This is a post I made from on the subreddit already, but I don't know if any devs go there to read so I'm going to copy and paste it here just in case. I apologize if it sounds defensive. That aspect of it is directed at aggressive Redditors that I knew were coming rather than the developers.
So let me start off by saying I have been through this whole journey from the start. I felt the fear and anxiety for this project when the break in happened at their studio and enjoyed the game in it's alpha as much as I do now. The game is actually quite improved from it's alpha counterpart. The problem is, the instant I start having fun, the game does something to instantly bring my mood down. Just now had to force myself to stop playing until enough patches are put in so I can enjoy the game to it's full extent. I made a post during the Alpha about the games issues, but since most of them were not addressed, I'm going to try again as I don't know where else to put my thoughts.
Lets start with the positives first, though, shall we:
Combat is fluid as always. Attacking and dodging feel nice and in point.
Taming and running around with a lot of monsters is fun. Feels like you and the pose going out to make trouble. To that extent, I enjoy how the way you ride a monster is a little different and often funny.
Thank you very much for the removal of stamina usage with dodging and running. Seriously. It was tedious to be out of stamina before even leaving town.
Exploring is fun and the environments feel quite varied.
Thanks for the Diablo-esque screen map. Although I would like it to be a little more transparent.
Having fun with my janky luck-only drop rate/crit build. There aren't many games where you can do that.
Alright. Now, lets get started with some major issues:
Hitting ESC just straight up skips cutscenes. I talked about this before, but it's still plauging the game. Please make ESC PAUSE the cutscene and give us the option to skip it if we want to.
Please give us an "are you sure?" option before exiting the game. I often use ESC to pause the game. When I return, I may mistakenly click on confirm, which has led me to loose about 1-2 hours of work already.
Picking up items off the floor instantly places it into your hotbar instead of your inventory, even if you have a stack in your inventory already. This one is a double foul and a constant annoyance. Please only put items in my hotbar automatically if there's no space left in my inventory and just put it in the stack if I already have one.
Sometimes attack combos reset. I'm not too sure why this one happens, but I have noticed (when using dual blades) in the middle of the combo, it stutters and resets my combo. This of course is pretty annoying, as the later attacks in the combo ramp up in damage.
You are still unable to strafe while farming, making using the hoe or your mangus to water a tedious task. Please let us click-and-hold to strafe to make it easier to aim.
There is no sort button and the storage stacks only go up to 30. I am a lazy and disorganized person. I'm not really willing to spend a lot of time organizing my inventory, only to have to do it again later. Please let us just click a button to sort. Also limiting stacks in storage to the same as player inventory is pointless and just causes more clutter.
You can't smith/cook with items from your storage. This one painfully doubles up with storage issues as it can be a nightmare to search and find specific items you need to build/cook.
Time is always running and is against you! Time keeps going even when you're in buildings!!! I haven't even had the time to relax and enjoy interiors of buildings at all. I'm always on the run somewhere as the clock is always running. Please pause time indoors in town and give us a 'teleport home' option. This fixes me improperly gauging how much time I have left to run home before 12AM after a deep dungeon run.
Core mechanics don't have instructions. How do I evolve? How do I open up the underwater farm? Where is the area where I can place fish? How come I can jump in the water for some areas but not other areas? If your reply is 'just Google it' for this or anything else I've stated, that is a failure of the game. Simple core gameplay mechanics need googling. I looked up that affection for a monster can be raised through riding it, talking to it in the barn, or feeding it. I feed the starting Draconewt all the time and exclusively ride it. It's still at 0 affection. I also can't talk to it or any other Magnus at the barn.
Please save my option preferences for the title screen when I open up the game. I really don't want to have to hear the music blast into my ears every time I open up the game.
Grinding up a new Magus up to par in level is difficult. Please add a sort of rubber-banding in terms of EXP scaling to lower level Magnuses to help with the tedium of leveling up a cool new Magnus you found/want to evolve, otherwise I won't want to use anything new.
Okay, let's get started with more minor issues now:
I sometimes hit a mining glitch. Sometimes my character will simply stop mining and it requires me to leave and re-enter an area to fix it.
Getting on and off the Magus takes way too long.
The animation for 'empty watering can' takes too long, I often find myself stopping right before I run out of water to simply save myself the trouble of watching my character get frustrated that he has no water.
Rare Manuses despawn after you leave the area. If you didn't happen to have the item to tame it at in the area, you lost it. Allow these rare spawning mobs to stick around for the day. This gives the player a chance to leave, grab the taming item for it, and come back.
Sometimes NPC text lines repeat itself.
Stone is a very early-game material, but you don't get a reliable source of it until it becomes outdated. Please allow iron/bronze ore minding spots to drop one or two stones. I know you can buy it, but it doesn't feel very intuitive to buy rocks.
I read somewhere that riding the Magnus increases it's affection. It doesn't seem to be the case.
Why is throwing food directly at the already tamed Magnus not considered feeding it?
Sometimes I am unable to open up NPC shops.
I'd like to iterate that this game has a lot of potential, and if all of these nagging issues were fixed, I would be stuck on it for quite some time. The painful truth is that I personally Kickstarted this game because I thought the Rune Factory series was discontinued. With the announcement of Rune Factory 5, this games going to have to try a lot harder to find it's place in the market. I've got friends lined up asking me if they should buy this game and it really hurts me to tell them "wait for to get better."
P.S I haven't even tried multiplayer, but I hear it's a whole 'nother can of worms.
