I've played two games of Valley 2 so far, one on .728 that I failed miserably, and now one on .800-.802 that I've almost beaten (only the final fight left). Both games were on the default difficulties of Rook and Adept.
The first game I had failed miserably due to only having 3 turns to prepare and losing a couple rebels to Daemonaica. In that game I was unable to access key areas on the world map due to lacking water dash with ocean shallows and swamp tiles nearby the keep. This also prevented me from stocking up food since I couldn't build any farms early on.
The second game on the newer beta version was a whole different ball park though. The map for this had many many more recruitable survivors, no early water dash blocking tiles, and many more turns to prepare before Daemonaica emerged. This essentially turned the strategic part into a cakewalk compared to the earlier version since I had so much man power and building space due to two nearby amplifier towers. I managed to split my development into three different areas and Daemonaica had only managed to flatten two areas before I had destroyed the citadels. I finished with over 25,000 food, and had up to 30,000 food and 40 rebels before I had to expend a few to destroy the second citadel.
So now, a few bugs I noticed.
-Daemonaica and friends don't destroy warehouses when they walk over them. Are these tiles even functioning? I never noticed their effect.
-When you have many rebels, the turn ending summary will run off the bottom of the screen. Perhaps make that window scrollable?
-There was a feather based mage class with an ammo attack that shot out feathers in a fan pattern for only 2 ammo cost. These feathers could not hurt a variety of enemies such as the ice bats and other flying nuisances.
-Debris field ammo attacks never worked for me. They would spawn their projectiles on top of the player character and harm it, usually resulting in suicide.
-The swamp belltower tile seemed to not work at all. I left a scout there for a number of turns and Daemonaica never seemed to notice.
Now for a few suggestions.
-I played the majority of the second game with no perks at all, since the research facilities were so far from the starting zone. I would like to see at least water dash and miniaturize available earlier in the game, unless it was just bad luck on my map.
-Seeing as how the game is inspired by retro games like Actraiser and Metroidvania games, I was slightly disappointed to see that all "melee" range spells were projectile attacks with very short ranges. I'd love to see some melee spells that mimic the swing of a sword in an arc in front of the character.
-There are some pieces of equipment in the game with -% projectile lifetime and +secondary attack damage. Many mage classes have a melee spell with very short projectile lifetime as their secondary attack, and this combination of equipment stats becomes worthless since the projectile lifetime reduction prevents most melee spells from reaching outside of the players hitbox.
-Is the "On Fire" equipment supposed to reduce it's own durability? I think that equipment type would be a lot more fun if it didn't subtract from it's durability and didn't trigger ivincibility. It would promote killing enemies as fast as you can to keep your health up.
-Why do merc coin drops from bosses behave like they have no friction? They slide along the floor indefinitely until they meet a wall. Chasing them down can be an annoyance.
-Currently when using a homing type spell with an extra projectiles equipment piece all of the projectiles stack right on top of each other and will all hit the same enemy at the same time. In many cases the extra projectiles just do overkill. I would like to see homing spells fan out a bit before seeking targets when combined with multiple projectiles equipment.
-The smashed robot towers sidescrolling areas seeom to drag on a bit too long. For one tile, I had to go through no less than four towers to get to the end. Each tower has two rooms of climbing, and one room of slow falling. I would suggest cutting it down to one upwards room, and one slow fall room.
-The bosses on Adept felt like a pushover once I attained a couple damage boosts. I could take a couple special attack boost perks and one or two shot a boss with a rocket attack. There was also one ammo spell that fired a straight shot large piercing green projectile that could easily one shot anything with the +100% ammo attack boosts.
-Animation. I know this takes lots of time and money, but I'd like to see some more sprites for smoother character animations, as well as maybe different sprites for casting in the air, casting different spell types. More than one sprite for a character in the air, say a couple for jumping, a couple for the peak of the arc, and then the one for falling.
-Maybe add + projectiles as a possible higher level perk? It's a fun mechanic with some spells and I think it would be fun as a playstyle choice in addition to an equipment piece. Stackable with equipment for crazy fun results.
-A new piece of equipment (and/or perks? ) that increases spell damage but also increases the cooldown period between shots. It would allow for a more carefully placed one shot style of play as opposed to many spells' spam all the time style. Should slightly decrease overall spell dps to make up for front loading damage.
Overall, I enjoyed the game a lot. I like how the level progression works with random perks and mage classes. It allows you to tailor your character for a specific mage class. The strategic part is interesting, I feel like I could easily handle queen or even king difficulty after the playthrough on rook though. I'd like to see more interesting tiles that offer strategic decisions in the future. I look forward to seeing where this game goes with further development.
