Ren'Py Divine Dawn [v0.33] [Cryswar]

[fez16]

Just finished a playthrough of the game. Got a little feedback

Overall, enjoyed it a bunch. Will leave a very positive review later when I have time. Just had some feedback on what I thought was my biggest gripe with the game.

In general, I think the camp system, and the way you unlock and consume the different scenes and events, is very flawed.

One of the main reasons I think this is, is because of how disconnected it feels with the main story/adventure part of the game. I can go from "just met an angelic emotionless killing machine" to "lovers" with Metatron before we even reach the first destination of the game. However, outside of those specific camp scenes, it doesn't seem like this change in relationship matters at all. It leads to this feeling that the relationship building and story part of the game are completely separate.

Not only does this rapid change in relationship feel weird narratively, but it also means that I have essentially completely blown through the content of one of my favourite characters extremely quickly, and the rest of the game she will have essentially nothing. While this is technically my fault, and I didn't HAVE to focus on her and could have slowly paced myself and done a small amount of scenes for everybody, I would guess that almost everyone is going to focus on their favourite girls and probably not worry too much about pacing their events out.

As I said earlier, this leads to some weird narrative moments, where I have suddenly grown extremely close to multiple girls before the story even essentially got started. This issue is only going to compound itself when the main storyline progresses, and rather than finishing off my fav girls stories in the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the game, they get finished in the first 1/4 or 1/6 of the game.

On top of that, you can get scenarios like when Ashley starts calling me her boyfriend even though we literally never had and romantic scenes before this, but since her affection was high enough I was able to accidentally choose an event out of order, which really took me out of the narrative.

Finally, another issue I have found with it is what happens to the girls you don't immediately actively pursue immediately/take on missions. For example, Cecilia joins your party just as your about to set off. I was interested primarily in Metatron and Sarah, so I chose to build their affection/trust scores first. This meant that I literally never talked to Cecilia until I had pretty much finished the game. This is apparently a super important character in the MC's life, but since trust/affection is limited, I never had any interaction with her.

This is even worse when it comes to Sam, who is supposed to be my best friend. These characters have zero input on whats happening in the story, or the decisions I have made. And when their scenes are done, it kinda feels like these scenes should have happened right after I set out on the main quest. Like I said earlier, it just feels narratively weird.

Finally, one last issue I have is that the party rarely feels like a true PARTY. Some of the characters do mention eachother, and there is the occasional scene, but for the most part they feel very individual. Frankly, more scenes with multiple characters interacting with eachother, and more reactivity to other party members in general would be very welcome.

I know I kinda got a bit carried away, so here are a couple suggestions I have to make the story and camp scenes mesh a bit better:

1. Think about potentially locking some events behind certain story milestones to prevent players from speedrunning characters storylines before the main narrative has even started. I think it would make sense to gate the romance events a little bit. I like that you can focus on the characters you like and unlock the scenes you want, but something that encourages main story progression to unlock more scenes would just make the game flow a lot better.
2. Maybe have some characters INITIATE certain events, rather than have the players initiate everything. For example, maybe after returning to camp after a certain point in the story, a character might come up to you and comment on what just occurred, or on what they think about you/another character. Something to prevent certain characters from becoming invisible if you are not actively building their relationship. Like maybe after Cecilia joins the party, Sam comes up later and mentions something right away, rather than wait until I get around to manually activating her events. Or maybe you come to camp one day to find X talking to Y, rather than having you initiate the "X talks to Y" event. I think this would go a long way to making things feel more natural and better integrated into the main narrative.
3. In regards to events meant to be triggered in a linear manner, lock them in order to force you to trigger them in a linear manner. This is essentially already done with some scenes, but it can be easy to trigger a scene out of order in the "sleep lewd" scenes if you have already built up affection.

