Coming back to this thread now after having beaten the game- twice over- and I wanted to give my thoughts and feedback on it.
I think as much as anything else, I want to stress that I actually held this game in high regard and I feel like I can appreciate that you've put a lot of effort and care into it, most especially in how you've stayed true to the actual canon and the characters while putting a slightly different take on them.
I haven't read through all the thread, but from what I've skimmed through I definitely wanted to give a dissenting voice to anyone asking for things like changing Bell's name, to having sex with random dungeon monsters (the Xenos will handle that), or getting rid of the Hestia Knife (why? It's cool). I can see you've made a concession in regards to the magic, but whatever, I chose Firebolt every time because Firebolt was great.
There's a million parody porn games out there that take the lazy route of just having a generic faceless McNobody protagonist and an ultra convenient plot to explain why he's banging all the girls, and I've got no interest in any of them. It's rare to see someone do a game like this that actually uses the characters, that obviously has a real understanding of the setting and lore, and that tells a story that entwines with the actual story we already know and love- so I wanted to say I appreciate that, a lot. If this had been just another generic MC I would have skipped over it, I picked this up quite specifically because I saw you played as Bell and it was a hentai twist on the familiar story (well, the familia story, I guess).
Even things like the maps you buy from Lulune not being complete and still having unexplored segments is true to the universe, I loved that touch.
And on that same note, I'll add that you've done a commendable job with condensing the Danmachi story. I had some reservations at the start when I saw that you were beginning right at the very beginning, I was wondering how we'd possibly move through multiple volumes of information to get the actual plot off the ground but I think you've done a really solid job of it. There's some nuance lost and everything'll obviously mean a lot more to people who've read the LN or watched the anime than people playing it fresh, but all the major pieces are in place and everything makes sense, for something that's going through the plot at a pace needed for a game like this, I think you've done it well.
You've even been nice to Hestia too, which is nice. I'm a huge Hestia fan, I love Hestia, she's probably my second favourite after Ryu and it's crazy to me how many people need to shit on her in fanworks. Here if anything you're probably a bit too kind on her, brushing away a few of her flaws and softening her attitude a bit, even to the point of having Heptaestus praise her, but whatever, it's fine.
I've got similar praise for the "Hestia route", previously if someone had asked me I would have said I'd thought it would have been difficult to write a Hestia romance that began before Volume8, because that's what finally deals with Bell's hesitations and has Hestia address them, but again, you've done a commendable job here. The Hestia route was well done, it felt true to the characters, it was endearing and the sex scenes were great- very enjoyable all around.
The Ais route was fine but mostly uneventful since, well... Ais doesn't really intersect with the main plot until much later. The Eina route was fine, mostly just cribbed off the later volumes, I enjoyed it but it didn't stand out as much as the Hestia one.
Honestly, I've only got a few nitpicks about the writing at all. I think the opening narration explains things slightly odd, making it sound like the Gods are shackled by the sacrifice of their powers, rather than that being a large part of the enjoyment they get out of being in the Lower World. It felt out of character for Bell to want to go up and attack Bete when he was getting badmouthed, rather than internalise what Bete was saying and realise how naive he'd been just assuming/hoping things would work out without truly accepting how far away he was from Ais. And you go back and forth with Bell's hesitation around not being comfortable dating Gods. In the Hestia route you have him say he doesn't know if he's worthy of dating a God... but you clearly know and understand what his actual problem is, because right after accepting her you have him talk about his fear of leaving him alone and address that... It's strange, that should have been his hesitation from the start and the thing he confesses to her- he's scared of inflicting the trauma of loss on someone he cares for, in the same way he was hurt when his Grandfather left him. And then in the Ais/Canon route you've got him basically just dismiss the idea of dating her because she always rejects anyone who asks and he thinks it'd ruin their relationship... It's just odd that when you clearly know his actual issues you've written these other mini issues in too.
So yes, obviously very minor nitpicks for the writing. Mostly praise.
The sex scenes were solid too. You didn't fall for the common mistake I see a lot of people doing where they draaaag the sex scene out to the point it starts to becoming dull. They're all about the right length, they're hot, and the dialogue fits the characters without any silliness, or getting into too much purple prose. I smiled a lot when reading about Hestia's "bowjob", that's just cute.
