Two Steps Forward

I just finished playing your updated version!

I like how the combat feels more in this version; with the fact that energy takes longer to recover, there doesn't really feel like a cheap way to fight the enemies, and there's a reason to learn how to play each character. Since you do have to spend some time playing as each character, I think it's a good idea that both of them can fill the roles of the other. However, I feel like the effectiveness of these secondary roles should be adjusted. Sword's block appeared to be just as effective as Shield's block in reducing incoming damage, making him feel less valuable. In contrast, Shield's melee attacks felt extremely weak, having poor range and only doing a single point of damage, which isn't even enough to break the save stones in one hit. I feel like he could be boosted a little bit in this area. Shield's special parry move when swapping to Sword felt very good and played to the strengths of Sword's character, giving her an opportunity to land some free damage. I'm not sure what you could do with Sword's special move, but I would be really interested if it somehow played into Shield's abilities as well.

You might think that the game feels too easy, but I don't think that there's enough content to really judge the game on its difficulty as of yet. With the complexity of the game mechanics, it's important to provide an ample tutorial to allow the player to become accustomed to the controls. If you continue to add new content to this game, I think it would be reasonable to gradually raise the difficulty curve.

I stumbled upon this project and found the premise to be very interesting, so I downloaded the game and gave it a whirl.

The visuals are really nice, and I was impressed with the frame count and smoothness of all the character animations. The controls are definitely a little bit complicated and take some time to get used to, but they still handle well enough.

I feel like the game's mechanics are in an awkward spot in this current state, though. The waiting period between swapping characters feels like it simultaneously takes too long and is too accessible. I didn't have any success with swapping between characters in the middle of combat and instead found that poking the regular enemies with Sword two times before running away was the most effective strategy. For the boss, I simply used Shield's dodge to get behind it and summoned Sword with the shift key to get some damage in from a safe distance; the energy bar regenerates quickly enough that I can just switch to Sword and run away before I can switch back to Shield. These strategies felt kind of like exploits and seemed to undermine the main idea of switching between characters on the fly.

Overall, I would consider this project to have a really promising concept that is in need of some additional balancing and polishing work alongside more content. Well done!