22+ Hours: End-game Feedback from a backer

[Cyber Akuma]

Well, after about 22 hours of playing and trying to get damn near everything I finally beat it, so these are likely my final thoughts and feedback for this game.

I was wondering if I should post this as a reply in my original "10 hours in" topic ( viewtopic.php?f=3&t=482 ), but I was worried that it would both kinda be necroposting and it would be dismissed as a nonsense reply to it.

Many of these were written before the latest update (1.031 at the time of this post) was released, but I re-tested them and all of them except for an issue with the Demon respawning upside-down if killed on the ceiling still apply:

It was a bit annoying when I was trying to level up all my magic how the game kept kicking me back to the "Select a spell to upgrade" screen every time I chose a gem, especially since it is very likely someone will want to apply multiple gems to a spell in order to level it up. I think it would be better if the menu stayed there and you had to manually exit. Perhaps only kicking you out if you MAX it since there would be no reason to remain there after it's maxed.

I am guessing this is likely not a possibility since it would require some parts of the game to be redesigned (as it likely does not track this), but would it be possible to make the secret detector stop pinging after you have found the secret? It makes it a bit annoying trying to comb through a whole area for secrets and you keep hearing it going off for something you already got. I can understand why people might want it to keep pinging for the one hidden area/treasure room in each world, perhaps either just keep it for that, or once you find it have it somehow be marked on your map so you don't need the device to remember it anymore? Or even have you map mark all secrets you found somehow (perhaps a tiny x on where it was, the same way it uses a dot to indicate a chest you haven’t gotten)

The way saves managing saves is designed (namely it's defaults) feels very counter-intuitive an prone to causing issues. Copy should be the default option, not Delete. You generally do not want to make an option that would cause a change, especially something like deleting a save, the default option as it's easy to accidently confirm it this way. This is further an issue since "Yes" is also the default after you select delete. I have seen others mention that they accidently deleted their only save this way. This even makes it so copying a save to prevent this has the issue of selecting delete first by accident. Likewise, the options should ALWAYS default to "Copy" and "No" instead of remembering the last option you chose like the game currently does.

Why are the warp-scrolls or the food items limited? I can understand limiting the items the jeweler sells since you would want people to kill enemies to acquire them and not just flat-out buy all their upgrades, as well as limiting armor and accessories and the stat-increasing scrolls, but there doesn't seem to be any reason to limit the food or warp scrolls. Likewise, it makes very little sense why the warp-scrolls are limited. In most games that have a "warp back to the town/store" item (Such as the DS Castlevania games this is based on) said item tends to be cheap and in infinite supply. While you generally have a carry limit in those games, it's not an issue since it warps you to the very store that sells them. The warp scroll in this game is fairly expensive (500gold) and in limited supply, once they are gone, they are gone forever. It doesn't make sense why this item would be in limited quantity, especially since it requires you to stand still and not take damage for a few moments to use it, so it's not like it can be abused to escape imminent death.

The crafted items seriously feel worthless. You can get "armor" in the Temple area that is better than anything that can be crafted, despite the fact that the Meteor Armor's parts so you CAN craft it can't even be obtained until the NEXT area. And even then, they are extremely rare. Speaking of which:

The platinum ingots seem way too frequent and appear way too late in the game. Most enemies even in the late areas seem to still drop these, in fact, even the enemies in the very last area drop these except for one who drops it as a rare second-item drop. Again, the meteor armor set itself had already become long-obsolete two areas before (from an armor item that itself was a drop), and here I am unable to even craft it.... while at the same time I am swimming in more platinum ingots than I know what to do with... literally, more than I would ever need to craft every Platinum item. What's the point of having an item to craft a piece of armor be a rare drop, which you need multiple of, and also having a much better piece of armor (that you would obviously only need once) also be a drop? Here was my inventory after I was done farming enemies to record all the item drops in my bestiary, notice the number of Platinum vs Meteor ingots: https://i.imgur.com/ULxjhW4.jpg

The axe feels rather worthless now. Other magic weapons were balanced to use up more MP when casting, but the Axe seems to just plain have suffered from this. It doesn't travel far, the fact that it can hit things above you is somewhat mitigated by the fact that club/greatsword weapons do the same, you only toss out one, and it doesn't do a lot of damage. It does about the same damage at max level as two of my knives do (and you toss out THREE at Max level for that spell), yet... the kicker is that it costs about twice as much MP (or more I think?) to use. It uses up a rather high about of MP compared to everything else for how little damage it does and how short it travels... not to mention the fact that you only toss one (although I am not sure how useful tossing more than one would be since nothing would be big enough to get hit by two of them).