And here's where I get into my complaints. And again, I want to point out I didn't come here to shit on this game or all the work you've put into it, I respect that, and I can see you've clearly taken great care to keep this as something actually true to the Danmachi universe. I wouldn't have spent my time playing this game as much as I have, and writing all this if I didn't think it was a game worth doing so. However, if I was asked if I would recommend this game, I honestly wouldn't.
There's a lot of things I want to pull at for criticisms, but the biggest takeaway and the thing that they almost all circle back to is that this game just doesn't respect the player's time.
Right off the bat, I'll go with a comment I'm sure you're sick of hearing by now: I was stunned when I got the loading screen tip that there's no option for a harem. I wasn't expecting "routes" or anything else, when I downloaded this game I figured it would follow the Danmachi story with Bell getting and banging the girls in his harem... I mean, his whole goal when he came to Orario was to have a harem, it feels like a slam dunk. I honestly do not understand why you'd do anything else, it just seems so obvious, and far easier in all respects.
But the issue isn't just that I'm dissapointed, it's that instead you're aiming to segment the game off into routes. The Ais/Canon route branches right at the very start, so you're doing absolute full playthroughs to see anything else. Right now the Hestia route took me about 5hrs to complete, and the story only just goes up to the point where Lili's arc is about to hit it's climax. I don't know how far you're intending to go, but I've seen you've mentioned the Xenos, so you're looking at Volumes 10+?
Even presuming you trim a lot, add things in earlier than they would otherwise be, cut out arcs that we don't need etc. That puts a given route at what, 15hrs? 20? More? I'm trying to err on the side of caution here, because I could very easily see the dungeons getting a LOT bigger (as in canon), and then with all the story details added and everything else we could wind up with 30+hr routes which is just insane.
I saw in one of your posts you mentioned that the routes getting longer would make replaying more friendly because it'd be longer before you were doing the same starter quests and I guess that might be true, but way more than that, it makes replaying incredibly unlikely. The amount of people that'll replay a game that took 15hrs on one playthrough over multiple different characters is minimal, especially when all you're getting in each run is the scenes for that one specific girl and maybe a few side girls that'll probably be common to multiple routes.
If you were just going to have an Ais/Canon route, a Hestia route and like another 1 or 2, maybe I could grin and bear it (the second and such playthrough is obviously much faster) but it sounds like you're intending to have more and more and more. The game tutorials talk about a freaking Demeter route! That's nuts. So we've got what, Lili, Haruhime, Ryu, Cassandra, Leyfia, Riveria? Are we looking at 6 playthoughs? More? Even if we assume a subsequent playthrough is half the time of the first, that's still getting into 100+ hours. It's nuts.
Like I said, it feels like the game doesn't respect the player's time. I could quite happily put a good amount of time into one big run that covered all the girls (even some being optional and missable perhaps), but asking me to redo the same thing over and over for every other girl is simply not going to happen. I think your solution seems to be that we can just put the game on "Story" mode and skip everything, but if your solution is to just skip all the content... then why separate it like that in the first place? It doesn't feel like you've added anything valuable there. (And you know as well as I do everyone'll just make multiple saves at all the various branchpoints anyway and so skip everything still).
The funny thing is I actually do agree with the comment I've seen from you about using gameplay to break up the story and the sex, I think that is valuable and I do appreciate that you don't want this to just be a VN. That's perfectly fine. The problem here is twofold though, obviously it's the fact that the gameplay is expecting the player to redo the same stuff over and over and over, but also (and I'm trying to be precise here, not being mean) the gameplay isn't good. It's tedious and dull.
Exploring the dungeons is painfully slow. My computer is pretty good, well above average, but maybe some performance relates to that. Either way, I was almost ready to just give up and drop the game in disgust until I found the speed option for movement and battle. I'll say this outright, unless the game is a LOT faster on everyone else's computer, the "Fastest" option should absolutely be the default, the game is an absolute slog on anything less than that.
And the combat itself isn't any better. It's dull. I'm not trying to be negative, but there's really no other way to describe it. My initial impressions were great, I got in a fight and Bell dodged everything, "Ah that's awesome, just like canon!" I thought, Bell is fast and dodgy and that's perfectly represented here... but that novelty didn't last long when every single fight is just "Click attack", wait for every enemy to cycle through, wait for Lili's attack, "Click attack", repeat forever. There's no decision making, there's no strategy and there's nothing to do but wait for the enemy turn to be over so you can click your single default attack again.
