did it take forever to do anything the last time I gave the game an honest try. 

In the 1.0 update the healers were the biggest issue because they'd infinitely heal both their friends and themselves. In addition to that they'd sometimes decide that 80% HP was enough to heal an ally and give them something like 35 overhealth depending on the level of the healer. You literally could not kill them without breaking them. At the time there was no punishment for it so it was the ONLY way to kill 3-stacked healers without bashing your head off of your desk for two hours per fight because with my luck EVERY fight was against 3 healers.

Then 1.1 came around which rebalanced a lot of the game. I think in 1.1 when you drain and stun I think the chances/power goes up each time you target the same target. But the enemies get that buff too so each time they drain you it goes up by like 5% which just results in a back and forth until you accidentally break an enemy. Which is bad now and you actively get punished for it with an ultra nightmare difficulty superboss if you do it to the bosses of the game and some other stuff if you do it to the basic enemies.

I barely even played 1.1 because it just felt like more of the same where you HAD to break enemies to win fights but now you got your balls crushed for it as punishment. Stuns were also super unreliable as it was a 50% chance that'd decrease if the enemy was higher level and increase if you were a higher level. There's some gear in the shop that is pretty much REQUIRED to win any fight, specifically the item that gives your character TWO TURNS as that means double stun, heal, or drain which is absolutely necessary to outscale the enemies. The problem is, it's legendary and you pretty much need 3 of them.

I'm still gonna try 1.2 but this does not give me high hopes that I'll enjoy it. So far it DOES seem like overhealth was mostly solved as everyone has a cap of 3x their max health.

I thought she was a boar? Though when she explains her origins, Tanuki definitely fits that better than a boar.

Mid to late August or early to mid September is my estimate. The update was sitting around 70 to 75% complete around June 17th. So it might be around 80% complete by now.

Tales of Mystra is by Orachi. Similar stuff to Nick Sav. It's balancing's a bit of a mess (or I'm just a dumbass, no clue tbh) and some of the stuff in this game reminded me of it. It's rare to get a proper RPGMaker Growth game so I was just trying to throw out a warning or word of advice or something is all.

Also both the artist and you get 3 pats on the back, maybe 4, then. Cause I'm imagining the base looked good and all your edits do look pretty good.

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Honestly after playing Tales of Mystra, I can understand why you'd want to save game balancing for last. The balancing in that game is pretty bad and it's almost impossible to get strong enough to do anything. Too many enemies that 1-shot, too many enemies who are practically immortal, the world level being hard to compete against, etc.

HOWEVER, I don't recommend saving it for last. When the full game's out it's gonna be pretty boring when every enemy gets 1-2 tapped. So I'd say try to do it as you go, but include a few items/settings that lower difficulty and makes fights substantially easier. AND a warning that makes it abundantly clear that the fights may or may not be balanced.

Also as another suggestion please make the menu sounds separate from the actual sounds in the options menu so I can lower their volume. Selecting something in the menus is sometimes really loud compared to combat, walking, the intro cutscenes, and growth scenes.

Anyways, good stuff so far. I'm decently intrigued by it and I very much enjoy the character designs. Whoever did the pixel art for the characters did a good job btw. Unless it was an Ai in which case it only gets 1 pat on the back instead of 3.

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I actually think it’s just returning to its normal pacing. Looking at 0.38, 0.39, 0.40, 0.41, and 0.42​ they average at about 13 to 16 thousand words and 200 to 300 renders.

0.43 didn’t have too much going on but it did have some lore, worldbuilding, and some chatter with the girls.

0.44 and 0.45 however were both completely filled with lots of seemingly important worldbuilding and lore.

0.46’s beginning felt like it could’ve been cut off from 0.45, especially since that had multiple cliffhanger opportunities itself.

