Strange to be talking about balance in this game, but I just want to mention it to keep it in scope. Characters start at 16 days lifespan on init, and before day 40 I can make multi-class specialists who are strongly capable of going solo. There are ways to deal with the possibility of the game being too easy, not strictly just limited to weakening player builds.
For example, one method is already in-game: enemies that deal strong corruption damage since it can't be treated, healed, or mitigated in much volume besides the Nun robe clothing article. However consider enemies that are situationally invincible until their formation is broken. For example, there are enemy formations where a large flower enemy is surrounded by vine/root enemies. Why not make the flower have nigh-invulnerability until its surrounding roots are destroyed?
Another possibility is giving enemies a variety of defensive tools. For example, enemies that can never be surprised in combat or even always start with advantage and attack first no matter how you approach them. Enemies that need to be stunned, slowed, or silence before continued combat is feasible, for example toggling off certain abilities on the enemy if they're hit with a certain status. Then the usual tanks who simply don't take these vulnerable statuses but don't do much in exchange besides be durable, like an actual team tank. Along those themes, a super-durable enemy who simply absorbs damage for its partners, making it a priority to deal with it first to cause appropriate damage.
In the vein of making the game's difficulty last in later chapters, consider enemies that give themselves stacking buffs if left alive too long, or enemies that adapt to repeat casts of the same element of attack. I suspect you already have elemental vulnerability / weakness like any game of this kind should, but look into that to see if it's pronounced enough. And when all else fails, an enemy that just becomes invincible for X amount of time that you have to endure out, followed by a downtime period where you can deal damage before it does that again. Self-healing enemies are a kind of proxy to this mechanic, but can be defeated if you damage-rush them with advantage in your first turn.
I enjoy the game's character design versatility in both looks and ability kit, but I'm suggesting tools to help keep the game's combat alive longer. In early chapters it is viable to let the player damage-rush everything as a simple way to game the system, but good games ensure players simply can't keep doing this and winning.
A cheesy strategy I've committed to often is entering a fight with an enemy, just to retreat from battle, to then attack the same enemy on-field from behind for advantage to use 2 consecutive turns of attacking to end the fight before I get attacked. I'm not sure about whether or not letting the player escape battles is a good or bad feature since H-games do tend to have the feature but I have also seen them recognize boss battles as fights you should not be able to flee from. In this respect the game seems okay.
On the more polarizing front that I'm actually okay with, but when I soloed the marsh to beat the Lamia (snake woman) in the swamp, the mud men were treacherous because they could literally just eat me in one attack and end the character's run. It was fine because I could flee from the battle but it did offer a hazard. The ghosts in the forest try for possession which would end a solo character immediately too, which is nice to avoid cheese.
On the flip side of giving you ideas for more challenge, I also have a friendlier suggestion. Have you checked the viability of captured monsters in battle? They're not very capable for the first few levels and it might be because they don't use weapons and thus don't have a way to scale up their damage. They do have the utility of their monster abilities but since they're driven by AI instead of player-choice they don't use these tools adequately to be helpful. I do not request immediate change on this matter, but I do request you think about it since they likely need to be more effective in some way. It's hard to say if they even can be game-breaking since multi-class persons are very strong once established.
And now for a reply to a recent post:
It's probably the first time I've been so drawn out by some kind of RPG. What is missing for me personally and what I have seen in other projects:
1. Irreversible curses, I wish there were curses that would forever change the appearance of the character and transformative potions and detransformation potions would not act on him.
2. There aren't enough reactions from the characters you're doing something with.
3. There is not enough smoothness of breast size change.
4. I would like to suggest adding a potion that can be taken only once, but it gradually transforms the character itself, say within 2 days.
Yes, I know about the curse scale, but it's a little different. I would like it not to be visible at all, as it makes the game much easier, and I would like the level of the curse to be determined based on the appearance of the character.
Oh and one more thing... I wish that over time the appearance of the enemies would be similar to the appearance of the characters. That is, not a picture, but a full-fledged model.
1) I mean, it's not
not a terrible idea if only due to the fact that we can make more people over time. Players don't like rigidity on the larger audience portion, but some do. Since children inherit species it gets a bit tricky if you want to keep transformations permanent. This kind of approach can be fine with recruitment from the guild for a permanent character join to your team that's a baseline unmodified human. It starts feeling like Rimworld / Dwarf Fortress at this point.
2) More emotion is cool. These technical RPGs don't tend to go for that feature until later though, but I'm not sure if it's easier to integrate if started earlier.
3) I think the rapid change is to keep file resources smaller and manageable since each breast size is its own art sprite to apply. Some games dynamically scale the boob up with 1 or a few shapes and a scaling slider for fully scaled-per-percent versatility, and some games go the simple small > bigger > medium > large > huge route like this one does. This is an engine constraint problem as well: RPGM VX Ace doesn't have much to offer for scale-modifier on sprites, and this game's work is already advanced for what I've seen on RPGM VX Ace. I'm sure a newer 2D RPG engine like nw.js (the newer pseudo-RPGM people seem to use for this genre) can handle it. Unity is a jack-of-all-trades, and WolfRPG is like a Unity alternative that seems suited to 2D games regardless if it's a top-down RPGM game or a sidescrolling platformer-fighter. For this project's direction I see nw.js as a good idea based on the surrounding works. Maybe RPGM MZ is okay too. I've not seen RPGM Unite used yet, seems like a subtype of Unity.
4) That's probably not hard to do but likely something to either avoid now of have a debug toggle for. Part of the instant nature is to playtest transformations immediately, both for dev and player since the dev wants to see what's not working and the player wants to see if the transformation is worth investment in the potion. I say hold off on this idea, seems hard to manage right now unless you can elaborate on it well enough.
And finally, a question: Is clothing dye in the game yet? I've not played to that point to see.
