So I just finished a run of the current content on hard with standard settings and no other mods and I had a pretty fun time! I figure that since it's pretty early in development a detailed overview of what I thought of it would be helpful. So here's a big ol wall of text.

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The Good:


It Makes The Game Harder:

I appreciate that this mod actually attempts to make the game harder rather than slam it to near zero like most of the other overhaul mods do. The pacing was also good and I never had a point where I felt like I had to grind or where I was bogged down by overly durable enemies. I do have some issues of the difficulty curve but more on that latter.


Very Different Atmosphere:

I think this was probably my favorite part of the mod, just exploring this gloomy post apocalyptic crystal project world. Definitely added to the experience along with the tougher fights and lower resources.


The PvP Fights Aren't Terrible:

Not much to say here but most PvP fights in the base game are... not very good. So for the two I experienced it was nice to not just instantly win on turn 1-2.


The Candle System Is Cool:

This is definitely a cool idea for limiting classes in various ways and made me have to plan ahead even on easier fights. Sometimes I felt it was easy to just ignore it and stick it on 1 or two specific characters, but this wasn't too common and usually only for the easier fights.


The Classes All Feel Useful:

While its early game so it's hard to say exactly, for all the classes I tried I found they all felt like they had a clear place in my party. Although the top performers definitely were a bit... too good. Again more on that latter.


I Like The Story Bits:

Again early game so not much to say here, but I appreciate how different this mod is at times and its interesting enough I'm curious to see where it goes.


Less Overpowered Status Effects:

The base game has a major issue where strong debuffs like sleep and blind just absolutely shut down enemies and are very easy to spam. So making them harder to apply here was a very good idea.


Gender Differences Removed:

I always found this kinda weird the base game had it.


More Enemy Diversity:

Early game enemies are quite similar so its nice to have more variation early on.


Healing Is Harder:

Unlike the base game I felt healing was much more of a commitment here and less trivial spam.


Paint Is Neat:

I like that you don't have to stall for specific abilities and everyone learns it. Being able to find them in the world is also pretty cool. I hope there's a way to get hints if your missing paints later on though, since currently there's no way to tell where any missing paint is, especially since it can be a hidden chest.


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The Meh:

The Platforming

I don't really have strong feelings about the base game's platforming one way or another due to the lack of variety and kinda floaty controls. The platforming doesn't get in the way or anything here, I just didn't really care for it either. I do appreciate the helpful mounts for EZ mode or just letting you skip past them quickly on a return trip.


Almost Every Boss Has Minions:

This is kind of a hard one because I get WHY this is a thing, as debuffs are still very strong and having only a single target means you can just dog pile them. But it does lead to boss fights feeling a bit samey at times.


The Candle System Has Major Favoritism:

This one definitely feels intentional but I feel its worth mentioning that I basically never gave the candle to my tank outside of starting with it for lockon on the Sentry while my damage mage was almost always clutching it in her hands. Helped she drew massive amounts of aggro so I could just protect her for easy aggro control.

This is probably for the best because having EVERY class rely on it to be functional sounds kind of miserable.


The Weather Is Interesting But Kind Of Annoying:

So conceptually I like this, expanding the labyrinth effect to other areas definitely adds to the flavor of each area. My problem is that the two times I encountered it both were just annoying. Hiding intents is just not something I think should be a thing in Crystal Project, and all it really does is let them cheap shot you on the first fight and not check damage.

The rage one I'm more conflicted, for players it provides a way to gain AP or you can just mass pass the candle to mostly ignore it. But being unable to remove it from enemies and having them randomly attack can be just some randomness that doesn't add anything. Although the stronger enemies being immune to it means its mostly just a minor nuisance.

I think that the system definitely has potential, but I'd prefer it was more focused on requiring some strategy changes rather than just "mild annoyance".

Not to the level of the labyrinth though. That level of drastic strategy chance belongs in an optional post game area.


Forced Enemy Encounters:

This is another one where conceptually I like, as the base game its super easy to just run past everything without much effort. The problem I have is that some of these are placed in places your likely to walk by multiple times, such as the road through Delende.

I think it might be worth making forced enemies in areas your likely to go through multiple rely more on surprise so that you can avoid them the next time, such as the enemies near the ruined shops or behind the fishing tree. Or make them unique and making sure the enemies have other flames they can still be fought at in case you wanna farm them.

That said for gauntlet dungeons like Castle Sequoia or the Labyrinth I think their current design is fine as is, since the point is that you don't want people skipping what should be a difficult dungeon just by hopping around. And if you fail you gotta fight through the gauntlet again.


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The Bad:


The Balance Is Janky:

I'd put this as a very light "Bad" since the base game and really every RPG is guilty of this to some degree. But some parts of this mod suffered from some notable balance issues, although this was also almost entirely in the player's favor so at least it wasn't frustrating. I'll talk more about the specifics in other bullet points and the class and boss overview.


The Difficulty Goes Down As You Go:

While the game started off with a decent level of a challenge for early game, I found that aside from the Painter, it either didn't go up or actively went down as I went on. By the Trial Caves I had more or less infinite MP for boss fights and every enemy fight went pretty much the same way "Apply all 3 dots, win." Again the base game also does this as well but it sets in much later.


DOTs Are OP:

DOTs were already one of the best options for damage in the base game for early game and while I like the idea of buffing them to make them more viable in the late game. Early on they are absolutely devastating. Blademaster and Heliolater can easily apply all 3 DOTs to groups and apply a sunburn on bosses for very high damage on everything. I think the idea of making DOTs still relevant late game is good, but early game it might be worth toning them down a bit.


Healers Have No Out of Battle Heals:

I had way too many times I would just trudge back to an inn while my healer had almost full MP because I didn't want to use any consumables since money is very limited early game and survivalist needs them to function. While you can stall on the last enemy to heal up that's also... not fun doing almost every encounter.

I think giving the healer a basic heal that can only be used outside of combat would help with this. This is probably less of an issue later when healing items are relatively cheaper but it was fairly annoying early game. (I know there's a setting for out of battle only abilities in the editor but last I checked it was broken and didn't work so you might need a workaround.)


Enemies Sometimes Have Too Many Abilities:

This is probably a personal preference, but I found some enemies had so many abilities it was hard to figure out what exactly they were going to do. These enemies also often suffered from a lack of a clear game plan and led to them being somewhat lacking in threat. I think some enemies could be a bit more focused in what they do to avoid move list bloat and making their purpose clearer.

Some examples are Oscar when not doing his AoE DOTs, and Fallen Warriors just randomly spamming often times non effective debuffs.


MP Leak:

This ignores % damage resistance so it's very overpowered on MP using bosses.


Anyways, that's all I got on overall game design so onto specific classes!

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Guardsman:

This feels like a perfectly serviceable tank. Good HP, decent speed, has both attack and magic down (and thank you for making them unmissable), and has counter attacks for extra aggro or you can guard your healer or mage who has the candle and is drawing aggro. I didn't try the damage tree since I didn't have enough LP but it seems fairly "whatever".

My biggest issue is that the class has no extra starting AP aside from its passive in the damage tree. Not being able to use either magic or power down on turn 1 without spending 3PP feels kind of underwhelming for a tank that has no AoE aggro draw and only a limited cover, so I'd never see myself main classing it after unlocking all its abilities.


Berserker:

I didn't use this class so no comment beyond it looking fine for a str attacker or HP tank at first glance.


Cutthroat:

It's rouge but in return for not being able to prevent bosses from doing anything with blind and interrupt it has a ton of really good debuffs. Honestly this class feels like the biggest reason when I look at why every boss has minions and go "Yeah that was probably necessary." since solo bosses were absolutely crushed by the combination of Slow and Instability. It also is the only source of steals so the class feels there's almost no reason not to include one on the team or sub it, just like rogue. It also has a really good stat spread for the icing on the cake.

Smoke Cloud needing the candle is pretty weird though, since in return for decent damage it actively benefits enemies by making their aggro uncontrollable. I guess you could use it if you really need enemies to change target but if your plan relies on RNG the plan itself is bad.


Exorcist:

This class screams "sub me!" since the innate ability and stats are ho hum, and needing a turn to set up healing. That said it felt very good as a sub class. Since I had access to some very potent heals, debuff clearing, and even a bit of damage support. The lack of CT is also nice for a class that takes a bit to get going.

It currently has a bug(?) where Devotion ticks down for every target hit, for example if all 4 team members are alive it ticks down by 4, but if you target only 2 team members it only ticks down by 2. Despite the bug, as it still felt like a very good skill, so your call if you wanna fix it or turn it into a feature.

While I didn't get the chance to use Harm Spirit due to not liking staves on my healers, it does kind of concern me just how strong DOTs could be since they seemed op even with just sunburn.


Heliolater (aka the class I pronounced differently every time):

This class feels very strong. While super early on its just a source of minor damage and some DOT. Later on when MP stops being an issue with survivalist and painter you can blitz through random encounters or deal very heavy damage to boss summons with Firen or even Firena.
While I didn't get flare I'm pretty sure with all the boosts to fire damage you could get most bosses in 2-3 shots.

Sunburn is also very strong and allowed me to start shredding bosses once I had it.

