Mourning Sun's Obnoxiously Giant Feedback List
Jun 28, 2018 11:59:32 GMT -6
freddythemonkey, axoin, and 1 more like this
Post by mourningxsun on Jun 28, 2018 11:59:32 GMT -6
Was going to originally post this in the Steam forum but since that's not up yet I'll start here!
-I really don't like how there's a "completion rate" for absolutely everything in the archive section of the menu. I don't like knowing how much content I have left. I like being surprised.
-Is that little tiny area really where all the surviving villagers are going to hang out? I'm *hoping* that we will be able to clear out the village proper and they can repopulate the area. I *assume* that is probably going to happen. I'm pointing it out regardless.
-I killed a Bone Morte on a chandelier and the item he dropped fell through the holes in said chandelier. Good attention to physics but annoying in practice.
-Lindsay looks almost exactly like my bitchy ex-FWB who was also named Lindsay. This is getting filed under "bad" because I had to annoyingly look back on that in the middle of my demo experience.
-Speaking of which. The village itself just seems really tiny and very very close to the castle proper. Maybe there's a forest planned that will be stuck in between the two areas. Idk it just felt a bit unnatural to me. The village either needs to be bigger or further away to feel right to me personally.
-Let me get this straight. Bats have shards. Toads have shards. Mortes do not have shards because they "aren't fully formed demons"
. I don't buy it. They seem to be the only enemy in the demo without a shard and I'm willing to bet that very very few enemies in the final build will not have shards. Just give every enemy a shard at this point because the in game excuse already falls apart with the bat and toad shards. #JusticeForMorte
-Anne's model just looks dumb. Her arms are too long, her hands are too big, her eyes are asymmetrical, it's just all wrong. Also I don't really like her voice actress but that's entirely personal preference.
-When you complete a quest and receive items, you should get a little pop up in the bottom left corner for the items you just received as you would with items you randomly pick up.
-Steak is overpowered as shit. Why is this food in the beginning of the game giving me +10 STR? It's ridiculous. Unless we will be seeing exponentially more powerful enemies, player power growth needs to get curbed hard.
-There is zero indication on screen that you have completed a quest. You need to go into the menu to see if a quest is done. This should be changed to be similar to PoR and OoE when you completed quests in those games.
-It takes awhile for the game to transition between dialogue screens and gameplay. Well over a second. It's nothing major but it's a noticeable and annoying delay.
-Miriam doesn't seem to move very much in the menus. She's almost
-When Vepar is in the background and she does her water spit attack, if you pause during this time the noise of the attack continues as long as you are paused. In game SFX needs to be muted when the game is paused.
-Dominique doesn't exist and my girlfriend doesn't own her outfit.
-Whenever you accept or turn in a quest, you are exited out of dialogue with Lindsay. Coupled with the transition delay mentioned above in the "bad" section, this makes questing a tedious and mechanically unfun experience.
-Miriam says "great!" when she cooks food and the audio for that "great!" is loud as hell compared to the rest of the game.
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Overall I'm left with a phenomenal impression despite my incessant complaining about the littlest of things.
I wrote down a whole bunch of random notes and impressions while playing and will list them here divided into The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I've kicked back a few double IPAs as I called the day off so I'm extra nit picky right now.
The Good (Things I enjoyed and thought were great about the demo)
-The game just straight up feels comfy. It feels like home. The physics are right, the atmosphere is right, the music is right, it all feels right. Good job all around for making a real spiritual successor to the Castlevania franchise.
-The swaying broken beams on the ship were a good detail even if it took me a second and a few missed jumps to notice it.
-I liked seeing Zangetsu rowing on his little piece of driftwood in the background in the first "on deck" area of the ship. It was a cute little detail and that's stuff I would like to see in this game. On that note you see him every time you go to that area so maybe have him trigger only once?
-Screenshots don't really do the game justice. It looks nice. Needs lighting work though which I know is planned.
-I got really excited when I saw that critical hits were back.
-I love how there is a movement speed up item so early in the game. I also love how it gives stats. Unlike previous games it seems like we will not be forced to pick between stats and movement speed here in Bloodstained. This is a welcome change.
