GrimToadstool
Green Slime
So, a little bit of Feedback from my side. First, can you make Secrets of Grindea into a liquid, so I can inject it into my bloodstream while not beeing at the PC? It's that good and addicting. So, there's so much done right in this game, mentioning everything good would make this thread too long, so I'll just point out what can be improved. I bought the game a week ago and have 40 hours listed on steam and played through the beta story a couple of times.
[Bugs]
- For whatever reasons, my story savegames get corrupted over and over, sometimes without an error message and progress and entire characters are randomly lost, equipment gets unequiped and so on.
- Lags can cause some aspects of the game to bug out. For example, in the Seasons temple I got knocked out of the room into the wall area. On another occasion I threw my Claymore, without and it just vanished and never returned.
- If your playing the story in multiplayer and have solved the mirror puzzle in the flying temple, if you push one mirror towards the other, while one player is standing next to the chest, he can't return and you can't exit the room or reset the puzzle, you have to restart the session.
[Demo]
While the arcade mode is phenomenal in the demo, I wasn't hyped for the story mode at all. Your descending a mountain and are thrown into an arena, this looked very lazy to me. I was blown away by what came after, especially the area design and puzzles, but though every mechanic was in the demo, the quality of the game didn't shine through.
[Inventory and Quickslot management]
So, in some cases, the quickslot system works really well and in others it doesn't. For example, if I use a build, which uses only two skills and a melee weapon, everything is quite alright. However, if I use a mage, I might not want to have one more spell in the quickbar, instead of the basic attack. If you play a build that uses multiple weapons, changing between them becomes a pain. My suggestion is to make Basic Attack and Defend a Skill (which can't be improved) that is as freely equipable as everything else.
I would also have each of the three skillsets have a slot to equip a weapon to the skill set. For example, if you have a 2handed weapon on “right” and a wand on “left”, every skill you use in the right skillset is treated as having the 2hander equipped, while everything in the left uses the wand. This allows for faster weapon swapping and thus more interesting builds.
Lastly, similar to the quickskill-bar in arcade, I would love to have a quick-usable-item bar. Press one button, lists all usables. It's kind of annoying equipping them over and over again.
[Cosmetic stuff]
-I would love to have more options to customize my character in arcade mode. And also to save these changes. For example that, if you find or buy one item in story mode, it gets perma-unlocked as cosmetic-only item in arcade mode. Also save the name of the character.
-That black cap seems to have one rogue red pixel.
[Balancing]
-So far I found a use for every skill. Some combos are better then others of course, but overall though it can be improved I think the balancing is okay. However there's one skill I found utterly useless and that's the insect swarm. It's slow, it enemies can cause it to fail, if they go fly or invulnerable, it does never crit and what have flying insects to do with earth again?
[Future skills]
- I'm mostly satisfied with the skills that are in the game now, though some seem to be copies of one another. However there's something I noticed. Though the game does draw some inspiration from MegaMan, one key aspect got overlooked and that's the angulation of the skills. Some weapons in MegaMan were particularly useful, because of the weird angles they use, for example, airman's weapon, stoneman's, quickman's.
Grindea utilizes the four directions, so skills with angles will make the gameplay much more interesting.
[Personal note]
-There's much fauna slaughtering in the game. Please do not do a rat-dungeon, like sewers or stuff. I love this game and I got trigger problems with that. If a game wants me to kill rats, it gets deleted and never touched again. If you're planning to anyway, how much do I need to bribe you with?
[Bugs]
- For whatever reasons, my story savegames get corrupted over and over, sometimes without an error message and progress and entire characters are randomly lost, equipment gets unequiped and so on.
- Lags can cause some aspects of the game to bug out. For example, in the Seasons temple I got knocked out of the room into the wall area. On another occasion I threw my Claymore, without and it just vanished and never returned.
- If your playing the story in multiplayer and have solved the mirror puzzle in the flying temple, if you push one mirror towards the other, while one player is standing next to the chest, he can't return and you can't exit the room or reset the puzzle, you have to restart the session.
[Demo]
While the arcade mode is phenomenal in the demo, I wasn't hyped for the story mode at all. Your descending a mountain and are thrown into an arena, this looked very lazy to me. I was blown away by what came after, especially the area design and puzzles, but though every mechanic was in the demo, the quality of the game didn't shine through.
[Inventory and Quickslot management]
So, in some cases, the quickslot system works really well and in others it doesn't. For example, if I use a build, which uses only two skills and a melee weapon, everything is quite alright. However, if I use a mage, I might not want to have one more spell in the quickbar, instead of the basic attack. If you play a build that uses multiple weapons, changing between them becomes a pain. My suggestion is to make Basic Attack and Defend a Skill (which can't be improved) that is as freely equipable as everything else.
I would also have each of the three skillsets have a slot to equip a weapon to the skill set. For example, if you have a 2handed weapon on “right” and a wand on “left”, every skill you use in the right skillset is treated as having the 2hander equipped, while everything in the left uses the wand. This allows for faster weapon swapping and thus more interesting builds.
Lastly, similar to the quickskill-bar in arcade, I would love to have a quick-usable-item bar. Press one button, lists all usables. It's kind of annoying equipping them over and over again.
[Cosmetic stuff]
-I would love to have more options to customize my character in arcade mode. And also to save these changes. For example that, if you find or buy one item in story mode, it gets perma-unlocked as cosmetic-only item in arcade mode. Also save the name of the character.
-That black cap seems to have one rogue red pixel.
[Balancing]
-So far I found a use for every skill. Some combos are better then others of course, but overall though it can be improved I think the balancing is okay. However there's one skill I found utterly useless and that's the insect swarm. It's slow, it enemies can cause it to fail, if they go fly or invulnerable, it does never crit and what have flying insects to do with earth again?
[Future skills]
- I'm mostly satisfied with the skills that are in the game now, though some seem to be copies of one another. However there's something I noticed. Though the game does draw some inspiration from MegaMan, one key aspect got overlooked and that's the angulation of the skills. Some weapons in MegaMan were particularly useful, because of the weird angles they use, for example, airman's weapon, stoneman's, quickman's.
Grindea utilizes the four directions, so skills with angles will make the gameplay much more interesting.
[Personal note]
-There's much fauna slaughtering in the game. Please do not do a rat-dungeon, like sewers or stuff. I love this game and I got trigger problems with that. If a game wants me to kill rats, it gets deleted and never touched again. If you're planning to anyway, how much do I need to bribe you with?