Some early game thoughts on Alphadia Neo (no spoilers)

[Victar]

I started playing the Playstation 5 port of Alphadia Neo, and just got a 4-person party. I have a few thoughts so far, which I'll list without giving any story spoilers.

It isn't obvious unless you look closely, but the main hero Alt has heterochromia. His right eye is dark red and his left eye is light orange-red.
The spritework is a different style than most recent Exe-create games, with very pixelated characters/monsters and detailed environments in towns. I'm not sure whether I like it better or worse.
One Shop purchase feels required to make Alphadia Neo fun. It's the Secret Room purchase to unlock the "instantly refill the Energi meter after each battle" option.
I spent more Shop currency on the option to have enemies randomly drop stat boosters, and rings that teach the party all types of elemental magic.
The early game is brutal on the highest difficulty of Expert, especially when it's just Alt; he can easily stumble into world map encounters meant for a party of 2 or 3 people.
The daily missions for Shop currency and the panels with rewards are a clever way to incentivize grinding, and keep it interesting.
The difficulty curve seems to be smoothing out now that there's a 4-person party, but I'm not letting my guard down.
The fishing minigame is very difficult with the basic tackle set; I don't have the reflexes to try for lunkers until I can obtain better stuff. I'll still fish as needed for panel rewards, though.

[ChromaRaine]

Good points. Early game is extremely brutal especially when you you reach *her* before she becomes a companion.

Alt physical changes might have explaination during that revelation at the late portion of the game

DisplayCollapse view

It might due the fact that he was kept by the Alphadia Crystal for a long time, almost a millennium sealed with the power of Alphadia. The Energi within the crystal affects his entire body, hence the changes of his hair and eye. This might also explain why he has two main Energi compared to others.

Seems artistic choice, they're following the previous design of their previous game into this. Or specifically Sword of Elpisia.
Same, I spend shop currency on that and for fishing. Until you can grind for 100 orion stone with the gold print and maximize every characters stats. (Plus UR weapons, preference.)
Very Hard difficulty is extremely brutal (if you didn't buy storage houses key), especially at her boss fight before she joins the party. But Styles and Resonant somehow manage to balance it out if you used it correctly. Though I don't get why they need to rid the defend option. It helps to cancel turn.
The fishing minigame also rely on luck. Early lunker lords are not difficult to get with the normal set but the rate to get one is low.  It also depends on the bait, which makes them hard to get one in the start. That is, unless you have the FP points multiplier in the secret room.

[Victar]

I haven't looked at a list of what's in Alphadia Neo's storehouses, but my experience with Exe-create storehouses is that they're usually disappointing. They typically have some equipment that will be outleveled down the line and/or a few stat boosters. It seemed more worthwhile to spend Shop currency on permanent upgrades.

The ability to have the Energi meter refill after every battle frees the party to spend all their Energi in regular encounters, without the tedium or the monetary expense of using consumables to replenish Energi after every battle. I have noticed that there are other ways to restore Energi, like switching stances, but those ways have limits.

Having enemies drop stat boosters might make the game easy in the long run, especially since I'm giving all the stat boosters to one character (Alt). Or it might not. I'm curious how that will play out.

The rings to teach elemental magic make the entire party very flexible, especially since there are quite a few Energi spells with defensive or debuffing effects that make them far more valuable than just raw damage.

There are also Shop options to flat-out permanently increase physical or Energi damage dealt in battle, and I may purchase those next.

I'm having fun with the battle system. The story seems okay so far; the English translation is a little bit iffy at times, but not unbearably so. This is my third Alphadia game (the first two were Alphadia Genesis 1 & 2) so I'm  starting to recognize the common features that make these games distinctly "Alphadia".