* Aware this is a long essay but I’m hoping someone at Pearl Abyss sees this and even implements just 1 of the suggestions *
Hi,
175 hours in, I’m at chapter 8 and have unlocked Damiane and Ongka - I saved up skill points to dump into them immediately but they don’t feel as good to play compared to Kliff - I’ve put my thoughts and suggestions below and welcome opinions
I’ve also added some other general suggestions / improvements I’ve thought of.
It’s a lot of thoughts but if Pearl Abyss can do a 3 month roadmap of updates in 3 weeks, they can do this.
Traversal
Traversal in this game is amazing with Kliff, buildings and mountains aren’t a challenge, they’re a slight inconvenience - but with Damiane and Ongka, they’re annoying again - my go to move combo with Kliff is double jump, triple force calm, focus and then aerial glide - my suggestions for Damiane and Ongka to bring them up to par
Damiane suggestions
I do have skystep unlocked, which to an extent replaces Kliff’s vertical force palm
- add the ability to do a focused aerial roll - perhaps the umbrella propels her forward
- may already be in the game but add the ability to do an aerial upwards stab
- as an alternative to skystep, add a way to use the shield to get height - perhaps use it like a fan to generate wind under Damiane pushing her upwards similar to how force palm does this for Kliff
Ongka suggestions
I have gotten the jet pack for Ongka but as far as I’m aware, I can’t get the vertical flight skill until I do the research in Deylesia and this npc doesn’t unlock until chapter 10 or 11 - I won’t be there for a long time and I want to use Ongka now
- to not completely make the research pointless, add it so there is a skill that you can unlock without research that lets Ongka only go vertically up (y axis only) - then have it so the Delysia research allows him to also move upwards in the x and z axis
- add an aerial roll ability - perhaps the cannon shot recoils him forward
Stats
After a recent update, Kliff now regenerates spirit at a bar a second roughly when in focus mode - his stamina regeneration was also sped up - these changes weren’t applied to Damiane and Ongka which means I can’t use as many abilities in combat (which is big appeal of the game for me ) and in Ongkas case he runs out of stamina very quickly
Damiane and Ongka suggestion
- have spirit regeneration match the speed of Kliffs
- either have that these two characters regenerate stamina at the same rate as Kliff or have it that Damiane (as she is slimmer) generate stamina faster that Kliff and Ongka generate stamina slightly slower than Kliff (as he is larger)
Combat
My go to move with Kliff is blinding flash into heavy attacks - it’s very powerful and makes Kliff very agile - Damiane and Ongka don’t have these which makes them feel a lot less powerful to me and slightly sluggish
Damiane and Ongka suggestion
- simply add the ability to do blinding flash attacks to both the characters
One of the coolest things (when I can pull it off) is when I’m doing a siege with say Kliff and Ongka, and i can switch between the characters - this only happens when I’ve cleared a area of enemies around the characters, with the remaining enemies say somewhere else in the castle - it’s also quite hard to realise when the other characters have taken too much damage
Suggestion
- it would be cool if we could switch between the characters in the middle of combat - maybe if they have say 5m of space around them and they aren’t in an animation, then you have brief window to switch to that characters
- when actively in combat, have the allies health bars on top of the map on the bottom left of the screen - that way we would know when we need to go protect that character, heal that character or even switch and take over
- perhaps had an icon next to the health bars that lets you know when you can switch to the character
Infinite arrows on Kliff’s bow is a game changer and not having that on Damiane or Ongka doesn’t feel great but I get it, the devs don’t was us spamming cannon shots without a cost
Suggestion
- my suggestion is to have a greymane expedition where you can continuously get a supply of bullets and small cannonballs - as far as I understand it, the existing expeditions that offer this are a one time only thing (may be wrong here)
Skill Points
A common critique is that there isn’t enough skill points to level up all the characters so people tend to ignore Damiane and Ongka - I’d counter that by saying that certain skills (including health, stamina and spirit) are shared and that if you explore enough, there does seem to be enough skill points (I’ve explored half the map thoroughly)
But a counter counter argument is that not everyone is a completionist like me seeking out every abyss artefact - these needs to be more skills I think shared between the characters
This would also free us artefacts for gear levelling up
Damiane and Ongka suggestion
- have it so that if a player fully unlocks a skill node for certain other skills for Kliff, that this then unlocks for the other characters if applicable
- for example, if a player has 5/5 levels unlocked for unarmed combat for Kliff, have it so that another perk of getting to level 5 is that this now unlocks the skills for the other characters
Other suggestions
General ideas I’ve had whilst playing:
- the devs have done a fantastic job adding different chests to the game - my only ask if to give us the ability to also have the private chest in my home - currently my weapons and abyss gears are the in the private chest at the main camp tent and my armour and materials are at the house, so I have to run between the two places
Farming is a cool additional system in the game but it can be cumbersome - some suggestions are
- to allow us to extract multiple seeds at once
- to allow us to keep the seeds in the characters hand so that you don’t have to go into the menu for every individual seed you want to plant
- have a way to automatically extract the goods you have farmed - this would have to be earned for example by research - I get there is a magical scythe and kuku pack but options are never bad
- The locking gear/armour feature was much appreciated but one gripe I have is that I have to unlock gear if I want to extract and embed abyss gears - can we have a toggle that lets us do this
- can the game saves also display how many hours have been played up to that save
- the vaulting move was a great versatile move that could be used offensively but also as a sort of parry to jump over enemies attacking you - in the recent patch this was changed so that you have to attack then jump to vault - can an option be added that the vault can either be activated how it current is (attack then jump) as well as how it used to be (r1 + square on PlayStation)
- I know people like to destroy the training dummy but the arena is quite small - I know this get bigger after expansion 5 but this isn’t until after you complete the campaign and after you do very expensive Pailune rebuilds - can a howling hill building quest be added to make the training arena larger
- the hard difficulty was a great addition - I like that normals enemies have more health so I can combo them and that bosses are more aggressive (although sometimes too much) - but the one thing I really don’t like is that healing requires a full animation - with how aggressive certain bosses are, the window to pull this off is very slim - may be a skill issue but can a toggle be added to have everything else hard mode offers but just with the normal healing mechanic - this would a toggle for those who want it
If you managed to read all the way to this point, consider me impressed ! This game is fantastic, if it had a better story I’d give it a 10, currently is a 9 for me.