I think the class on its own does have a some good limiting factors, with a poor stat spread and a very limited innate ability. But as a painter sub it was devastating.


Blademaster:

It's tweaked fencer, so it still works mostly like fencer. You stack as many DOTs per attack as you can, multi attack, and just go to town on early game.

While it has been devastating early game, I don't really see much way for this class to really contribute once DOTs become easier for the rest of the party to apply. Since it lacks a big "Wow!" ability and its passive is good but not amazing.

Maybe it'll turn out to be amazing later with the right secondary class but I think it could use a way to boost its damage when attacking DOTed enemies in the late game. Or maybe DOTs will just end up being so amazing that even with nothing else It'll remain viable, no way to tell until then.


Painter:

This class was a very strong support damage dealer. It has a wide selection of abilities even early game, has weapon skills that are effectively magic so you don't need the candle to use your basic skills, a fantastic stat spread, and refresher is very strong in this mod. It kind of reminds me of a hybrid of scholar, red mage, and elemental support ninja, with a better stat spread than any of them.

I don't think any one point pushes this class to being OP except maybe the 15% mana regen. But all together it feels like something you can put on nearly any character, especially mages who like to hold the candle for its stronger skills.


Paladin:

I only used this class to get natural tank and then switched off. It does seem more dependent on holding the candle than other tanks and Magic and Power Walls only lasting one turn makes them kind of hard to time. So I wasn't particularly enamored with my first glance but take that with a grain of salt since I didn't even unlock them yet. After all, base game aegis looks trash at first but it has some great ways to use it.


Archer:

Another class I didn't use, while looking it over I was mostly impressed I have one big issue that makes me just not want to use it.

Not having Perfect Vision on a class with capped accuracy is just uuuugh god no. Maybe other people can tolerate that, but in the base game I would never run a physical attack without Perfect Vision past early game. Especially one with capped accuracy. Locked In can help but you need the candle, it's single target, and other allies can also drain it even if their a guardian with perfect accuracy debuffs. Maybe this class just isn't for me since I prefer very high consistency, so I'd probably also take this one with a grain of salt.


Survivalist:

Yay! Its my favorite class from the base game but better! (I mean, it's technically worse since the innate passive is so op, but I mostly ignored that cuz it's boring to become immortal in every fight.)

Just like the base game this class is just all around fantastic, great stat spread, can easily restore both HP and MP, turn control to help time your heals right when you need it, and now it even has AoE heals and debuff cleansing. Selfless combined with Dinner is also kind of amazing to look forward to, take an AoE and bam, entire team is good as new.

While it was a bit dead weight in random encounters due to early game money being low, this class was very strong in boss fights, especially when given the candle for double item use and AoE heals. And the random encounter dead weight is pretty much a non issue later on with the better money gains in the capital onwards.

This class is probably OP but also just like chemist it just makes the game more... fun. Since you have so much more control over healing HP, MP, and AP, you have a lot more tactics you can pull off.

The sprite is also cute which I consider a positive.


Sentry:

I think this was the secrete class right?

This class feels very specialized to fighting bosses and elites, which given their usually the strongest enemies is a perfectly fine niche to have. It's got a solid list of support skills with some high AP costs, but due to being the tank AP isn't much of an issue past the first turn.

I think Polish and Full Impact might be pushing it though. Haste is a very strong buff and 4 turns of it for only 14 MP is quite low, and it can be stacked with Shift gear and the class'; already amazing speed to just zip zoom around. And 6 turns of slow is absolutely devastating on a boss or elite given tanks can easily hit 30 AP.

It also has the best stat spread I've seen so far, to the point where I think I'd probably just give everyone except healers full Sentry levels upon reaching the growth center (and not being poor).

Also sentry mode gives -35% physical damage taken twice, I'm pretty sure the second is supposed to be magical damage since currently it just makes you near immune to physical attacks.


That's all I got for classes so onto the last part, bosses!

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Guardian:

This was the boss I had the most trouble with, although I'm pretty sure that was due to challenging it too early while not quite getting the systems yet. I think this boss gives a good intro of what's to come. The boss will have respawning minions, some way to deal AoE damage, and you should pay attention to status effects (in this case, cover and its counter).
This definitely felt like a good intro boss for getting you ready for what the mod is aiming for.

Chole showing up to help was also pretty cool. Even if her low damage meant she was mostly there for moral support.


Bone Devourer:

I think I was supposed to fight this one first but I fought it second so it was kind of a pushover. I think its fine for what it does, making sure you pay attention to the boss mechanics. It might need to have its super be a bit higher damage or apply a debuff since currently you can just Power Down it and heal back up without much issue.


Canal Beast:

This boss was... less good. I found it to mostly be a pushover as by this point I had realized that AoE DOTs were very strong in the mod for minions, and sunburn allows very high single target damage. The boss also feels somewhat unfocused with having a large list of mostly non synergistic abilities that it used fairly randomly. I think that its supposed to teach you "Hold aggro or bad things will happen!" But the abilities aside from the candle stealing lack the punch for this. And if you do hold aggro none of them deal enough damage to threaten your tank.


The Painter:

I also thought this boss was good. It felt like it was going further into what the mod wants to do, with more threatening bosses and minions. And the threat of both bosses being on the field at once meant you had to make sure to keep up the damage or be overwhelmed. Definitely one I had to think on how to beat and tweak my strategy, but not too tough for an early game boss.

My victory was also just a biiiit closer than I wanted.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2465237010532963343/6F9F132616ED8F35AD674C0CF8CFE0B7858C0022/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false


Zoras:

This boss was a complete stomp. I don't know if she's underpowered or my party was overpowered but my first run was an absolutely dominating win. She was very susceptible to the combination of daze and slow to cripple her turn economy, and her minions spawning with a turn of stop meant that I could easily stack damage and DOTs when they spawned to take them out before they could do anything. The threat of an insta kill this early on with frostbite was somewhat threatening, but aside from accidentally slamming my face into her counter attack, all the slowing meant she had no chance to actually apply it.

DOTs were also very effective against her, since her relatively lower % resistance meant it was easy to take down each health bar with them, and when she auto revived her turn time would be reset, effectively skipping it, further crippling her turn economy.


Anyways that's my long rambly review of the mod. I think there's a ton of potential and it's already quite fun, but currently it's held back by issues with the negative difficulty curve, balancing, and some annoying mechanics that could be smoothed out.

Good luck with the project! As someone who also tried to make a full rebalance mod (It's bad you don't want to play it) for the game I know it's a ton of work.

My apologies for the late reply! As the co-developer of the mod, I only designed maybe 20 to 30% of the content in the current demo, but for what I did make or contribute to, I can comment on that! This might be a bit of a long one...

The DoT Issue:
This was actually a team effort! Although it was mostly my fault via Blademaster, a class that's just entirely focused on DoT stacking. A lot of the stronger enemies in the current demo needed substantial HP% res. buffs due to just how much DoTs were shredding them, especially considering that all 3 DoTs combined + Weakness + Sunburn is over 100% HP% damage!
Part of the issue is that all 3 DoTs are easily achievable, with all sources of Poison and Bleed not requiring any amount of Candle use, and all sources of Burn requiring only a single turn of the Candle in use to use!
There are a few ways to go about nerfing this, but the easiest would probably be bigger HP% resists or applying status immunities to certain enemies. Hungry Slimes have Bleed immunity, for example, and applying Burn and Poison immunities to a number of other enemies would make sense as well.
DoT stacking has definitely been "the meta" for a while, so someone pointing it out as an actual issue to fix is good earlier than later.

Blademaster:
I mostly designed this as a "bread and butter" melee class. Basegame Fencer is bogged down by weapon restrictions and a lack of any notable contribution when subclassing, so I removed its weapon restrictions, gave it some Luck-scaling magic to lean further into Luck-maxing Fencer strategies, and gave it Blade Frenzy for AoE status application.
As for its lategame scaling, Fencer struggles not only from weapon requirements, but also a lack of equivalent stat scaling. Hunter uses Agility, but poor Fencer, who can't use bows and use its own moves at the same time, suffers for it.
To mitigate this, we made it compatible with anything - including Archer - and made certain classes (such as the Samurai equivalent) also use Agility scaling.
In terms of DoTs, with later-game options such as Blood Spiller and a number of status-inflicting weapons, it might be a concern, but it's still definitely the best at applying those statuses nonetheless.
The only thing I can think of regarding a "way to boost its damage when statuses are applied" is some sort of mini Coup-de-Grace, and as cool as that would be, we're trying our hardest to avoid a repeat of basegame strats - instead inadvertantly creating our own, unique overpowered strategies, which I still prefer over strategies like infinite Crystal Form and what-not.

Paladin:
Paladin is, essentially, a "burst tank". It grabs the candle, prevents basically the entire party from taking any sort of damage for a few turns with its option, and then passes it away. In that sense, it's meant to be an inverse of Guardsman that sort of fills that class's holes in terms of options.
However, in the current demo, it's pretty... unusable. You get maybe a few skills before the end of Land's Inception and then the demo ends, and the skills you get aren't particularly standout either. A rearrangement of the skill tree to make speccing into the class more favorable would probably be a good idea?

