The Stuff Fairy Tales Are Made Of

[Antiquity]

I could really use a break from my year-long crunch, so I finally gave this a go today.  I like it!  I like how you need to gather clues and talk to people in order to know how to advance.  There is also a lot of attention paid to making it feel like an actual world.  Rather than just wandering nobodies, towns have people with different jobs like crier or blacksmith, many of whom you can talk to about your various current leads.  Shops and houses extend beyond their public front and the protagonist won't rudely wander through them.  It seems like you also spent a lot of time decorating areas; you did a good job of making them detailed without being noisy.

The weak point mechanic is an interesting idea, but I haven't really used it much.  If I need Paul to contribute damage, magic is generally more effective; using weak point vs. a standard attack is kind of moot in most combats.

I made it to

Spoiler

the top of the Black Castle, but the Black Lady is handing my head to me.  I figured out that only non-magical weapons can damage her, but I can't keep up with her spell damage and summons.

I'm around level 19.  I'm not sure if I'm missing a clue somewhere, or if I just need to grind werewolves for a while or maybe bring some buff potions.  I'll probably do that, since I don't have any other leads on what to do next.

You may have gotten slightly carried away with that dungeon.  It's gigantic, and every step of the way is spent searching boxes and dressers and such.  The shortcuts between floors seem arbitrarily placed, so I didn't really use them.  I'm sure I missed some treasure, but hopefully it's nothing important, because I don't really want to comb through the whole place a second time.  It's a cool dungeon with lots of neat flavor text, it's just very long.

Other than that, my only real complaint is that I wish there was a way to speed up combat animations.  Combat against even weak enemies can be pretty slow to resolve, so I usually just flee if they're not worth much.

[EntangledPear]

Thank you, world-building and character interactions are my favourite parts of developing, so I'm glad it paid off 

You're right about the Black Castle dungeon, in a way we wanted to give a chance to gain experience before the boss, but it is quite long. For the boss, it's really useful to have three party members, one of whom can use some luck based skills that help a lot. Leveling up just a bit is a good idea.

I'll have to think about the battle animations - again, for this game, only for some kind of anniversary updated version, but more for the one we're working on, which might have the same problem. It never bothered me when I playtested, but I had someone else mention it, too, so I should keep it in mind.

Thanks for the feedback so far, and I hope you kick the boss's butt.

[Antiquity]

You're right about the Black Castle dungeon, in a way we wanted to give a chance to gain experience before the boss, but it is quite long.

I guess that's fair.  I did gain a few (3?) levels on the way up, which was not nearly enough to defeat the boss, but it was enough that I could then take the mirror shortcut back down, buy all of the remaining equipment upgrades, and start leveling on werewolves.  These give a lot more XP and gold than the castle enemies.

I did finally win after grinding up to the low 20s:

Spoiler

Barbara doesn't learn Assassin's Edge until 20, so I didn't even have that yet on my first attempts, and it ended up being absolutely required.  I brought along some magic booster potions (cursed bones have an annoyingly low drop rate, btw) to improve magic defense, which didn't make a huge difference, but they helped.  I kept Barbara's attack buffed with Breath Weapon or bravery potions and just kept her focused on the boss.  I did see that Thief's Luck boosts Assassin's Edge, but I ended up just spending her TP on Edge.  Adele was almost exclusively healing or dispelling the defense buff on the boss.  Paul couldn't do anything at all to the boss, so I just had him clearing the zombies or using healing potions.  I just ignored the rot, it wasn't worth spending a turn to cure it.

I should have grinded up just one more level first, though.  After I won, Adele made level 22 and learned Heal II, which would have helped a lot during the fight.

I'll have to think about the battle animations - again, for this game, only for some kind of anniversary updated version, but more for the one we're working on, which might have the same problem. It never bothered me when I playtested, but I had someone else mention it, too, so I should keep it in mind.

It's not the individual animations per se.  Those are fine, but combat as a whole just kind of runs slowly, because there are a lot of delays between turns or when resolving damage.  I don't know how much control you have over this, but any way to speed it up would be helpful.

[EntangledPear]

You found a good strategy. That's how I fought her too 

I think I know now what you mean about those battle animations. Like when there's a hit, there's a small delay, then the target moves backwards a bit and gets back to the original position. I did try to find where that delay is set up in RPG Maker, or the battle script, but I wasn't successful. Maybe I could try asking in the RPG Maker forum, since people there know much more about its inner workings than I do.

Have fun with the rest of the game, and don't forget to save often in different slots 

[Antiquity]

I haven't gotten to finish just yet, but I did complete the northernmost area and should be ready to move on next time I play.  In the mean time, I left you a rating on Itch.

Spoilers

I thought the consequences for banishing Death and having to bring it back were interesting.  Lots of games have Death as just a regular boss, but literally defeating Death would probably have an impact on the world.  I also appreciated the affable dragon and peaceful witch that didn't need to be slain as a first resort, which is also in keeping with Paul's character.

The point of no return took me by surprise, although fortunately I had a save file from right before it.  The fact that you can't return once you teleport into the castle is very clearly telegraphed, but it isn't obvious at all that you can't leave the witch's tower.  It's especially odd since the alchemist asks for various items from outside the tower, which I did not have and then could not go and get.  This is a weird trap for the player and doesn't feel necessary.

So, I reloaded my game from right outside the tower, and went around to finish up everything that I hadn't done yet.  I wasn't able to procure any spices, since the spice merchant is gone, so I am hoping that they won't be required to finish the game.  I'm pretty sure the spice merchant was a long while back at this point.

Speaking of which, I was curious about something.  I found two ancient wines in the castle, which I noticed sold for 30,000 gold, but I held onto them.  I later traded one for the brandy.  If the player just sells both of these, it's enough to buy the brandy, but what if the player does so and still runs out of money by this point?  It's no longer possible to grind for gold, because enemies don't die.  Is there an alternate solution, or would farming and selling mushrooms/gallows dew/etc. be the only renewable source of income at this point?

I also wondered about the meditation.  I did this with Paul at the beginning of the game, then returned every so often to see if I could do it again, but I couldn't until where I'm at right now.  I gave it to Adele this time, but is it possible to meditate a third time to cover all characters?  What determines when it refreshes?

[EntangledPear]

Thanks for the rating  I trust your opinion won't change when you've finished the game (hopefully you won't find some obscure bug that no one else has).

Answers to your questions

The part with the Death, both calling it and then having the consequences, was inspired by two different fairy tales. I'm glad you liked it, we thought it was interesting and brought variety to the game.

I understand your point about the inability to leave once you reach the witch tower. We tried to remember why we did that, and I think it was because it would have meant changing all the NPC dialogues to reflect your new knowledge. So purely practical reasons, but maybe if we return to this game sometime in the future to improve it, we can put the time into adding the dialogues.

To be honest, the love potion recipe was meant to be just a joke (also so that the apprentice's selection wasn't that small), so it's not possible to make it - the Spanish flies are not obtainable in the game.

As to the aged rum money - for this, we added something that can be caught in the Silver lake and can be sold for a higher amount of money. It takes some time if you go from zero, but it's not impossible to make enough to buy the rum.

The meditation can only be used twice - once before and once after Andrew joins you. It was supposed to be rare, but I guess it could be increased to three (in the 20th anniversary edition  ).

I'll be happy to hear your overall thoughts after you're done