Anyways, I love the game and the writing for a lot of these events is fantastic. I just think that with a few tweaks the narrative will flow a lot better and be a much more enjoyable experience

 

[Cryswar]

Just finished a playthrough of the game. Got a little feedback

Overall, enjoyed it a bunch. Will leave a very positive review later when I have time. Just had some feedback on what I thought was my biggest gripe with the game.

In general, I think the camp system, and the way you unlock and consume the different scenes and events, is very flawed.

One of the main reasons I think this is, is because of how disconnected it feels with the main story/adventure part of the game. I can go from "just met an angelic emotionless killing machine" to "lovers" with Metatron before we even reach the first destination of the game. However, outside of those specific camp scenes, it doesn't seem like this change in relationship matters at all. It leads to this feeling that the relationship building and story part of the game are completely separate.

Not only does this rapid change in relationship feel weird narratively, but it also means that I have essentially completely blown through the content of one of my favourite characters extremely quickly, and the rest of the game she will have essentially nothing. While this is technically my fault, and I didn't HAVE to focus on her and could have slowly paced myself and done a small amount of scenes for everybody, I would guess that almost everyone is going to focus on their favourite girls and probably not worry too much about pacing their events out.

As I said earlier, this leads to some weird narrative moments, where I have suddenly grown extremely close to multiple girls before the story even essentially got started. This issue is only going to compound itself when the main storyline progresses, and rather than finishing off my fav girls stories in the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the game, they get finished in the first 1/4 or 1/6 of the game.

On top of that, you can get scenarios like when Ashley starts calling me her boyfriend even though we literally never had and romantic scenes before this, but since her affection was high enough I was able to accidentally choose an event out of order, which really took me out of the narrative.

Finally, another issue I have found with it is what happens to the girls you don't immediately actively pursue immediately/take on missions. For example, Cecilia joins your party just as your about to set off. I was interested primarily in Metatron and Sarah, so I chose to build their affection/trust scores first. This meant that I literally never talked to Cecilia until I had pretty much finished the game. This is apparently a super important character in the MC's life, but since trust/affection is limited, I never had any interaction with her.

This is even worse when it comes to Sam, who is supposed to be my best friend. These characters have zero input on whats happening in the story, or the decisions I have made. And when their scenes are done, it kinda feels like these scenes should have happened right after I set out on the main quest. Like I said earlier, it just feels narratively weird.

Finally, one last issue I have is that the party rarely feels like a true PARTY. Some of the characters do mention eachother, and there is the occasional scene, but for the most part they feel very individual. Frankly, more scenes with multiple characters interacting with eachother, and more reactivity to other party members in general would be very welcome.

I know I kinda got a bit carried away, so here are a couple suggestions I have to make the story and camp scenes mesh a bit better:

1. Think about potentially locking some events behind certain story milestones to prevent players from speedrunning characters storylines before the main narrative has even started. I think it would make sense to gate the romance events a little bit. I like that you can focus on the characters you like and unlock the scenes you want, but something that encourages main story progression to unlock more scenes would just make the game flow a lot better.
2. Maybe have some characters INITIATE certain events, rather than have the players initiate everything. For example, maybe after returning to camp after a certain point in the story, a character might come up to you and comment on what just occurred, or on what they think about you/another character. Something to prevent certain characters from becoming invisible if you are not actively building their relationship. Like maybe after Cecilia joins the party, Sam comes up later and mentions something right away, rather than wait until I get around to manually activating her events. Or maybe you come to camp one day to find X talking to Y, rather than having you initiate the "X talks to Y" event. I think this would go a long way to making things feel more natural and better integrated into the main narrative.
3. In regards to events meant to be triggered in a linear manner, lock them in order to force you to trigger them in a linear manner. This is essentially already done with some scenes, but it can be easy to trigger a scene out of order in the "sleep lewd" scenes if you have already built up affection.

