The Treehouse Live demonstration was kinda underwhelming, but a game like this seems hard to show in a vertical slice.
Can someone give me a better idea of what makes the combat system compelling here? Treehouse Live made it look like trial and error figuring out elemental weaknesses, and then hitting with those attacks to get extra turns within your turn, and repeating until you're out of MP or your character dies. And negotiations with demos looked like guesswork.
The video reveals had me excited for this, but Treehouse Live less so. Someone restore the hype!
I think the treehouse gave too much focus on the press turn and exploring weaknesses. I understand they wanted to explain the system, but the game is so much more than that.
The press turn system coexists with a robust roster of demons with different strengths/weaknesses and skills, and you can fuse the demons and have their skills transfered to create the perfect customized demon, until you gain access to new stronger demons and the cycle repeats.
Negotiating with demons is random for the most part, but it is consistent: each species has a set personality so as you try to get a demon talking to it over different battles, you will start to get a grasp of how it will react. Some games also carry your progress over battles (of you started to befriend a demon in one battle but didn't manage to recruit it, you will start where you left off in the next one), but I don't know if that will be the case for SMTV.
The press turn system is important and is fun, but battle are more than that. You won't be actively doin trial and error every battle like the treehouse demo made it look like. It's more like "hey, this is a new dungeon, i don't know these demons yet, let's hope they don't kick my ass before I can figure what their weaknesses are". It's nice when you get to explore a weakness but most of the time you will have to do without it, and regular attacks work just fine.
Also the game has a nice buff/debuff system and it's critical for boss battles, so it also adds depth.
The gameplay loop is basically: get to a new area, get your ass whooped, try to barely survive to recruit some new demons with useful abilities, fuse new demons, start to learn their weaknesses, now you're badass and will obliterate the demons in the area (but don't get too cocky, you still might die if you don't pay attention), fight the boss, get your ass whooped, figure out how to build your party to kill the boss, kill the boss, repeat.
