Thanks for the detailed feedback. I do understand some of your points, and I somehow feel the need to explain why some things are the way they are...
But first, to your question about the stone and if that's a bug: No, it's not. The stone and the locked dungeon belong to another branch of the main quest. The main quest branches when you decide whether to ask Gradwin or Sianor for help. For both branches, you find the needed quest items both at the same location but you only need one of them in your particular branch. I did it that way mainly because it was convenient to do it and I never expected it to confuse quite a lot of players. I wouldn't do it again, but it is like it is now.
Before I answer some of your other points, I want to put things into perspective: This game is, as you've already mentioned, mainly a one man's effort (with some help here and there, of course). I made the 3D engine as well as the game engine, I wrote the story, the quests and the dialogs (in german and english at the same time), I had to design the items, the world, the dungeons...etc. I took me 4 years and 2 month of spare time work to get as far as I did. That's not meant as an excuse or to get the tears flowing or something...It should just show how much work it is to get something like this done. And you have to cut corners and simplify some things, or the game wouldn't be out for another 2 or 3 years. With that out of the way, here we go...
About the ending...I'm not really happy with it either...BUT: To understand why it's the way it is, you have to know how it all started. Naroth isn't my first game that takes place in, well, Naroth. I released the first one as a german only shareware game 23 years ago for the Commodore Amiga (
http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/die-quelle-von-naroth). It basically lets the player experience the events that lead to the incident...where it ends. For the new game, I wanted to build upon the lore that I had created for the first game and I also wanted to keep the story personal. I just couldn't do some real epic stuff with dragons and magic and whatever, because I didn't have the resource to do so...not the time, not the money, not the art...so I decided to keep it on a personal level and I thought that this whole "looking for the father" story was a good fit, because it allowed me to build upon the first game's story without forcing me to make each and every detail match the first game. After all, 20 years have passed...in game time as well as in the real world.
So I went ahead with the "father story", but after some time, I felt that something was missing. Searching for your father is great and all, but it's not very interesting in the long run, because it doesn't provide any kind of antagonist. So I had to come up with something, but again, I was limited by what I had at my disposal regarding art and animations. I had a pool of maybe 15 different enemy models from which I could choose. So the rest of the story as well as the antagonist had to fit somehow into these restrictions. The whole "undead rising" thing seemed to fit, so I went ahead with that. But after that story came to an end, I thought that I somehow lost track of the whole "father searching" thing and I didn't want the game to end that way.
For weeks, I had no idea how to make the turn back to the father story without having to redo everything, which I just couldn't do. The only idea that at least somehow worked was the one that's now in the game...yes, it comes out of nowhere and yes, it somehow feels rushed...I know that. But I also like open endings, so I went with it. As said, I'm not 100% satisfied with it, maybe not even 75%, but I had to make compromises to get this game done in a reasonable time frame...and this is one.
Apart from that, quite a few people seem to like the ending the way it is. They think of it as an interesting plot turn...
I'll try to answer some of your other points by citing them...
It was far too easy. I never died once. just hit,move back, hit.
It's really tough to find a good balance here. When it came out, especially the first few levels were a lot more difficult than they are now. But even now, a lot of the one star reviews that I'm getting are because people find the game much to difficult. I tailored the game to my play style. The way I play it, I die sometimes but not enough to make it a frustrating experience. You can't please everyone. You are an experienced gamer, but a lot of people playing mobile games aren't. And for those, the game is quite difficult as it is.
I killed the last demon guy by just letting him follow me back to the first room and I switched the lever to lock him in while I shot him through the door with a bow!...
That seems to be a common trick. I get this as negative feedback from time to time, so I'll do something about it in the future. I'm not sure what exactly though, but we'll see.
Also I found it really quite illogical the way in which you gain all these items which you really have nothing left to kill to enjoy them?
By the time you got your magic sword you've only got a couple guys to kill and then it's Game over..nothing left on map so you just equipped best gear and it's over? Sad...!
