As a little bit of background information, there are many visual novels out there that are not quite player-driven, but kinetic "NVL" mode, meaning it's a straight read from beginning to end much like a traditional novel. The original idea behind Pokémon Academy Life was to act like a hybrid of sort, where there are moments of extended dialogue between characters mixed with sessions of descriptive prose. This is why feedback is so important. Some people don't mind the format and some people really dislike it.
To clarify some points, yes, the beginning is very long-winded. In fact, little has changed with the opening since development first started. We've always thought that tackling the opening from another angle could be in our best interest, but we haven't prioritized it since it didn't seem like too many people were bothered by it (at the time).
So before the visual novel is all said and done, expect the opening to get an overhaul. On a similar note, expect monologue to be limited mostly to when the player is alone. There will still be some internal dialogue when the player is among other characters in the same scene, but those will generally be short observational comments.
Character art will be a little different to address. Art is purely subjective. We can bring the topic of May's character art to our main artist to see if change is necessary. My personal bet is that even if change is welcome, it won't be the priority.
As for individual characters and their respective personalities, the demo will not do any of them justice, whether it's Blue, Leaf, Misty, Serena, etc. Let's just keep it at that for now. There's a lot in the works regarding each character (not all of them, but most of the recurring ones). We don't expect people to universally like every character. That's impossible. So it's totally okay for some to be favored over the others for whatever personal reasons; it's much more realistic that way.
Again, thanks for the feedback. We would love to hear more from everyone. Feel free to continue posting in this thread, or you can post in the (mostly for elective class feedback and overall feel).Statistics: Posted by VisualJae — Sat Jun 25, 2016 10:48 pm
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