Hey everyone, have you played the new update yet?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
What did you enjoy the most? Any bugs, feedback, or favorite moments? Let us know!
First, this one has an interesting premise and some potential to grow into something good. The plot and the game world certainly have the potential to some player immersion and engagement.
I tried to play the update but was only able to finish the prologue. Not more. Because the minigame (help Violet with serving drinks) right at the beginning of the "open world" start is much too hard. Impossible for me to succeed and therefore to progress. I'm no hater of minigames from time to time if they are engaging, fun and not too grindy. But harshly timed QTE's aren't fun, in particular when they are ridiculously hard to win, but mandatory to progress further.
-> My proposal for the
minigames:
- please make them skippable/optionable for players who don't like (or can't) play them and much easier for players who like to spend time on them. Many players will completely quit the game otherwise.
- try to balance the use of the QTE's to tasks that are engaging enough for any challenge
- count the time limited ones in or give them a START button
- give an option to save the game before the minigame and/or the option to scroll back to the starting point
The
indoor and outdoor navigation need some optimisation in my opinion. Directions in the club weren't all intuitive enough for me and a bit too laborious to click through. It would also be nice to get outdoors with one click (kind of a shortcut option) instead of having to navigate through all indoor rooms.
Outdoor navigation is currently limited to the map. Don't know if you plan to expand to on-screen-navigation with arrow directions to bordering districts/locations later on? Additionally, I agree to
Spawn420' s proposal of a map tracker.
In my opinion the
voice acting is not such a great benefit and should be considered to be taken out.
The bits that are currently there aren't technically bad, even some occasional audio dropout or audio cut clipping is audible that needs to be polished. Furthermore the male and female voice are on too different levels - the male voice is much less present while the female voice (Harmony) is too much! I'd guess it's not only due to unbalanced voice compression, but also the formant frequencies of the female voice (no offense here intended, but Harmony's voice timbre is also kind of annoying, to be honest, especially when raising her voice)?!
Of course, generally voice acting could add some flavour to the characters, dialogues and interactions. But so far it just don't add much positive to the game for me, only the urge to mute it. I'd have doubts if the ambitious and huge amount of additional development work to implement full voice acting to "Noctis" would be really worth it?! Beside the general fact that it increases update time and update file size significantly. But please do your thing here independant from my opinion.
From the prologue only, the introduced characters and the game world are a bit bland and blank. The "pep talk" between MC and Harmony goes in the right direction of creating a bit more depth, but was also a bit too long-winded for me. But the overall writing is generally decent and that's a neat foundation to build up on.
So far, player (dialogue) choices are not much relevant/existant for any directions on plot or character progress.
Due to the very early development state options for some player agency are of course still very limited. I hope with some more updates that all will change and improve.
Good luck with the further development,
Studio Nox. I'm looking forward to progress once you hopefully changed the minigame...