Got Yeeted on my 5th fight with a single hit even though i used evasion attack and was at full HP lol
Idk, at least let me restart that last day
Reviews for "[v0.5] Darkmorrow Arena"
I've had a lot of fun during my 2 full playthroughs (medium/hard) and thoroughly recommend giving it a try.
A few issues that may be overall improvements or just personal preferrence:
- Skipping during the Nightscenes should place me straight in my room. I read most of them on their first appearence (merchant wasn't my cup of tea), but i don't need to read my 50th trainer session :D
- Visiting the Arena master more than once per threatening opponent is kind of a waste. If you need to visit him to ensure victory/survival, you have already fallen behind the powercurve. My suggestion would be to give the player a buff, that lasts for a variable amount of days, which gets refreshed upon the first visit between opponents and improved with further visits. Improvements scale with relation, but the higher the improvement the higher the chance for the streak to break after an opponent has been killed.
-The game gets incredibly snowbally. I chose Spear+buckler, unarmored/underwearonly and power attack. The idea is to hit first, hit hard and dodge. Apart from some early levels into parry, to deal with the first wave of mercenaries/veterans, i put no points into heavy/medium armor or quick/aimed attack. Even if my opponent would counter power attacks i would spam them. My character had become so 1 dimensional, that she simply no longer cared if her opponents were strong against her setup.
My solution would be to scale the penalties with enemy tier, while also encouraging more diverse builds. For example reaching higher relations with the trainer sets all talents to 2/3 at relation levels 2/3. Maybe you steal some items from the merchant, also tied to relations.
-Rework healing/goldgain. Getting hit slows down character progression, so when facing an opponent you cannot kill in the number of rounds, it is often better to just stand back and spam parry. Maybe a small health gain (scaling with strength/heavy armor/home improvements?) each night can offset minor wounds in time for the next fight and only major blows require actual rest.
Lower the flat amount of gold gained through surviving/killing your opponent. Instead encourage the use of different moves.
For example: Each round a random stat of both parties is chosen, then add the repective initiative to both. If the opponents value is greater than the players, their action is hidden and the player has to guess (intel through arena master might help :D). If the player value is exceeding their oppoents they get to see their action and can then choose accordingly.
Choosing the correct moves, gives more gold at the end of combat.
We are fighting in an arena after all and the spectators want to see a show.
-Crafting your own gear is too expensive/time intensive for the first 9/10th part of the game ;D. Fatestone aquirement takes too long and gold is often better spent straight up buying already upgraded items.
My Solution would be to lower the cost of enchantments, offer alternative ways to acquire fatestones and remove already leveld legendary/epic gear from the shop.
Sorry for the wall of text. This was both a lot of fun to play and to think about what i would change. I'm looking forward to whaterever you guys have in store for us, as there are far to few adult games out there, that have meaningful and interesting gameplay. I'm looking at you 3D-Incest-Visualnovels :/.
acacGames responds:
Thank you for the kind words and all of the thoughtful feedback. I'll mull over everything you said, thanks! :)
It's kind of weird how game promotes changing strategy/figuring out opponent but in reality does everything to prevent it as well..
Not only gold is super limited for majority of the game but the gear is too hard to perfect.. by time you reach 250 glory for the arena champion ending - you will only at most upgrade 2 pieces of legendary equip and that's only IF you go for sexy 4 set.
Overall for those who want to have an easy time - most important step is to buy a buckler, preferably with evasion upgrades... ideally legendary buckler which you can upgrade with a lot of evasion.
Most important mastery with that strategy would be shield mastery. I recommend sword as weapon focus, but it probably can be axe as well, I found sword more reliable due to accuracy being hard to get. As for type of attack - I recommend parry early(get it to level 2 so you can endure early fights) and as you upgrade your buckler with more evasion - swap into the power swing and focus that one.
Out of armor - I prefer the unarmored thing and sexy 4 dancer costume(meaning you want to up relation 3 times in total, likely 2 times on trainer and 1 time on merchant)... this will boost your gold gain massively and allow you to upgrade your weapon and buckler.
Out of relations - focus on trainer first, then once you need to start upgrading you can swap to merchant.. Arena master is kinda pointless, you won't have trouble with accuracy/evasion in this build and it's better to gain permanent one through training anyway.
As you reach end game - it will be easier and easier since even legendary opponents would need all the luck in the world to win.
What can I say it's very interesting, yet it quickly becomes bullshit the moment you fight tier 3 enemies. Several bad rolls can end you. since this is as you say an ironwoman game, it shouldn't be too heavily reliant on it's rng aspects. I think you should make the ironwoman mode an option at the very least or make progression even slower then it is now so people don't get screwed against the tier 3 fight.
The game is pretty fun but the way that resistances work kind of kills it for me, especially considering there's not really a way to change your weapons mid-battle. If you're running like a fire axe power-attack build you can just get completely fucked over by being matched up against someone who's resistant to all three of those.