[Content Feedback] My experience with the game so far...

[Ageless]

[apologies to the mods, posted this in general without realizing there was a specific feedback forum, could you please move the thread there, sorry for the trouble]

...is that I am damn hooked on it! It has been a mostly wonderful experience save for a few frustrating things here and there which I will go over in my post. I have played through all of the content available atm (everything unlocked but I was meeting new characters as far as my last run with the game).

The good:

- I love the atmosphere for the game, the art, the animations, the music, everything is beautifully on point (as I have come to expect from KLei Entertainment). It really helps tie everything together and immerse you in the run. 

- The negotiation system is a lot of fun to play with given the combinations of cards that are present for it, it really fits together and functions very well for what it is supposed to accomplish. I love figuring out the different combinations one can make and the challenge of trimming down a deck so it functions flawlessly. I also like that you can talk your way out of most situations if you are so inclined.

- I like the 'try again' mechanic for the days as well, really helps you recover if you had a bad stroke of RNG.

The not so good:

- Currently the combat mechanic feels VERY flat and most of the grafts for it are very lackluster when compared to counterparts from negotiation. Its also pretty hard to establish a consistent mechanical trend with the combat deck. 

- Combat itself is very boring, I see my enemies automatically gaining shields, having trigger conditions for buff effects, having trigger conditions for party size, filling my deck with actions and here I am mostly stabbing and smacking them in return. I would really like to see more depth to character customization for combat, with perhaps a few passives you can choose at the start that define a play style you want to have which you can supplement with card selections through a run.

- There are some flaws I've encountered with the negotiations system which I feel are not really good. They mainly revolve around the abilities of merchants and bartenders. With the merchants I feel the rate at which they dilute your draw pool with card inception is a little too high and with bartenders I feel their ability to do 4 damage any time a manipulation card (the type which probably makes up half of most good negotiation decks) is played is simply over tuned.

- Speaking of merchants in combat, confusion should not be a permanent debilitating effect (I don't even know why it is given all others expire) that you can inflict because its effectively worse than stun when paired with their ability to make your deck be mostly composed of Tipsy. It takes combat control completely away from the player and very quickly results in death when facing them alone, its not a good feeling.

- Back to negotiation, I find its a little frustrating when one has a lot of active arguments that need to resolve at the end of the turn that they take quite a while to do so, perhaps this could be sped up or be an option to be sped up?

- In terms of unlocking content per each character I think its a little too grindy atm. You have to play the game through A LOT to unlock everything and potentially with more content each time that will be slightly alleviated so eh, may be worth looking into.

The bad:

- There are several instances in the game where the player is simply killed based on RNG, as in they don't really make a decision consciously to be greedy or stupid about anything and the game presents a scenario where you simply die. I personally do not like this kind of design in a game but if its there for the aesthetic reasons of 'these Lands be dangerous yo!' I can understand. I will go over some that I have experienced for the sake of, well its feedback and if its not as intended it can be looked at.

+ Early in the game if a player encounters animals and they happen to be Fleads and the player has not had a chance to upgrade their combat deck beyond the starting one there is no way to kill them. Its just a very slow death spiral because of their armor regen ability. Even small changes in deck composition from the starting one giving the player some more damage options will avoid this, but I ran into it once the moment I started a run and it was a very frustrating death.

+ There are a few quest encounters where you are baited into an ambush and the effective hp pool of the enemy party happens to be around 300-400 hp, now even with a pet and two other characters helping you I don't really think its feasible to chew through that before you lose the war of attrition. Not to mention you usually end up facing this group with your pet or alone. So that's basically a game over.

 

All in all I had a blast playing and replaying the game multiple times for the past few days. I am very eager for new content and more of the story. I fully understand that its an alpha and quite honestly its very functional for that state. I hope my feedback is of use to you and I will provide more when the new content arrives. Thank you for all your hard work.