Anyways, I love the game and the writing for a lot of these events is fantastic. I just think that with a few tweaks the narrative will flow a lot better and be a much more enjoyable experience

Glad to hear you enjoyed the game overall, and that you got invested enough for concrit. I mean that seriously for the record; I'll never say no to some dicksucking, but genuine constructive criticism is incredibly helpful and has been integral to the game improving over the last few years. As for the general commentary;

tl;dr: you're cool and I agree with all 3 suggestions

Long answer:
I generally agree with most of what you put down, with the caveat that some story scenes do get swaps if you've romanced your partner, and every girl still has a *lot* more content to go - this is just what I have so far.

Pacing is very much an open question; I've intentionally swung more towards 'easy to get' currently, but down the road I absolutely intend to add linearity (must do previous scene to do this one) and some degree of progression locks (must reach Badon to do 12+ affection/trust). I'm just not sure *exactly* how I want to do it yet. I've gotten a surprising number of complaints about how fast you can get trust/affection as well, though I don't plan to nerf that yet.

The camp side of things is meant to give the player as much choice as possible in what they interact with, but I do think the camp could have a lot more random interactions and occasionally scenes that just pop out of nowhere. That's something I want to approach very carefully and has been surprisingly unpopular in polls so far - idk why - so I haven't prioritized it. But by the same token, if the player just genuinely doesn't give a shit about Celica, I don't want to *force* them to follow her arc, even if I love this dumbass gremlin and the MC should probably care too.

More group stuff I can only agree with, nothing much to say there, I've been trying to do more of it as I get further in but have a long ways to go.

 

[UnDeaD_CyBorG]

I think one potential issue might be the repeatability and as of yet limited choice of night events.
If the only thing I can do at night is sleep with one of two succubus, and even repeating events I've already seen grants me the full amount of affection, I'll end up with a lot of affection for those characters, without really doing a lot for it.
I'm sure this will be alleviated in the future when there's more options with more characters, butmaybe it's also possible to halve the amount you get on repeat events?
Assuming there's no way to lower affection planned.
Also, I've found that, when gaining trust through adventure, there might be some rounding error.
I've never had this issue with flut numbers, but when a character had "2.0" Trust, in two of three cases, I couldn't actually click their Trust:2 events until I got another bit of trust, bringing me to 2.2.
Edit: And then Celica has this:


I think I would very much like a bit more guidance on event unlocks, as I actually tried actively to pace myself - spread attention to all characters, grind a little bit, then went on when I assumed now it would make sense from a progression point of view.
If I was able to just assume everything will be fine, that would make the game more pleasant.
Though this is mostly relevant at the very beginning (thestep from strangers to friends) and near the end, in between it's probably a lot less noticable.

 

[fez16]

Glad to hear you enjoyed the game overall, and that you got invested enough for concrit. I mean that seriously for the record; I'll never say no to some dicksucking, but genuine constructive criticism is incredibly helpful and has been integral to the game improving over the last few years. As for the general commentary;

tl;dr: you're cool and I agree with all 3 suggestions

Long answer:
I generally agree with most of what you put down, with the caveat that some story scenes do get swaps if you've romanced your partner, and every girl still has a *lot* more content to go - this is just what I have so far.

Pacing is very much an open question; I've intentionally swung more towards 'easy to get' currently, but down the road I absolutely intend to add linearity (must do previous scene to do this one) and some degree of progression locks (must reach Badon to do 12+ affection/trust). I'm just not sure *exactly* how I want to do it yet. I've gotten a surprising number of complaints about how fast you can get trust/affection as well, though I don't plan to nerf that yet.

The camp side of things is meant to give the player as much choice as possible in what they interact with, but I do think the camp could have a lot more random interactions and occasionally scenes that just pop out of nowhere. That's something I want to approach very carefully and has been surprisingly unpopular in polls so far - idk why - so I haven't prioritized it. But by the same token, if the player just genuinely doesn't give a shit about Celica, I don't want to *force* them to follow her arc, even if I love this dumbass gremlin and the MC should probably care too.