Bone Devourer:
Devour Essence originally dropped everyone's HP to close-to-dead, but it seemed a bit too Kaizo-y and the other developer thought it was "too hard" for a first boss. Some sort of debuff would probably do wonders, though - Power Down would be a good consideration, to further enforce the "melee attacks aren't the best idea" angle and keep you from rushing down the boss.

The Painter:
I personally love the balance of this fight, but after seeing someone get curb-stomped 4 times in a row by the fight, we decided we're probably going to nerf it a bit. Most notably, the Illusion Beast summon is like 500x more threatening than the Illusion Spirit, so we're going to try and nerf that.
Even on Normal Mode, the other dev literally couldn't beat the boss, so a nerf is definitely in order.
I'm glad you liked it, though! It's probably one of my favorite fights in the mod, although I am a bit biased.

Here's a note on difficulty:
Candleholder is definitely meant to be harder, but not so hard to the extent it becomes too punishing. Basegame had a relatively good level of difficulty, and this mod is meant to be a slight step above that, with moreso a focus on strategy between each turn and carefully managing all the variables in a battle (rather than trying to kill the enemy before it can get off its big attack, or rushing for all of your debuffs so you don't get one-shotted). In the end, earlygame was meant to be a check of your knowledge of the base game, before slowly pivoting and introducing the Candle mechanic.
Regardless, there is definitely a sense of that "backwards difficulty curve" with some of the balance. This is slightly intentional, but could definitely use a look-over if it's that noticeable.
One thing we're trying to do in a future update is have Hard Mode-exclusive mechanics and moves- if something is too overtuned for Normal Mode, we move it to Hard Mode. This is a bit of a weird decision, but it should keep things challenging for the sickos who want that kind of a challenge.

Zoras Nerf:
Yeah, so the summons used to come out instantly with no Stop applied whatsoever. The issue is that, even on Normal, the fight was literally too hard for me and I couldn't beat it after a number of attempts- we might change things back to keep the non-Stop version of Necromancy on Hard Mode specifically, but for now, this will probably remain the same on Normal Mode.

In the end, we're VERY glad you played the demo and gave your feedback - some significant feedback at that! Currently, we're working hard on the second demo, which is planned to include up to the Ancient Reservoir in terms of content. As we work on said demo, though, we've been pushing out a litany of balance changes and additions to the current demo, and your current feedback should keep us occupied for a good while.

EDIT: As a note, Archer DOES have Perfect Vision, it's actually its innate now! Hunter seemed bizarre as a "stealth" kind of class, especially with it being in a different stat group than the low-stealth Rogue (uses Dex scaling). So, we moved all of the "low threat" niche stuff to one of the classes in the Dex stat group.

Main dev of Candleholder here, the many points you bring up are valid and I'm currently working on a large balance update to address most of your points!

When I began reviewing the enemies, I realized that pretty much every common enemy has no HP% resistant against DoTs, probably something we forgot to do while making the enemy changes so whoops! That's on us! I'm also gonna nerf Weakness and Sunburnt to be only a 50% DoT boost too, so while they're still good, you need to apply both to get the full damage bonus which I hope makes it harder to pull off.

There's more ideas I have to tackling the other points you made, but I actually want to first test them out and get to making the changes before showing.

Edit: Oh and thanks so much for the huge paragraphs of balancing!!! Candleholder has been rocky and hard to balance since the beginning due to the new Candle system and people like you help make it better!

The balance update is now up! https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/changelog/3223702659

So reading through your notes and the balance fixes definitely feels like the project is going in the right direction, just a few comments based on what you've said so far:


Blademaster:

Somehow I ended up overlooking that it has no weapon restrictions despite me picking it specifically because I was happy to actually get a knife viable subclass early. But yeah, in that case I think it has plenty of late game potential as a generalist damage support class so I'd probably wait for more feedback before making any drastic changes.


Paladin:

I think the demo ending almost after you get it was a big part of the issue, since I didn't really have time to figure out a way to use it. So moving some skills around to help it shine a bit more in the early game sounds like a good call for now.


Archer:

Oh. Yeah that's just me forgetting to check the innate passive then because everything else looks fine. I'd definitely be interesting in trying the class next time I play then.


The Painter (the boss):

I did kind of realize that through the fight and had an "Oh ♥♥♥♥" reaction whenever the lil doggo was spawned in. Probably best to make it so the summons are closer in difficulty so it doesn't suddenly spike whenever it spawns in.

Also I realized both summoned bosses have steals in the editor but during the fight itself it said they had none. I checked the lost and found in my save and they weren't there either. So I think something got borked with their steals due to them being summoned mid fight.


Zoras and Hard Mode:

Oh yeah that sounds like she would have been too much for a normal mode boss fight that early on. Using hard mode as a sort of "Well you DID pick hard..." and having the unnerfed versions of bosses sounds like a good idea for now. Although I'd probably try to find some other people's opinions on it since as I learned from my mod I ain't too good at making sound decisions for boss difficulty.


DOTs:

The changes definitely seem to have reduced the power of DOTs and put them in a more reasonable place so they'll probably be fine for now. I am curious to see how well they function late game with both DOT bonuses in place but that's for a later time.


Painter (the class not the boss):

One last thing, while I originally didn't really notice it at first (because just like archer I sometimes forget to check innate passives), the innate +1 debuff length does kind of concern me, because while early game it was just a nice way to add to debuffs, combining it with instability allows you to turn a 1 turn debuff into 3. Which for debuffs that are intended to be limited can allow you to have them last much longer without having to resort to class stacking.

While currently it doesn't really have anything to do that, it feels like it might have a similar sort of issue to the base game's Chemist passive. Where you have to constantly keep it in the back of your mind when designing things or risk having it get completely out of control. (which the base game didn't, and thus Chemist/Aegis exists)


Anyways that's all I've got for now. I'm looking forward to the next big update and seeing how the mod continues its changes into mid game!

Demo 2 is out!!

I recently finished demo 2 on Blackout with standard settings and I gotta say the mod is even better than before! Since the NPCs at the end told me to give feedback here's another big ol wall of text. I'll try to avoid repeating myself if I don't have anything new to say about a particular thing. Also for reference, I restarted as it seemed like a lot changed early game and also I cleaned out my saves folder and I don't feel like digging through my backups to find the old one.


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GENERAL GAMEPLAY:

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THE GOOD:


I Still Like the Atmosphere:

Yeah not repeating myself and all, but this is still my favorite part of the mod. All the little bits of flavor added, like how many more NPCs you encounter, the ocean actually having stuff in it, or the bits of lore added to the world.


The Difficult Curve Feels Better:

The difficulty curve felt a lot better this time, with it steadily increasing over the course of the game while not just relentless escalating with no breaks.

However I do feel that normal enemy encounters started to lose a lot of threat as I got near the end of the current demo, as many of them only had ho-hum single target attacks that could barely hurt my tank, and even my non tanks didn't take all that much damage. There were definitely still some dangerous regular encounters, such as Spotlights and Earthen Remnants, and I think that the current content is fine as is, but it might be worth giving the basic enemies some extra punch for later fights, particularly with breaking through tanks (such as DoTs, healing reduction, or defensive drops) or some ability to disrupt the party, especially as the bosses definitely feel like their keeping up.


Balance Feels Better:

I also felt like the general balance of the gameplay improved as well. While there were definitely still some very strong strategies, I found they took a decent amount of effort to figure out. So while it wasn't quite perfect, most of my issues were specific to a class or boss, which I'll list later on.


Fights Feel More Different:

This was an issue I had last time but it's completely gone now. The boss fights definitely feel like they all do a better job of standing out.


I Liked the Story Stuff:

I think the greater focus on story definitely helps the mod stand out in a way different that just mechanics. The pyramid I particularly liked as it felt like it was focusing more on that whole MMO vibe the game has, with everyone going into the big raid dungeon. I'm definitely curious to see how it's going to end up.


Stealing is More Accessible:

This fixes a big issue I have with the base game, as with a lot more classes able to steal I felt it was a lot easier to have at least one character who could steal. Which given the mod also has more useful stuff to buy in stores meant my budget greatly appreciated this.


The Mod Changes up the Gameplay Sometimes:

This is another part of the mod I enjoyed a lot. As there were a lot of things I found very novel in how different it would get, from the sneaking mission in the quintar fields, to having the ocean be a mid game area, or solving ice block puzzles in the pyamid. In addition, I felt that, aside from some issues I had with the ocean, they didn't overstay their welcome and were more a neat side thing than some obnoxiously long change from the base gameplay of "Explore and fight stuff!"


The Weather is Better:

I think the weather improved a lot since last time. With it feeling like it has more of an impact when it occurs while also giving you more control over how you want to use it. Definitely more fun now.


Out of Battle Healing is Better:

With survivalist only needing one of each consumable, having access to a larger stock of consumables, and the soup and burger given to you in the capital, I found out of battle healing was perfectly fine in this version of the demo.


Weapon Restrictions are Interesting:

The way the mod uses weapon restrictions is interesting. While they still exists, their not nearly as common as vanilla and seem mostly restricted to stronger skills, giving better flexibility while also keeping the stronger skills from being too splashable.


