DELTARUNE : Frostveil

The comments were right. It's exactly what I feared: Bad RNG attacks.

But before all that. I should start off with everything before it. Firstly, the areas. They're very big, confusing, and mainly empty. There's no sense of direction cause of how many paths there are. There are some paths that are even blocked off with seemingly no way to unlock them, like they're just there to tease you. There were several forcefields I just couldn't unlock, but I guess they weren't important as I could proceed with the main path anyway. I would recommend less open paths and actually guiding the player on where to go and such.

Then, the puzzles. I want to specifically talk about the word puzzle for the b key cause that one was the most terrible. No hints before or during the puzzle. It's one of those "Just Know" puzzles, as in you're supposed to Just Know the solutions beforehand. Freeze, Smile, and 5 days. How is anyone supposed to figure that out on their own? I was just brute-forcing through it all. That's NOT how you design a puzzle.

Now, for the fight everyone's been talking about. Noelle. Yeah, that's literally unplayable. The Knight fight is better balanced than this.

https://youtu.be/UJkZWdNSJNk

There were beta testers for this game, right..? Ultra fast attacks mixed in with high damage and bad RNG and you have a recipe for one of the worst fights ever. Every enemy is like this too. Why do they all do such high damage? I don't think enemies should be taking me out in less than 4 hits. That's insane. It's not difficult, it's just annoying. But anyways, the Noelle fight needs a redesign. It's not playable in its current state.

Overall, I can't really recommend this. There's just too much holding it back from being great. Long hallways of nothingness, confusing pathways that loop in on each other, bad RNG and poorly designed attacks... I hope these can all be addressed sometime.

rng based attacks in both the "anomaly" and noelle fights are awful. EVERYTHING ELSE IS AMAZING THOUGH. YOU LITERALLY JUST MADE A WHOLE CHAPTER.

Banger random encounter music

game is very good, but the noelle fight is miserable to go trough, theres a TON of rng compared with an extremely high damage which just adds artificial difficulty and brings the enjoyment down

Apologies for the long review, but after finishing my first playthrough, I want to leave my thoughts on this fangame here, as I personally had quite a fun time with it, and think that this has a lot of potential. Even if Duskkii doesn't plan on improving this project specifically as time passes, I hope that he'll read this and consider some of the points that I'll be making when making any other games in the future. Plus, everything that I'll be saying here is intended to be as constructive and hopeful as possible, even regarding the more controversial aspects, and that I am in no way a professional writer, developer, or hell, just an artist in general.

Anyways, let's start off with the good. I absolutely love the art of Frostveil. Everything from the enemies to the background pieces, to even the more subtle effects on-screen, it all screams quality. The music is phenomenal too, and I'd definitely put some of the songs into a playlist to listen to on repeat. There's not really much else I have to say, other than to keep it up! :)

Now, there's some of the weaker aspects. Before I say anything, I do want to mention that the good parts that I've mentioned before still outweigh what I'm about to say now by quite a bit, even if I have more to say about what needs improving. I think that's just the nature of constructive criticism though, I don't know. Again, I'm not a professional, I'm just someone who really enjoys this fangame.

Disclaimer aside, I think the biggest problem that I have is the balancing with the fights. As someone who's only played the nerfed versions, specifically starting from v1.1.5, I still found some of the more RNG-heavy attacks, specifically in the main bossfights of the game, to be quite unreadable, and even in certain cases undodgeable, with some patterns having little-to-no space for the player to breathe. The "fireworks attack" (as I like to call it) in the final boss is a prime example of this, as I didn't even know what to do there due to how fast I had to react, so I just stayed in a corner and hoped that I wouldn't get a bad combo. There's also the "ultimate attack" in the same fight, which feels like it was made to be impossible to no-hit, though I don't want to be rude and assume that this was the case.

My best guess is that you probably just got used to dealing with your own attacks that you simply forgot how other players would experience it for the first time, which is a common problem in game development as a whole, and I definitely understand that. One more thing I'll have to say about the fights in general is that I feel like there should be some level of balancing regarding the generic enemies compared to the actual bosses themselves, as the former felt a bit too easy to dodge compared to the latter, and vice versa. Of course, it's important to always make the bosses harder, but it's important to keep in mind that the jump can't feel too unreasonable or unfair. Hell, the Nightmare and Roaring Knight fights in Chapter 3 are pretty decent examples, as the baseline enemies and mini-bosses beforehand, as well as Tenna, had simple and unique attacks, but not too easy to make the main 2 bosses feel "out-of-this-world". I don't know, maybe I just really suck at the Anomaly and Noelle. :p

Another main criticism I have is the writing, and it's mainly due to the fact that Frostveil is indeed a DELTARUNE fangame, based off of your own take on the Chapter 5 Weird Route, no less. Of course, there can be some leeway on how you yourself want to write the story, but it's still important that the characters make sense compared to their original game's counterpart, especially in regards to their actions, thoughts, you name it. I'd say that it applies here a bit more than other games since this does seem to be an interpretation of what comes next. Susie especially feels off, and is honestly thrown to the side the more the game progresses. Quite literally too considering what happens to her at the end, and even more strangely, how Kris reacts.

I think that's all I really have to say in regards to my criticisms. There was some things I was confused about regarding the puzzles, and some other things that feel a bit underutilised, but I think that's just me not playing through all of the routes yet. Overall, this is a really good fangame that I'd highly recommend to other fans of DELTARUNE, so long as they're willing to spend quite a while figuring out the best strategies for the bossfights.

As for one last note to Duskkii, I really hope that this long-as-hell review doesn't sour your mood. In fact, I hope this encourages you to keep making awesome stuff and improving on what you've already done! You're genuinely a really talented person, and once again, I can't wait to see what you'll make next. Hit me up if you need another playtester, by the way! :3