Since you can have more than one Assassin's Sword, and each one has it's own "exp" in a sense for how much damage it does based on how many enemies you killed with it, is there any way you can somehow tell them apart so you don't accidently equip or sell the wrong one?

This is pretty tightly ingrained in the game so I doubt it can be changed, but I guess it's feedback for future games: Reducing the EXP monsters give you is understandable, you don't want people to just level up high in a beginning area after all, but I feel the way it was implemented in this game is counter-productive. Enemies just simply give you less EXP, until they just start giving you one. The issue is that there is no way to know how much reduced EXP an enemy gives you, especially with the bestiary telling you how much base EXP they give you. It’s confusing to see the bestiary tell you an enemy gives you a certain amount of EXP, but to receive a different amount. I know this is done so you don't just keep leveling up to high levels off beginning enemies, but I feel a better way would have been to increase how much EXP you need to reach the next level by a larger amount and not change the amount of EXP enemies drop, rather than reduce the EXP the enemies drop. Especially since when you get to the point where even near end-game enemies drop 1 EXP, this defeats it’s original purpose, since now the strongest enemies in the game still drop as much EXP as the weakest ones, making it even MORE beneficial to just attack the weaker ones now.

I had no idea I was about to fight the final boss when I did. It was just an inconspicuous drop, and I had already jumped down two similar drops throughout the final level. I understand that it would be a bad idea to put a save point there since without a warp scroll, you would be trapped there. But would there be some kind of indicator or hint that basically lets the player know "Hey, the boss is here, don't jump down if you aren't ready!"

About the revamps to the parachute in the most recent patch: It's good to see that it was moved to the backdash button, since making it the jump button interfered with your jumping, although this makes it also rather annoying to use for those on a gamepad. I feel it might be better if it was it's own separate button, although I am not sure if it's possible to apply a change like that to the game at this point, plus, having a button labelled "Parachute" in the options could be considered a spoiler I suppose. But even without a dedicated button, currently with no controller button mapping (Yes, I know that's planned) it places it in a very awkward position. Most gamepads nowadays are the standard dual-analog design. Two analog sticks (each that are also a depressible button), a "Start" and "Select" button (Or + and -, or Option and.... Touchpad?, or uhh... three horizontal lines and... two intersecting boxes? Argh, whatever, they are "start" and "select" basically) four face buttons, and four shoulder buttons. Not using "L3" and "R3" is understandable due to their nature, as for the shoulder buttons, the game used the first set to quick-select magic, but doesn't use the second set of shoulder buttons. The problem with the face buttons is that switching between them is slow, you only have one button to control all four, and it's not feasible to hit two buttons across from each other (such as the jump and backdash button) together at once with a thumb, many rhythm games that don't have a special controller actually use the shoulder buttons instead of the face buttons because of this(or at least have it as a recommended option instead of the face buttons), since separate fingers each control two sets of shoulder buttons, rather than a single thumb controlling four shoulder buttons. Many of the metroidvania style Castlevania games actually dedicated the shoulder buttons to a backdash because of this, it's lot easier and faster to press a shoulder button to do an evasive maneuver. It would make a lot more sense to have backdash be one of the second set of shoulder buttons, especially if parachute will be the same button. I can understand though, that in terms of something like say, a SNES controller, you already used up every button and had no additional buttons to map, not sure how feasible it would be to have some kind of option to separate the parachute button or not for those with a more SNES-style controller, it does still feel like it would make a lot more sense if it was a shoulder button though. (Perhaps in that mode make the magic quick-select just one button that only does in one direction?).

