@JerrySD: The average length currently is about 1.5 to 2 hours depending
@MCSephiroth13: Which Cave puzzle are you having troubles with, the mines?
@Brickman:
Thanks for the long reply, I hadn't heard of the problem with starting/stopping the platforms or the exp issue, I'll make sure these are addressed. Amazing you managed to beat all the zombies at once though, I didn't think it was possible and didn't build the victory conditions around ensuring the holes are plugged, I'll have to do that now.
Your points on the battle system are well taken, I've addressed a bit of this and the rest I agree with.
1. I've lowered the difficulty of the battle with Andrea, and will modify the second cave fight to be easier too, you're right it probably is a bit unfair to throw that much at them so fast.
2. I've actually REDUCED what is covered by the first tutorial, not even mentioning the the raye squares at all. I have introduced new tips at the start of each battle after however. This, along with reducing the difficulty of the first series of fights, is designed to make people get the hang of the system so when I explain a new feature they immediately see the value instead of dealing with information overload.
The effect of this is shown well in the example you gave; when you were told you could "Freeze" combat you immediately saw this was a tool you could use (and made life a lot easier!)
The features are available earlier, so if you played it again you would know the features and could take advantage of them, and if you learn of them by accident, well no harm there and many players like the feeling of learning something through testing.
To help with your point on the frustration on dying on the early battles I'm making them easier, for example it's pretty hard to lose the very first battle against the Island Crawlers, I'll fix up the second one too, and the Sailor battle with Andrea has already been balanced and a special note that you should move her to safety (along with a tip on how to control battle speed) has been added at the start of the fight.
I'm glad you recognized that the bats are weak to physical and the scorpions to magical damage; that you mentioned it as a point to make is well taken, I'll add a tip at the start of that battle briefly explaining damage resistance (Defense is -Physical and Resist is -Magic). I'll also reduce the range of the scorpion attack to 1 instead of allowing them a 2 square range. It is a bit unfair to have 2 ranged enemies come out of nowhere, though I'll admit I didn't honestly consider they were both ranged, thanks for pointing this out!
Skill-wise I am assuming no one has purchased any skills before the tutorial covering how to do so. Some of the debuffs are useful at this stage, the Pillar Attack and Hit down don't have any tough targets to help you weaken specifically yet, so it's damage is it's main draw.
The Root effect is however VERY handy. Since Kael and Rayne both are ranged in nature, locking an enemy one square away so Kael can beat on them and Rayne can cast is very handy. If nothing else I use it often to keep enemies clear of Rayne so enemies Kael isn't fighting don't swarm her. This will become more important in Ep3 and especially later.
This project is actually much larger than I ever expected; I'm not even through what I considered the "introduction" of the game yet. I've also poured so much detail into each aspect, and you can't just stop doing that once you've started...
I'll also look into adding a "Manual" document that outlines the controls; this way you can look up advanced battle system and map features if you want, and reference if you forget.
Thanks for the feedback, one nice thing about doing it episodic like this is that I can take the feedback provided and implement it and mark them as points to consider in future development (I've added a note to watch enemy spread based on their attack ranges as well as attack power and health, etc.)
Part of the goal of this project was to see how far an almost pure RTP game go. We stick to mostly RTP characters with minor edits, some art, and tileset mixes/edits, but other than the art most of it is kept as plain-jane as is possible, we just add in insane amounts of detail to make it more memorable.