More group stuff I can only agree with, nothing much to say there, I've been trying to do more of it as I get further in but have a long ways to go.

Awesome to see that you are thinking about these things. Super excited to see where the game goes in the coming months.

 

[Doruza]

Not sure how I feel about how having multiple channels increases the initial cost, but maybe I just like the idea of being op too much.
Maybe add a trait that slightly decreases the increase?

 

[UnDeaD_CyBorG]

A small other thing before I eventually forget it:
I acknowledge the combat is far from done, so noting how some equipment has more or less abilities available to them might be moot.
But looking at the choices, there's a lot of them. And I've found that they are frequently not quite as mechanically different as they ought to be given the amount of choices.
Meaning, I'll generally pick a half dozen or so and stick with them.

Spoiler: A bit more detail

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Thing is, usually depending on the traits picked, this is an academic choice. I'll have some abilities that mesh well together, and then I'll just keep using them because there is no case where there'd be a different but similar ability that makes more sense.
This may of course organically happen once we command multiple schools of magic (if we go that route) and may have to circumnavigate resistances etc., but so far, I basically use 10 abilities, and the ability points slowly pile up because even if something else could be interesting, there's no time to use them.
Which brings me to the second point:
There's potentially a nice range of neat buffs, but unless we combine those with a strong disabler helped by traits, and our companion provides sufficient distraction for us (which we have no real control over), we'll never use more than 2 (non-instant)buff abilities at once. Which will probably always be the same buff abilities.
I don't have a great solution there, as this is at the core of many turn-based systems, but most of them don't offer this breadth of choice.
I doubt we'll get into a position to even seriously consider 90% of traits in a single playthrough, while at the same time, abilities are gated by a resource we have no control over: Turns.

Btw, I loved the Mastery system.

Edit: Maybe a suggestion.

Spoiler: Suggestion

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[littleowen]

Not sure how I feel about how having multiple channels increases the initial cost, but maybe I just like the idea of being op too much.
Maybe add a trait that slightly decreases the increase?

My favorite build is using a Earth essence, Rune plate armor, Mana blade, the Deep breath trait and the one to increase mana by 5, stat to have all the resistance/mitigation/defense grows/stances and high hp, you can recover the initial cost of channels with the mana blade, take almost no damage and regen 10% hp per turn. Boy do i have a hard time dying

Spoiler

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[Sasarko99]

I really enjoyed the story so far, even the gameplay and combat system weirdly enough, despite me usually just cheating my way through it, this time around despite the game providing me with cheats I opted out of it.
The one issue I had with the game so far is how verbose it tends to get.
I get why the author does it, I completely sympathize with them and even share their enthusiasm, during the temple part the author wanted to convey how grandiose and magnificent the events and actors were and how the MC was way out of his depth.
Outside of the temple, I believe the author overdid it with the explanations and how much information he gives to the readers, and I understand why they do that, they're perfectionists and they have a very vivid and specific story in mind that they wish to convey to us players in the right way, they wish for us to properly understand these characters the way they meant them to be, to ensure that we get the full and good experience, they're just being thorough, the problem with that I feel, is that they overdid it.
I have 4 things to say, first I invite you to go back and read some of the conversations the MC has with other characters and compare how much was said and done, and how much you the author explained to us, for every short line a character would say, or act they perform, we would get a lengthy paragraph following it, then another explaining the other character's feelings, actions and reactions.
This brings me to the second thing, be willing to take chances with allowing the reader to understand your intent with fewer words and consider using other mediums such as facial expressions and body language (sprites), and be willing to let some details get omitted especially if they're not important for us to know as we do not have to be omniscient.
And third, believe in your readers/players' ability to extrapolate meaning and interpret on their own, based on what they've read so far and what little cognitive abilities this band of coomers has.
Fourth, be willing to consider that sometimes, the audience misinterpreting or coming up with their own interpretations is a feature rather than a flaw, especially if they're small things that do not have a lot of bearing on the overall story.

