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Reviews for "Relic"

First, I really enjoyed the game. In my review I will focus in details on the weak points I felt that you could improve greatly. I'll simplify by review by the following points:
Pros:
1. Pleasant artworks
2. Fast paced battle and storyline, no feeling of drag
3. customizable characters
4. dynamic battle system
Cons:
1. No inn. This may not be as bad as it sounds as one could still heal through potions. However, it is tedious to heal one by one, including mana, after taking damages, using skills, and after adding points to stamina and/or magic. Also, the rooks one receives after each battle is quite small (not sure if it's true in the late game as I'm only just done with the ruins).
2. Battle Animation. It seems, especially for Coal, that damages appear even before the character's attack animation hits the target, thus giving a sense of a lag of the attack animation.
3. Battle System. This reminds me of FF7 in which you could turn the battle into complete real time. However, this is definitely not for everyone, as player needs time to scroll to find magic or item or even target to attack. And while enemy attacks in real time, allies take turn-based attack! That kind of defeats of purpose of a real time battle mechanics since enemies have the advantage of attacking 2 times before you cycle through to your main attacker after wasting time with the weak physical attacker such as the alchemist. If you want a real time battle mechanics, then make it for your allies to and allow player to freely switch between characters who are ready to take actions. That gives player much more freedom in strategy.
4. No hot keys. Real time battle mechanics is not bad, but it's worse when the game is completely mouse based. As mentioned in the previous point, player has to waste time finding the right command and click. With hot keys, players could plan what he/she wanted to do and when character is ready just use the hotkey to execute the action.
5. Batlte menu. When character is ready to take turn, player will see the menu slowly scrolls up, wasting precious time as battle is in real time (this, along with many other cons, makes the whole real time mechanics really horrible choice). Get rid of it, just make it appear instead of rolling up.
6. Stats/Description. The statistics part of the menu is too simplified. There are other hidden stats such as evade rate, maybe hit rate (though I haven't seen my character missing), magic attack effectiveness/multiplier. And for the equipment description, player should be able to click on the currently equipped items to see its effects. Right now one has to take it off to the inventory to see its description.
7. Bestiary. It's a good idea to include a bestiary in the menu so one could check the ones that are scanned. You should check out matt-likes-swords' Epic Battle Fantasy 3 to get some inspirations. A good bestiary makes players exploit enemies weakness much easier. Also, if you want the players to use different equipments for diff enemies, allow them to freely switch equipments during a battle. Else how could one exploit certain special effects against certain enemies if one doesn't know who he/she will run into next.
8. Stat points. It is great to be able to customize characters, but each character seem to receive different amount of benefits for each addition stat point. Some are obvious or told in game: guardians receive extra HP for each stamina. But some are more hidden (like dex). Tell players what they're getting out of it, otherwise freedom of customization is just as blind as one without it.

Hope this helps and I look forward to your updates and future works.

Hyptosis responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback, I'll try to do better next time.

Yeah, it's good.

I agree with most of Ferphlyss's advice below. His suggestion to upgrade only strength and stamina except for Cinnacat, the healer (who gets magic instead of strength) was a good one. I upgraded magic instead of strength on Jahti, the archer, as well, because she had a couple of good mass attack spells, and that worked out OK, but by the end I was wishing I'd upgraded strength instead of magic for her too because she was often short on mana and her spells didn't deal a lot of damage.

I beat the game with the party at level 6. I didn't have any trouble with enemies dealing too much damage. Ferphlyss, maybe you didn't find all the good armor?

The magic system is indeed poorly designed as Ferphlyss pointed out. You can optimize a character for regular attack, OR for special attacks, but not both - and if you optimize them for one, they are useless at the other. And special attacks other than healing are barely stronger than regular attack, if at all.

Another thing to add - the only potion worth buying is the smallest mana drink (the Huchukalaki drink). One of those lets Cinnabar cast 5 healing spells which is like 250-400 hit points depending on his magic. It's way more cost effective than any of the alternatives.

I also didn't have much success trying to match enemy weaknesses. There are too many possible elements and not enough options especially since most of my characters were terrible at magic. For example, there was one enemy whose weakness was "water" but I don't have any skills that use water, just ice (and there was another enemy whose weakness was specifically "ice"). I think there were 2 different kinds of enemies one of whom had "cold steel" as a weakness and another of whom had "iron" as a weakness, and it seemed that Coal's basic attack worked on one but not the other? And the green slimes were weak to crushing, but the black slimes were apparently not weak to crushing. It was pretty confusing and didn't make a lot of sense. You should lay out a system of a few basic elements with symbols, and add the element symbols above enemies who are weak to them, and put the element symbols on the button to attack or use a skill.

Well done! BUT,there's a minor bug. I sometimes can't use the skills. (Okay, its like this. When you are in a battle, you press the "skills" button with full mana, you roll over the skill you want to choose, you click on it, but it does not work.) Could you fix it?

takes forever to load

Great game i would say. The reason i only gave 4.5 is cause first Fjor has a Freeze attack that is WAY over powered for the level you receive it. Make it where she gets the skill later on. Storyline was great, but i hope you either continue with this project to tell more of Coal back story it kinda left me in the dark. The act was great, yet kinda laggish but my computer aint that great as well. The damage amount seems to be a set amount which is good but also with weakness you should maybe think about getting a critical damage as well. Now this may have been because of me, but that chest in the maze like area seemed either impossible to get or i just didnt either look good enough for there was an action i did not know about. Also what would be great is make quick keys for the menu option or battle actions.