Gameplay
Fishing
i did it once in a while (once a dungeon run). nothing to really say because of the basic nature of the minigame but once in a while it was somewhat hard to tell were the fish were because unclear idea how deep they were in the water. I won’t be giving any suggestions really cause this kind of minigame is not aimed at me so i couldn’t give advice how to make it more engaging and fun for those who like this kind of thing.
before going into this part i used gully,garrison and bretto in the begining. once monika was introduced she replaced garrison and alumon replaced bretto respectively.
Combat
Biggest nitpick that when there is so much space, why can’t i see all my abilities at once or able decide which order my abilities are so the ones i use the most would be at the top? Also pretty much any game in this genre should be taking notes from persona 5 how to make combat flow faster by making you open “category” by pressing a single dedicated button rather than having to navigate to said catergory and then pressing a button. I dont think anybody is going to say “no” to using more buttons on the controller/keyboard.
Overcharge as a concept works really well and i like it a lot but i think getting overcharge is too easy in the current state of the game. Enemies arent difficult enough to force you to use abilities without having the time to get atleast one(or 2 which makes abilties cost no mana [most of abilties cost 20 or less] thus mana potions are not necessary) action between the abilties.
Lowering the overcharge gain to half(so most actions would gain 5) would also indirectly"buff" mana potions and manas importance in general.). Or increasing the monsters power generally that would make it “harder” have time to use regular actions to gain overcharge(yes this would also force making 1 overcharge more valuable so it should buff example certain abilities damage more like garrisons warblade)
Changing “most damaged” to “least health” description in the abilities would be nice so it wouldn’t be a lie.
monster “unit” too often consist of 1 enemy which should automatically make them either be by nature tough as nails to kill but usually are on a playing field with you or lower which makes it easy thus boring. Only time lonely high tier enemy would be threatening was when i was multiple levels lower without proper level gear.
Adding “stamina” into the game would make it more interesting. So let me explain while you’re fighting every action(also using items and abilities) would drain this resource. having low stamina would decrease your characters efficiency. i would suggest having 4 states. 100%-50%,49%-30%,29-8% and 7-0%(these are only examples to give direction to see the point). first state: normal. second state: decrease stats by around 20-30%. third state: decrease to around 50% and unability to use burst. Last State: Unable to do Anything except runaway ,use items or block that really gets nerfed in this state.
How to regain stamina: resting either at the inn or using earlier mentioned tent item. Tents should be usable only either in a room that has been cleared(making a dedicated room would force some redesigning in the dungeons so that it doesnt become just annoying time waster or something because monsters don’t respawn for example and only adds useless back and forth running).
On (EDIT:Heroic not hard) difficulty or higher you would have max times you could use tents on single run(Or adding some nasty ambush encounter that would start happening after certain amount of times and this encounter would happen BEFORE you get health, mana, stamina back)
Reason i suggest this because you can avoid using healing potions using really easy “exploit”(if you can even call it that and/or even if you need to use it. i did it 2 times)using Alumon.He can Heal and shield(himself or gully for example)all your guys to max health and once he has done that just use his action to get all his mana back after couple turns and heal himself in the end so you can be pretty much be as if you’re fresh out of inn in the next fight . Thus i think there should be a system in place that would make it that you want to end combat earlier rather than “let’s relax for a while and get our resources back while this last weakened enemy that dies to next poke tries to get through our shields”.
Dungeons
There are 3 difficulty settings that dont really make much of a difference. Even if the monster do have couple levels on you at the begining, after couple fights you’re going to level up fast because of the level difference which makes the dungeon get easier and easier as the time goes by. Also makes it so that there’s almost no reason whatsoever to play them again besides the slight stat upgades,bestiary and maybe trying to see if there are anymore events. So basically making dungeons obsolete as soon as you level to/past them.Also the fact that you can actually exit the dungeon go rest at the inn and just makes most of the consumables pointless as long as you actually have a healer in your group and dont mind wasting couple minutes. Also only time that the game makes you fight multiple waves is the arena and in the dungeon it’s not gonna happen if you have patience or don’t want to fight more enemies yourself at once.
How to fix:
*Exiting dungeon SHOULD reset dungeon(at least (EDIT: heroic) or higher difficulty if you’re afraid making the game too challenging on base level). This would make consumables way more important(never used anything other than 3 revive potions and 2 health potions whole game)
*Also increasing the enemy numbers per “unit”(1 unit is basically one enemy model in the dungeon.).
*Using level caps so that while in the dungeon depending on difficulty too, you would be at a certain level(only capable of lowering your level for duration of the dungeon). You would gain exp same way as normal but while inside the dungeon you can’t go past certain level cap. imagine trying to go through legendary difficulty while you are multiple levels lower than the enemies.
*Adding a dungeon difficulty that would be balanced for max level characters with best gear. this would help not making dungeons totally obsolete but also add more content to the game cause you could have the bosses evolve too by having more attacks and maybe designed for specific combinations etc.
*As a bonus having a specific party combination challenge that would give you a reward for one of the characters(first 6 dungeons for example) and when completing the 2 final dungeons also you would unlock “secret dungeon” that has no “normal difficulty” and would be the final test to see are you able to survive.(Yes i know this kind of thing would be a DLC or maybe a feature in the possible expansion/sequel)
dungeon skills
Again i like the idea but most of them are unnecessary thus i didn’t even bother going to a inn that much. Only ones that really matters are in the begining brettos group heal and Ground break that can break walls but even that is an extra rather than necessity. Another useful one was stealth so you could avoid multiple units attacking you at once in the earlier state of the first dungeon run when you’re still under leveled.I ended up ignoring them most of the time so would’ve been nice that they would’ve had more of a impact but i understand that they didn’t want to have certain characters “be” necessary for dungeon runs. But i think they should’ve made ALL characters have one skill that is either powerful/useful(heal/stealth) or has effect on the dungeon(smash a wall and get reward).
Bosses
I don’t think the dungeon difficulty* affects bosses or if it does… then it’s not enough. dungeon bosses were way too easy. They almost always ended up at least feeling easiest encounter in the dungeon. All bosses except the first one ended up dying in couple rounds.Worst one being Farseer getting basically only one, doing burst and buffing itself next turn even though it was about to die.
How to fix:
*making the difficulty matter more and making the boss tougher/harder. Boss monster should BE THE BOSS. it should be challenging, nothing should compare because it’s lone monster(usually) they are more powerful but not enough.This can be done in so many ways: new attack/s,adding power to moves, way more health and higher defense, more turns for the boss(this would require some changing to bleed, poison so that they only tick when your “turn is over” which should only tick when you have actually used an actions, ability etc. rather than making using ability make it tick twice). Something that would make you play by the bosses rules rather than let’s kill his ass before anything matters.
*Making you start with 0 burst. once you unlock higher level bursts, the dungeon bosses just end up becoming even easier than they already are. Or making changes that game assumes that you have 3 burst from the begining and buffing them radically to compensate but i would like starting the fights with 0 burst and making you earn burst in the fight.