But isn't that quite common in single player RPGs? That you get the good gear at the end without much left except for killing the final boss?
Not to mention it's not a full set of magic gear?
No, there's not. To be honest, I never thought of it. As said above, I tailored the game to my play style. And I don't care about sets in the slightest in RPGs. I played Witcher 3 plus add-ones for 160h and I almost never had all the pieces of a set until the very end, where I didn't need them anymore. I just don't care and it shows in Naroth, I guess.
You never need to spend gold to buy anything its all found easily in dungeons.
The same thing as above: When I play the game, I do spend some money on equipment.
The herbs were a waste of time I never used any.
You don't have to. But if you want to play the game with alchemy, you can. You can skill alchemy instead of melee combat and get the same effects and buffs with potions instead. And if you do, you might need more money as well, because you have to buy these empty flasks from time to time.
Another idea behind the herbs was, that some people just like to collect stuff. So I wanted to give them the opportunity to do that while walking around the wilderness and from what I experienced on how people are playing the game, it seemed to have worked, at least to a degree.
I never needed any healing ever. regen was enough for the rare times I took a hit.
Others do use them. I do. What can I say...
...but very lacking in its imagination creativity and logic.
That one hurts...
I really tried hard to get as much as possible out of the limited resources that I had at my disposal. Yes, the puzzles aren't that hard or varied, but I really don't think that they were worse than what we had in the games that might have served as an inspiration for this one.
More variety in dungeon maps and textures.
Again, limited resources. The dungeons have been build using ASCII in a text editor. I just couldn't model them in a 3D modeling program. That would have taken maybe one month per dungeon (and that's not even taking the fact into account that my artistic talent might not be sufficient to do it properly anyway), which would have lead to almost 3 years for the dungeons alone- Let alone that it would have required more coding to make the AI work in real 3D dungeons as well.
Much less gold find or ways to spend it.
Point taken. It's a little bit like with the herbs. I wanted to add collectibles to the dungeons, and these gold nuggest were a nice fit. When I play RPGs, I usually end up with more gold than I can carry as well, so it didn't think that having too much gold would bother some people. But it's obviously the case.
Maybe mobbs that can respawn for replay ability.
That's a request that some players have. But as said, I made a game that I would want to play. And I HATE respaws in RPGs, so I didn't add them.
Boss encounters at end of each dungeon. which drops the loot instead of a chest that was easy to get.
I would have loved to do that, but I couldn't...no art resources to do it.
Night time every 12 hours would be very Eerie, where hard enemies would appear like "vampires" or something more creative, would bring a real sence of danger and tense moments that are memorable.
There's code for a day/night cycle in the game (really old screenshots are showing it:
http://www.jpct.net/forum2/index.php/topic,2471.msg18252.html#msg18252), but it's not active. There are two reasons for it: I don't like night time in games. I want to be able to see something, so I usually skip night time whenever possible. The other, more important reason: I find it really stupid when games add a night cycle, but all the NPCs show no difference in behaviour. Shops are open, kids are walking around...I just don't like that. But I really didn't want to add a complete new layer of NPC AI and logic for a feature that I don't even like...so I scratched it. I do get why people like it though.
Phew...
I hope this helps at least a little bit to understand why some things turned out the way they have. That doesn't mean that you have to like them or anything and I've really appreciate your detailed feedback. I'm getting not very much in-depth feedback from gamers, let alone seasoned ones like you.
Making an RPG on your own is a huge task. It's sometimes to hard to stay focused and you have to cut corners and kill your babies, or you'll get nowhere. My initial, very rough time estimation for the game was 3 years, it took 4 and 2 months. I really felt that this was enough.
I'm still thinking about some additional content (which gets harder and harder to do the more languages the game supports, which is another problem in adding or changing stuff) and maybe I can implement some of your suggestions then.
For now, I'll at least try to handle the "kill the final boss (or any enemy) by shooting him through a door" in one way or another.
Game on!