FEEDBACK

• The title screen music is good, but too bland. A "title theme" should play, and that theme should be "grand." It should be a call to adventure. A strong, powerful piece of music that instils the player with excitement. Or at least it SHOULD be if the goal is to recapture the feel of Baldur's Gate and the other classic CRPGs of yore. The current music feels like background field music--very forgetable. Which is the opposite of what is needed--the title theme needs to be the MOST memorable music in the game.

 

• I seriously love the character portraits. Especially how several of them are "clones" -- using the same face with different skin tones/hair styles. That said, I do think there need to be a few more portraits. Non-white portraits seemed to be (very much) lacking, and I think there should be at least 3-5 different clones to accommodate each style of hair. Maybe it would be possible to alter the skin-tones of each portrait by applying a semi-transparent layer based on the skin-tone color the player selects for the 3D model? That would be really cool.

 

• I like the little bracketed dialog attributes, but they're a little unclear. I get what "clever" means and so on, but what about the second term indicating severity? IE "minor?" Does that mean the dialog option is only minor-ly clever? That it only has a small chance of being articulated properly? That I need to have a "clever" stat of at least a "minor" level in order to say it? If the latter, numbers would work better than words. IE, my character has 3 points in clever, so can say, "I'm clever [Clever 3]", but can't say "I'm super clever [Clever 4]." 

 

• I seriously love the ambient sound effects. The audio quality is really, really clear. One thing that would be cool would be to add some "frictive" sound effects--like different intensities of wind blowing through trees/grass, footfalls on various terrains (dried leaves, grasss, dirt, sand, snow, rock, wood, wet sand, etc.). I'm not classifying this as a suggestion though because this stuff could already be in the game and I simply haven't heard it yet, or it could be stuff that's currently being worked on. It's also much more of a thing that would be "nice," but isn't as "necessary" as what I'm classifying as my suggestions.

 

• Really love the dialog. There's brevity, clarity and style--I don't get any since of the writers either trying to hard, or too little--something I haven't been able to say of ANY western-style RPG since the Infinity Engine days.

 

• When the game is minimized, the icon is really too small. At a 1920x1080 display resolution, it looks like the icon is upscaled 200-300%. It'd be nice if you could replace it with a higher-resolution icon. This is probably the least necessary feedback I can offer--but it's one of those polish things.

 

• I really like the little scroll & sound effect that pops up in the upper right corner of the screen when something is added to the journal. You know what would be cool? If mouse-clicking on that scroll would open up the journal screen.

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SUGGESTIONS

• I think the character customizations are "sufficient," but I would VERY MUCH like to see a few more facial models and--most especially--hair models. Speficially, I'd like to see at least 1-2 new "short hair" models for each gender, if possible. 

 

• Add "real" tooltips. Right now, hovering a mouse icon over a character portrait will display that characters HP in a window... but tat window is over the character him or herself--instead, the tooltip HP window should appear exactly where the mouse cursor is.

 

• The dialog history window (lower right of GUI) should indicate the "time" status of the game, like in the old IE games. That is to say, when the player pauses the game dialog (in red) should appear reading "PAUSED," and when the game is unpaused another line of dialog should appear reading "UNPAUSED."

 

• As soon as I started the game I noticed there were several NPCs right near to my party--but only barely. The problem is that they blend too much into the terrain--there needs to be more contrast! It should be easier to see NPCs, I think, although I'm am not entirely certain how to go about making them more visible (in general). Not using green/brown color clothing would help, but that's not an ideal solution. Making the unit circles brighter or making them glow (maybe pulse slightly?) could help. Simple idle animations would also make them stand out more, as would generic VFX. I'm not sure what the temperature of the area is, but it seems like it would be easy to add a puff of breath vapor that appears and dissipates at regular intervals around each unit's "head."

 

• The lack of contrast is also a problem with the terrain. It's very hard to make out what a tree looks like when its leaves are the same color as the grass underneath it!

 

• I would very much like the multiple options, or tiers, of spell effect options that can be disabled--specifically passive VFX. For example, offensive passive and defensive passive. IE, if there's a passive defensive spell that creates a bubble of magical energy as a barrier around the caster, I would like the ability to disable that visual effect. One thing I hated about Baldur's Gate is that some of the best gear had always-active passives like that (cloak of mirroring, etc.) and it just looked incredibly stupid to see a party member PERMANENTLY surrounded by a giant glowing bubble. Or glowing. Or whatever. The same with offensive passives--like a flaming sword. If the sword is always going to be flaming (instead of only igniting while in combat), I think it's necessary to have to option to disable that effect entirely so you don't walk into your bedroom in an inn to go to sleep, with a giant sword strapped to your character's back shooting out great big gouts of fire.

Agree with you on the music part.