Prefacing my review by saying first off that I really enjoyed the game. For someone with a drain kink, this was an excellent experience that tickled the neurons quite well. I am, however, coming back to it a few days after with the horny having worn off a bit to offer some balance feedback! (I apologize because some of this is going to sound very harsh, but I'm harshly critiquing it because I love what it is conceptually and want it to be even better.)
First, the drain mechanic itself. I think this is mostly handled very well. Drain, conceptually, has two sides to the kink, both the feeling of power of draining others, and the threat of *being* drained. Draining enemies as the player feels powerful! Mostly. It takes a bit of time to ramp up but once it does, the feeling of shaving multiple levels off at once is very satisfying. From the other side, the enemies also have threatening draining skills! It's very possible to feel things slip out of control as a player, which is a euphoric feeling in some ways but also a very difficult balance tightrope to walk.
The combat system integrates these things generally very well, as the enemy archetypes (Tank, Damage, Healer, Drainer) force thoughtful decision making on how you handle an enemy formation. Do you prioritize a drainer so they don't snowball, knowing they'll need to be killed several times if a healer is present? Do you kill the healer first, knowing the drainer gets time to snowball? Will a tank disrupt either of those plans, and can you disrupt that with status effects? I found myself enjoying the combat... mostly.
Where the system falls short comes in my opinion, in 2-3 major areas. First issue is enemy formations, some of the enemy types, and boss design. (Particularly how the bosses handle reinforcements)
When it comes to basic enemy formations, most combinations feel okay, but some arrangements slow the game to an absolute crawl or are outright unwinnable depending on when they're encountered. Double Drainer + Healer or Drainer + Double Healer are both borderline (if not literally) unwinnable if encountered early in the game before the player has any decent items. Even when winnable, the fight becomes so ungodly slow because of the need to spend dozens of turns trying to gain a level lead over the opposing drainer while sandbagging the team's HP. It's not uncommon to spend a lot of turns in a cycle of 2 characters mending to stay healthy while Red tries to gain enough of a level lead to break the stalemate, or you have to just be ok with trying to roll the dice on getting a lucky Smite to break it, which is a gambly and generally miserable experience as a player.
Outside of the basic enemies... Structures suck. A lot. Life totems are dreadfully unfun due to being unable to chew through that much HP while ALSO sandbagging your own team's HP and trying to maintain an exp lead over any drainers present on the opposing team. The Wooden Barricade was ok but not great. Probably the least offensive. The Cleansing totem is about as bad as the life totem due to the team's dependence on bleed crits to deal meaningful damage. I can't say I had much fun with any encounter that had a structure present because they, by and large, remove all the strategy present in the other encounters, because all of them are so annoying they MUST be dealt with but dealing with them is a miserable, slow slog. You are essentially forced to bring the flamethrower to deal with them quickly, which shouldn't feel like the only viable option. Especially when there is no inventory to keep it in and bring out as needed. Many players won't even know it exists!
Bosses... Mixed bag. I'll come back to these because I think this is primarily a topic for one of my other points of feedback.
Second big problem I have is that the way the game handles enemy leveling and player progression means it almost never feels like the player is getting meaningfully stronger. Consider a typical encounter where the player is actively engaging with the drain mechanic and not just beating things to death. It can take as long as 15-20 minutes depending on the formation, but by the end of it, the player's party has likely drained quite a few levels out of the enemies they were once equal with them, leaving them small and broken (figuratively or literally, depending on if you're draining them all the way.) This is great! It feels fantastic to do that. It is then immediately undermined by the next encounter being autobalanced to match your average experience, leaving you feeling like you actually didn't get stronger at all, you're right back where you started.
This happens because the player's only progression is the items. As you level you don't learn new skills, there's no skill trees or new abilities to gain that do new and interesting things (like draining a group! or abilities that combine damage and status effects, or more powerful versions of existing tools, etc) The only powerspikes are lootboxes, and some of the items feel actively detrimental to use early on, and while getting the Legendary items feels like a huge and satisfying powerspike (the Temporal Watch and Shrink/Growth rays in particular), it leaves it very feast or famine, and frustrating as a player because it feels difficult and out of your control to actually gain a leg up on the enemies.
Finally... Action economy. Action economy is the messy issue at the root of the game's balance. Without the Temporal Watch I almost never felt like I was stronger than anything in the game. The enemies are all approximately as strong as the player's characters, so largely speaking this means you're frequently forced into slow stalemates due to how much of your action economy *must* be healing, defending, draining or status effects, in order to survive. This is especially bad in most of the boss fights, which often swiftly overwhelm the player.