SPOILERS (0.46)

The ambush part specifically feels like it could’ve fit as the ending to 0.45 but was instead moved to 0.46 for some reason. I say this because the ambush includes MANY opportunities for cliffhangers which is Vertigo’s favorite method of ending updates. Meanwhile the second half was just the MC explaining things to the class, catching them up, and then moving out towards the hotel. Hence it’s lower word/render count since those conversations can be cliffhanger-ed at almost any point, going off of Nene’s mask reveal that is.

0.47 most likely includes something similar (haven’t played it yet) and is probably just a bunch of chattin/hangin out with the girls. With some lore/minor/medium reveal at the end.

Oh trust me, I know how it all works. I've been in the AVN scene long enough to know that quality takes time. And judging from the ones I play (Eternum, Nature of Magic, Wild Cats), I much prefer quality over quantity and I'm sure a great deal of others think the same.

So take your time to make something you're proud of and people will notice. That I can almost guarantee.

Surprisingly 2 months was my first guess but I changed it cause that felt like a bit of a rush for peak.

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1.2 part 2 JUST came out so it'll be at least 3 months.

Enemies kill each other and level up off of it. They used to level up WAY too fast but now it's kind of on the slower side.

What used to happen is that by the time day 2 or 3 rolled around almost every enemy would be level 8 or 9 and instakill you and it left you very few opportunities to level up yourself. The dev changed it in one of the recent updates but made it a bit too slow imo. Now it seems like enemies take way longer to reach even level 5 unless there's a trillion bases next to one another. 

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It feels like the world gets populated WAY too fast which results in the enemies just beating the shit out of each other and powerleveling. By the time day 2 rolls around you start seeing way too many level 8s and 9s and if you touch one of them you just explode and get sent back to 100cm. 

And I'm pretty sure the level 8s and 9s are like 1000 meters tall because only their feet are in view and 95% of their body is offscreen so there's absolutely no way for the player to win at all considering all of their glyphs are about 1000+ in strength.

Also Amiya only has 1 item in stock and I don't know if it's supposed to be that way until she gets bigger. (Turns out finishing her quests allows her to grow larger AND get more items in stock, HOWEVER her second quest wants "some basic glyph scrolls" which is quite vague as it doesn't specify a number or specific type like attack, shield, split, etc. in the quest log.)

Edit: Loading a save bugs out the save slot, whenever you try to save to the bugged slot it fails and keeps the old save that was already there. Loading ANY slot, deletes the old save in the bugged slot, and then successfully overwrites it with the new one you tried to make previously.

I believe the free room only heals up to 50% of your max HP. If you want to heal back up to 100% you've gotta pay for the premium one. 

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Alright, after playing the prologue I'm instantly hyped for more. The prologue does its job perfectly. I can't really compare it to the original since this is the first time I've heard of, let alone played this game, but I still think it's pretty damn good from what's shown so far.

It sets up the plot with a strong enough hook to catch you and keep you wanting more. Introduces the starting cast of characters as well as tells you enough about them for you to make a decent estimate of their personalities, not enough for me to say whether I like them or not but definitely enough for me to find them interesting. It gives you a few choices to make so you can see what they'd look like as well as get a glimpse into their effects. And it's got a few mysteries hidden in it too! 

The free-roam segment is cool too and definitely peaked my interest as I was not expecting it. The interactables are highlighted and different types have different colored highlights so you can easily tell which ones are "progress" and which ones are "side content," very much appreciated by the way. The inventory works quite well and it's also pretty well made. I like how you can slide the items around and organize your inventory yourself. The ripped up paper was a neat little teaser of some possible puzzles/minigames in the future, which I liked a lot. And the fully readable newspaper is nice too as most of these games only really give you the headlines. That newspaper is also a good source of world/mystery-building.

Speaking of mysteries and hidden things. The ones in the prologue are hidden enough that it requires a bit of thinking to make the connections. But they are still satisfying to make nonetheless and they set up the worldbuilding even more as well as make the hook stronger.

Overall, I enjoyed it and eagerly await more as I really enjoyed what it showed off. However, I do feel the need to advise you to give your computer a "good job" pat after every render because these renders are of a very high quality and you need to make sure it knows that you appreciate its work as it renders them. 

