I'm giving up. The combat is monotonous and irritating. The simplicity reminds me of early Monster Girl Quest, but with none of the charm or depth. I have a ton of abilities, but near all of them are useless. Once I figured out the focus system, I tried managing that for the first real fight, and I spent half an hour just spamming attack, defend, and deep breath, edging below 50% and hoping the ai wouldn't high roll or crit. Level Bar and Second wind allowed a psuedo fight reset but I'm nearly always still behind and they are limited use. Counter slash was barely worth the ability slot. The hidden speed/initiative is garbage, if it was visible the speed-related abilities would have a purpose. All it did was frustrate me, the 'combat' completely ruined my experience. It didn't even manage to be an interesting puzzle-fight.
It's a bit harsh to say that most of the abilities are useless, when there's virtually only one fight right now
It's very likely that later on, Quick Slash for example might get really important
I agree however that RNG is a bit dangerous in this fight, but to be fair, it's supposed to be an nearly impossible fight; she's just stolen 60 levels from you, making you now level 39, and her at least 61
It's probably better to not use Counter Slash yeah, maybe it will be better in the future if the developer adds an enemy who hits more times, but as of now, 2/3 hits isn't really that much (I would probably add Quick Breath or Mental Trick, or even Hysteria since crits seems to be super strong)
Breath/heal depends on focus, same as your main attack, there's no neutral way to build focus and progress other than sacrificing a (HIGHLY CONTESTED) ability slot for mental trick, since Iron skin and Vision are 100% necessary. If you attack until you are out of focus, you can barely heal. And since every worthwhile action consumes focus, including healing, and she can out-speed you and hit you before you heal, focus is incredibly frustrating to manage. Even counter slash is lackluster, as it too relies on near-full focus. There is no proper tutorial, Kill me in 4 turns or bad lmao, is fucking dogshit. That is literally the worst tutorial I've ever played. Even the Armored Core 1; "Beat this guy to play game" taught me more to me than that. I beat it by just spamming the self-damage double hit and making the damage check. The abilities, while their details are 'explained', are mostly rendered useless due to the hidden nature of the speed/initiative system, and the RNG.
I think it's okay that you don't have a way to regen Focus easily outside of Second Wind/Level Bar, that's the whole point of the gameplay, to learn control over your Focus bar and not just go all in to kill the enemy fast (at least for this fight)
The initiative is a bit special, you usually have 50% chance to have initiative, and some skills either increase or decrease initiative (Quick skills makes it go to 100%, and Counter Slash for example makes it go to 0%)
As for the tutorial, I think it's made to make you think outside the box, and it also makes you understand how much Focus is important
Reading this makes honestly, incredibly angry. Obviously you've thought this out. But saying "Is easy if you figure it out, lol." Makes me want to delete this game and never touch it again. None of what you're talking about is explained in-game. Do you expect people to just throw themselves against the wall, trying random shit until something works? If this is a trick-out where all the fights are incredibly difficult and the default abilities are a trap, I have no words. Even Ninja fucking Gaiden and the Fromsoft games have ramp-up. Are you trying to make a game with an actual difficulty curve, or fucking Battletoads? I thought this would be casual fun, I didn't sign up for Battletoads. If you wanna make something that is so difficult that it drives people to uninstall, literally telling people to "Git Gud or Fuck Off", please mark it ahead of time. Or you will be flamed into oblivion.
It is explained in the game tho?
All your stats are on the Status screen (It even includes when you're level drained, and your initiative)
And the gameplay mechanics themselves are written in the H menu during battle, same for the skills descriptions
Also, the only skill that actually consumes focus is Hysteria X, and it's written in its description. Everything else is based on how much HP you have at the end of turn (That's why healing always cost Focus, you're usually higher than 50% HP at the end of turn after healing, so you lose focus)
I think for now, the combat is fine how it is, the two first fights are unfair because of how the story goes...
The only thing we can deduce about MC's power right now is that he's much stronger when he's in danger, but much weaker when not being focused, it's both portrayed in the gameplay, and in the story :
- You deal like 10 times more damage when full focus compared to 0 focus
- You start the tutorial with no focus because MC doesn't feel in danger (because he's super strong, and because it's just a scarecrow)
- You can only one shot the girl when she's about to mind control you, before that, your can only lightly attack her
- Even after being level drained, he still has a chance against the girl if he can keep his focus
- When she realises MC's power, she tries to heal MC to make him lose focus to make him weaker
I do think there are some problems right now however, mainly the slow movement in the map, not being able to save (which is planned to be added to be fair), and how we need more fights to see if the skills are properly balanced