This is most notable on the Slime Queen Boss. Let's consider, for example, the experience of a first-time player on this boss. We're presented with a 3-enemy fight, and we see that we have the Queen, a Mage, and a Healer. We know how these are likely to behave! The Mage is a drainer, and the Healer is obvious. I, as most players likely do, concluded that I should focus down the Healer, since the healer will likely block my attempts to burst down one of the other targets.
I, by some luck, manage to do so! Only for the Queen to immediately summon another one, and then give BOTH OF THEM ROYAL GUARD. This is, frankly, awful. You have immediately removed one of the strategies that works everywhere else from being viable.
So I go, ok, let's reload to try to rush the queen instead! For an average player, this is strictly not possible. They can't kill her in one turn, and even if they did, they'd need to do so repeatedly until she stayed dead, because the healer is alive. I couldn't do this on my first playthrough and it only proved a viable strategy on the 2nd playthrough with cheating myself the Legendary items. For everyone else, they do around 1/3rd to half her health, the mage barriers her, then the healer mends her. Great. No progress.
Then. THEN. THEN SHE EATS SOMEONE?? Like, I expected that would be a risk, but this is a GIGANTIC action economy issue, because your eaten party member is effectively not able to do anything but slowly die and feed her EXP. All the while your other two party members are trying to stabilize the party while slowly draining the adds down until they're broken and hide behind her. This is likely the 'intended' solution because that mechanic is clearly deliberately programmed, but it takes so ungodly long and requires skewing your party levels such that Red is at least a few ahead of the enemies so that it doesn't take 3 hours of sandbagging. I was able to beat the fight this way, but it wasn't even remotely fun, and feeling pidgeonholed into that strategy felt bad. There was, seemingly, no real way to prevent this action economy problem. You can berserk her to buy yourself 1 turn, but even then she gets two actions and swings at you, so that's barely a gain. Seduction can stun her, again buying a turn, but the core issue remains, turns spent doing these things are turns that are NOT DEALING DAMAGE OR MAKING PROGRESS, as the other enemies in the fight will either be draining you healing her, barriering her, etc, and the instant she gets to eat someone you fall behind. It's very frustrating for a first boss, and definitely overtuned, even if I was able to eventually beat it.
This problem, unfortunately, persists into every single boss fight in the game. The bosses' action economy is either as good or better than the player's, so without Legendary items the game becomes a tedious slog. The Scientist and Dragon were both particularly bad for this because once again, structures are the worst thing in the game, and the decision to have the Factory and all the Robots exactly match the player's level means you can't even overlevel it. The Factory replenishes the bots so you're once again forced into the slog of draining them until they're so weak that they aren't a threat, then whittling it down. This fight is miserable even at max level with cheats. Dragon has the same problem, because of Last Stand + Life Totem and reinforcement jumpscares even when you start whittling the Dragon down. Again there is only one real strategy. I didn't fight Miss Darkness but after reading the comments she sounds so unfun that I don't even want to. I did fight the Shadow Stalkers and those weren't THAT bad. DPS race.
All this said I now need to dial back and make clear: I did really enjoy the game for my first run, but once the horny euphoria of draining wore off, the mechanical flaws and frustratingly slow gameplay hampered my desire for repeat runs and prompted me to provide this feedback in hopes the game can develop into something more engaging for the player and less slow.
I think the biggest things to address are:
1) More depth to the player gameplay. Revolves too heavily around items, which are luck to obtain. Introduce skills and means of the player to feel like they're actually getting meaningfully stronger. These skills should be strong enough to make fights *faster*, too. That's the reward for getting stronger!
2) Fix the game's approach to reinforcements and structures. "Drain the reinforcements until they're non-threatening" should not feel like the only valid approach to every boss, and structures are woefully unfun in all their incarnations.
3) Item balance could stand to be looked at. The common items often feel actively detrimental, the uncommons are in a good spot, and the Legendary feel gamebreaking to the point that it feels like the later bosses are designed around having them. (This is not a good assumption to make of the player)
Other specific issues:
- Phase shift sucks. Just take this out, all it is is frustrating for the player, from both the player and enemy side. On the same note, Red Bots are way overtuned, you may as well just quit if one is present.
- Slime Queen needs a cooldown on Consuming an ally, she shouldn't be able to eat you again instantly, this is what makes progress so ungodly slow in the fight.