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Skyward sword makes a good first impression and you can tell a lot of time has been put into custom features and little touches that add to the expirience. The dungeon itself is dark and gives a very dungeony feel with the character exploring by torchlight never knowing whats going to be up ahead. monsters are represented by flames that roam the map and pursue you if you get close but not inevitably so, you can decide to avoid monsters or run if you're not ready to fight and you regenerate health after each fight as well as after each step you take. The bestiary and statistical information are interesting and the bestiary becomes an important tool to figuring out what to do against different monsters. after killing any specific type of monster you learn how much health it has and a bar apears under the mob in battle making planning a bit easier. you have the option to save with F5 instead of having to go into the menu which i appriciated. design wise you can tell effort has been invested.

In hard mode combat starts off keeping you on your toes and you're forced to think about everything you do which is what i enjoy in an rpg. The potential is here for a very enjoyable game however some balancing issues leave combat disjointed and jarring and occasionally outright frustrating.

weakness/resistances are tough to follow and I often found myself mystified about why a monster took very little damage from an attack so id check the bestiary..and eventually forget who was weak to what.. monsters weak to magic are problmatic since the only person capable of dealing magic damage is also keeping the party alive with magicShields and healing.

mage enemies are often very resistant to magic but the party mage is not. priests reflect the mages normal attack and the only defence against mage enemies seems to be magicshield which only makes the encounter survivable.

strategicly speaking against melee monsters flameshield is amazing but against magic enemies its decent for the damage output boost so really its an always on move. against a magic monster team the focus shifts towards getting magicshield up on turn one by using stella to apply an action potion if tp isnt already sufficient. the defensive bonus and magic reflection potential trumps anything else stella can do. when monsters often regenerate and often deal enough damage in combination to kill one or multiple characters using stella for dealing a small bit of multi-target damage doesnt do much of anything and her stun attack misses too often to even attempt it. stella quickly became the glorified item user since sol deals much more damage, lunar is overly busy being the only source of magic damage (and magic protection).

enemies weak to magic are often strong against other damage forms so the party gets pinched. melee attacks dont deal much damage so the fight gets drawn out and the only source of magic damage(lunar) has to be split between keeping the party alive and dealing magic damage. too many eggs in one basket.

potions are way stronger than the mages heal spell since regeneration nets you more hp overall. I managed to beat the first boss on hard at level 4 in 23 turns by relying on potions flamecloaks and magicshields and not caring that stella stayed dead for most of the battle.

In normal mode the same tactic worked at level 2 in 14 turns. compared to the enemies that imediately follow this boss it was a cakewalk.


shades for example take very little damage yet regenerate most of their health in a single turn through draining. you might use multiple potions/revives to survive the battle and be one shot away from ending it just to watch the shade regenerate all of your damage in one move. ironically soleils best response to the shade is to guard since the shade counterattacks sols melee hit with a drain that restores most of its health.

this is the direction combat started to move towards as monsters became more magic central using spells you yourself dont have access to. My multi-target options either divide the damage or deal fire damage that equates into about 1/5 of what 1 mage enemy can do in hard mode and you fight 4 of them at one time.if 3 shaman decided to cast fireblast on the same turn you'd take more damage than you have in health before you could respond RNG mercy is the only thing stopping that.

similarly the priest monster has a multitarget heal which restores pretty much the whole enemy side so yeah kill him first but if you miss he regenerates and the other enemies attack you for basically free. this priest also reflects the party mage's magic attack and fireball.

wraiths are resistant to just about everything and hit you way harder than you can hit them. oh and they drain health as well.

in one treasure chest there is a monster called a pit demon. it attacks twice each round for huge magic damage even in normal mode. if you kill it you get nothing but normal exp and chances are you will use items to survive the battle so the best strategy here is dont open the chest you get nothing even if you win.

The problem with all of this combined is each battle starts to become a net loss. to survive a battle against 4 mages with multi-target high damage spells you either use potions or revives that cost more than you gain in gold to replace the items. and whats worse is the 20% health regen +1hp per second is basically nothing when you end fights barely alive with 200/800 HP you will find a new monster before you regenerate enough for it to matter unless you run in circles for a good while.

even counting expirience as invaluable the battles themselves dont equate challenge:reward wise. fighting 3 kobolds with auto-attacks yeilds similar exp to fighting four mages that repeatedly melt your face off.

at first i tried hard which was enjoyably tough up until the 4 mage troops that cost me more than i gained.
I restarted in normal mode to try to get further in the game.. but met the same issue. pit demon actually seemed worse in normal mode somehow.

the game has a ton of potential and the developer is obviously talented but i cant push any further until these balance issues are resolved its just too frustrating. If the game is updated I will revisit it becuse initially it was really fun.


developer notes:
new game/continue screen is very pleasing to look at but I didnt get to see it until loading the game.
load game f8 doesnt work inside battle
can cast heal on dead target with zero effect. frustrating and avoidable.
aimed shot doesnt seem to boost damage much and falls off after one turn
mage enemies take very little damage from magic but mage character takes a ton of damage from magic.
walked by store to first boss without realizing the store was a store. a more traditional guy with a cart would of been more intuitive.
found and killed the pit demon and got 45 gold? no treasure?
Traps are frustrating and annoying. not hard to avoid but when you do hit one and lose health its hard to get back.
missed entirely with sols solar strike. spent resource and needed a trump against tough enemies. missed entirely. frustrating.
died from a troll counterattack in one shot. died for attacking the enemy.
the duration for flaming cloak and magic shield isnt given anywhere
fireball costs 20mp with a 3 turn cooldown to often deal less damage than sols auto-attack
music becomes a bit repeditive after a while
skills unusable from often starving for resource or on cooldown
marked status fell off before attacking again? and didnt notice any damage boost to other characters
i deal 10 damage to a wraith and it deals 500 damage to each of my characters. i use my revive items just to get it almost dead then it heals almost all of its health in one single turn.
auto-saved over my hard file when i tried to save normal game..........