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I tried playing the demo. I thought the idea of the setting was pretty cool, and art is obviously high quality, so I figured I'd give it a shot, even if I don't have the cash to get the full version.
The demo struck me as having a few problems, though. To be entirely honest, I couldn't bring myself to get past the part where you fight with the veteran guy, simply because of difficulty issues in the battle system. I just kept dying. The only reason I even beat the first tutorial battle was because the robots in that one couldn't do damage.
I think the main issue that caused this was just how low the hit rate seemed to be. According to the numbers officially displayed in the battle screen, most of the characters had a hit percentage between 40%-65%. This is pretty low as it is, even if it's early in the game, but in practice, the numbers seemed to be even lower. Over half of my attacks missed for every single character, even the higher accuracy ones. It's entirely possible that I just have really bad luck, but to me it was looking like the numbers were somewhere around 25%-40%. It got to be really frustrating after a while, especially since the enemies clearly had much better hit percentages than the party.
A lot of the mechanics did seem pretty cool, though. I like the idea of having different damage and hit types, and the game really did seem like it had potential for strategy, just as long as the accuracy issue it fixed. Unfortunately, as it is now, there's just too much randomness for it to really matter.
Also, I feel like the stat sheet for the enemies shouldn't be displayed at the beginning of battle, since it seems to pretty much determine your strategy for you. The idea is neat, but it just lays far too much out for you. Maybe have it so that you can scan the enemy with some kind of skill to get it to some up? Or maybe you can make it so that the sheet fills out as you throw different attack types at the enemy. The latter would involve a lot more programming, but it would be the best for strategy.
As for the writing, it mostly just seemed... so so. There really didn't seem to be much personality in it, and most of the setting related stuff seemed to be mostly made out of sci-fi buzzwords. I mean, I only saw up to a couple scenes past the tutorial, so it's entirely possible it picks up a bit after a while, but what I saw wasn't really that mentionable. The whole thing just felt really bland, lifeless and based around such a basic idea of sci-fi that it all just felt hollow. This got particularly bad when exposition came in.
The characters also suffered from similar issues. While they didn't seem to be routed in particularly cliche personalities, they also didn't have much depth to them, as far as I could tell. Fox is cocky and strict, Shatz (*chuckle*) is serious, but kind, and Michelle is the laid back, outgoing, friendly type. Again, a lot of my assumptions about their depth could be based around me not seeing as much of the game I originally meant to, but, going by what I did see, they just seemed to be far too straightforward about their personality traits. They pretty much flat-out stated them, sometimes. Aside from that, though, I suppose there was nothing wrong with them.
I do like the more subtle approach to the choices, though. I definitely approve of a game that doesn't flat out state what's going to make people like you.
Basically, I guess what it comes down to with the writing is that it simply didn't grab me. It wasn't bad, and was pretty much just fine on a grammatical level, but it never really did anything.
The graphics, on the other hand, still look quite nice. The uniforms are perhaps a bit... tight, but the characters were well drawn and distinct, otherwise. The backgrounds were also of a similarly high quality.
Really though, I swear the girls all had a hint of camel toe going on, and, as much as I like men and their man-parts, seeing them bulge out of their pants like that isn't quite the ideal state. Not that it's that big of a deal, but it did get really distracting on both sides, for all the wrong reasons.
I also quite liked the music, particularly in battle. It fit the setting really well, and made the otherwise grueling pace of the fights a bit more bearable.
But yeah, the demo did a few things right, but the things that went wrong really take away from the game's quality as a commercial title. I really feel like the writing would have to be significantly more spiced up to draw me in enough to buy the full version, and, if nothing else, the battles absolutely must be fixed. As it is now, the whole thing just feels incredibly slow and tedious.
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I know I have a macmini which is pretty low specs (512mb, 16mb VRAM) and there works fine. So it seems something specific of netbooks!
Obviously I invite everyone to play the full demo before buying it. If the demo works, there won't be problems since it's pretty long.