The Defend Skill:

This is a nice way to give the skip turn command some use in battles. While not the most useful, I found there were a few times it helped a character just barely survive a hit they otherwise wouldn't. And since it's a generic ability everyone has I couldn't really ask for more.

That said, I think the passive itself really needs to list it gives +50% crit res (I didn't even know until I looked inside the mod files). Especially as the stat is additive, so a tank with the Boomer Shield and Aversive doesn't take any extra damage from crits, which is very useful.


No Reaction Ignoring:

This definitely makes enemy reactions a lot more important, as I can't just go "Oh that looks like it'll be hard to deal with... anyways how do I free up 3 PP for unreactable?"


The Ice Rod:

This thing is so wonky, I love it. Within 10 minutes of finding it I already figured out how to climb a 4 block wall and started sailing across the ocean on my ice block. While it does enable massive sequence breaking, the jankyness really does add to the feeling of using your new tool in creative ways to explore.

I wouldn't mind if it had a softer sound, as the loud metal CLANK whenever I used it was a bit much. Although I recall when I looked in the editor events had like... 3 sounds? So I guess you don't really have many options.


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THE MEH:


The Candle System Feels Restrictive on Blackout:

I'm not really sure what category this should go into. But I found later on that on blackout it was increasingly hard to justify the use of most classes that had heavy reliance on the candle (this especially affected heavy magical classes that didn't have a way to store charges, like Siren and Terraformer). As later on bosses often had very high AoE damage and lots of status effects, so it felt like I couldn't really afford to have anyone other than my healer hold the candle for long. This might also have been a result of my party building, but I found a lot of abilities I passed on because they needed the candle to function, and I couldn't justify not having the candle ready for my healer. Especially as physical attackers could still put out great damage without being nearly as neededy. For random encounters this is definitely less of an issue as high level spells really do pack a punch, but even there it felt like that mages were getting the short end of the stick, as most physical classes could throw out perfectly good AoE damage or quickly pick off key enemies with their strong single target damage without the candle, while some mages can't even cast a single spell without directly holding the candle.

That said I'm not really sure if it needs to be changed? As it does provide a very different experience and does give a feeling that candle abilities are very important and the candle is very valuable, so the candle mechanic itself is very much working as intended. And from a lore perspective it fits as well, as it makes magic feel like this rare and powerful resource. So I'm putting this as a meh, as ultimately I think that even among my opinions, this is probably the one that'll vary the most on how other people feel.


Cards are Cool but Hard to Get:

So this one is mostly positive, as while I didn't use it all that much (I more prefer passive equipment) I found some fun uses for them, and the whole card collecting aspect is fun.

My issue is that the costs of cards feels quite high, as you have no idea what card your going to get, and the costs continue to climb as you go through the game. While I guess you can grind card packs on monsters that seems very tedious. I think more enemies need to drop packs or the cost of packs could go down a little, especially as it seems like there's intended to be multiple packs later on, which would increase the price even more if you're looking for a certain card and don't know what pack it's in.


Hidden Intent and Random Targeting:

So this one I'm putting in meh because it's very much a personal preference, but I had some issues with these two mechanics. While random targeting isn't that bad with most moves, as I find they don't deal all that much damage. Some moves that randomly targeted had a very strong impact, and Berserk bosses often had very powerful attacks that could do a lot of damage to a non tank, and the only way you have to counter them is cover and the Paladin's passive. Hidden intent was also not really an issue aside from the whale boss, as most enemies that had it were either predictable, or it was in Delende that let you remove it. I just don't really feel it added anything aside from the weather, as that one was interactive, while the rest were just mildly annoying as I couldn't check the damage.


Complexity Creep:

Compared to demo 1 the new classes feel increasingly complicated. While on its own I don't really think this is bad, I felt some of them pushed this to the point where they felt like they were starting to suffer. As they were either trying to do so many things at once they couldn't really do any of it particularly well, or just had so many moving parts that their gameplan had a lot of trouble adapting if anything went wrong. I feel like this is partially related to how many more classes the mod has compared to vanilla and the need for each one to feel unique, so it might be worth to slow down the rate of class unlocks and focus more on refining what's already there.

I guess this also sorta leans into how each class contributes to the overall strategic aspect of the battle vs individual tactical aspect. Currently I think the mod does a great job at balancing this, but I think it's always important to keep this in mind to avoid the common RPG pitfall (especially with mods) of focusing so hard on tactical mini game style play that overall strategic depth is ignored.

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THE BAD:


Late Game Defensive Play Feels Off:

This is gonna be a long one as it's my largest issue with the mod so far, and I don't really have a good way of summarizing it, but I can mostly split it into two parts.


1 Healing Feels Very Polarized:

This one is kind of hard to pin down, but I feel that in the current demo healing feels... off? It's probably related to me playing on Blackout but I found that for the hardest fights, the importance of having reliable and strong AoE heals and status cure was incredibly important. Meanwhile for fights without AoE and status spam the good healers were able to output such massive levels of healing the enemies couldn't ever hope to overcome it. I think that this seem to be an issue with how most of the healers are designed with limited AoE healing. Either with strong but slow AoE heals (Exorcist and Survialist), quick but weak AoE heals (Butcher), or nothing at all (Peacekeeper). Meanwhile Donor's Overwork gives EVERYONE a repeatable and strong AoE heal and is probably one of the biggest causes of this, which I'll mention more of in my Donor section.

I think this issue in particular is important to consider, as having every healer turn into "Fast AoE heals and good status cures." is very samey. But at the same time, healer builds that couldn't do that just felt useless for the hardest boss fights, while the really good healers builds felt overpowered for the other kinds of fights, and with the overall difficulty of the mod climbing and powerful AoE spam becoming more common, it's gonna be increasingly relevant.


2 Mass Defensive Buffs are Almost Nonexistent:

So for most of the mod, I don't feel this is an issue. Mass defensive buffs are extremely strong in the base game, and the mod in general accounts for this, so you have less of a need for mass buffs in the first place. Normally I was fine just focusing the defensive buffs on my tank or more fragile characters.

However near the end of the demo some bosses (and even a few regular enemies, like the Spotlights and Earthen Remnants) started to gain powerful and fast mass AoE damage, and... there really aren't many good options to counter this. Which combined with the healing issue I felt like I was restricted to only a few viable classes for these fights. As most tanks lack a good way to contribute to reducing AoE damage and the tanks that CAN help with AoE also handle single target fine. Paladin was of particular note as it had by far the best mass defensive buffs, with Power and Magic Wall. This feeds back into the healing issue, since due to the difficulty of blunting mass AoE damage, the easiest (and sometimes only) option available is to simply take the hit and heal back up.

There's definitely still counter play on both the equipment and class side, but I felt that the classes that had the abilities necessary to properly handle the strongest bosses were limited.

I'll talk more about the specific fights I felt the issue stood out in the bosses section.


The Ocean is Very Slow:

So the whole idea of going to the ocean as a mid game instead of ending area was one of my favorite twists of the mod, and I really liked how much more stuff there is to do in it... in certain areas. Which brings me to my biggest issue with the ocean, so much of it is still empty nothing and without a proper mount, you're so slooooooow. While I don't mind this when first exploring, I found a lot of the time in the ocean I wanted to go to one of the two villages for one reason or another, and it took so long to get there. I eventually just cheated for a golden quintar just so that walking back and forth didn't take so long. I think that adding some way to quickly travel between the villages, and maybe some other key locations would help a lot with how slow the ocean feels currently.

Also the lizard duo boss fight had no save crystal near them like the other 3 ocean bosses. Which admittedly the fight isn't all that hard, but if your stuck it's gonna feel real bad repeatedly walking back. (Or maybe there was and I just couldn't find it?)


Anyways, that's all I got for the general content, as you can see from how few things were in THE BAD part, I thought the mod was definitely more refined than demo 1, so good job with that! Next up is a new (and very short) section on equipment!

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EQUIPMENT:

So I don't really have a lot to say here, but there were a few things that stood out.


One Handed Books and Other Weapons:

This is a cool change that definitely helps the weaker books especially feel more useful, as their weaker effects feel more justified by also giving you an extra equipment slot.


More Off-hand Stuff:

Another nice change, it definitely helped give classes that weren't just tanks make better use of one handed weapons.


Defense/Resistance Shifter:

While I like the change from a flat boost to a % boost to make it more relevant for when your defenses get higher, the problem is that they don't really.. shift your defenses anymore. They more serve to shore up an already high defense, as a warrior with 60 resistance isn't going to get much use out of a +12 boost. I think splitting the bonus between a flat and % boost would help their use in mid game, and maybe having an upgraded version available later than is a pure % boost.


Tortoise Mail:

The status effect is only removed by physical damage while limiting all damage, resulting in it being very overpowered against enemies that don't deal physical damage or when combined with Reflex Stance. I'm not sure if this a bug or intentional but I think it should probably be changed in some way.


The Upgraded Candles:

So I generally think these are good, as they let you not just have the candle take up an accessory slot. However they currently feel a bit imbalanced, as the Vitality, Spirit, and Luck candles are just not as good as the others (especially poor Vit). I think giving the weaker candle types a small additional benefit in addition to the stat boost would be nice, like giving the vit candle maybe a small reduction to DOT damage or a little bit of HP regen.