Finally, this is still a gem of a game, that I look forward to seeing develop, I'm rooting for ya, and these thoughts are just my personal opinion. Good luck!

 

[Cryswar]

Merry Christmas yall! I had a stupid idea earlier this month, so I ended up spending the last two weeks working nonstop to get one last update in this year, as sort of a budget Christmas present and a very white Christmas LOL. So 0.28 is free for everyone now, and 0.29 is up for supporters.

0.28 public release patchnotes below;

• A massive combi-scene covering your return to the knight camp after the Deepwoods finale, with some significant plot development and some major callbacks to previous major choices. Also includes Ina being thirstier than usual, which is a feat in and of itself.
• Aspasia 12 and 14 affection scenes, pushing further into friendship and romance with the starstruck slime. Like, astronomy stars, not a metaphor for romance.
• Sarah 10 trust gets moving on her own Rocky training montage, which is unsurprisingly less violent than Ashley's. Slightly more messed up tho.
• Metatron 10 trust finally starts delving into Metatron's own martial art, as well as more trauma. That's gonna be a recurring theme.
• Ashley affection 12 is mostly really wholesome, with a side dish of PTSD. She's a good girl. Might purr if you pet her.
• Greatsword rework; 4 new traits, a few new support abilities, and several new elemental skills. It's still probably not as busted as Greataxe, but way safer and plays more into the unstoppable juggernaut vibe.
• Some new music; Selendis and Ina each get their own themes!
• A new knight, with art from alhazart. Same guy who did Kuril, Kandros, Svyatibor, etc.

As always, you can download from my

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or get the demo version free on

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, or check out patreon/steam/itch to get the newest version. There is a Steam sale going on if you want it there!

I will respond to posts this coming week, I've just been too busy to do much of anything *but* work lately. Sorry for the radio silence. I hope you enjoy the update, and you have a fantastic Christmas and New Year's!

 

[geheim12347]

Is there a wiki for Divine Dawn?
Doesn't look like there is. I dunno, it's such a common feature these days it's a bit surprising and it might help some people who forget half the plot they went through so far after a long pause between updates.
Totally thinking of other people and not myself here.

 

[Doruza]

Don't know if they're supposed to work like this but the talent that reduces the upkeep of all channels and the talent that reduces wind specific channels upkeep do not stack.

 

[riji]

Going through the game, jolly good time, very comfy, all the girls are adorable.
Something I noticed, tho - last available convo with Sarah seems like it doesn't really match Nether training - apparently Ashley picked Sarahs brain for info like Qlippoth as general Nether magic system, but Sarah tells that she knows nothing of Nether magic systematization. I might be missing something there, but this kinda jumped at me.

Edit: another thing - maybe a bug - Flash Freeze sometimes removes all of the chill stacks without applying frozen ones. Not really sure what happens there, and it is not CC protection status - seems to happen quite often during morning spars.

 

[Renate]

Really enjoying this one. Great writing and nice collection of girls with varied themes and preferences. I really like a lot of the effort put into fleshing out some things that wasn't even required, like the element training dialogues. There's great world building here and it's got me engaged in the world and the characters more. The combat system seems pretty engaging too with a lot of growing options.

Seeing you being active, communicative and updating often made it an easy decision to pick it up on itch. Please keep up the good work!

 

[riji]

Current Steam version, new game. Cant get this event to fire.
Also, Maya joint event should probably have martial art trust event as a requirement, not just a value.

Edit: its just a misleading hint self-referencing event, should be referencing the joint one as a requirement.

Also, Cryo armor spell and one of its upgrades (beta, I think?) seems somewhat obsolete since Aether armor baseline is equal to it.

 

[Deit1]

Does this game have any kind of endings yet?

 

[Cryswar]

Hey guys, happy new year! I know it's long passed for some and yet to come for others, but such is the reality of timezones.