In the first few levels, where the encounter rate is low and the enemies are weak it's mostly fine. But when you start getting into floors 7+ then you're fighting whole hordes of enemies. The already tedious combat becomes just unbearable, you click attack, take off 1/2 of 1 Kobold's attack, and then wait for 8 of them to miss you, then click attack again... Each fight takes multiple minutes and it's multiple minutes of absolutely nothing. In the end the only reasonable way to fight that many enemies is to use the Explosive Bombs... except that if you finish the fight killing multiple enemies with the bomb then the game will get stuck on the combat screen and the only thing you can do is crash out and reload. So you're gambling your progress against sitting there and clicking each individual kobold to death.
Look, the Explosive Bomb bug is whatever, bugs happen, it's fine, it'll get fixed I'm sure. But the combat, as it stands at the moment, should be an absolute priority to change. Right off the bat, let's ask about the Agility stat... it seems tied to dodge, right? Seems reasonable. But why isn't it also tied to attack speed and number of attacks? Bell's entire thing is how fast he is, the books constantly talk about how he layers on attack after attack, his "Vorpal Rush" and similar moves, yet with the way the combat currently stands he's attacking at exactly the same rate as a random Kobold. Bell should be able to get off 2, 3, or more attacks before a Kobold can even get off a first, let alone a second. And if we extrapolate it further, what if we used the system as it stands for Bell dueling Ais? Bell would attack at the same rate as Ais? She's so fast that at this level he can barely even see her move.
I can understand not wanting to overload one stat and not wanting to make Bell overpowered or any similar issues, but why? Who cares? It's a single player game, let the player get strong. At the very least doing that would let the player do more than just twiddle their thumbs while each individual kobold and goblin took their turn, until they got to choose "Attack" again. Beyond that, you really need some actual abilities and options, and desperately need some AoE abilities. Explosive Bombs shouldn't be the only way to deal with groups of enemies beyond "Slowly wear them down."
Mapping is similarly tedious. I can understand some people like exploring dungeons and building a map, and I've played a few similar dungeon crawlers myself. But when the map is just white squares on black, the exploration almost entirely boils down to "Walk randomly around until you find the path to the exit." Because there's no indications what's a Safe Spot, what's a Dead End, or what's a Corridor you haven't explored yet, the only value of a map you've currently explored is that you can see the path directly to the exit. eg. If I have two branching paths and go down one, when I look back later there's absolutely nothing on the map to indicate there's another path, if I go slightly down the second one to indicate there's a path there it looks just like any other dead end. The only way to actually navigate the dungeons is with memorisation, it's tedious and annoying. And this is the upper levels, I dread thinking of mapping the Great Tree Labyrinth or anything en route to the 18th floor when the map is completely plain without any indications.
Honestly, as a personal thing, I'm not really big on dungeon crawlers or mapping at all. I've played Persona Q (and I heavily suggest you crib a mapping notation system from that, except automatic) but it's not something I seek out. I imagine there's a good amount of people like me. I do understand that mapping a dungeon is literally a part of the lore and it fits the setting perfectly... but man, just let me buy maps from Lulune for every set of levels. It could even be how you generate a relationship with her.
And all my complaints about the combat and the mapping are made magnitudes worse by the decision to base the story around routes instead of just having a big common story with the romances as paths within it! If I have to replay the game 3x, 4x, 6x, I have to map the exact same zones, I have to click "Attack" on the exact same Kobolds, I have to do everything slowly and dully over and over... it's terrible, and it puts me off to the point where I honestly don't think I'll play the game even when it's finished if these things aren't fixed.
It reminds me of a full, proper production HGame I played recently. The combat was interesting but got a bit tedious as the game went on, the story was fine, and the girls were chosen with a "Choose which one to spend time with in your free time" mechanic, all pretty standard. You've only got enough time to choose one girl, so you can only get one on your route. That's fine, I thought, I enjoyed it well enough (although it wore out it's welcome by the end)- I spent the entire game absolutely certain that when I beat it, I'd go into NG+ which would give me extra time enough to romance all the women, and carry my abilities over so my character would be strong enough to just blow through the combat. All those things are completely standard for games like that, there was no doubt in my mind that'd be how it worked.