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Yeah, I think it was either 0.15 or 0.2, but he does get a haircut at some point.

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Maybe my opinions of her will change later, but for now she's my 2nd least LIKED character. On my "interesting character" scale she's somewhere in the middle. I personally find characters like Zeline, Iris, Bella, and Oriana to be among the most interesting. And characters like Maria, Sae, Kanoi, and Oriana (again, but only after her 7/8th event) to be among the most likeable. I kinda rate them across two different scales. "Likeable" is for their personality and how entertaining they are while "interesting" would basically just be their story, arcs, character development, mystery surrounding them, and just my overall interest in the character in general.

Also I believe that would be the case then, increasing her points through repeatable events is unlocked later. I'm currently at the beginning of 0.8 with 14/23 events for Hazel, and at that point you cannot get points with her through repeatable events. Only through her unique ones.

Though I'm currently taking a break from the game as I've begun to find a decent chunk of the events repetitive or annoying in some way that I can't describe. So I'm waiting for a little while before going back into it.

You're right, I probably DID misunderstand her. But that still doesn't make me like her. To me, a man who is bad at reading social cues/understanding emotions and shit, it just looks like she's bipolar. One second she's kind and caring and the next she's chewing you out for an hour because you breathed wrong or something.

It also doesn't change the fact that she seems more closed off than the others even after her 2nd H-scene. No matter what, you cannot increase your points with her through the basic repeatable hangout events. ONLY through her unique story events. Every other character's points can be increased (infinitely?) through the hangout events with the exception of Zeline before her 2nd or 3rd event. After her 2nd or 3rd Zeline can also have her points increased through repetition.

And even if she IS genuine with Kanoi, I still don't think she's the... best influence on her. No clue if Kanoi has already witnessed Hazel's rage or not, but that's probably not something Kanoi needs nor wants to see. Plus some of the stuff Hazel tells Kanoi isn't too great either. Which I guess Jin can correct, now that he's in Kanoi's "inner circle," but still.

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I played this a while ago back when the OG 0.2 was out and it was pretty good. But I played so many others since then that this one just kinda...  almost completely disappeared from my memory. I'd get a few flashes of it pop up every now and then but that would be it. So I'd show up to check in and see it was still being remade and just move on.

So it was definitely a surprise when I saw that you'd be releasing the remake of 0.1 soon. Then you did release it, so I downloaded it, and then played it and a great deal of it came back to me. Not enough to accurately compare it to it's old form but enough to know that the remake is definitely an improvement. Everything looked better and I'm pretty sure the pacing and overall clarity improved too. I'm pretty sure that all the interactions felt more fluid and natural as well. As I played I basically experienced various cases of deja vu as I vaguely remembered some of the scenes and it was a pretty good feeling. It was very interesting comparing those deja vu flashback visions to the updated versions of them and seeing all the differences.

And the scene at the end with Doriana? Heartwarming and adorable. Brought a smile to my face seeing her interactions with the MC there. Doriana's flashback was especially good and made the interactions really stand out. Makes me excited for the... I think Christmas? Date later in 0.2. I vividly remember that one, especially after playing this again. 

Overall: Good shit, I'm excited for it and it's earned a more vivid and permanent place in my memory after this. All the work you (and friends) have put into seems to be paying off so far. So keep it up and good luck!

What's up with the "old game" folder? Do we just ignore that or move it over too?

Askin cause I've never seen that in an update patch before.

I'd bet things like the basic sexual tags (-jobs, sex, anal), then maybe femdom/maledom too as that seems surprisingly common, dev already mentioned a harem, threesomes/somes in general also tend to be common occurances.

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I've only just started getting into Part 2 of Update 0.4's content, but I think I know enough to confidently say that at least half of these characters would fit into a mental asylum.

