Also what's the condition for the fake difficulty and monster multiplier to come into play? I didn't really understand the prior explanation.
incoming text wall be warned
MY SHIHONG PLAYTESTING FEEDBACK:
Also, in further playing I was experimenting with all the meter moves for Shihong, and i wanted to drop my opinion here. The mine layer is a really cool ability but its flawed in its current form. My criticisms are that it bounces off of enemies when it probably ought to phase through, so the whole cluster tends not to land on a group but bounce off and form a cluster away from them. The mines chain detonate, so when one mine gets touched by an imp, the whole attack goes up in smoke. I think they ought to not chain detonate but detonate individually. If these changes could be affected, it'd be worth the same energy cost as the forward gun super imo, but right now it simply isn't.
The homing missiles I criticized before, I dislike them as they are but would love them if they homed in more like Tone's core in Titanfall 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM-j_BOKnDE I know its possible for cursor guidance because your boomerangs do it in High Noon Drifter, and I've seen homing rocket mods elsewhere. Slow projectile speed high projectile counts would be the key to making this especially satisfying.
For melee, I really like the killing power of the big punch, no real complaints other than the request for a special button to avoid having to buffer a punch in between actions.
I haven't fooled with the uppercut as much, but I've been musing over its place in the melee kit. For ShiHong, it is the only way to float enemies, and with HaeLin, the whole purpose of floated enemies is they take more to kill so you can spam sword for combo meter and damage buff. With ShiHong, it basically kills everything on contact. Take this however you will, but if it were mine to change, I would consider adding a longer more invulnerable dash, lower the hitbox so it hits less enemies, reduce its damage so it floats consistently even on weaker enemies, and cause it to launch HaeLin on hit with the target enemy for a good air to air roundhouse freebe or stungun palm, followed up by a safety dash and more gun juggling or whatever. This could give it a similar niche of application to HaeLin's sword uppercut, but with invulnerable closing and easy safe followup hits and positioning options to justify meter use.
As for melee side specials, they seem to have far too much range and possibly damage for their cost. They make the other moves seem pointless to use in comparison, especially considering you can wall jump then safely boost overtop of an enemy group before executing it. I'm not sure if its the same range as HaeLin but I'm pretty sure her sword would be longer than Shihong's foot.
I don't have much for stealth specials, the area stungun and stealth work excellently. I especially appreciate the touch of the silencer sound effects on the guns while under cloak. That's very nice attention to detail, but I don't really understand the place of the sonic trap. The sonic trap is a very cool idea, but I don't really understand what it's doing when I use it, other than generally lowering the threat of enemies within the radius for a time and contributing to general chaos, I prefer the stun pulse for that application
Speaking of stun, it is Shihong's go to option for nullifying enemy projectiles, but it is inferior to Hae Lin's scabbard spam in every way. An idea I had was rather than having it auto-spam cast on holding, perhaps let her do some swirly hand static wall neo style deflection shield for up to 2 seconds. It shouldn't have an overheat animation but I think it should disable normal usage or at least the shield usage for about 3 seconds and have no attack properties. If it could flow seamlessly out of the normal static palm, that'd be ideal...I think of the protective armor on Haelin's iron maiden, and think a similar usage meter could apply to this idea. You had mentioned liking it before when it was another person's suggestion, and I agree that it is a good idea.
For what it's worth, I notice in my play that the stun gun palm is good for getting about 2 punches off before repeating, and generally you want to aim for other enemies to spread out hitstun and minimize the angles from which you can be threatened in confined melee. I think its good to consider ways of expanding options for the player in confined melee to assess and manage threat and risk rather than just resorting to OP side special. To put it this way, I could round robin 3 enemies with nothing but stun gun palm and be safe, but the moment I start using punches I become threatened.
I'd like to see a way to mitigate this and improve the game of tactically stunning enemies in close quarters. I have a few ideas for how this could be achieved. One is to add a crippling charge punch function to holding and releasing attack should that function be freed by the introduction of a new keybind for special moves, with perhaps 1.5 or x2 stungun palm's stun. The other would be to add enemy knockback/knockdown/hell knight nut kick animation similar to that which exists in brutal doom. I think that if the alternate attack is not a launcher like Hae Lin, it should have a similar role of removing the enemy from battle for a moment, if not dealing damage. My last idea is that I like the idea of a special taser dart or some other meter based stun that affects one target but for an excessive period of time. The cyberdemon replacement should be immune to it to avoid cheesing, and though its probably impossible to script, it could prevent the ArchVile's flames from firing if associated archvile is affected... Last idea is perhaps fist mode can buff stungun palm's stun time generally, since most enemies seem to die in the same number of hits whether you use that combat mode or not, or cause ShiHong gain faster combo meter, or faster special meter, or have lower specials cost, or all of the above.. I feel like the combat stance generally needs a buff of some sort, and I want playing Shihong in close quarters to feel like playing Arkham Knight's melee challenges where half the enemies are knowingly incapacitated and the other half are being willfully countered, but with WASD movement and actual spacial awareness/danmaku bullshit required lol. Tall order, but I don't think you're far from achieving it. Also a function could be added for the dash melee like Haelin's powerful downward slash... on second thought, if it were mine to redesign, the dash punch would cripple for longer than a stun palm, and a charge and release punch would unleash a 3 hit fast flurry or enter you into some kind of aatatata muda muda muda ora ora ora state...
I hope my foods for thought are helpful, I value this mod in my collection above most others and believe it has the potential to be truely great, it just needs the love of ever vigilant polish and tweaking. Let me know your thoughts ^^
LAST THING! Green card BFG9000 replacement for shihong....I JUST realized that the uppercut/front kick bind is an underbarrel machine gun, this is so awesome. <3 I have been filling my energy with the demonsteele options menu for infinite energy, saving, then turning it off, and loading the same battle and experimenting with different meter burns to consider their value. This has led me to a suggestions for the Lazcannon, the alt fire is a charge with 3 levels. Level 1 is a nice single damage direct hit shot with some negligible splash damage, level 2 takes 2 bars and packs a wallop which is great for murdering tougher enemies and their cohorts, but level 3 takes a whole meter and super black hole nukes the whole level... The gun is beautiful and well designed, but my suggestion revolves around the difference of energy costs between the level 2 and level 3 shot. My belief is that if you have the energy for a level 3 shot, it is disastrous to release one by accident because you simply charged too long to set up the level 2 shot that you wanted, so in the event that we get a new keybind, level 3 could be locked behind that, or add it as a double tap directional super to give the player more control over not accidentally burning up their entire meter for inability to line up the shot in time. ^_^ Also imo the energy drain although subtle I don't believe is necessary at all. It makes more sense for HaeLin because she gets god armor out of the deal, but Shihong is just holding a BFG.
PS: with regards to the sprite work, a minor gripe is that the under barrel machine gun doesn't appear to be firing at the center of the screen where the bullets are hitting... I know this isn't getting a redesign because the transformation animation and all the rest is clearly a huge labor of love, and it is expertly done, my jaw hit the floor when I first activated it and saw cthulhu and a wall of text with the keypad coming out of the forearm, but perhaps the gun attachment specifically could be moved so that it doesn't clash so much with the shot placements aesthetically.
Great work on the new character btw, I find her to be more compelling than HaeLin which is saying a lot. The laser sword chainsaw replacement is just perfect the way it is, don't you dare change a thing <3<3<3