Alright, I’ve downloaded the latest version and have begun a new playthrough, and I’m ready to give my new thoughts. The difficulty is lower overall, and I’m happy to see that. Each paragraph will mainly talk about each chapter.
Chapters 1 and 2 might need a tiny tone down in difficulty. They feel like they leave too little room for error. Maybe one less enemy per map? I don’t know, I’m just throwing things at the wall.
I’m glad that Katie doesn’t move immediately in chapter 4. That prevents her from dying before the player can do anything about it. However, chapter 4 still feels like it spams reinforcements.
Chapter 5 is significantly more enjoyable thanks to the lower enemy stats and density. My only complaint would be the wyverns – I wanted to shop, and because of them I had to waste a bunch of turns fighting them. That reduced the size of my army for the rest of the map, and made the time limit more tight than it should. Possible solutions I can think of are: 1, space out wyvern reinforcements; or 2, wait one or two more turns before the boss appears.
Chapter 5x is an interesting one. You have an anti-turle incentive, but in order to get the prize, I pretty much had to send my fighting units full move into the frontline, without regard for possible damage taken. It felt like I was relying too much in RNG to not screw me over to even have a chance at getting to the boss. Perhaps you should extend the timer to 11 turns or something like that: not too long for total turtling to work, but not too short for lucky dodges to guide the player through.
If I remember correctly, Kimberley’s chapter had monsters ambush spawn close to her in the previous version, but now they appear before player phase like all other reinforcements. That was a good change. However, these fliers feel a little overpowered, especially when I have to weather the storm from more than one side. Another complaint is that the thief that appears in the northeastern room leaves too quickly: because the stairs are so close to the chest, if the player realizes the thief just appeared and their troops are not in the room already, the treasure is pretty much lost, since there’s two pesky enemies and a door getting in the player’s way. That’s what happened to me, at least. I was so caught up in defending from the OP fliers that I hadn’t had any time to break into the room, so when the thief appeared, once I tried to break in, I was 1-2 turns short, because I was fighting that nasty mage knight with crit chance and the myrmidon.
Chapter 8 is thankfully easier as well. I like how you delayed the bandits’ appearance by one turn, because in the previous version it felt like there was too little time to save the village. The map is challenging but manageable, but I think it was a bit of a sucker punch to put a swordslayer and an axereaver close to where Nancy and Joe start. I also felt like there was 1-2 too many enemies going for them. The killer bow archer was also a bit of a pain to deal with because only Joe could take a crit and live.
The bridge chapter is slightly easier, but not by much. I still have no idea how I’m supposed to have my units survive, save the allies to the east, visit both shops, save the villages to the west, and slay the bosses all at once. I don’t like how if you kill one boss, the other charges on the next turn, because I accidentally attracted Amos, had to kill him immediately, and then I had to run away from the general, which forced me to abandon the green units. I also felt that there were too many reinforcements from the sides (the pegasi are fine). Maybe Amos shouldn’t move until a certain turn hits, because it’s rather difficult to deal with all the initial western troops plus reinforcements without pulling him.
Circle of Four is still really fricking hard. There are far too many reinforcements. Honestly, I don’t think this map even needs reinforcements. Trying to get everything in 12 turns with such a big map is still a challenge. It doesn’t help that the map before this one is extremely difficult as well. By the way, the cutscene in which the four shamans appear and kill the emperor’s guard is bugged – the knights don’t die.
The chapter that introduces Cale is fine… as fine as a desert map can be, that is. But it’s annoying that the boss decides to charge Cale at a certain point. I know you don’t want the player to turtle, but this isn’t the first boss who does this and it begins to get tiring, personally. I feel like I can’t get a break. Or maybe I’m whining too much because I’m generally against punishing turtling, LOL.
Reinforce forts, eh? It’s a nice concept that I was looking forward to, but it crashed in execution. Because a single green unit death means game over, I have to go fast. But if I go fast, the enemies swarm me. If I make it so the enemies don’t kill me, they kill the green units instead. It’s like no matter what I do, I get screwed over one way or another. Add to this the fact that the greenies can get RNG screwed and you get a pretty bad player experience. Consider making the game over requirement ALL green unit deaths, or introduce the enemy reinforcements later. The player needs some breathing room. It also doesn’t help that the boss decides to move (is this the third boss that does that? Fourth?) while I’m trying to make sense of what is going on in every corner of the map.