I'm a bit of a completionist, so I ended up playing Sunken Spire for 10 hours-ish. And I'm still
not finished yet. I'm at that stage where my party defeated Preston, Beatrice and Ezekiel probably in a minute or two. I finished two painful battles with Ezekiel when I decided to put this report to bed.
Issues
I had all these nifty screenshots of some issues, but Dalph was already ahead of me and pointed them out
So here's the ones I found.
On level F27, a ghost in the jar would keep repeating his dialogue. You cannot exit or continue with the game. Easily avoided by not interacting with the jar at all.
Why does the Dispel Charm claim to remove "2 stacks of ATK/DEF/MAT/MDF down and weakness", but only removes the weakness and 1 stack? I noticed this during the battle with the Book of Hindrance, Healing, Warlock and Enchanter.
I killed General Flippers and he could still talk. (Dying last words?)
In the Field of Flowers, there are two tiles you cannot walk on in the flower patch. Was this intentional?
If I accidentally use one of the revive items on a live party member (oops), you don't get an error buzz and your turn is over.
If the Lake Guardian kills the party and the player loads Autosave, the game will load automatically triggering the cutscene to fight the Guardian. (Only a problem if you're not the habitual saver.)
General Jumble of Thoughts
Good pacing of gameplay! I like how you started out with Alma going all magical CSI and then switched to Elsa where she got to kick butt. The Spire was also a delight to explore with an equal mix of battles, puzzles and funny sequences so that it never got tedious.
Alma and Elsa - It's sooo refreshing to come across female characters who are tough, quirky and not disgustingly cute. They play off well together, and I love how every party member had unique character builds.
The research and development part was inspired and made leveling fun. By the time I got to the Spire's lava levels however I would have finished researching everything except for Plant. Then there's this sense of a gap until we reach higher level R&D like Dragon Slime and Golem Upgrade 2. Not too big a gap, just enough to have you wondering,
Is that it?
Ooze - OMG that is almost too cute to live. I admit it, I fell in love with this guy (named him Oozie) ;D He is also a
beast. By the time he reaches Level 30 or so, it's possible for him to one-hit kill entire groups of enemies in his Dragon form. It's exciting to see all his different forms, and I get the most fun trying out each of them to see which I like. In the early levels, I favoured Mystic or Reptile, later Humanoid, and now of course Dragon for incredible damage dealing.
I'm curious, why is it I can fully unlock Dragon and Humanoid without needing to level them up? I like the instant gratification, but I would have liked to level those too.
Golem - I love the idea of building a robot and upgrading him along the way. I have to admit, it took me a while to realise how to prioritise his actions. There was so much going on, what with Oozie eating everything and the runes and Alma researching, that it took me 20 levels to notice that Golem had
other things he could do. (It felt like he was stuck with Attack forever!)
I like that the golem is controlled by the AI, but I wish I had more control as to what he could do
during battle. Ah well, I guess this is because he is a machine and can only be "programmed" to act a certain way. My other question is, why no love for GILES? Alma, Elsa and Oozie get all the cutscenes, but not once do you see the golem clank or klunk in them. I guess you didn't want him to take away the spotlight from Oozie, but still, I wish he had some sort of personality too.
Elsa - Elsa is a Death Knight? You guys so rock. I love how this game constantly subverts your expectations, including actually making vampires rule a town, with people
happy with it. I also love the inn interactions that allow Elsa to get new summoning spells. Excellent way to fill in newcomers on background.
Runes Tech - I really liked the idea of it, and found it fun for a while, until I realized it was too easy to earn Ice Runes and Death Runes from enemy encounters. Getting Blood Runes and Bone Runes took
forever for me
. I've been eyeing that Bone Mail Armour for ages, and all I could do was afford Bone Mail Boots until I came across the Death Knight set in the Spire. At this stage, I still can't afford the Blood Fountain nor the Cleanser because there are too few Blood Runes... and it just occurred to me while writing this that I should probably stop *****ing and go grind in the Undead levels a few to get those Blood and Bone Runes
Thank you for allowing shortcuts to the last Spire level you were on after teleporting back from town!
I love the humour in this game - the guards have staring contests, the bad guy letters... and do I even want to know why there are two skeletons in Mariah's throne room?