It's been a helluva year for me, and by extension DD. From getting two different severe respiratory illnesses early in the year to the Steam release and the culmination of the Deepwood plot in a finale I'm still proud of, there have been no shortages of ups and downs. I kept at it though, and we're making pretty good progress with both the main plot and finally paying off on character romance arcs. Aspasia finally earned hers, Sarah starting to get her stuff together, Sam building up to her first time... and maybe most importantly, your first truly major choice at the Deepwoods finale, deciding the fate of a race.

I definitely needed that holiday break week, but I'm excited to get working on DD again. It seemed like people liked that last 2 week update, so I'm gonna give it a shot again for the next update. Gonna focus on Ina and then see what else I can fit in. After that, might try for a larger valentines update? We'll see how that goes.

Will respond to all the recent messages/DMs soon, I wanted to actually take a week off for once and didn't think they would build up this fast haha. Apologies for the delay, I usually try to respond to everything ASAP.

 

[Laice]

is a female mc (from the start or by transformation) possible or perhaps planned for sometime?

 

[UnDeaD_CyBorG]

I have to admit it took me embarassingly long to think of Warhammer when reading this.
But, I failed to comment on it at the time, but I am very fond of you mentioning Galantyne Sauce.
I've tried it oncy after Tasting History. You even went as far as to remind people of the ingredients. ^^

Maybe a bit on the nose, but, points for style!


Edit:

Spoiler: Edit

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[Cryswar]

Apologies for the delay in responses, took a break over new years and have had a lot going on IRL. Gonna try to get to everyone here.

I think one potential issue might be the repeatability and as of yet limited choice of night events.
If the only thing I can do at night is sleep with one of two succubus, and even repeating events I've already seen grants me the full amount of affection, I'll end up with a lot of affection for those characters, without really doing a lot for it.
I'm sure this will be alleviated in the future when there's more options with more characters, butmaybe it's also possible to halve the amount you get on repeat events?
Assuming there's no way to lower affection planned.
Also, I've found that, when gaining trust through adventure, there might be some rounding error.
I've never had this issue with flut numbers, but when a character had "2.0" Trust, in two of three cases, I couldn't actually click their Trust:2 events until I got another bit of trust, bringing me to 2.2.
Edit: And then Celica has this:
View attachment 3180088

I think I would very much like a bit more guidance on event unlocks, as I actually tried actively to pace myself - spread attention to all characters, grind a little bit, then went on when I assumed now it would make sense from a progression point of view.
If I was able to just assume everything will be fine, that would make the game more pleasant.
Though this is mostly relevant at the very beginning (thestep from strangers to friends) and near the end, in between it's probably a lot less noticable.

It's definitely possible to lower repeat T/A. It's funny, my initial goal was to make the game as not-grindy as possible, but I get more complaints about that than any grind that is there. Balance is hard.

The rounding error is actually Python floats being awful in every possible way, there's no real way to fix it aside from moving solely to integers, but I can mostly fix it by forcibly rounding displays to 1 decimal place. Fixed for next update.

Not sure how I feel about how having multiple channels increases the initial cost, but maybe I just like the idea of being op too much.
Maybe add a trait that slightly decreases the increase?

Channels are definitely getting revamped to be simpler, and will lose that scaling thing entirely. Been trying to work thru the details on discord/patreon, most of the way there, but will not be in the upcoming update cuz I'm gonna have to change a lot.

A small other thing before I eventually forget it:
I acknowledge the combat is far from done, so noting how some equipment has more or less abilities available to them might be moot.
But looking at the choices, there's a lot of them. And I've found that they are frequently not quite as mechanically different as they ought to be given the amount of choices.
Meaning, I'll generally pick a half dozen or so and stick with them.