And that's all I got for equipment, onto classes!

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CLASSES:

I'm gonna list these in the order their in the skill menu.


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Guardsman:

This is still a very solid tank class, being pretty much permanently my sub class for every other tank I was training and pretty much always filling in any gaps they had. I also think the innate passive has some interesting uses with the new classes introduced, such as making it very easy to maintain Paladin's Barrier. Being another class with a steal and revive was also nice for making it very well rounded.


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Berserk:

First off I only used this class for tanking, so I'm not really sure how good its damage dealing is, but that part seems pretty good.

For tanking I found it did a very good job when combined with another class to help reduce damage to allies, as it was almost invincible on its own with the auto Def Up when hit, and Adrenaline Rush giving you great regen that didn't need to be reapplied. Shrug Off and a candless revive also helped make it surprisingly well rounded. And if nothing else it has two of the best tanking passives.


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Cutthroat:

Still a very good class, and with others able to steal it can focus even more on using its strong skills to debilitate enemies. MP and AP sickle also give you a way to further weaken enemies in a less conventional way, and Erasure is a fantastic finisher near the end of a fight if you really need to rush the finish. Also I gotta say while I didn't mention it last time, Candle Snatch is a really nice supportive move to move the candle around.


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Exorcist:

This class feels like it's in somewhat of a weird spot currently? As for most fights its perfectly fine, being a bit slow but having generally strong effects. It's revival isn't as good as the other healers, but you have a fantastic mass clense with Repentance, so it has its own strengths and weaknesses.

My issue is that Exorcist/Donor feels very overpowered currently. Being able to full heal the entire team every turn for basically no cost by spamming Overwork + Transfusion, sure you need 50% HP for it. But with Exorcist having moderately high HP, aside from a few enemies that do high AoE damage nothing is getting past this. Overwork and Invigorate also fully heals the team's MP, and while it also costs a lot of HP, all you need is a single turn where you don't need to heal someone else to instantly fix everyone's MP. I don't really think this class is the issue, as its otherwise perfectly fine, but I think this particular combination needs to be looked at.


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Heliolater:

With the nerf to DOTs, this class feels like it's still very strong but not overwhelming anymore. Being a full mage while also only needing to briefly hold the candle gives a ton of more leeway for your characters, and it has two great stances, either for counter attacking, or healing to offset the HP drain. The latter I found particular helpful when subbing the class and combing it with Refresher to keep the MP costs down, as other classes really felt the DOT damage without the innate resistance.


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Peacekeeper:

I didn't really get much of a chance to use this class, as I mostly just dipped into it to pick up Regenerator and Refresher and mostly used subclass skills. From what I did use it though, it definitely seems like it could be a great supportive attacker or subbed to give some extra skills, as you get quite a few casts from only a single turn of candle.

It's innate passive doesn't feel like it really helps with the healing aspect though, as healers already have aggro issues and shooting an enemy every time you cast a spell doesn't help with that. For attackers it seems pretty great though, as the spell deals a decent chunk of damage.


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Blademaster:

I've really come around to this class as a generalist easy sub for melee attackers. You get a wide selection of cheap and useful attacks, Power Up, two nice stances, and even some gimmick spells. Definitely a great class at what it does. Blade Frenzy also has a lot of ways to do massive damage, although with the heavy downside of not being able to pass the candle.

While mostly well balanced, there's a particular combo with Blade Frenzy (and by extension the Warden Axe that grants it) that I found to be an overwhelming strong opener in normal encounters for very little effort. Using it with Sobekian's Sleeping Tip (it costs a lot of AP but that's what AP Juice is for) and a DOT weapon and/or passive to put every enemy to sleep and DOT them as well. The axe can even be used with a Painter and DOT passives to get 3 turns of sleep, allowing you plenty free time to set up. I get this is a specific combo, but I feel the issue here is the strength relative to the effort to set it up, as it's basically Sleep Aura from the base game but better, and that was already one of the strongest abilities in the base game.


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Donor:

A lot of my issues with the current healing system end up related to this class, so I'm gonna try to break it down.

In a vacuum, this class is fine, you spend your own HP to heal your allies, then use drain spells or a sub class to heal up, simple. You also get a pretty good debuff cleanser and an emergency self heal by using AP.

My issue is that once you start to optimize your healing any balance this class has goes out the window. Healing % boosts and Compassionate (which due to the class draining it's own HP to heal people, is really easy to activate) make Overwork + Swift Heal into a full heal without a turn cost, then just pop a drain or sub class heal and you're back up. You can even use a Survivalist snack for a quick next turn. Transfusion with this method is a full MP heal for the entire team as mentioned earlier. Or sub it and turn your classes' single target heals into AoE heals for only 25% HP (which given other healers can target themselves will instantly be healed), the reduced healing barely matters when so many healing bonuses are combined together.

The next part is this issue is that for the hardest fights on blackout, I feel this class is almost necessary? As its benefits are so universally applicable to the other healers in letting them heal off the huge AoE damage, and a turnless debuff cure provides so much more freedom for managing the very precious turns of your healer. So while its overpowered for most fights, it also extremely useful for making these fights manageable if you don't wanna just hyper offense.

I think fixing this class needs to be looked at carefully, as currently it's overpowered but nerfing it would make certain fights on blackout even more restrictive.


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Dancer:

I didn't get a chance to try this class in my current run, but it seems pretty cool. Definitely seems like it has potential for a tank sub to make use of all the AP you get to help your buddies.


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Paladin:

While I didn't get to use this much in Demo 1, I got a lot of use out of it for the tougher fights in this demo, especially with Power and Magic Wall. Armor and Resistance Boost not costing a turn really helps them be more useful, and Barrier gives a great use for all the AP tanks get when you don't have time to set up a longer term defensive buff. Reverse polarity is also a very interesting skill for this class to have, while I didn't really explore it that much I can definitely see some interesting things you can do with this on a tank.

It's innate passive was just like vanilla, specific, but for certain fights it was immensely useful.


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Painter:

This class worked just like it did last time, it's a really good support, especially for debuffs. I particularly found that Painter/Sentry of all things was an incredible support, as you can stack a ton of the strongest debuffs to completely cripple lone targets.

My only issue is with Tiring Paint, as it completely prevents the enemy from gaining AP unless they have some alternative source. While for most fights it isn't overpowered, either because the enemy has other skills or there's multiple targets. But for lone fights with an enemy that rely heavily on AP it's basically an auto win, as with the painter's debuff +1 and Instability you can get 4 turns of it, ensuring it's never getting removed. I'm not really sure how exactly to fix this, as the skill is very overpowered but only in very specific circumstances. Maybe giving AP heavy bosses some way to react to the status such as an ability they can use for temporary immunity.


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Archer:

This class feels really good now that I got a chance to use it more. You get a ton of skills for dealing damage in a variety of ways and even a few supportive skills. I also really like that not only is Perfect Vision back as a learnable passive, but it's very early in the tree too, making it super easy to pick up for any physical attacker. Blaze Barrage in particular does very high damage due to being elemental and only having a CD of 2. I don't think its too much currently, but if more fire support gets added it might end up being too strong, so I'd keep an eye on that.

Also I don't know where else to put it but it was neat Chloe recognized that I upgraded her bow.


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Survivalist:

This class was hugely changed since demo 1. Not needing to use consumables makes it much less micro managey, and the Full Belly status effect is an interesting way to limit its otherwise very strong healing. I think that the tier 1 and tier 2 meals are quite strong, as even the weaker ones can heal a good amount with healing boosts, and the shorter turns still let you precisely time your heals. I also like that the mutli heals have some additional effects give this class a lot of utility. The class definitely feels like it's more meant for main classing than sub classing, as you want all the heal boosts you can get, and Force Feed is extremely useful when combined with spamming tier 1 food for fast turns to get its cooldown reduced.

This class does seem to be a bit odd as far as scaling goes, as the tier 3 foods, both single and multi, have such high Full Belly statuses that you really want to pair it with Force Feed. While for the single target ones this isn't much of an issue, Coffe Time and Dinner feels like they can be actively detrimental to use due to just how long they can last. In addition, since the items don't have any healing scaling, the class needs you to constantly boost your healing % in order to keep up with the rising HP of your allies. While it's currently fine, I'm kinda concerned if it'll be able to still hold up by the time you reach lvl 60.

Also I wouldn't mind if Force Feed could target enemies. The idea of beating my enemies to death with reverse polarity steak is pretty funny, even if it's not all that practical.


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Dread Knight:

I didn't get a chance to use this class but it seems pretty strong. +50% attack after using a magical ability seems like you could get some really powerful combos by subbing a class with a good set up spell.


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Ashigaru:

This class has a pretty cool design, as it has skills to support both a very powerful attacker as well as an evasion tank. The class itself seems set up to be a damage dealer while its evasion abilities aren't quite enough to properly evasion tank, giving it an interesting aspect where the class has a strong skill set that wants a proper secondary class to really shine. It's also is very easy to combine with other classes, as it has no weapon restrictions and mostly uses cooldowns, giving you a lot of resources to use elsewhere. Hundred Claws is similar to Archer's Blaze Barrage in that while I don't think it's currently overpowered, it has very good power if you can get an enemy's defense low and if too many sources of Def down are introduced it might get out of hand.

