Big Blade

The beginning of the game is very unclear and unintuitive. Cirrus says to make potions before heading out, but we don't start with any ingredients.

I tried to fight the closest monster, which was a Shelby. I exhausted all my MP trying to kill it and couldn't. Then I tried to fight a Gelly Fish and died even faster. Then I tried to fight an Alacrabster, which I also couldn't kill despite exhausting all my MP. I tried again using Meditate to recover my MP, got lucky with it wasting most of its turns dancing, and just barely won. Then I tried fighting a Gelly Fish with a Crystal Cloak and Soul Balm, but still died. Grabbed some yellow flowers to make a medium potion, which allowed me to just barely eke out a win... and I got no drops. It took two more kills to get the Gelly Brains I needed to upgrade my sword. Then I tried to kill an Emberwing, failed, tried to kill a Shelby, failed, tried to kill a Shelby again, and succeeded after using up all my potions only to discover I couldn't use its drops for anything. This was a very frustrating experience. The game would benefit from a tutorial section and a clear indicator of monster strength, especially since you can't flee battles.

It's odd that you can just sneak around enemies to grab endgame-tier resources right off the bat. I assume that won't be the case in the final version.

RNG is really painful in this. Enemy attacks usually take off between a quarter to a third of your health, so a single miss can completely shift the tide of battle. I also found myself frequently wasting my buff items, either because enemies used the wrong type of attack while I had defensive buffs or because I missed my attack while I had an attack buff. If enemies had a consistent attack pattern I could use them more intelligently, but as it is, using my hard-won resources feels like a crapshoot.