Paralives criticism post!!!
I bought the game at release (yesterday) and, despite having watched reviews and knowing the game was rough, I'm still somewhat disappointed. It's not about encountering bugs, but rather the attitude towards the player. I'm making a game myself (which is why I've been absent as an author-artist here), and I'm putting my all into polishing the foundation of my free project. When you're a solo dev or a small team, bugs are inevitable - who would know that better than me? But in my opinion, if you're selling a game for a pretty hefty price tag on Steam, you'd better live up to it and make sure the foundation, the core, actually works. But it feels like it's barely breathing. And it all starts with the character model.
Meet my Henry of Skaliz, and he has anatomy issues...
From the front, everything is fine, but from the side, there are obvious problems. I realize the model probably can't be changed now, but I just don't understand how this made it past the draft phase. There's a glaring issue with the proportions here! Meaning, I have to conclude that they never fixed such an obvious flaw from the very beginning. The character is literally the first thing the player looks at, and they didn't even bother polishing this detail to completion.
Here's my sketch with a more or less normal head position:
And these flaws aren't rare; they're literally everywhere. Characters can only talk while standing, for some reason. If you select all characters, you can make them do actions "collectively," even though in reality, one of them ends up doing nothing and if you cancel the action for the idle one, it cancels it for the Parafolk who is actually doing the work. The camera jumps like a horse between floors, and as far as I can tell, there's no way to adjust this. I haven't played for long, but I'm afraid to imagine what's ahead if the devs apparently didn't even test such basic screw-ups.
It's just frustrating. Not so much because of the money, but because this game is considered a cool product, when in reality, the only good thing about it is the wrapping. Maybe it gets better further down the line, but the first impression is already ruined.