-The game feels very "dense" in a good way. There's a lot of depth even in the tiny slice of game that we just played. It's like somebody mashed Curse of Darkness, Dawn of Sorrow, and Symphony of the Night together and we ended up with a product containing the features of each. It's wonderful and I am very excited in the direction this game is headed. I am filled with nothing but hope and hype after finishing the demo.
-I kept trying the "soul steal" input hoping for something cool and eventually struck gold with the third tier katana. I'm really happy about that.
-The fact that the map scales out so far and moves around makes me overwhelmingly excited for the size of this game.
-Music is 10/10 EXCEPT for Vepar's fight which still feels like a B-track off of OoE.
-I fully appreciate how equipping a shoe weapon makes your slide dash do a lot more damage. Excellent attention to mechanical detail.
-I love how there is both a "grade" and "level" to the shards giving you multiple ways to increase their power. This is a fun mechanic to me and vastly increases the variety of spells we will end up with.
The Bad (Things that I thought were strange or not so good. Mostly my opinion)
-The demo was extremely easy. I died zero times and didn't have trouble with the bosses at all. This concerns me as it was stated that the difficulty would be "ramped up" for this demo. This highlights the need for Nightmare mode being available at the start, or at least a middle difficulty of "hard mode." As it stands, the game is currently far too easy for myself and likely most other diehard fans of Iga's previous games. Also it's important to note: the key to fun difficulty in RPGs is extremely high enemy HP, not extremely high enemy damage. Glass cannon vs. glass cannon is no good. Unless you're playing Devil May Cry. (Not that I need to tell you all how to design your own game, just my opinion.)
-There's no village music? It just feels awkward considering that the ambient noises are VERY minimal as well. Throw in some howling winds, birds, and the occasional wolf howl.
-The gameplay timer keeps ticking on during the pause menu. Not a fan of that.
-I beat the demo at level 11 without even trying to go out of my way to grind. Seems a biiiiiit high unless the cap is above 99. I'm sure the game will go through a whole balancing wash before release but still.
-The font used for the dialogue subtitles is just straight up Times New Roman. Can we get something a bit more thematic?
-So we can't aim the guns at all? Seems like it would be a great use of the R-thumbstick.
-The game just straight up feels comfy. It feels like home. The physics are right, the atmosphere is right, the music is right, it all feels right. Good job all around for making a real spiritual successor to the Castlevania franchise.
-The swaying broken beams on the ship were a good detail even if it took me a second and a few missed jumps to notice it.
-I liked seeing Zangetsu rowing on his little piece of driftwood in the background in the first "on deck" area of the ship. It was a cute little detail and that's stuff I would like to see in this game. On that note you see him every time you go to that area so maybe have him trigger only once?
-Screenshots don't really do the game justice. It looks nice. Needs lighting work though which I know is planned.
-I got really excited when I saw that critical hits were back.
-I love how there is a movement speed up item so early in the game. I also love how it gives stats. Unlike previous games it seems like we will not be forced to pick between stats and movement speed here in Bloodstained. This is a welcome change.
-The game feels very "dense" in a good way. There's a lot of depth even in the tiny slice of game that we just played. It's like somebody mashed Curse of Darkness, Dawn of Sorrow, and Symphony of the Night together and we ended up with a product containing the features of each. It's wonderful and I am very excited in the direction this game is headed. I am filled with nothing but hope and hype after finishing the demo.
-I kept trying the "soul steal" input hoping for something cool and eventually struck gold with the third tier katana. I'm really happy about that.
-The fact that the map scales out so far and moves around makes me overwhelmingly excited for the size of this game.
-Music is 10/10 EXCEPT for Vepar's fight which still feels like a B-track off of OoE.
-I fully appreciate how equipping a shoe weapon makes your slide dash do a lot more damage. Excellent attention to mechanical detail.
-I love how there is both a "grade" and "level" to the shards giving you multiple ways to increase their power. This is a fun mechanic to me and vastly increases the variety of spells we will end up with.