I have two issues though, the first is that Spotlight is currently pretty vague about how it works. With it not mentioning either the buff's effect, or that the move doesn't use a turn.

The second is that Reflex Stance is... Reflex Stance. While having it on one character is perfectly fine, the issue is that when everyone but the tank has it, it allows fights that rely on physical AoE to simply be invalidated for next to no effort. Sure you have to have a specific sub class, but the boss loses the majority of its damage. I think it might be worth limiting this stance, either to one character at a time, or in some way penalizing it if you spam it on everyone. If it's not going to be nerfed, all future bosses are going to need to be designed with it in mind, as it's not some specific OP combo, but a single move that can easily be slapped on anyone.

I guess this sort of applies to class stacking in general, but Reflex Stance stands out due to how easy it is to slot into basically any build.


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Terraformer:

I don't think I used this class right, as I was mostly interested in giving it to my mage for the earth spells and that didn't really work out. It feels like it has everything necessary to work, but the pieces just didn't really come together for me. While the magical side has great damage, nice debuffs, and an innate passive to reduce the huge CT, it's also completely reliant on the candle and it's base stats being fairly average mean the reduced CT is held back by weaker damage, and to get a wand on it to help with the iffy mind, you need to spend some passive points. And while it has three stances, none of them help if you wanna cast spells.

This one is probably on me for misusing the class. I think I went in with expectations too similar to Nomad, which you can either go full magic or full physical, while the class expects a more true hybrid approach.

The physical tree seems better, but I don't get why Cold Cut has the 90% damage penalty when not top aggro, as the class really has no place holding max aggro for extended periods. I guess you could use it as a tank sub but it has no real abilities for tanking. And if your attacker is holding top aggro, you're either gonna wanna prevent that, or use powerful attacks to defeat the enemies before they defeat you, not use a moderately damaging basic attack replacer.

There is one thing I found it very strong at. Using Final Gambit, Float Shoes (for your allies), and repeated revives to absolutely annihilate non boss enemies. It's very dumb, and you end up with a lot of dead characters, but it's also very funny and surprisingly effective at blasting through random encounters (and blasting that jerk Light).

Also Blizzard is a very interesting ability, although my team was too reliant on buffs and debuffs to really make use of it.

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CLASSES PART 2 BECAUSE I TALK TOO MUCH:

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Siren:

So there's two sides to this class, mage and tank. Mage I think does a good job. Having a bunch of very powerful spells in return for needing the candle, and even a stance to buff them even further. The innate ability also helps a lot with the general fragility of magical attackers, and you even get some interesting supportive abilities if you use a scythe. It's not the best to main class, but it's got decent a skill set to sub if you wanna have a very strong first strike in normal battles or some nice supportive skills for boss fights.

The tank side is... underwhelming. From its stats which are spread far too thin to properly tank, especially it's abysmal agility, which due to the rarity of accuracy boosting spears and scythes is even worse, to its defensive skills requiring a spear or scythe, which often aren't designed for tanking, especially with only 4 in the whole game being one handed, or how it's almost completely incapable of protecting allies. Sure, it's innate passive can be combined with other skills to become basically immune to single target damage, but if your casting some long ass spell, that's time your not using your abilities to protect your allies from AoE. It's not like the other tanks aren't also very resistant against single target damage, but they can do so mostly passively, freeing them up to be more helpful in protecting allies. I guess there's potential for a counter attack life drain build, but even then, it's attacking stats aren't all that impressive either. Subbing it is also sub par, because you still need a scythe or spear for the only useful tanking skills, and its self healing ability is horrible without the 50% damage resistance while casting it. I guess you can get 10% magic resistance which most tanks are weak to, so that's something at least?


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Butcher:

This was a kind of odd class, as main classing it felt a somewhat underwhelming, but it was surprisingly great as a sub class. I think this mostly comes down to how its stats are too spread out, and its equipment doesn't really mesh that well with its skills. While its set up to be a class that can do almost everything, its poor HP means it can't tank, its poor agility means it has trouble hitting things (which means no meat), and it's fairly slow to boot, which means its already slow healing is even slower. While the innate passive is pretty strong, I feel it's more a bandaid trying to fix the issues the class has rather than enhancing what's already there.

Meanwhile when subbed you can focus much more on what you want, either having a physical attacker that happens to be able to throw out a heal when you need it, or using its surprisingly great magic skills to give a mage/healer more utility. As you can get huge stacks of meat from groups with Split, add some DOT and constantly heal your party with Draw Out, access to the rare and very useful Power Down with Fillet, and then you can turn all that into some pretty nice heals too! I think this class works a lot better the sub of a secondary healer than a main healer sub, although honestly Draw Out is so good at patching up chip damage it can be viable as your sole healer's sub for the less intense fights.


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Spellsword:

I didn't get that much of a chance to use this class, but from what I used it seems very similar to base game Samurai but with some tweaks. I like that the finisher uses MP rather than AP, as it lets you completely burn your AP before using the finisher. While it uses spirit instead of agility, given how high you can stack combo tokens this is probably for the best to keep the damage from spiraling out of control.

That said I think the stances aren't balanced currently, the wind stance directly boosting your agility means its basically just a flat damage boost, and while the fire stance has some use for a crit build or subbed onto another class, the earth stance boosting the almost useless vitality stat just doesn't feel good, maybe give it some other small benefit?


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Cultivator:

I didn't get the chance to use this class, but it seems pretty strong and the seed gimmick is an interesting way to handle its wide set of powerful abilities, definitely looking forward to trying this one in demo 3.


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Sobekian:

Another class I didn't really get a chance to try, definitely seems like one of the ones you need to carefully plan around with how many skills need bottom aggro. I am a bit concerned that a class so dependent on aggro control has only one non aggro attack, and only one candle dependent source of aggro drop that can be easily dispelled. Take this with a grain of salt though, as I only barely tried the class so far.


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Sentry:

I don't have anything new to say for this class, it seems like all the changes since demo 1 were for the better so that's nice.


And that's all the classes! Onto the bosses now!

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BOSSES:

Bosses are listed in the order I fought them.


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Dr. Cool Aids First Fight, Bone Devourer, Guardian:

I got nothing new for these three other than Bone Devourer has a debuff now so I just used magic instead of ignoring it, so that's working as intended.


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Canal Beast:

This feels a lot better than the demo 1 fight, as it does a better job of feeling unique compared to the other early game bosses and the new moves along with the change to the weather does a better job at encouraging you to learn how to shuffle the candle around.


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The Painter:

This boss definitely feels toned down from demo 1 but given this is the tutorial area I think that's fine, and on blackout it could still definitely put up a fight.


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Doist:

He tried his best to be a boss fight.


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Oscar:

So funnily enough, this was the one boss in the mod that I actually got stuck on and had to go grind for. As his opening salvo with all the DOTs was just slaughtering me without an AoE status cure. Once I got Breakfast to cure that the fight was still pretty tough, but a lot more manageable. I'm not sure why I had so much more trouble with this than demo 1, but I think this fight in its current state does a good job of making sure you know mass status clearing is important, as on blackout especially I found that making sure I had good status clearing was very important.


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Zoras:

With the nerf to DoTs and the minions no longer having summoning sickness this fight felt much tougher. I had to take it very slowly and chip down Zoras and her minions, which thankfully survivalist and donor provided me the MP that was necessary for this. While the current version of the fight doesn't feel like it's going to instantly flatten you for a mistake, it feels like it's testing if you have a party that can consistently handle a longer fight. Which given that blackout has plenty of fights that can go on for quite a while, I think this does a good job of making sure you're ready. Overall I think this was a much better finale for the tutorial area than before.


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Salmon River Tournament:

This was definitely a pretty rough wake up call after the fairly easy Greenshire and Salmon river. My team was designed for a more slow grind than sudden burst of damage, so they had quite a bit of trouble with the first two rounds (the first in particular was rough despite it having only 3 members). Still after I got past those two I felt that the remaining three rounds were a lot easier, which honestly I don't mind. Given that I had trouble with even the starter fights, if they got harder I'd probably have needed to rebuild my team for PvP fights. I also like that you can see some classes you don't have yet in action, and can get some ideas for team builds or new ways to use classes.

While much better than the base game, I do have one issue with how PvP fights are handled in the mod. when the fight starts, due to being at 50% HP, whichever one of your characters moves first will gain aggro from all enemies. And it's not a small amount either, as it'll completely override Natural Tank. Or maybe its healing the tank that gains the aggro? Either way, I'd be nice if something could be done with this, since a lot of the fastest classes are ones that don't particularly want to be dogpiled.

Also I wish that the illusionary tournament gave SOMETHING. Even if it's just some minor rewards like a few consumables or something (maybe a card pack or two?), as it's not like you aren't fighting real battles even if their not as hard as the real tournament.


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Ghastly Quintar:

So first off, the boss currently has a fairly large bug where the haste skill it has needs a candle to be used, but the boss doesn't have a candle so it can't use this. I fixed this before doing the fight so everything I say from here on out assumes that.

