So... after finishing the currently available version here, I've got some stuff on my mind:
First up, the game sure as hell was not what I was expecting. I thought I'd just give this a spin to see if it would be enjoyable and before I knew it, almost 14 hours passed and I finished the currently available main story as well as a good chunk of side content in a single sitting, so it definitely does a whole lot of things right. I mean, dang, the characters in particular... it's just superb in all the right ways. The game sure hooked me hard with how well they are written, not to mention they look adorable as fuck. All wrapped in a nicely packed story to boot? What's there not to love? Well, I've been spotting some potential issues that I feel might turn into problems in the future of the game:
One of those might be the scaling. With how powerful everything becomes towards the currently existing end, it might very well be possible for the players to get stumped and having trouble advancing at all. I am very well aware that the game is far from finished and that balancing and all is not set in stone, so any and all points I make might just be for nought, but still. The areas past Misty Woods in particular seemingly make massive leaps from area to area. Playing on the normal difficulty - which is the intended experience - might cause players to be getting roadblocked if there is either a) not enough side content to gain the necessary exp and money to keep up with the ever growing adversities one might encounter or b) a way to grind not just money and exp, but
also to let time pass for resources to be generated in Minstral Village without having to advance the story.
But from what I could tell, currently there exists no such feature. I've seen the map, while it only has 1/3 of the world accesible for now, I can see that becoming an issue if the players party can - at times - only barely ever edge out threats. While I would love to say that having random resource generation from Minstral Village is not being a problem right now, I can see players potentially being locked out of either content or getting roadblocked later down the line simply because they either forgot to collect resources, invested those resources wrong or worse yet, the game just didn't give them what they needed due to a roll of the dice.
The upgrades seem like minor % or point increases, but since the game is using exponential formulas for attack power and defence calculation (if I remember Gabbi's tip of the day correctly), each point can and
will make a massive difference later down the line. This potential problem will only exacerbate in the future, as I'll assume that the current town upgrades are far from being complete as well, meaning you'll require even more resources than what you can obtain as of right now. Not to mention, the gold gain on the side, for example from from selling excess loot due to repeat contracts - I specifically won't count contracts that are labeled as "optional" or "misc" as they feel very much necessary to progress as of right now due to their high payout in both exp and gold - is laughably low when compared to the currently available gears and their costs. After all, you'll most likely have to outfit your entire party with top notch gear just to keep your edge in combat and with how many elemental and status gears exist, you just won't have the cash and since you won't know what's actually good to have in upcoming areas, some gears that seemingly are expensive at a current point serve a little more than glorified paper weights later.
Oh, also there were minor niggles that I encountered while playing the game, not sure I'd call them big issues, but they seemingly were inconsistencies that threw me off guard:
-Gears that will replace the option "Attack" for a character will prevent them from gaining any TP via those attacks unless you specifically use the "Warrior" TP switch (HP Damage). This is true for Bessies Windsloven (Accelerating Strike), MCs Keke's Fury (Fury Swipes) and Rays Fiery Quiz Show Wand (Fira). This potentially hampers these attack-replacing gears more than one might think, as TP generation is supposed to happen when performing standard attacks, regardless of TP setting. Sure was wondering why Bessie never gained any TP in short fights as she basically went with Windsloven the second I obtained it. The issue here is basically that the two systems are at odds with each other, as you either want to have steady TP generation, meaning you'll never use anything other than "Warrior" for party members TP setting that use skill replacing weapons - which means all the other options are entirely useless - or you'll avoid using skill replacing weapons at all because you can't lose out on the standard attacks' TP generation.
-After you finish business in Misty Woods and have aquainted yourself with the features regarding Minstral Village, you unlock all remaining areas at once. Given that you are supposed to follow a very specific route due to the difference that levels make in combat, this can lead to some really cheap deaths. Sure got me good when I was just going to an area I assumed to be my next stop, as it came up in conversations quite a bit, which happened to be Magic Weavers and subsequently got my ass handed to me in the initial fight
Regardless, I'll keep an eye out and might even support the game before I know it because in the end, my complaints are just smaller nitpicks on something that has a rock-solid core to expand from.