The Bad (Things that I thought were strange or not so good. Mostly my opinion)
-The demo was extremely easy. I died zero times and didn't have trouble with the bosses at all. This concerns me as it was stated that the difficulty would be "ramped up" for this demo. This highlights the need for Nightmare mode being available at the start, or at least a middle difficulty of "hard mode." As it stands, the game is currently far too easy for myself and likely most other diehard fans of Iga's previous games. Also it's important to note: the key to fun difficulty in RPGs is extremely high enemy HP, not extremely high enemy damage. Glass cannon vs. glass cannon is no good. Unless you're playing Devil May Cry. (Not that I need to tell you all how to design your own game, just my opinion.)
-There's no village music? It just feels awkward considering that the ambient noises are VERY minimal as well. Throw in some howling winds, birds, and the occasional wolf howl.
-The gameplay timer keeps ticking on during the pause menu. Not a fan of that.
-I beat the demo at level 11 without even trying to go out of my way to grind. Seems a biiiiiit high unless the cap is above 99. I'm sure the game will go through a whole balancing wash before release but still.
-The font used for the dialogue subtitles is just straight up Times New Roman. Can we get something a bit more thematic?
-So we can't aim the guns at all? Seems like it would be a great use of the R-thumbstick.
-I really don't like how there's a "completion rate" for absolutely everything in the archive section of the menu. I don't like knowing how much content I have left. I like being surprised.
-Is that little tiny area really where all the surviving villagers are going to hang out? I'm *hoping* that we will be able to clear out the village proper and they can repopulate the area. I *assume* that is probably going to happen. I'm pointing it out regardless.
-I killed a Bone Morte on a chandelier and the item he dropped fell through the holes in said chandelier. Good attention to physics but annoying in practice.
-Lindsay looks almost exactly like my bitchy ex-FWB who was also named Lindsay. This is getting filed under "bad" because I had to annoyingly look back on that in the middle of my demo experience.
-Speaking of which. The village itself just seems really tiny and very very close to the castle proper. Maybe there's a forest planned that will be stuck in between the two areas. Idk it just felt a bit unnatural to me. The village either needs to be bigger or further away to feel right to me personally.
-Let me get this straight. Bats have shards. Toads have shards. Mortes do not have shards because they "aren't fully formed demons"
. I don't buy it. They seem to be the only enemy in the demo without a shard and I'm willing to bet that very very few enemies in the final build will not have shards. Just give every enemy a shard at this point because the in game excuse already falls apart with the bat and toad shards. #JusticeForMorte-Anne's model just looks dumb. Her arms are too long, her hands are too big, her eyes are asymmetrical, it's just all wrong. Also I don't really like her voice actress but that's entirely personal preference.
-When you complete a quest and receive items, you should get a little pop up in the bottom left corner for the items you just received as you would with items you randomly pick up.
-Steak is overpowered as shit. Why is this food in the beginning of the game giving me +10 STR? It's ridiculous. Unless we will be seeing exponentially more powerful enemies, player power growth needs to get curbed hard.
-There is zero indication on screen that you have completed a quest. You need to go into the menu to see if a quest is done. This should be changed to be similar to PoR and OoE when you completed quests in those games.
-It takes awhile for the game to transition between dialogue screens and gameplay. Well over a second. It's nothing major but it's a noticeable and annoying delay.
-Miriam doesn't seem to move very much in the menus. She's almost
unnaturally still save for the blinking which makes it look like she's in some kind of body horror scenario where she's unable to move.
The Ugly (Bugs and other arguably objectively bad things)
- *This is the worst thing for me personally* Miriam's "shadow/outline" whenever there's an object in the foreground or she clips into any solid object. It looks bad, it's unneeded, and it triggers so often that it shows up on her basic run cycle. Please please please get rid of it.
-So that nameless guy at the veeeeery start getting grabbed by the first Morte you see looks absolutely terrible. He has a full on sprint animation but he's moving at a walking pace. It looks horribly awkward. He's on screen for a whole one second and it's that noticeable.
-Might be a bug, might be intended. I noticed that when you equip a "shoe" weapon and then equip a regular weapon afterwards, the appearance of the shoe weapon stays. On that note it might be cool if we could just trigger appearances of different boots and shoes without equipping them? Fashion and all that.
