Hey me, please explain how post-game content and secret post-game content is part of the "required gameplay to finish the game" that I was supposed to be working on. I'll try to stay focussed; I've made some progress in terms of designing a bit of Middunn which is D1 priority. I also spent some time familiarising myself with how things work and are set up because it has been a hot minute since I last sat and properly worked on it, I've made a few changes to minor things that bothered me and rewritten parts of the huuuuge design doc.

It's cool how coming back to a project after a bit gives you fresh ideas and a new look at what you slaved for months on. Some of what I was doing didn't make much sense and needed rewriting/redoing, it's much better and the writing is more consistent in places now. Not like the writing was a finalised thing at all... It was very placeholder and just served to get the main point across, finalised dialogue will come when I'm working on D1/D2; that being said, I have vastly improved some of the dialogue.

It also occurred to me there was never an explanation about the cap anywhere, which might've been confusing. Wasn't sure how to explain that outside of a hamfisted "You can only carry 5 of a specific item at once" so there's currently a grand total of ONE forced tutorial message. Well, technically two if you count the message asking if you want to view the battle tutorial in the first battle. It's literally just a "hey want to know how battling works" prompt though so I don't count that one.

I much prefer letting the player experiment and figure things out, as well as teaching through gameplay and giving less obvious information through descriptions or tooltips. This is what I've tried to do, but there is an optional battle tutorial in the first battle. The tutorial is fairly surface level. Just explains how the battle system works, how the skills work, and that's about it. It ends by telling you to experiment since that's how I'd rather have people learn what works, while just giving information on the critical things.

Think I've mentioned this before but I can't remember. The battle system is based around agility, basically whoever has highest agility goes first, second highest goes second, etc. It's an initiative system, basically. It also gives an incentive to have high agi, but the way the armour/weapons are set up makes it a trade off between more defence/damage and being able to hit first. My main priority with the battle system was "simple, fast paced, lots of depth". I like to think I've done that.

The sheer amount of item slots encourages messing with various misc. items as well, and there are some fun synergies. You can turn characters into extreme glass cannons or just get some fairly simple flat stat increases. Couple that with 5 max party members and only max 5 item stacks? You get a battle system that's fast, fun, has a lot of options/depth, and forces you to be selective with item usage but also encourages item use, turning each area into an endurance challenge almost.

Messing with the party equipment has honestly been some of the most fun I've had testing it. So many neat options and synergies, and if you get really deep into it there are some insane things you can do across the full party. Those'll likely be nerfed though, stats aren't final.