Mode: Rainbow
Total Whiteouts: 5, 7 if you count the unwinnable fight and the home invasion Salamence.
Shit I didn't like
Surprisingly this is a short list and most of my gripes are minor.
>Mon variety
A lot of the early routes feel very samey in terms of mon availability. It gets a bit better when you get to the sky areas, but not too much. Type balance is very skewed too; there's nearly no ghost, fire, or dragon types and so on.
>1st gym leader's team
I already mentioned this earlier in the thread but the design of the fight felt sorta soulless which is an outlier because the rest of the boss/major trainer team designs have been decent.
>Encounter rates in dungeons
It's not the worst we've ever played, but given that dungeons have both grass and regular encounter tiles as caves, the encounter rate is way too high pretty much across the board and most income gets spent on Repels as a consequence of that.
Shit worth talking about
>Balance changes
Most of them are decent and I overall appreciate the trend towards buffing rather than nerfing everything into being unfun and homogenous.
>Every single trainer has held items and weaponizes power consumables
Obviously Rainbow mode is meant to be hard and that's great, but seeing gems and sitrus berries on pretty much every single mon gets tiresome after a while. You have a thing going where only the Rich Boy trainer class can use bag items; it'd be neat to see if more types of held items were segregated to specific trainer classes rather than being one homogenous blob.
>Characters
Unfortunately one typo about the protagonist's age coupled with some...interesting typing quirks in texts gave me a very different impression on what the relationship between the protagonist and Emily was than intended, but aside from that none of the characters really stuck out for me. I guess I'm most curious about why Evelyn is quitting her job and why she's fucking over her sister in the manner she's doing so and I know Will is going to be a central plot hook, but other than that, I'm not too invested in anyone just yet. I don't see this as a big issue since it's still just the first two gyms, but it's something to at least keep in mind going forward.
Shit I liked
>Presentation
I adore the presentation in this game. The music's incredible, the tileset usage is great, the sprite choreography is good.
>Map Design
The cities are easy to navigate, the routes are reasonably sized and have good walkability overlays with plenty of goodies to explore like hidden grottos, and you don't get held hostage by roaming NPCs and 1 tile paths much if ever.
>Hidden Grottos
Self explanatory.
>Quality of life features
Mints/ability changers/porta PC/EXP All all fall under this umbrella; I'm glad all of this is handed out for free if the player wants it.
Suggestions for the Future
>A password that increases enemy level by a set %
This could be a game that I'd like to try seeing if I could beat Rainbow mode with a 15% level bump on all enemy trainers on. It doesn't sound like much, but in my experience it makes games a lot harder when coupled with the already optimized teams Rebornlike hardmodes are known for.
>Axew
Free the little nigga.
>Minor Legendaries available before the ass-end of the game/postgame
Most of them are worse than a lot of the options available in regular mons and they tend to make great sidequest or exploration rewards.
>More text conversations in the group chat as the player hits various story flags
The least realistic thing about the groupchat is that there isn't a constant stream of yapping in there.
>A bit more themeing on boss trainer teams goes a long way to making them memorable
Self-explanatory. Dad's team having a lot of rodents was a good touch and helps each individual character stand out with their personality reflecting their choice in mons or team compositions.
Closing Thoughts
I like it. I didn't really go in with any expectations for better or worse, but I can already say that with the level of quality and care you've put into it, it'll easily mog Rejuv and probably end up being the best Rebornlike out there assuming this standard is maintained the whole way through. The scope of this game seems to be huge judging from the map, so you've got a lot of work ahead of you, but the quality of the work is so high you likely won't get lost in the endless polish cycle of constantly refurbishing old areas the better the dev gets at designing a game like Amethyst and Jan did. Despite the scope of your game, I fully expect this to be finished before Rejuv since it both seems like you know exactly what you're doing in terms of feature scope and the story you want to tell.
And you're not using the game as a secondary source of income via patreon like Jan is.
>>9995
GG and congrats on vanquishing the ruiner of storylines.
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>>9993
>>9994
Thanks bros.
>>9999
GG nigga.
>>10000
/vp/ has hit 5 digits now.
>>10003
Get Dragon/Steel'd, chuddy.