Mermaiden was short too, so I wasn't expecting a long game in the first place. But it did feel lacking, content wise.
But what saddens me more is that this game feels like Mermaiden 0.9, when I was expecting at least an improvement over Mermaiden.
I can elaborate my problems with the game before someone jumps on me. I should add that I enjoyed the game, I already finished it twice in hard and very hard, for a total playtime of around 5h, it just didn't live to my expectations after really enjoying the demo. In no particular order, without spoilers:
- Fast travel doesn't add much and certainly contribute to reducing the game length. Mermaiden was level based and hence didn't have the need for fast travel, although you could zoom through the levels too. Here, you'll rarely revisit a level.
- The game is also really easy, perhaps even easier than Mermaiden. You can just mash most of the bosses or their weak points to death.
- No hidden secret areas unlike in mermaiden (well, except one but it's not really hidden nor anything big), meaning there isn't much reasons to explore. And the hidden equipments aren't hard to find either, nor required considering how easy the game is.
- Money is also mostly worthless. You can use it to buy some equipments (half of them? I forgot the exact number) and consumables, but it's a far cry from Mermaiden consumables and equipments which were really good and game changing. I should add that Mermaiden money was scattered through the levels tho, unlike Hachina where you get it by defeating enemies. Meaning that it does give you a reason to fight, if you have equipments left to buy that is. The crafting system also makes the need for the consumables mentionned above almost null (In fact, I only discovered the consumable shop in my very hard run).
- But the crafting doesn't add much either, outside of story related stuff. I only crafted heals and pills to remove specific status effects, that's all.
- The bad ends, events, situations and debuffs are also another step down. They are either similar or another step down from Mermaiden. The few really new ones were interesting but it I don't wanna eloborate here to not go into spoiler territory.
I feel like I could go on (the environment variety, the dungeons, etc...) but this is already long enough and I don't want to ruin the mood.
Like I said, it's still a good game, just temper your expectations if you really liked Mermaiden.
And play this one first, then Mermaiden if you haven't played it (and Hasumi 1. It might be a RPG maker game, it has its highs too).
PS: Because I like to tinker games, I also played with my save file after finishing (it's the exact same format that Mermaiden save, down to some variable names). The game got an upgraded crafting mill (which I couldn't find in-game and it doesn't seem to do anything more than the normal one) and more areas which I couldn't find a way to access. Perhaps this is cut content but let's hope it's something for a future update. Some status effect flags are unused too, along with achievement flags, but maybe they are simple leftovers from reusing Mermaiden code.