Cute, but worst aspects in front
Voidsayer is like Pokemon crossed with Darkest Dungeon except they don't get what are the good sides of both games.
+ You can catch cool monsters (e.g. grass lion, teddy bear, shadow jellyfish and more) that can grow and get new attacks (not sure if they can evolve to change or not).
+ The catching system is better than in Pokemon: you just activate a special scroll anytime during a battle with a wild monster (not already owned by a boss or another entity) and slay the monster and see if you caught it or not. It doesn't matter when you activate the scroll, it won't cost you a turn and you beat up the monster anyway.
+ I like the visual style: it's quirky and kinda cute on critters, while retaining the tone of this being a dark and uncertain setting.
+ Some monsters are rarer than others, but the starters aren't some obscure thing you'd need to search long for.
E.g. I picked the grass lion and already saw the alien pick on my 5 or 6 story advancing expeditions and I imagine the dragon would easily follow in a future hot area.
- Whatever supplies you already purchased are spoken for and WILL disappear at the end of an outing no matter what. You can't store them either.
- While you will likely get some money during outing to a previous area, you will quickly feel that you're losing money and may be unable to afford items you'd need for a proper expedition.
- The 1st level cap is 11, which you'll hit quickly with your main monster and it won't gain EXP for a while (no idea what alleviates that, I've yet to beat the first boss).
- With some critters, the "restore attack moves" is a must - you get something like 6 uses of a move and without restoring gear, you can easily lose because you're out of moves (you can restore moves in combat, but it takes a lot of HP for 1 usage of each of your monster's attack skills). Said potions can be expensive early on.
- You can manually save and the game autosaves every time before and after you go on an outing. If you planned for an advanced skirmish and realized after the "defeat -> loading" screens that you can't beat this yet and won't need all the supplies you've already bought, you're out of luck. You cannot return purchased outing items and you can't store them, so they will disappear and you'll waste money (a very limited resource, unless you're steadily advancing without losing) needlessly on what a better save system of accessible item storage like Darkest Dungeon had could easily prevent.
It's a deliberate choice to give the player the finger for no good reason and so far my biggest gripe with the game.
- Initially, you can only take 2 monsters with you at a time - very limited, given you'll face at least 2 or 3 battles before a boss and your squad could be mostly depleted before then.
- On progressing the game you'll get boards you can use to repair buildings, but you can't partially repair them - you can only use boards on buildings once you have the full amount of boards required and the explanation on what does what are lacking (Darkest Dungeon is clear on what does what before you unlock a building, Voidsayer is not).
I'd much prefer the ability to invest into repairs of buildings over time rather than the "only once requirements are met, but not before" system.
I love the game's concept, but I hate the deliberate moves against the player in how it's executed.
It could be easily fixed with A: a storage for expedition items and/or B: manual saving.
Maybe A can be unlocked later, but I see 0 indication of where or how in the game itself, and it's such a shame because it's the one thing making me question if I want to keep playing or not.
And either solution would be seamless and likely not difficult to place into the game.
Darkest Dungeon can be hard, but 1 it lets you select difficulty modes, 2 it explains enough to know what to prioritize when, 3 it's forgiving enough that trial and error gameplay is still fun.
Voidsayer does NONE of that and it majorly hurts its appeal to continue playing despite its wonderful presentation.
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