darcin-greyhart responding to your review:
Be sure to be mean -- this isn't a relationship game.
It's a roleplaying game. You can be cruel, or kind. Carrot or stick, either way obedience will increase over time. High spoiling decreases obedience, and it is possible to lose taming if the slave's aura is stronger than the master's, and despair can lead to suicide attempts, so it's not as simple as just waiting, but there are many routes to the same end result.
Random complaints:
Combat: There is exactly *ONE* method to beat the harder enemies in the fog. You have to have the flamberge. You have to have Battle Cry. You have to have Roundhouse Kick. If you picked other special skills, you lose. Start your game over.
Each weapon type has associated special attacks, and they are all effective, though the hardest are morale weapons because the enemies hit so hard they recover a lot of morale every round. The fog battles also have differing levels of difficulty. The harder ones are balanced around the expectation that you have high attributes and combat skill, wear armor and/or use alchemy (healing balm gives more survivability, and other types can be used to gain immediate bonuses that help set up combos or increase survivability). Moreover, the artifact rewards from the white town forum give bonuses in combat. It's possible to learn all of the special skills now: you aren't limited to just 4.
Slave Training: On easy, it's pretty straight forward. I usually ask the slave to clean the house and if she doesn't, she gets beaten down until she does. Gotta get that fear stat up. (Once in a while they just won't comply and they get taken to the butcher for meat.) Then, it's about spending days to slowly build up habit and taming. It takes a while, but the fear goes away and you get a workable slave.
On normal mode or higher, things are far, far worse. If you punish them, the slave will run away, commit suicide, or mind break. If you reward them, they gain 'spoil' and refuse to comply. There are very specific, exacting steps to take to get a slave to work. It's a puzzle game at that level, not a slaver emulator.
The tutorial lectures explain the mechanics and show you exactly what your actions are doing to the slave's obedience stats (which you can also see outside the tutorial while wearing the Raven Crown), so not really a puzzle but rather an optimization game combined with learning what actions have what effects.
The only time pressure comes from the risk of running out of sparks, and there are many ways to supplement your income or reduce costs. The crux of the game is balancing income and expenses so that you can maintain positive cashflow while accomplishing whatever goals you set for yourself.
Suicide is preventable with a competent assistant. Escape is preventable with a collar. Mind break is preventable by keeping the relevant attributes above the threshold, or recoverable by raising them again.
Spoiling from rewards is minimal if you stick to the 2 per day limit which is stated in the tutorial. Usually high spoiling results from the "rules" you set on the slave, or from not setting enough rules if the slave is not fearful. High spoiling acts as a penalty stat (though low spoiling has a beneficial aspect by increasing merit) that encourages reaching certain thresholds of obedience or devotion before applying certain rules because otherwise there are negative side effects.
Arena: This isn't too bad, but requires memorization or the wiki to compete. I recommend dual wield. Since nothing is explained, you can click the crossed swords image for one special attack per arena fight. It does good damage.
It's deterministic now (same actions result in same outcome even if you save/reload). The status displays in the combat interface are clickable and give info about how it works, so "nothing is explained" is a bit of an exaggeration. Just like the opponents in the arena are announced with their combat style at the beginning of each battle, you can choose different combat styles for your gladiatrix until she becomes a champion. Those combat styles come with specific equipment, which have specific attack types and combos. Some are defensive-oriented, like net and trident, or sword and shield, and some are offensive-oriented, like dual wield or heavy weapon. Depending on the size, skill and strength of the combatant, and what the opponent is using, different styles will be more or less effective, but it's possible to win a majority of the battles with each of the styles.
Racing: I never got this, even on easy mode, even with the wiki, even after hundreds of tries. Not worth the effort. Cheat -> Easy Race.
You win a race by maximizing average speed. I've shared tips on this forum several times in the past.
Lord Spectre: I admit this is the last thing you'll do in the game. It's, like, the final quest. I guess it's supposed to be hard. However, you'll need to read the game's source code to complete it.
The instructions are spelled out in a numbered list with a copy in the diary and if you fail any of the conditions you are told which one you failed. People have completed this quest without reading the source code...