Good lord, the town is HUGE. I must have spent half an hour alone exploring every house with room after room, talking to the NPCs. I am impressed that each of these NPCs had tons of personality. The ones that stood out for me was the man humouring his girlfriend in the dressing room, and that elderly couple in the restaurant. That, there, is good writing. I just wish I had a map of the entire place! I want to visit places like the museum or music college again, and I have no idea where they are ;D
Another thing I also liked is that you can see the missing people you brought back. It really feels like you are making a difference. I just wish I could find that 20th missing person! (A part of my completionist soul cried) I even went through the entire Spire again looking for him/her before the battle with Beatrice, Preston and Ezekiel (BPE).
Me:
How can a robot be healed by the fountains? Evil Me:
Shhh, shut up and take the free heals.
Me after a Spire battle:
More gold again? This is useless. Later during Ezekiel solo battles:
I need more gold!!!
After a while, it gets a bit tedious having to manually feed Oozie after every battle. I sometimes wish there was a Feed All option. I'm just being lazy ;D
I really enjoyed that skeleton-music puzzle in the Spire, but I can't help but wonder, what if you're hearing impaired? My hearing isn't that great either so I had to turn the volume all the way up for this one.
If Elsa has a familiar, why don't we see it, or use it in battle??
Why is the Ezekiel solo sequence so difficult compared to the rest of the Spire levels? I like a challenge, but the difficulty here skyrocketed. It's almost like it was designed by two different people. Am I missing something? Was I was supposed to have leveled up more before taking on Beatrice, Preston and Ezekiel (BPE) who went down in, like, two minutes? I feel like I was supposed to do something else. Defeat the Lake Guardian first, perhaps?
Lake - After coming across some surprisingly difficult monsters and defeating the Dragon, I found the Lake Guardian whom I couldn't beat no matter what I did. I might reload to a save before Alma's party took on BPE and try again with the Guardian.
What does DP stand for and did I miss the explanation for it somewhere in Ezekiel's tutorial?
I love the custom battlebacks, and I forgot to mention that the art for the cutscenes and characters is awesome
Battles
I have to admit, once I have Oozie and the golem in my party, battles felt too easy. As the upgrades flew in like rabid monkeys, rarely did anyone's health dip below 70% (except for Oozie). I didn't need to touch any of the Aoife items or the cures, and only had Alma or Elsa cast the occasional healing spell. I also rarely bothered with buffs as I focused on dishing out the damage to take them out as quickly as possible.
I like a bit of challenge, so when I started exploring the tower, things got a bit exciting. I remember the Spark Squid hitting particularly hard, and I wonder what does a Stalker do? All I ever see is him disappear. Other than that, I've been happily decimating my enemies without ever needing to cast buffs or debuffs. (I don't mean to sound like these abilities are useless. I like that you're giving players options - after all, everyone tackles their battles differently)
One reason I don't bother with debuffs is because it's hard to see what effect they have on the enemies, or even if they're affected at all. No matter how many times I cast a Freezing Powder or use an ability that casts Stun on all enemies, I can't see if it worked at all. I'm not seeing any Stun Resist message, and I can't tell if the enemy is stunned or not because he still seems to act on his next turn. If I cast Break Power or Break Defence for example, I can't see how many stacks are left on the enemy. It's a little frustrating, which is why unless they're bosses I just go straight to damage dealing.
Now the boss battles are amazing. Although no one ever died, it was the only time I felt like I had to be on my toes - a testament to how well they're designed! I'd have Oozie cast Break Power/Defence, then go to town with Earthquake, Blaze Claws or Wing Assault, Alma's Magna Cannon and Royal Thunder, Elsa's Summon Meimi, Zygomatic Salsa or Ice Slash, with an occasional Temporal Waltz.
The first time anyone of my party died (Alma) was during the magic levels in a random encounter.
One spell I'm a bit confused about is Alma's Defibrillator. I admit, the only time I decided to use it was with the Lake Guardian. It claims that this skill "gets stronger between uses". I've used it some 10, 20 times and chances are it revives an ally with just 1HP. When it says "between uses", does it mean per battle?
Typos