Anyways, I found this fight was fine. While the boss is very fast, it has high CTs and it it only does single target damage so it's not uncontrollable. I think having the earlier bosses be more single target based is generally good, as it's hard to have good multi target healing early on and later on single target bosses aren't much of a threat, and this boss does a good job of being a decently strong obstacle between you and a quintar. That said, Daze kind of completely wrecks it, as even with the buff in the second half to halve its CT it just has trouble doing much of anything once its Dazed.

Also for some reason there's a second Ghastly Quintar on top of the big mushroom where the normal boss quintar is. I don't think it's supposed to be there as the Quintar Entusiast called me a cheater for showing him a second Ghastly Eye.


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Capital Jail Mini Bosses:

I thought this was a pretty fun gauntlet. As it let you face off against a wide range of different threats to see how well your party can handle them. I think this showing up decently early on, but after you've had some time to work on your party is a very good place to time it. As it lets you see how well your setup handles different kinds of enemies, it definitely helped me realize my team was fairly lacking in AoE healing and quick debuff curing. The sickle guy in particular gave me trouble, but I think that every party is gonna have some fights their good at and others their bad at, so that was probably specific to my party.


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Sanguslime:

This fight I think suffered from how easily the main threat of the boss can be countered. While it's supposed to spread poison and stack other debuffs to wear you down, I just equipped my team so they were all immune to poison and the boss struggled to do anything until Hemoplague. While the mass status effects were dangerous, the attack only dealt 50% damage which is a lot less than the base game. And since the boss could only use it once, past that speed bump the fight was fairly uneventful. I think I was also a bit overleveled as I forgot about this boss until just before I beat the ninja boss. Although I guess it isn't bad to have a simpler optional boss, since all you get is a few items anyways.


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Amarylis First Fight:

This is technically a boss fight so I'm mentioning it.


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Amarylis Second Fight:

This fight was rough. As the first time you have to deal with constant AoE damage (that ignores reactions too!), my team struggled a lot to keep up, and I had to go to the drawing board to tweak my equipment and the classes I brought before I was finally able to win. The phase where the 3 helpers get summoned in is particular brutal, as without DOTs it feels almost impossible to take down their combined total of ~6300 HP before your overwhelmed. As while their attacks aren't that strong if they get a tank, making sure they all attack the right target with how quickly they move can mean things can quickly spiral out of hand if your not ready. This one definitely felt like it was another of the climax battles to make sure your ready for what comes next, both with AoE damage becoming more common and making sure all your party members have at least decent survivability. The boss guarding the very crystal that grants Reflex Stance felt fitting, given you had to go through physical AoE hell to get to it.


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Nibbler:

This little fella put up quite the fight. While it wasn't too bad at first, once it started to get going with Berserk, Haste, the need to constantly pass the candle around to block the chum, I definitely felt this fight put a lot of pressure to finish it quickly. This fight felt like it had a good focus, as the boss had two debuffs you could counter with the candle, as well as it speeding up and becoming more dangerous the lower its HP got.


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Bubonic Plant:

Eh, I don't know about this fight. While the first phase of the fight was fine with it having a clear obstacle with the massive flood of debuffs you need to counter, both focused and spread out. Once it got to half health and started using Pull Down I felt the fight started to get a bit too luck based due to the powerful effect and random targeting. As if it hit my healer or whoever had the candle I basically just had to stall and hope the next time it used it it wouldn't hit anyone important. While I was able to delay it by exploiting it using Acid Storm whenever the target didn't have Acid Rain, it still felt like when I won, I just happened to get lucky. The boss eating your candle at low health also really didn't help, as this completely cripples a number of classes, meaning you either need to use DOT to skip its activation, or use characters that can still function without it. The whole fight felt like it was very specific in who it wanted me to bring, and ultimate I won on my first try because I simply happened to get lucky with Pull Down and having enough DOT to skip the candle eating, as my team was very reliant on the candle. While some of this is probably due to my setup, I feel that invaliding the main mechanic of the mod is something that has to be used very carefully, as every other source of candle destruction up to, and after, this point was avoidable.

I guess it would probably be a lot less luck based if you ran double healers to ensure you always had one. But if your running two full healers against a boss reliant on chip damage and debuffs, the fight is gonna be a joke, so I dunno if this is the best thing to encourage for this fight.


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The Observer:

This was my least favorite fight in the mod. The fight just felt so random, with Forget + Hyperfocus being random, the rapid use of it meaning sometimes every character would have Threatless at once, meaning ALL the attacks became random, the boss having a powerful spell that could randomly crit, Cover Break actively punishing you for trying the one thing you can use to control it, and then at half heath, it not only gets hidden intent, but it also gains another powerful spell that can crit. Combined with how fast the boss is, making it tough to keep debuffs on it to protect weaker characters from the wild spam, I just had absolutely no fun with this one.

I quickly gave up trying to interact with the mechanics and just used a Paladin with all my other team members at low health to auto cover them. Even with this, the fight still wasn't easy due to the sheer damage the high speed and powerful spells could do.

I dunno about this one, it doesn't feel like it's really testing anything you've learned before, or teaching something you'd use after. Just a frustrating mess of RNG. I guess you can use Reflex Stance with Cover Break to exploit the AI, or make sure everyone has the ability to revive since it's only got single target attacks, but those doesn't really feel any better than what I did, as their all just trying to avoid interacting with the intended mechanics.


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Waterfall Beast:

Another boss with hidden intent. However this one was a lot weaker and simpler, so I didn't have much trouble figuring out its pattern and it went down pretty quickly. If any future bosses are gonna have hidden intent, I think this one does a much better job of showing how it should work. With it having a much more predictable set of moves to counter how much information you lose out on.


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Amphivena:

This fight was very fast. While the boss didn't have too much health, its damage output was pretty impressive, and once Berserk activated at the second half of the fight, it was very much a race to finish it before my team was defeated. I think this boss did a good job of being a mini boss. While it was short, it put up a decent challenge with it being a clear damage race.


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Lake Hydra:

Another fun mini boss with a clear focus. Having the real threat for this fight be the weather (and by extension, my own team), and the boss constantly trying to reapply it was a pretty cool idea for just a mini boss. I'd definitely be interested if the bosses of any future weather areas also got more interactions with their weather, as it was definitely a mix up from the usual boss fight.


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The Judge:

Hoof, this fight was tough. Not only did the boss constantly shift around what I could do and force me to rapidly adapt to the latest penalty, but in the second half of the fight the constant barrage of AoE made me realizing my healing was not keeping up. I only managed to etch out a victory because my healer was protected from the AoE with the candle, and she just kept reviving the other characters who would suck up No Existing until the boss finally ran out of MP. I think this fight was a good wake up call for how dangerous some of the later fights would be, and it definitely encouraged me to start preparing my team for more aggressive AoE spam.


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Salamander Squad:

This felt very similar to the base game fight, but with some extra spice. I think this was definitely a fun fight, although I don't really have much to say since it was kind of just like a normal Crystal Project boss. Not that that's a bad thing, as being "normal" in a mod that usually has a lot of unique fights is its own kind of unique.


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Dr. Cool Aids Second Fight:

This one was much tougher than the first or the tournament fight. Dr. Cool Aids in particular was a big surprise, as I expected him to just be a mostly harmless tank, but turns out he has really strong moves now, especially Glacial Strike. I didn't have too much trouble thanks to DOT spam being real good in PvP, but I do like that given his great prescience in the story Dr. Cool Aids is less of a joke in battle (his name is still very goofy though, no amount of cool moves can change that).


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Death:

So I didn't realize how to get the Simple Ring because I thought the NPC that sold it was part of the wall, so I did this fight while kinda over leveled, which probably contributed to why I didn't have too tough a time (That, and As Foretold having a massive 120 casting time when dazed). The fight was still a bit tricky in the second phase, as the barrage of AoE attacks definitely put pressure on my team, but after the Judge I had prepared my team for AoE damage.

I think this was the boss that was supposed to teach me about mid game AoE and not the Judge, but I did it backwards which probably explains why the Judge fight was so rough.

I also like how the game is setting up for a rematch with Death later. As it definitely makes me interesting in seeing what'll be be new next time, and finding out what Death is talking about.

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BOSSES PART 2:

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Heneral Banal:

This was absolutely the hardest fight in Demo 2 (at least for me). The boss has a relentless barrage of AoE attacks only occasionally broken up by a weaker single target attack, and with Berserk, not even those are safe. The boss having high HP, gradual resistance to attacks, and the constant attacks putting me on the defensive made this a very long and complicated fight. This took quite a bit of planning in order to get a team that could handle it, and I ended up going with a very defensive team that relied mostly on DOTs to slowly damage the boss while I just focused on staying alive with defensive buffs and stacking as many debuffs as I could to dull its offense and speed. While definitely very tough, I think this boss was a lot of fun, both in planning and executing my strategy, and it had a wide variety of attacks to deal with, making my team definitely feel like they were really being stretched and figuring out how to optimize them for it (the Golden Salmons especially helped me pick up some nice passives).

I think I need to go into more detail about this fight, as there's some important things about it, both from its individual design as well as the issues I talked previously about AoE spam.