Every single character is such a strange yet unique goober. 90% of them likable in their own unique way. While others are completely confusing or rage inducing.  Well... The only one I genuinely dislike (and find rage inducing) is Hazel, everyone else fits into "confusing yet likable" or "weird yet likable," Hazel is still interesting don't get me wrong. I just feel like everything she says/does is a lie and her cheerful/kind demeanor is but a mask hiding an actual demon from Hell. And it's quite easy to see why I feel that way as her demonic side seeps through the mask pretty often. It's especially made clear as she's the one character (so far) whose points are consistently locked behind events, you cannot endlessly repeat her basic hangout events to farm for points as they seemingly ONLY increase when doing her actual unique story events. I'm still interested to see who she actually is, and as such will continue interacting with her though.

Dev posts some free ones every now and then so it's always worth checking Patreon every 2-3 weeks. Though it IS only $2.50 a month which isn't too much but that's kinda hypocritical of me to say because I'm... not subscribed either...

I mentioned it in my response to someone else, but I estimate it'll be out soon. Either July or August... Maybe later than August depending on difficulties encountered. Though I do have to agree that some form of basic tracker would be much appreciated. Gives a rough estimate of how long it'll take. 

Though at the same time it's difficult to estimate work that is yet to be done. I mean how would he know how many words the next update will have when he hasn't written them yet? Or maybe he just gets locked into a loop of adding more stuff to the next update so it stays stuck at 90% for a month or two? He'd pretty much have to have the whole thing already planned out with a designated endpoint to avoid any of the complications with it. Plus maybe the tracker could be seen as a sort of schedule? I know some people get stressed about deadlines and he could be one of them, maybe he'd get stressed cause he didn't add a 1% to the tracker somewhere or something. 

Idk, I think at this point I'm just rambling about nonsense, it'd still be nice to actually see some indicator of the progress being made tho. Maybe just make every 3rd devlog free? Or do a quick free follow-up only containing the rough percentage? Something like "~73% done, give or take"

Sounds like you're just gonna have to gamble and hope it downloads the whole thing. I found that babysitting the download sometimes works. Or deal with an emulator I guess, but that tends to have buggy controls because it's assuming you're using a phone and not a PC/Laptop.

My recommendation is to just check on it periodically and if it's stopped, hit resume. My current internet also bugs out and breaks the download and it occasionally works again if I hit resume. Sometimes it'll get corrupted and say the download is "forbidden", sometimes it won't and it'll actually start downloading again.

The game's only 9 GB. That's small compared to some others I've played. Out of Touch is 19GB for instance.

Splitting the download also wouldn't change much since you'd still have to download and play Part 1 first, then do the same for Part 2, and then finally Part 3. All you're really doing is delaying downloading the full game. If you're worried about turning off your PC and thus losing the download then instead of turning it off, put it into sleep mode with all your windows open. Or start the download, pause it before turning off your PC, then you can SOMETIMES continue it when you boot it back up. Make sure you aren't in Incognito or anything tho so it actually saves the download. It's also usually better to download it all in one go anyways as that's more consistent. If your concern is that it takes too long, then start the download before work, put PC to sleep, go to work, and when you get back it should hopefully be done. 

Only real reason to split a download on Itchio is if you hit the file size limit. Which Out of Touch and Companion of Darkness both reached. Out of Touch, I believe applied for more space and got it. While CoD split the download in half between a season 1 and season 2. So maybe that's something Cosy Cafe will have to do later. Some games avoid the limit entirely by doing external downloads from Mediafire or MEGA, but that comes with their own caveats. Mediafire has ads that are suspicious as hell (fake download buttons) and MEGA only lets you download 5GB then it wants you to wait 6 hours for another 5GB,  it also wants you to download and use their app, BUT it DOES save downloads so long as you pause them before closing it so that's a plus.

Storage space is also a valid concern which I, fortunately, fixed before the price of SSDs skyrocketed. Literally, a month or two after I bought a 1TB drive for ~$100 it tripled in price. So I guess that's ALSO a valid reason to split downloads. But just delete a game or two or store Cosy Cafe on a flashdrive or something. All of which are easier options than deciding to download and deal with an emulator JUST so you don't have to download 9GB.