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[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Current Steam Beta version: Beta v1.01 (Patch went live at approximately 8/30/2016 3:17 pm Pacific)

This is a thread for discussing the closed beta for Cosmic Star Heroine & reporting bugs. Please post spoiler tags around plot twists, but bear in mind if you want to go into the game fresh when it comes out, you're probably better off in the general thread. Second post of this thread will be reserved for some of the positive feedback we're receiving if you just want to quickly hear some of what people are saying but avoid spoilers.

Here's a link to our Online Bug Tracker Document. Please check it before reporting bugs to make sure that you're not reporting issues we're already aware of.

Thanks everyone for your help as we try to whip this game into shape for release.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Positive feedback for the Beta:

RPGamer Beta Impressions

Cosmic Star Heroine Beta Impressions

"To echo some of the sentiments in the first reply, this game is the real deal. Judging from the first few hours, it seems to be everything you could hope for from a game with its goals and inspirations. The combat system, in particular, is incredible. It's fast, lean (in the best way possible), and tactical -- you're pretty much always thinking of everything between now and three rounds ahead."

"I love the game so far. Following everything you've posted on the game, I was simply expecting the game to meet my expectations, but after playing the beta, my expectations have been blown out of the water. This was one of the first Kickstarter projects that I've ever backed, and by far my favorite. My only regret is not donating more, haha! The battle system, music, map, designs, everything is all amazing. I never thought that I would be hit with such a huge nostalgia bomb with a modern game, but I'm honestly debating picking up a USB SNES pad or something to play through the final version to really complete the experience.
I also need to stop and say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR MAKING BOSSES SUSCEPTIBLE TO STATUS AILMENTS. One of my biggest JRPG pet peeves is when status ailments become useless for major fights."

"- Cool variety of environments, music, and plot arcs so far
- The Easter eggs/riffs/homages I've noticed all made me smile
- Interesting boss battles, enjoying the variety of boss ability sets so far. Battles in Agent difficulty seems pretty forgiving for someone relatively experienced with JRPGs, but battles in the factory started getting noticeably more demanding in terms of strategy and understanding of mechanics
- The shield system, with its associated programs unlocked by hackitude stat, is really fun and feels nice and meaty. Looking forward to playing around with it more and unlocking more abilities. It feels good to be able to customize characters with additional abilities just by equipping them with a shield.
- Abilities in general are interesting and lend themselves to a variety of synergies. Hyper mode also makes for fun strategizing, prepping your characters over multiple turns to deliver a devastating attack when the time is right
- Characters are fun, and the assorted conversations throughout the game are enjoyable to read. I find the Alyssa-and-Chahn-vs-Dave dynamic pretty amusing
- Very much looking forward to playing more."

"Overall I enjoyed it and I'm hungry for more."

"Backer beta is nothing short of amazing."

 

[Cornbread78]

Whip it into shape for release, huh.. Sounds good to me! Looking forward to impressions

 

[purseowner]

Congrats guys! So excited - it's tantalisingly close now.

 

[Cornbread78]

Congrats guys! So excited - it's tantalisingly close now.

Seriously, it needs to come soon!

 

[Burt]

Was just playing and... "Oh hey... it's 3am"

Got through it all in ~

Spoiler

2

hours, really fantastic stuff. Will do a full write up tomorrow.

 

[Burt]

To echo some of the sentiments in the first reply, this game is the real deal. Judging from the first few hours, it seems to be everything you could hope for from a game with its goals and inspirations. The combat system, in particular, is incredible. It's fast, lean (in the best way possible), and tactical -- you're pretty much always thinking of everything between now and three rounds ahead.

I could probably write 2000 words talking about all the things the game gets right, but since it's a beta and not a review thread, beta stuff:

SUGGESTIONS

Spoiler

- Buff indicators are the big thing. When you're juggling a lot of stuff, especially in a long fight, sometimes you can forget which turn of Inspire you're on or whether or not Sue still has stone hands or if a character still has Aegis on, and so on and so forth. I know the bug sheet has something like this listed, but it's worth reiterating. If you don't want to clutter up the character sprites, you could probably fit icons of the characters' current buffs in rotation to the left of their health numbers.

-The UI itself can obscure targeting arrows, particularly when healing your own party. Not a huge issue considering that you get a big window in the bottom half the screen that tells you who you're targeting, but for me at least (especially with the portrait being so small in the window and the text being so spaced out), it's more natural to look at the characters themselves after selecting the skill, so not being able to find the target arrow leads to a "Where the shit is the arrow??" moment whenever it happens. I find myself looking at the characters first, then their portraits on the left second, then the menu at the bottom last. Maybe a 'friendly targeting' specific highlight on the portrait on the left or a more noticeable indicator on the small portraits on the turn bar to the right would help.

- With a lot of non-traditional status ailments and mechanics, some sort of built in manual to serve as a reminder would be a big help -- although I'm guessing that might be a subsection of one of the blacked out parts of the menu.

- I think that the game would benefit greatly from an autosave feature. I don't know if there's a "Retry" option if you lose a battle, but my saves were at 6 minutes, 11 minutes, and... 1 hour and 55 minutes. Being able to save anywhere is fantastic, but the lack of save points led to me completely forgetting to save. If I had died 90 minutes in and had to go back to 11 minutes, I probably would've just turned it off for the night.

- Gotta give that style meter some style. Pun intended.

- I'm not entirely clear on the effects of "enrage" status - does it only lower AOE damage the enemy does and not single-target damage? It lowers the damage they receive? How does taunt work, exactly?

BUGS

Spoiler

- Between defusing the bomb and landing on the jungle planet, I hit a bug that unequipped Bash on Alyssa and gave me an ability screen that looked like this:

After some button mashing and menu switching things managed to reset. I'm assuming it was triggered when I was equipping stuff I bought at the HQ shop, because it happened again after I got the purification torch. Maybe it had something to do with swapping shields out, because I didn't touch my shields my first run through and didn't get any bugs, but this second time through as I've been experimenting more the bug hit me twice.

- After a certain point, edit: nvm, that's an equipment feature apparently -- whoops

Would love to talk more about the game, so if there's anyone else around playing the beta, let's hear it!

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Glad you liked it!

Just found an article about the beta that I added to the impressions post: https://nipponpan.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/cosmic-star-heroine-beta-impressions/

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Beta v1.01 is live.

Bigger, more obvious cursor for selecting targets in combat.
Zeboyd & HyperDuck logos in the first area have been changed to look more like graffiti.
Various bug & typo fixes.

Complete list of changes can be found on the bug tracker.

 

[tryptobphan]

I'm not a beta tester, but I just want to express congratulations and let you know that like many others, I'm really looking forward to it. I tried it out last PlayStation Experience in SF and it was great.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Beta v1.02 is live.

Initial boot times have been drastically improved. DRASTICALLY.