First off, the boss itself was MOSTLY really good, with one issue. I really didn't like that World Cleave had a 10% chance to deal double damage. With how high its damage is, and how relentless the fight is, my non tanks were only able to survive the double damage if the boss had Power Down, I had Power Wall, and they were at full health (and my Cutthrot would die even with that, although she had reflex stance to avoid it entirely). The issue is that with how much damage was coming in, and how fast the boss was, I wasn't always able to have everyone at max health, or time my Paladin with Power Wall. While they could just barely survive a normal hit with a Power Down and Defend, or take a hit with Power Wall and Defend if their HP was getting low, but if it did double damage without Power Wall? They died, no question. I don't like this bit of randomness at all, and it made me very tempted to just use Reflex Stance on everyone but my tank to just avoid it entirely. And I think that would be doing this fight a disservice, as its otherwise a very fun fight that does a great job of challenging you, I don't want it to encourage just cheesing it.

Secondly, while minor, the boss having a 50% CT reduction was very important to keeping up its threat. Late game vanilla magic bosses bosses show this very well, with how utterly Daze cripples them due to the increasingly high spell CT of powerful spells, and reduced player turn time making the delay even stronger. If there are any future magic heavy bosses in this mod, I think they would definitely benefit to have a way to counter Daze, either with reduced CT, quick CT spells, or having some way to temporarily protect themselves, much like the formerly mentioned Tiring Paint.

Thirdly, and this is the big one. This boss and to a lesser extent the next one feel like their very much the reason why the less good healers suffer so much. Their not bad bosses, both of them I think are a lot of fun. But the pressure they put on your team to keep up with their mass AoE on Blackout really makes only a few healers able to keep up with them. I'm not really sure how to handle this though, Donor and healers that sub Donor feel like their made for these kinds of fights, with their huge AoE heals being matched by the huge AoE the boss uses, but at the same time, regular enemies have a lot of trouble matching the good healers, and regular healers have a lot of trouble matching these bosses, resulting in a very strange state of balance.


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Tundra's/Desert's Wrath:

This was probably the second hardest fight in the demo, with the constant use of Quick meaning it was constantly piling on both single and multi target damage. Its single target bite attacks in particular was very dangerous, as it both ignored defense and applied a debuff, making it very effective at breaking through tanks. It also had its own armor gimmick, making it harder to damage as half the time your attackers couldn't damage it and making it more of an endurance match. I didn't have to play nearly as defensively as Heneral Banal, but I still felt like I really needed to carefully prepare for the fight (Float Shoes helped immensely). This was another very fun fight, although the second phase of the fight definitely had a similar but less issue to Heneral Banal, where the AoE damage got very intense. That said, I think this was much more manageable for a larger selection of teams, I didn't have to go full defensive, so a more defensive team could probably make do with one of the weaker healer if they had more ways to slow it down and reduce its damage.

I do wish it had some unique item it dropped though, as it's quite powerful and can take some time to find.


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Xanthe:

This fight had a great buildup, with the pyramid adventure, the walk down the corridor as you hear everyone fighting, the boss having a mix of crazed ranting and very interesting bits of information, and then facing off against the possessed Reid and Dr. Cool Aids. Unfortunate I didn't find the fight itself lived up to this.

The first phase was fine for a quick warm up to the main fight. While Reid is barely a threat, Dr. Cool Aids is very dangerous, having some very powerful AoE moves that he will absolutely spam if given the chance. I ended up having to specifically prepare for him, despite this just being the first phase, which definitely made me curious to see how powerful the main boss was.

The second phase is unfortunately where things went south. It wasn't frustrating or annoying, just underwhelming for all the buildup. While the IDEA of the fight is very cool and thematic, with the boss not only possessing your friends, but stealing your buffs to power up itself. The problem is that, well, it'll steal ALL your buffs. Stances included. This is exceedingly exploitable, to the point were I did so by accident by simply having my tank using Sentry Mode. In addition, even without any stance shenanigans, the boss simply doesn't have many dangerous abilities. Pain Spreader is the only move that I had any trouble with, all the rest are either ho-hum single target attacks, or Absolute Zero. Which not only deals % damage, but gives the boss Stop so you can easily recover during the turn it can't do anything. And while it can revive Reid and Dr. Cool Aids, they only get 25% HP, which makes it quite easy to defeat Dr. Cool Aids before he can even take a turn. And Reid is barely a threat, but his 0% DoT res and low resistance mean magic can easily deal with him if you need to.

I think this boss definitely has potential, it just needs to be able to put up more of a fight. In particular as the 50% HP super move, Absolute zero shouldn't stop the boss, it should buff itself or inflict a debuff on your team, as 75% damage that can be reduced with with buffs and debuffs is in no way strong enough for the boss to skip a turn. Although if Absolute Zero is meant to stop YOUR team I don't think that's the right debuff to use, as if the boss does so after reviving Dr. Cool Aids, or follows up with Pain Spreader, that's a near unavoidable loss due to both having no trouble clearing out a stunned team with low HP.


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Deathly Quintar:

The journal says it's a boss so I'm counting it.


Anyways that's all the bosses! I definitely feel they were a step up from demo 1, so that's a another good sign. Next is a small number of miscellaneous suggestions.

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MISCELLANEOUS:


It'd be nice if Shiroi would tell you what her curses did before you bought them. Their not that expensive especially in Sara Sara, but it would be a nice bit of QoL.

Light could have a reaction if you beat him, since he's a unique fight unlike the Deathly Quintars, and with only 400 HP it felt like a gimmick boss rather than some intentionally unwinable fight. So I was kinda surprised when nothing happened.

Deathly Quintars could despawn if you defeat them. I know their not intended to be defeated, but it'd be nice the game recognized if you did win. Or if they can't for plot or technical reasons, at least some dialog about the quintar being too powerful and getting back up after you beat it.


Now onto the last section, bugs! I didn't notice that many so it shouldn't be too long.

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BUGS:


There are several NPCs where pressing cancel doesn't work, either doing nothing or selecting an option rather than exiting, the ones I noticed were:

The Wanderer Scholar near Gaia Shrine.

The Nerds on both floors of the Boomer Society.

Both the normal and illusionary Salmon Tournament Receptionists.

Shiroi in Sara Sara Bazaar.


Several enemies list the incorrect location in the bestiary, the ones I noticed were:

Mirage

Hungry Slime

Restless Soul

Axebeak

Twins

Onion Legs

All 3 Meat Flowers

Maze Bush

Obsidian Doll

Stone Puppet

Camera


The Sentry NPC that unlocks the Sentry class isn't solid.

The move Static E! says "Hard Mode-exclusive.", rather than Blackout.

The little girl in front of the Capital Sequoia maze doesn't properly recognize when all the monsters are defeated. If it matters, I lost to the second plant rather than clearing them all out in one go.

As mentioned earlier, the Ghastly Quintar can't use haste, and there's a second one on top of the big mushroom where the normal quintar boss is.

When Ashely's party is talking about getting the Shu Stone, near the end of the conversation Chloe appears to have gotten one of Ashely's lines.

When opening a West Journy card pack, when getting the Shade card, it says you got it, but you don't actually seem to get the card.

The detection area for the second Amarylis fight extends through the back wall, so if you walk behind the building you can trigger the fight while outside. This doesn't change anything else about the cutscene or fight and is mostly just funny.

The second boss fight with Amarylis gives you no EXP, LP, or money. You can also steal a lotus cloak from both forms.

One of the crabs for the ocean crab quest is inaccessible until you get the ice rod, and even then, where it's located is impossible to find without blind luck or already knowing where it is. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not as the quest has an altered reward, and one of the other crabs on a rock tower now has a staircase up to it.

The Crab in question is the one just south of Beaurior Volcano on this tower at 76,76,178: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/25426501419409285/B720CC22CC5610DF7A36EFDDF611CBE2F6F515B2/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

Water Binding EX doesn't say blackout exclusive, unlike Ice Binding EX.

Four-Arms strike is used on blackout despite it saying it's not used on blackout.

The Simple Ring costs nothing, despite the NPC saying it'll cost you money.

When talking to Ashely after getting all 3 desert lookout tokens, for some reason my character threw herself into the water to the left of Ashely when the cutscene started. After Ashely talked to the ocean where my character jumped in, she threw herself into the water as well, phased into a wall, then the game sat there until the anti soft lock prevention kicked in and I drowned and teleported back to land. I have no idea why this happened, but if it mattered I started the cutscene while I was riding my quintar while jumping. It was also very funny.

I'm not sure if Ashely supposed to have moved somewhere else, but she was located here for me: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/25426501419410673/E64738F1C3EB43E18F0DB289A1F10EB48BC07C5F/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

If you die in the switch room in the pyramid with Edge Master, he resets his position. However the first cutscene with the switch is only triggered when the switch is triggered. This resulted in him throwing himself into the water and continue to walk along the bottom of the pond during all the remaining cutscenes.

Xanthe gives you two Tiger Plates and pouches. I'm not sure if this one is actually a bug though because you only get one Ice Rod.


Phew, that sure was a lot of rambling. Anyways I think the mod is definitely headed in the right direction and I enjoyed it even more than last time! So I'm definitely looking forward to what awaits in demo 3, and hopefully the few remaining issues can be worked out.

P.S. I wrote this in little chunks while I was playing the mod over a few days, so if it sounds even more rambly than last time I blame that.