I let it try my patience to the limit twice and managed to play for some 50 minutes. But let me start by the edges and mention some technical stuff:
-
You should make the screensize changeable, the default window is minimal.
The second door on the second floor, in front of the elevator, and fourth door on the second floor too, but the unresponsive elevator this time, don't have any text messages when you touch them.
The warning sign in the suburbs misspelled maintenance. Norman's win quote misspelled intriguing.
I died in the dark room, and after the respawn I was still a shadow sprite (used the motorcycle once and got my colors back.)
I think the yellow magic circle is a terrible choice of VFX for "Papa Bear has a small drink."
-
Now, some design critique:
The first battle against the wolf already ends with your life on the yellow if you fight normally. Considering the player doesn't know what's coming ahead, it's hard to assume you should start the game burning your MP to down the enemy and not get hit (If a single attack misses, it's probably a game over straight away) . Maybe that's what you're going for and instantly filtering casuals in the first minute, but I find it a debatable choice.
Jagan's such a useless char I found the run I did devouring him right away and learning firm shake to be better than the one with him on the team. If that is by design, then I like this choice, because letting the player use the Devour mechanic right away and be rewarded for it is better than keeping them from using the game's mechanics.
Amy spending a turn shuffling after using shuffle is honestly baffling. In the time it takes her to shuffle her deck once, people around her are sending psychic waves, turning into wolves to slash/bite and swinging swords around twice. If buffing is so busted it needs a cooldown, then either every attack should have a cooldown or her buffs shouldn't cost so much you have to shuffle after using them once.
Leaving the first dungeon at lv2-3 to instantly find LV7 enemies that kill you in two touches, and they don't even come alone is hardly what I'd call tough but fair combat. Even more so because none of the four characters I got had any AOEs. And even worse, you walk a straight path forward and run on a three-enemy encounter that use AOEs themselves? And after that there's a buffer with two AOE attackers? And after all of that you walk into a random room and start a boss fight with no signs or warning? (My feelings for this will be present in my final point, so just hold the thought.)
You can die because it costs 5 dollars to revive, but you can't win any fights to get money to be able to pay that, so you just figure out it's better to load the game. But then you enter the sacrifice screen and have to write abraham or me (good to have this to be frank, two digits is nicer than the alternative), but what'd be even better is to have just a simple choice to choose to die. "Pay, Sacrifice, Explain Again, Let Me Die" would be ideal to make loading the game again faster, since paying's wasteful in more than one way.
With the water treatment's place key you get an easy way out the sewers, but you can't enter it again from that exit. I think that's silly and it should just become a shortcut for you to use into the dungeon.
After you get the motorcycle, the game should go straight to the map select screen, or at least show a popup telling you that you can use the bike to move to other maps. After you noticing there's nowhere to go, most people will figure out it's an item to use, probably, but it's smoother to just say that than wait and waste time.
The only tell for the head doctor being a few drawings around the door is something I think you'll only notice on the way out, not the way in. The facility is has 3 floors, 6 corridors, some 20 doors and just two things to do. Why so much dead space in your game's intro?
During the 40-something minutes I played after leaving the facility, what I did was win a battle, ride back to the facility, save, and go back to the suburbs to stop losing my progress every 2 minutes as I find out that enemy blocking the only way forward is, indeed, beyond my powerlevel.
And this leads to the final and overall point that permeated the entire experience:
So much walking, so many challenging battles and I have no idea why I'm doing this, or what I'm doing. There was no slice-of-life segment to make me care about Penn, I'm just told Penn existed and now no longer does. I don't know who Abe is, why should I care he's a wolf now and why the cure for it matters. I suppose I can infer the facility turned him into one, but considering the entire facility is empty and I was just hired to find the head doctor, I don't think he's got any attachment to the place, nor that defeating the doctor brought him any catharsis. The note mentions the suburbs, so he goes there, but nothing speaks of what place he's looking for, what are his feelings for heading there and what he wants when he arrives/after he arrives. I've been handed a blank slate, and asked to make it walk around and endure awfully balanced encounters for no reason or reward.
The game's all whip with no carrot in front of my face.
