Hey Ravidrath, thanks for hanging out around here and answering questions and stuff!
So, after sinking about 18 hours into this (99.5%, still need to get around to killing Mike's cat), I think it's easy to say that the backer preview is a huge improvement over the prototype, which was already more fun and fleshed-out than any other prototype I've gotten my hands on.
Every character feels fun to use and meaningfully different in some way, but I think Ginseng & Honey are easily my favorite so far (and maybe my favorite Healer-type character/s in any RPG). Definitely digging the inclusion of subsystems in some characters like with G&H's salve-making game and Dhar's Earth Install, took a bit of tinkering with them but learning new things about their attacks just makes them more and more interesting to play each time.
One thing I would like to see, though, would be if G&H's moveset wrapped around the salve-making a bit more, since right now it only seems like Neutral and Up interact (where at first I assumed everything did). Down doesn't seem to have any discernible advantage over Neutral (beyond 50 points of damage and sometimes hitting another enemy if they're perfectly aligned - although G&H's combo damage pales in comparison to everyone else's so it's not a huge motivating factor), and spending 1 or 2 Iddhi purely for damage seems a bit unintuitive when you have any other more damage-oriented character on your team.
A suggestion I might make for that would be to reorient things a bit - where Down finds a simple ingredient that goes in the mortar, Neutral grinds up all ingredients (and maybe does more damage/builds more Iddhi/speeds up AP regen so you have a reason to use it outside of grinding), and Up heals based on the amount of ingredients ground up. The Special Ingredient found with 1 Iddhi could have an additional effect based on which one was found, and can then be thrown with Down to apply a negative effect to an enemy or ground up with Neutral to add a buff of some sort to Up's heal (for example, finding a spiky fruit may lower an enemy's Defense when thrown, or raise the team's Attack when ground up). 2 Iddhi could then continue to be a souped up version of Down, acting as a means to instantly fill up the mortar for powerful back-to-back heals, and 3 Iddhi can keep its role as more of an in-the-pocket clutch heal.
As a side note, doing something along the lines of having Razmi's 2 and 3 Iddhi specials extend the duration of her hex or interact with it in some way could also help with the whole "pure damage special on a non-damage-focused character" thing as well.
Not to go on for too long, it would be nice to eventually see more detailed information about each Incarnation's properties - maybe not anything hyper-specific, but rather more along the lines of their niche/properties and the purpose their attacks fulfill. For example, I've been having a lot of fun with Qadira, but I'm not sure why I'd put her on my team over someone more damage-oriented - with the big silhouette and weaponized shield, I assumed she'd have some sort of defensive role, but she seems to mostly have damage, displacement, and single-target focus that all feel outclassed by Ajna (with the axe at least). These characters are already super visually diverse, but I'm really curious about how they'll distinguish themselves from each other gameplay-wise as well.
