To anyone playing the game, is this game actually fun?
Whenever I look at the gameplay, I can see a WHOLE lot of effort being put in, but I can't see it being fun.
- After seeing the damage numbers, I can infer that there are RPG stats so Grinding is now an aspect of the game. T_T
- I see the hero doing a lot of skills with a lot of visual effects, but it's really covering Zell's pixel art. I really like the minimalist effects of FOBS.
- Not only that, but the enemies fight back in simple ways but the Hero's flipping around and doing crazy shit. The only way to add challenge to this would be to tune numbers on the enemy side( which isn't fun in my experience) or have a ton of enemies to fight which takes away from the individuality of the monster girls. They could also make the enemies do crazy shit, but that feels like a lot of work and would really push the pixel art since the base resolution is still kinda small.
- The protagonist is super strong. If it's still GOR then getting too good at the game means you won't see scenes too much. The whole contract system seems to alleviate that, but I really like the feeling of pressure when playing the game to play well within the FOBS guys limitations.
Those are just my concerns for this game so far.
Obviously FOBS isn't perfect either. There's a lot I would do to improve that game as well, but since this game is still so early in development I'm really curious about whether or not the game will be good.
Point by point
I've gotten the demo and i personally think it's pretty genius. If you've played Aria of Sorrow on the GBA you kind of get a similar feel, yet it retains that FOBS feel to some extent. You're just able to do more and movement feels a lot more organic than it does in FOBS (notably the jumping and gravity in general)
As for RPG mechanics, i very much doubt there will be a super expansive leveling system. From what i can tell, and presumably set in stone, capturing monsters you've "charmed" (more on that later) will unlock new skills / allies (as seen in the demo videos). There's scenarios where the camera zooms in (grapples, game over and such) and what's present in the demo is mostly the sword skills being overly obscuring. There's a projectile attack, a sort of slime caltrop throw and a few others. Out of all of those, only the sword one is very visually heavy but that's not counting ally / future skills being more or less worse. The demo also features as follows: 1 enemy, followed by terrain, then a jump, 2 enemies in the same "room" followed by a climb upwards, then 4 enemies of different colors (same monster though). At no time did i fail to see anything i wanted to see and there's plenty of opportunity to 1v1 any given monster in the future i think for "enjoyment" or just appreciation of talented spriting.
In terms of monsters fighting back, they react to things. The demo has slime girls throwing out the same slime traps you can throw, and when you get stuck they charge you. They will also close the distance and idle between "moves". As far as being OP goes, your sword does absolutely negligible damage, but this might be for demo purposes. The Slime traps, projectile attacks and the "grab" attack all add to the charm gauge. When this is full, the monster gets stunned and you can start filling up the heart meter. Presumably when this is full in later releases is how you capture / obtain skills and allies and unlock gallery entries (if this is a thing ever).
It really highly depends if there's going to be a full on leveling system or not to be able to tell whether or not you'll end up as OP. I can see "elemental" weaknesses absolutely being a thing, where different attacks have very high or very low impact on specific enemies.
The demo's GOR basically consists of enemies taking turns on you with no change in animation, much like how some enemies in FOBS do.
We'll just have to wait and see how it turns out to get anything more concrete.
Hopefully this is at least informative for those without access to the current preview build, which is what it is. I've read your post about this being a demo, and it's not a demo beyond demonstrating what they are working on.