Also, the above reminds me, two shoulder buttons just feel a bit excessive just to switch magic and nothing else, although considering you can carry enough equipment for an army on your person, it would be a mess switching between weapons. Another thing the previous metroidvania style Castlevania games did was basically have “loadouts” you could switch between. It would be a lot more useful to just switch between two or more “loadouts” than only being able to switch between magic.

If possible, since I noticed some discussion about revamping the bestiary, many times these things tend to have a bit of flavor text, usually just a sentence or two, about the enemy, whether they are serious or comical. Would it be possible to add something like that? It feels a bit bland as it is.

And finally, a few possible bugs I ran into:

First thing, is the Crystal Rod supposed to shoot something? It's weapon description seems to claim that it fires projectiles, but my character seemed to just use it like a melee weapon, I couldn’t figure out if it’s supposed to fire anything, and if so, how.

I also noticed that if you time landing a jump-attack right, you can effectively cancel the weapon's delay and swing it again immediately. Considering that you need to be rather precise to pull this off, and the timing is different for each weapon, I wasn't sure if this was intentional as an ability for more skilled players to pull off, or a bug. I wondered if this was a bug since it seems to work for any weapon, whether it's a faster one like a 1H sword, or one of the slowest to recover from weapons in the game like the club, I was able to immediately swing all of them again. Basically I attack while jumping, and time it so I land around the time the attack animation itself is about to end, pressing attack again at that time lets me instantly swing again on the ground when normally you would have to wait a few moments for the weapon’s swing delay to end. It's significantly faster than you can swing the weapon normally twice in the air or on the ground.

I noticed some more possible issues with the Demon enemy. While the issue where it respawns upside-down if killed on a ceiling appears to be fixed, the Demon also appears to be able to leave it's "patrol" area via it's ceiling-climbing ability. I don't know if this is intended behavior or not, it was able to cross a lava pit that normally prevents it from leaving by crawling above it and enter the area where you normally fight a Grell. The part of it that definitely feels like a bug though is that it can drop down when there is no floor under it and just lava. It seems to get stuck and unable to move when this happens (though it doesn't take damage), only attacking in place, but it can get out of it by jumping to the ceiling again and moving to an area where there is a floor under it. I took some screenshots of that: https://imgur.com/a/LWfxbza

Oh, and speaking of the Demon (man this guy likes to break things) I noticed that if it attempts it's lunge-attack across stairs, it gets blocked and can't go past the top of the stairs. I don't know if this is intentional or not, it essentially has almost no range if it attacks you near the top of the stairs since it barely moves forward. Has no issues just walking across the top though. (I recall the Titan Hammer had a similar issue with it's shockwave attack across inclined/sloped floors)

Aaaand... that's it. That's everything I had found and had feedback on during my 22-ish hour playthrough. Likely the last of the feedback I have for now since I have done most of where there is to do in the game at this point... other than farm Meteor Ingots.

[Batstabber]

I wholeheartedly agree with the craftable items being a bit underwhelming compared to later-game drops. Once you've helped yourself to a Traveller's Cape, you won't ever need any other piece of armour, period. Considering how much "work" it takes to get your hands on the Platinum Mail and meteoric equipment, that's a real letdown. Now, if ingots where a bit more common, that wouldn't be such a big problem, but the most reliable sources are enemy drops, as crates mostly contain food, money or tokens. By the way, there are enemies in the Temple that drop Meteor Ingots, both common and rare, but they're a pain to farm.

The Crystal Rod is indeed able to shoot a projectile. Press backward, forward and then attack in sequence, but it takes a small amount of mana to do so.

[James]

Thanks for all the feedback! A few of the things you mentioned have already been fixed or will be in an upcoming patch (Demon upside down, defaulting to Delete under manage options, not resetting to first option, etc). I can agree with the gem screen kicking you back being annoying, I will take a look into a better way to handle that. Loadouts could be cool, something I've been thinking about a bit. Again, thanks for all the feedback, we will definitely be taking it all into consideration for future updates!

[Cyber Akuma]

The fix for the Demon spawning upside-down is planned for a future update? I thought it was fixed in 1.031, since I saw it happening in 1.03, and when 1.031 came out I tested it again and it didn't happen anymore.

[James]

Yea the Demon thing should have been fixed as of 1.031, the data manage changes will be in the next patch.