Glaring flaws. Why? Why?!
Greater Fighter is a game that looks like time and effort has been put into it, this is clear when you play and see all the art and music it flaunts, but there are many major problems in gameplay that completely ruin it for me.
For one, Leveling up is way too slow and the bonus experience you get for hitting objects rapidly without taking damage is unfairly weighted toward light, rapid characters, don't forget the bonus expires if you go 2.8 seconds without hitting anyhing as well. Sammy and Vanilla are both very maneuverable and can attack more than once per second so they have a much easier time leveling up than Lovett or any of the slower fighters you hire. This leads to one character (Sammy in my case) becoming way stronger than anyone else on my team and leading me to replay the first level over and over.
Speaking about power, why do I need to level up to stand a chance? I have 10000 dollars, why can't I just spend money on one of mu main fighters to make up for their terrible weaknesses? Why do I need to hire a different fighter that is either terribly slow or they cannot deal a decent amount of damage in a battle? The difference one level makes is ridiculous when my level 6 Sammy can completely win a battle by himself. While my level one Lovett can get in three battles not even get halfway to a level up, nor survive a hard fight because she is SO SLOW.
On character designs, I like them. You try to infuse personality and style into everyone, it's clear that they all have a combat type. Sammy, is balanced and thus does the best in a shoot'em up like this.
Vanilla is hindered in that he is fast, does little damage and has low health. WHY? I can understand that he is a speedy fighter, and cannot just march up to enemies and win singlehandedly, but he does so little damage that it is pointless and he only becomes a supportive fighter. If he had a smaller hitbox it would be a nice redeemer, or if he had a wider angle to attack rapidly with. but he can only move straight, shoot straight, has no chance against enemies that move to the side or behind and dies in a few hits, WOW.
Lovett is just horrible, she takes time to attack, so she will never level up as fast. She fires in a shotgun like burst, which is a nice design choice, it makes her feel different, but her "increased" damage is easily outdone by a leveled up Sammy. She moves terribly slow and has a pitiful amount of health. Why? What purpose does that serve? If she was a tank she would have much more health, and if she was a glass cannon she would be much faster. Lovett has no actual way to survive in combat since enemies have much more health and you will need to fight them for a few rounds to defeat them, unless you have a much higher level. So she attacks an enemy get in a few volleys of fire and dies in 2 hits. Amazing.
The mercenaries are even worse! Sure they can attack and move, but they take forever to level up, they have no special attacks or the ability to fuse in support. They often deal damage in an unconventional way or they do not deal enough of it, they feel like they are an unfinished part of the game, just added in to give more options, but they really fail to do anything except give you a larger presence on the battlefield.
The battles themselves are just awful. You move your fighters one or two squares, why so short? they need a much larger movement radius in order to capitalize on the idiotic rule system that turns normal battles into gimmick fests. The Silence status effect needs to be removed, absolutely. I do NOT want to sit there and try to evade bullet hell for a solid minute with no way to fight back. There is no reason for small mini enemies to float through one on one battles and spurt off bullets, so the slower characters have no chance to survive, even if you memorize bullet patterns.
I want to like this game, the idea is fabulous but you need to add a more versatile upgrade system and make it easier to evade bullets. There is no reason to have a tank character in a game about dodginf bullets!
Thanks for making this game.