I like this new intro bit, and I've seen a few new things I've never seen before... certainly still a fan of Saria's design.
What I'm not enjoying is, honestly, the combat. It still feels really clunky. As I recall, it is taking inspiration from Karyn's Prison, which is fine, but Saria doesn't feel... enjoyable? She takes several hits to take down the weakest enemies at the start of the game, which doesn't make her feel very powerful. Her backstory suggests she should be pretty skilled, but the gameplay doesn't really support it.
The in combat lewd is also... still weird, I think. She takes such massive Willpower hits, she'll collapse from dirty talk alone in seconds, which doesn't feel very appropriate. It's also easy to get stuck into a 'defeat loop', since Saria's WP doesn't recover after the defeat, meaning any enemy that she runs into will instantly defeat her with a lewd chat, causing her to collapse to the ground in complete exhaustion.
I feel Saria needs a more... reasonable, well, reason to feel like she's lost. It seems silly she just passes out because guys say lewd things to her, unless words have some pretty powerful effect in this setting.
This. I could type an essay on the state of this game currently many things just aren't implemented right or just aren't good it makes the game so unenjoyable... it's a like a slog to play honestly. Nd yes, I understand it just came out so don't give me the "Give it time excuse" cause remember if this is the FOUNDATION... it doesn't bode well for its future.
The UI for one is fucking ABYSMAL. Idc what ANYONE says the UI in this game is so bad, ppl thought Elden Ring UI was bad lmao this takes the cake for sure. It takes the notion of looking cool but having garbage functionality, it's an Eye sore to look at.
Why does Saria take up a 3rd of the screen??? Why is she not static (in a sense she keeps going back nd forth between being there nd not when traveling.) She should NOT be taking up that amount of screen space since this game seems to be bigger than Karryn's Prison (I will abbreviate to KP for future mentions). In KP It made sense as everything was always IN-FRONT of Karryn... this UI is just ughh.
Not to mention WHY is the perk tree and passive system hidden in a DIFFERENT menu that isn't opened by using a key but having to move my mouse to the left side of my screen nd click a up arrow... that's not good design at all. Stuff like that SHOULD ALL be in a menu. I could harp on the UI ALL DAY cause honestly its fucking terrible it needs to be fixed ASAP.
Furthermore, the game itself... not that fun nd It's not hard to find out why. The game is so... how do I explain like Saria is INCREDIBLY weak for the intro making her out to be powerful nd such. The 3 bars willpower, stamina nd the blue shit IS NOT EXPLAINED! Not only that it's a fucking GRIND to see H-Scenes having to dwindle those bars down is damn near a job itself.
Honestly, I cannot type anymore because nobody would read this shit it would no doubt be a college essay if I was committed to it.
So TDLR; Rework the fuck out this game. It's like it took off the springboard KP made but instead doing a running jump to make a distance to shore....it jumped and made a small splash with no distance. I understand the need for a game to be original but if all games had to be original, we wouldn't have games to this as we do now.
Take the good parts of KP and then improve upon em, instead it's taken parts then somehow even made them extremely complicated or just straight up worse. I'm going to fucking honest WHY IS THERE A ABS BAR ND LEG BAR AND FUCKING ARMPIT BAR... like there seems to unnecessary shit. Alot of these ideas' rly need to be scrapped nd the Dev needs to be told that hey, this isn't a good idea.
This game has such feature creep, and the dev seems to be wanting to shoot for the moon but as mean as it sounds, they unfortunately might be hitting only the clouds.