-Miriam's pained "shard scream" lasts beyond the point where it's impaling her. So we can here her scream when she's in the neutral "I just got a shard now read its description!" pose. Seems weird to me. Realistically there should be more than one scream sound effect as well.
-Miriam's mouth animation.
-Returning to the ship after you've already landed gives you the background of it being at sea again. I'm 98% sure this is going to change with the final build but I'm still saying it anyways.
-Johannes's dialogue didn't trigger in the crafting room when I spoke to him. It basically soft froze the game until I hit start to "skip" the nonexistent dialogue. This issue remained for his "goodbye" dialogue as well. I was finally able to talk to him after I progressed further in the game and returned back to him.
-Miriam seems to freeze upon taking damage in air riiiiight before she touches the ground. She is only unfrozen by taking damage again.
-I can only seem to eat one food? As in, I had a cooked pork, ate it, and couldn't eat another pork even when I exited the menu and re-entered it after thirty seconds or so. Does Miriam need to digest or something? Admittedly I didn't mess around too much trying to figure this out but it seems like either a bug or a really awkwardly unfun mechanic.
-Being able to hit Vepar while she is in the background does not look good at all from a perspective standpoint. It worked for Balore in Aria of Sorrow because the game was 2D. It does not work in 3D. Just have her plop a tentacle down on deck when she moves to the background and let us hit that instead.
The Ugly (Bugs and other arguably objectively bad things)
- *This is the worst thing for me personally* Miriam's "shadow/outline" whenever there's an object in the foreground or she clips into any solid object. It looks bad, it's unneeded, and it triggers so often that it shows up on her basic run cycle. Please please please get rid of it.
-So that nameless guy at the veeeeery start getting grabbed by the first Morte you see looks absolutely terrible. He has a full on sprint animation but he's moving at a walking pace. It looks horribly awkward. He's on screen for a whole one second and it's that noticeable.
-Might be a bug, might be intended. I noticed that when you equip a "shoe" weapon and then equip a regular weapon afterwards, the appearance of the shoe weapon stays. On that note it might be cool if we could just trigger appearances of different boots and shoes without equipping them? Fashion and all that.
-Miriam's pained "shard scream" lasts beyond the point where it's impaling her. So we can here her scream when she's in the neutral "I just got a shard now read its description!" pose. Seems weird to me. Realistically there should be more than one scream sound effect as well.
-Miriam's mouth animation.
-Returning to the ship after you've already landed gives you the background of it being at sea again. I'm 98% sure this is going to change with the final build but I'm still saying it anyways.
-Johannes's dialogue didn't trigger in the crafting room when I spoke to him. It basically soft froze the game until I hit start to "skip" the nonexistent dialogue. This issue remained for his "goodbye" dialogue as well. I was finally able to talk to him after I progressed further in the game and returned back to him.
-Miriam seems to freeze upon taking damage in air riiiiight before she touches the ground. She is only unfrozen by taking damage again.
-I can only seem to eat one food? As in, I had a cooked pork, ate it, and couldn't eat another pork even when I exited the menu and re-entered it after thirty seconds or so. Does Miriam need to digest or something? Admittedly I didn't mess around too much trying to figure this out but it seems like either a bug or a really awkwardly unfun mechanic.
-Being able to hit Vepar while she is in the background does not look good at all from a perspective standpoint. It worked for Balore in Aria of Sorrow because the game was 2D. It does not work in 3D. Just have her plop a tentacle down on deck when she moves to the background and let us hit that instead.
-Dominique doesn't exist and my girlfriend doesn't own her outfit.
-Whenever you accept or turn in a quest, you are exited out of dialogue with Lindsay. Coupled with the transition delay mentioned above in the "bad" section, this makes questing a tedious and mechanically unfun experience.
-Miriam says "great!" when she cooks food and the audio for that "great!" is loud as hell compared to the rest of the game.
--------
Overall I'm left with a phenomenal impression despite my incessant complaining about the littlest of things.
yey