Spoiler: A bit more detail

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Thing is, usually depending on the traits picked, this is an academic choice. I'll have some abilities that mesh well together, and then I'll just keep using them because there is no case where there'd be a different but similar ability that makes more sense.
This may of course organically happen once we command multiple schools of magic (if we go that route) and may have to circumnavigate resistances etc., but so far, I basically use 10 abilities, and the ability points slowly pile up because even if something else could be interesting, there's no time to use them.
Which brings me to the second point:
There's potentially a nice range of neat buffs, but unless we combine those with a strong disabler helped by traits, and our companion provides sufficient distraction for us (which we have no real control over), we'll never use more than 2 (non-instant)buff abilities at once. Which will probably always be the same buff abilities.
I don't have a great solution there, as this is at the core of many turn-based systems, but most of them don't offer this breadth of choice.
I doubt we'll get into a position to even seriously consider 90% of traits in a single playthrough, while at the same time, abilities are gated by a resource we have no control over: Turns.

Btw, I loved the Mastery system.

Edit: Maybe a suggestion.

Spoiler: Suggestion

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Could you give some examples of weapons/elements that you think suffer worst from a lack of choice, and some that you think do a better job of it? I've been trying to improve that over time, compared the start of the game when everything just had 4 super basic attacks.

Ability points stacking up is an issue I'm just not sure how to fix; even if I make every single Greataxe ability good, that's still at most 10-12 AP, and then a greataxe main is just... done interacting with that system.

I personally think that the biggest design mistake I've made is increasing TP from every 5 levels to 3, and adding so many since then. Zero chance of people EVER getting more TP income.

I really enjoyed the story so far, even the gameplay and combat system weirdly enough, despite me usually just cheating my way through it, this time around despite the game providing me with cheats I opted out of it.
The one issue I had with the game so far is how verbose it tends to get.
I get why the author does it, I completely sympathize with them and even share their enthusiasm, during the temple part the author wanted to convey how grandiose and magnificent the events and actors were and how the MC was way out of his depth.
Outside of the temple, I believe the author overdid it with the explanations and how much information he gives to the readers, and I understand why they do that, they're perfectionists and they have a very vivid and specific story in mind that they wish to convey to us players in the right way, they wish for us to properly understand these characters the way they meant them to be, to ensure that we get the full and good experience, they're just being thorough, the problem with that I feel, is that they overdid it.
I have 4 things to say, first I invite you to go back and read some of the conversations the MC has with other characters and compare how much was said and done, and how much you the author explained to us, for every short line a character would say, or act they perform, we would get a lengthy paragraph following it, then another explaining the other character's feelings, actions and reactions.
This brings me to the second thing, be willing to take chances with allowing the reader to understand your intent with fewer words and consider using other mediums such as facial expressions and body language (sprites), and be willing to let some details get omitted especially if they're not important for us to know as we do not have to be omniscient.
And third, believe in your readers/players' ability to extrapolate meaning and interpret on their own, based on what they've read so far and what little cognitive abilities this band of coomers has.
Fourth, be willing to consider that sometimes, the audience misinterpreting or coming up with their own interpretations is a feature rather than a flaw, especially if they're small things that do not have a lot of bearing on the overall story.

Finally, this is still a gem of a game, that I look forward to seeing develop, I'm rooting for ya, and these thoughts are just my personal opinion. Good luck!

Better backgrounds and some (non-lewd) event CGs would help with some of the worst of that, I think. The late temple and Metatron's arrival is a good example of something that could seriously use a new background and proper CG with about 1000 less words.

I don't intend to cut out stuff like the MC thinking or characters considering how to respond. MC is very good at reading people and considering how they feel; his empathy is a big part of the character.

Is there a wiki for Divine Dawn?
Doesn't look like there is. I dunno, it's such a common feature these days it's a bit surprising and it might help some people who forget half the plot they went through so far after a long pause between updates.
Totally thinking of other people and not myself here.

There was for a bit. Then fandom banned all forms of NSFW wikis. I intend to add a section ingame dedicated to that, but I've been focused on other stuff.

Don't know if they're supposed to work like this but the talent that reduces the upkeep of all channels and the talent that reduces wind specific channels upkeep do not stack.

