A Fool's Errand

Congratulations on releasing the expanded version! I just got to play through it, and I really like all the changes you made to flesh out the story and characters more. As always, I love the custom sprites and music for the game, and all the new additions for both are just as excellent and help to make the game feel more engaging and vibrant! The new enemy sprites to represent their remaining health are very cool and add a good feeling to the combat. The new maps and scenes that flesh out Edward's backstory and the post-game events definitely help in making this feel like a more proper RPG.

I do feel like the game still leans toward the easy side, and I never felt much of a need to spend money on anything aside from recovery items and a few accessories, especially with all the nice items to be found in the dungeon and forged with demon dust, but I don't really consider that to be a problem. It's definitely better that a turn-based battler is too easy rather than too hard, and I appreciate having the opportunity to be able to manage my character's attributes in several different ways. However, I did find that I had to reconsider my selection of equipment for the "extra fight," and I especially liked encountering a challenge that forced me to think about my approach.

I didn't run into any significant problems during my playthrough of the game, but here's a short list of the small issues I encountered, if you ever feel up to modifying the game again at some point:

• A few indoor tiles seem to have odd collision, mainly the brown and gray shelves found in "The Skeleton Closet."
• The initial story trigger of talking to the boss in the UPD building repeats if you speak to the boss again. It didn't affect my actual position in the story but just felt odd.
• One of Dan's dialogue boxes when talking to him after the demon den sequence displays twice in a row.
• The "enraged" status effect has a messy text pop-up with the word "undefined" appearing in it after the enemy's turn.

This game's description caught my interest, so I decided to give it a try. My expectations were definitely subverted! By the description, I thought that this was going to be something more like a detective story with less of a focus on combat, but I ended up being okay with a combat-heavy dungeon crawler instead.

I really like the custom spritework you've done; in particular, all the sprites for the major characters and enemies are very nice. I also appreciate the effort that went into constructing all the maps in order to make the city feel more like a living place rather than a linear path back to the dungeon.

There are several issues I have with the balance of the game itself, though. My main issue is that the ability to save anywhere really reduces the risk of exploring the dungeon, as it's not too difficult to just save once or twice per floor and make a run to the bottom on the first day. The treasures in some of the deeper floors are quite strong, too, which encourages such a playstyle. There's also little reason to want to fight the enemies on the deeper floors, as you can always go back to the top in the same day and use the powerful equipment to grind on the weakest enemies. I got up to Level 5 while farming for the demon dust I needed to craft one piece of gear, and at that point, I ended up being very overpowered and defeated the boss in four turns. Almost all of the shops in the city ended up being unnecessary. If you end up revisiting this game after the jam is over, I would love to see the balance of this game tightened up.

Overall, this was still an enjoyable experience! Congratulations on finishing this game and submitting it to the jam!