Hey guys, I’m aiming to update the EBF5 v2.0 beta on Steam today, with a bunch of bug fixes, and a first draft of some of the languages. It’ll be version 2.0.6 when it’s updated – maybe wait til tomorrow to make sure it’s up. I don’t usually make a detailed list of changes, but this time I’d like to point out how boring this stage of development is. Take a look at all of these bugs, only the bold ones are somewhat serious. This is incredibly tedious work:

Fixed Grand Gallery layer issue
Fixed Book Worm crash with lovable
Fixed SP not updating immediately from a new card
Fixed equip shops tooltips being cut off
Fixed frozen/stunned foes countering
Fixed Angry Chair target-choosing behaviour
Fixed Snek berserk behaviour
Fixed the element of some Squid attacks
Fixed Haste chance on equips that always give it every turn
Fixed Glob crashing due to Lovable
Fixed enemy Bubble Ring damage type resulting in almost no damage
Fixed foes sometimes countering after surrendering
HP debuff now increases catch rate as much as Evade debuff
Fixed summon descriptions of Gem Idol, Stone Idol, Metal Idol, Snow Bat and Scaly Worm
Healing skills are now shown as “magic” type
Fixed the unobtainable broken chest at the Rainbow Gate
Fixed some arcade foes’ idle animations not stopping
Steal skill now stacks with steal equips
Fixed Sharpen not affecting backup
Fixed Sharpen used as an unleash (and probably Dispel and Sharpen when confused)
NoLegs Jump Attacks/Final Cutter get the berserk bonus now
Added more space for foe HP and evade in the foe stats display
Fixed not getting the Extreme Difficulty medal from final boss (should trigger from Gigalith and Devourer)
Set all classic foes to ignore lovable, since they have no behaviour for it – probably why some default to attacking slot 1
Fixed Ion error if Lance is not in the battle
Fixed minimap coordinates for Glob, Pumpkus, Maw and Guoye areas
Fixed Chibi Knight dialogue about mammoths on Foe Remix
Fixed the descriptions for Acid Blast, Hurricane/Whirlwind, Leaf Blade/Razor Leaf, in all languages
Fixed wrong battle icon in arena
Fixed Chopstick hat summon
Fixed Phoenix intro dialogue triggering on revive
Fixed -100% enemy resistance text being cut off in Bestiary
Fixed Gigalith shiftCount behaviour
Fixed virus spread reducing Target stacks
Buster Sword has real stats now
Fixed MAW’s push-out effect by removing it
Enabled target status stacking, so you can use both flairs at once
Changed Target to decay at the start of your turn, not at the end
Fixed Sabrina’s hair
Art Attack animation updated
Fixed secret rainbow chests not being counted correctly for treasure finder
Fixed dropped chests not being counted correctly for treasure finder
Fixed Natalie having invalid HP when rejoining your party in Newgame+ (crashes at the start of battle or in party menu)
Fixed equip icon problems in Randomized Equip mode
Fixed possibility of getting trapped in the Rapture cave
Fixed errors due to rearanging party members while entering Battle Arena – menu is now closed during transition
Fixed Chibi Knights not counter-attacking

Hey guys, here’s a reminder to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

I’ve started streaming a playthrough of EBF5 with some of the new challenge options enabled. If you catch the stream live, it’s a good chance to jump into the chat and ask me some questions about whatever.

I don’t have any sort of schedule, but it’s a very long game, so you’ll have plenty of chances to see the stream live, especially if you follow me on YouTube.

Hey guys, I finally got round to doing something that I’ve been avoiding for a whole year, and that’s reading through people’s reasons for refunding Epic Battle Fantasy 5.

Steam asks users to select a reason for their refund, and also gives them the option to leave a comment. 3.5% of EBF5 units were refunded, and 0.3% were cancelled due to payment issues. Let’s take a look at the reasons for refunds, starting with the most common…

By far the biggest reason for refunds was that the game was “not fun” – this was roughly 50% of the refunds. Some examples include:
“I just found it boring and repetetive.”
“Some parts appealed to me, but others did not.” (puzzles, graphics, music, story, difficulty level, etc)
“The other games in the series are free and more or less just as good.”
“It’s decent but I don’t like it enough for $15.”
“Bought it ’cause it had good reviews but it wasn’t fun or what I expected.”
“I liked the other games but I guess my tastes have changed or I’ve just had enough of it.”

I’m alright with those. I much prefer users admitting that the game isn’t for them and getting a refund, rather than trying to get their money’s worth and leaving a bad review after a few hours of boredom.

Quite a lot of people bought the game before getting their launch-day discount coupon, and wished to purchase it again later. Totally fair.

There was a surprising amount of accidental purchases:
“I don’t really want to play it now, but maybe later.”
“I meant to buy it as a gift for someone.”
“My friend bought it on my account as a joke.”

Many of these accidental purchases were also people not realising that the game was only for Windows.

Altogether, around 20% of the refunds were due to various accidental purchases.

Poor performance was the main refund reason that I expected to see, but it wasn’t that common after all. Maybe around 15-20% of the refunds were due to “low framerate”, “system requirements not met”, “game crashes”, etc. Very few people specified that they could not run the game at all, which was nice to see.

A handful of people said that a lack of controller support was the reason that they refunded the game – but not enough for me to consider adding it. Similarly, a handful of people mentioned a lack of 4k support, or fullscreen mode not working for whatever reason. I can’t support every type of hardware, especially cutting-edge stuff, so I’m not gonna beat myself up about that – and some of these issues could have been resolved by sending me a message anyway.

Overall, I think things went very well, and this feedback was more positive than I expected. A high refund rate is not always a bad thing – it may mean a lot of people are impulse buying your game because it looks good. EBF5’s refund rate is a little bit below the average, from what I recall.