So I beat the game and it just finished. And when I started again it was level 1. The game expected me to do the entire game again from the start, with nothing to speed it up, 30+hrs of playtime just for another route with another girl... I uninstalled immediately. And I see your game going down basically the same route. Regardless of anything else, I would absolutely suggest you let the player carry over Bell's status+Level, items, Vallis and Map into a NG+. No it doesn't make sense for Bell to be level 3 or 4 when the story calls him a level 1, but it doesn't matter, it's a hell of a lot more fun than just doing the exact same process you've just done just for a somewhat different route and another girl's scenes.
In regards to the routes themselves, I mentioned the Hestia route and I've praised it, but I haven't praised the Ais one nearly as much and a large part of that comes down to the fact that it IS a route, and it's the one I played second. When I was playing it, I was skipping EVERYTHING, just holding Ctrl down and then seeing any new dialogue that popped up for that route instead. The emotional weight of any given scene and the actual impact of it is completely lost like that- I can't really invest properly in a scene where I'm skipping everything around it, but I'm also not about to read through all the same dialogue and slog through all the same dungeons (I just used Morbol's to skip everything).
I think that's most of the main points I wanted to cover. As far as any suggestions, my thoughts are twofold
1: As mentioned, I'd heavily recommend you pivot away from the idea of having "routes". I think it's fairly telling that there's a bunch of people asking for a harem route, and I haven't seen anyone arguing the game is better for not having one. Unless your Patreon supporters are of a completely different opinion, I believe it's hurting the game and making all your design decisions a lot harder for basically no gain.
I thought the Hestia route was great, I really enjoyed what you did with it. But it's absolutely not something that couldn't have just been a Hestia romance path as part of a single/main route.
If you really want to have people replay the game, then why not do something like what I mentioned above? A mechanic where Bell has a given amount of free time he spends with the girls to romance them- with there only being enough to fully romance one girl and get some scenes with others in a single playthrough... but that it opens up enough to romance everyone on a NG+ playthrough, so you can do everything there. There's plenty of games that do that, and it's generally well recieved. Plus gives the player the option to just have one girl if they so choose.
2: If you're stuck on doing routes and don't want to change that idea. Then I'd suggest you trim the amount of routes HEAVILY and tie way more girls into each one. So instead of there being 8, 12, 14 or however many routes you're thinking of, you'd have say an Ais one, a Hestia one, an Eina/Random one and I dunno, maybe a Freya one.
Then for the Hestia route you'd have Hestia, Lilli, Haruhime, Mikoto (?), Aisha, etc all in the same route. Add unaligned characters like Tiona, Ryu, Syr, Cassandra, Rei, and you'd have a good mix.
Then the Ais route would be Ais, Leyfia, Riveria, Tiona, etc. Maybe have Haruhime and/or Hestia join in either in parts or too, since it'd be weird for nobody from his familia to be involved. And then same story with all the unaligned characters.
Might take some doing to plan out and justify, and I don't like that idea as much as the first one which I think is a million times simpler, but it would help condense the content and would give you multiple playthroughs while having each playthrough still feel like it had plenty of action, rather than just a few scenes with one girl.
Anyway, a lot of thoughts here. I'm not expecting you to respond to each of them, or at all, there's no need to really. I understand some things will or have changed in later releases- but I can only judge the version I've played.
I love the idea of this game.
I love a lot of the details and care you've put into this game.
I would love to love the game itself, but as it stands now, I wouldn't recommend it and I won't replay it.
EDIT: Oh, just remembered. I enjoyed the random "Achievement" story, very hot! But Ryu has black nipples? Please no! Looks terrible!
If people were here for cannon then parodies are far off the beaten trail of source material no matter how faithful they try to be but instead came to see what interesting twist Winterfire brings to the story. All the girls jumping Bell at the first chance just sounds like comedy gold. In the FF7 remake the girls are thirsty and it's funny. Even if there is only going to be a small select harem I'll still replay it just to see what it's about though if the dungeon doesn't tie into the real game much I might do that in story mode, no point in grinding gold if the girl's jaws don't drop when they see all the bling bling.