Channels will be getting a lot of work in the near future that will nullify that being an issue, but thank you for the report.

Going through the game, jolly good time, very comfy, all the girls are adorable.
Something I noticed, tho - last available convo with Sarah seems like it doesn't really match Nether training - apparently Ashley picked Sarahs brain for info like Qlippoth as general Nether magic system, but Sarah tells that she knows nothing of Nether magic systematization. I might be missing something there, but this kinda jumped at me.

Edit: another thing - maybe a bug - Flash Freeze sometimes removes all of the chill stacks without applying frozen ones. Not really sure what happens there, and it is not CC protection status - seems to happen quite often during morning spars.

I'll look into that, trying to keep track of all this stuff does lead to lapses in memory, but maybe I had something planned, I don't really remember until I look it up LOL.

If the enemy already has Resilience (elites like party members get it for longer), Flash Freeze doesn't bypass that.

Really enjoying this one. Great writing and nice collection of girls with varied themes and preferences. I really like a lot of the effort put into fleshing out some things that wasn't even required, like the element training dialogues. There's great world building here and it's got me engaged in the world and the characters more. The combat system seems pretty engaging too with a lot of growing options.

Seeing you being active, communicative and updating often made it an easy decision to pick it up on itch. Please keep up the good work!

I've gotten a lot of positive comments about the element trainings - it's super cool to know people actually like those! My first attempt at them was a lot shorter 'cuz I wasn't confident anyone would care. Glad you've been enjoying the game and thank you for the support!

Current Steam version, new game. Cant get this event to fire.
Also, Maya joint event should probably have martial art trust event as a requirement, not just a value.

Edit: its just a misleading hint self-referencing event, should be referencing the joint one as a requirement.

Also, Cryo armor spell and one of its upgrades (beta, I think?) seems somewhat obsolete since Aether armor baseline is equal to it.

Fixed the wording of the requirements, it was fine mechanically, just confusing as fuck to read. My bad.

Which aether spell are you referring to? Skin of Adamant is better overall, but has less raw defense. I'll look at all the channels when I update their mechanics and mana, try to catch anything that is too samey/one obviously being better than the other.

Does this game have any kind of endings yet?

Not even close. It's supposed to be an epic fantasy adventure, we're maybe a third of the way through currently.

is a female mc (from the start or by transformation) possible or perhaps planned for sometime?

Very unlikely at this point. I wouldn't mind it in theory, but rewriting everything to make meaningful differences between genders in most scenes would be an enormous amount of work, and halfassing it would still add a lot of mutually-exclusive H content and effort.

I have to admit it took me embarassingly long to think of Warhammer when reading this.
But, I failed to comment on it at the time, but I am very fond of you mentioning Galantyne Sauce.
I've tried it oncy after Tasting History. You even went as far as to remind people of the ingredients. ^^

Maybe a bit on the nose, but, points for style!


Edit:

Spoiler: Edit

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Researching galantyne sauce was an interesting rabbit trail, trying to make it something more setting-appropriate than hamburgers and McDonalds. Felt like it could be a good 'grounding' scene after all the high-fantasy stuff in the temple.

And I try not to be too on-the-nose about Warhammer references, but there are a few similarities.

 

[riji]

If the enemy already has Resilience (elites like party members get it for longer), Flash Freeze doesn't bypass that.

If I understand what Resilience is correctly (red arrow down icon), than that's not it. See attached screenshots. It might be glancing hits or odd stacks of chills, as somehow thise two seem to happen at the same time for me.

Which aether spell are you referring to? Skin of Adamant is better overall, but has less raw defense. I'll look at all the channels when I update their mechanics and mana, try to catch anything that is too samey/one obviously being better than the other.

Yeah, thats the one. Its base is equal to Frozen Armor alpha. See screenshots.

Edit: are there plans to add MC parents sprites or descriptions?