Okay scratch my last post, I found the rpoblem with the smith menu, its the alt key.
I finished the demo and briefly started the game as Alexandra the princess as well as checked the hunting demo.
the hunting is actually pretty cool, and I can understand why the horse quest is there, I'd like to see more of that especially with the animal audio. Also, reading between the lines it sounds like there will be a degree of character management in the game which might be fun if combat remains the same.

I will play through the rest of the demo as the princess, though I am a little disappointed the story is pretty much the same, after all, if we assume a medeival europe sort of soceity there should be a little distinction between  princess and a prince even if this is an era when  there could be a ruling queen.

For instance, maybe prince Alexander was sent to the vale due to the death of some local lord he could take over from but didn't think he'd ever marry since noone would want to marry a blind son, whilst princess Alexandra was sent off specifically as part of an arranged marriage since she could still have children whilst blind and be a link to the royal succession, whilst Prince Alex would just be seen as a liability.

Same with sword play, a blind swordsman is unusual, a blind swordswoman even more so, indeed I was disappointed thad Shepherd's gender and interactions were the same with both characters, since it would've made more sense for her to be less trustful of a man than a woman.

I like the idea of gender switching in a game, but it would be nice if it had at least a little effect on the plot, after all this is hardly a modern world where women would be treated the same way as men by default.

For example, Princess Alexandra might  get some more sympathy in the village due to being a girl, but would risk more nasty encounters with scummy men since they'd perceive her as being weak, whilst Prince Alexander would likely be trusted far less over all for being a man and a stranger, but also would be likely to be seen (at a distance at least), as more capable of taking care of himself.

Either way, just some thoughts.

I have played trough the game and like dark sayd in his above post, forgive me if I repeat myself. I didn't read the topic.
I found a bug regarding the blacksmith. The items you bought still appeared in his list, and you could buy them again.
another bug is, after I bought the chestpiece and the bracers, the sound of turning remained the same even in the tutorials, as if I had armor.
like dark sayd I tought there would be other reactions from characters regarding gender, but the game asked if that is important in the questionnaire so I guess this will be implemented later.
I liked the village exploration, it wasn't boring at all like Wlomas sayd, although yeah, the combat is easy and surely will be easy for a skilled gamer. I want to remind all about the sentence in the questionnaire, about this combat method being just a preview. It might be like bop it, yeah, but who knows how the game will change?
another bug I found was, at the dog scene, after I battled the dogs, Alexandra was heavily breathing from the combat and both from the scene... which was strange to hear.
another Strange bug was in the hunting tutorial. I managed to shoot the pig without moving towards it, and theo told me to move closer and to shoot it when I was preparing to shoot my urm... next fat pig
In the end, I liked the demo and I would really love to see how the game will change in the future.

Okay I've now finished playing through the demo as the princess.
A couple of other things I noticed.
Firstly, there needs to be a key to skip audio scenes and intros and go straight to the action, especially if the game gets more difficult in the future and there are parts that need to be retried.

Secondly, two things which made  combat far easier than it should've been, were the fact that you always here the enemy's footsteps moving from one place to another, and secondly the fact that enemies seemed to have a limited range of attacks, for example that bear only ever attacked from the front or the  left never the right, and the first fight with the two raiders one was always in front and one always on the left.

Even on the boppit scores, simply speeding things up and not having attacks be so telegraphed would  do quite a bit for difficulty.

I also say I rather like the scene in the raider's camp where you can hear the raiders and either run into them and fight them or sneak around them. I had a bit more of an explore of some one off areas in the game such as the cave with the waterfall in the village quest and the areas are nicely large, so hidden weapons or encounters would be nice. I also noticed that the sword you buy from the blacksmith does more damage than your existing one, or at least that bear took a lot more hits to take down without it, that combined with the fact that you couldn't get all of the items at the smith makes me think the game must have some wilderness areas to earn money and maybe get supplies so you can improve rpg style which would be nice indeed.

I mentioned gender issues above, but one particular scene which struck me as a bit odd was the scene with the silk merchant's cousin. I could appreciate that he'd want a tough looking guy standing with him to prove to the unscrupulous fir traders that he had some backup on side,  but walking into a trader's camp with two women, one of whom was blind and which didn't likely look too threatening strikes me as more than a bit strange.

this quest I would write differently according to character gender, EG maybe the prince is asked to go along because he looks tough and the cousin wants a good appearance that might stop him getting attacked, whilst with the princess maybe he asks  her for the opposite reason, that he's afraid of the traders shooting him down before he could get close, then it turns out he was planning to use her as a distraction while he and his cousin got away, (I get that he's not exactly a nice guy).

Everyone else has already pretty much said what I wanted to say, so I won't go on about it again other than to mention the combat again and one more observation. I am getting slightly weary of sighted people who make games for us without asking us what kind of combat we would like to see, but instead presume to know what kind of combat blind gamers could decently enjoy or are capable ofenjoying. I frankly don't understand why developers always feel the need to make combat stationary and telegraphed, when it would be very possible to allow for free movement and a degree of complexity. Both as a martial artist and someone who prizes good combat in games, this bothers me... and this doesn't feel like a mainstream game to bridge the gap, because a mainstream game would never have combat this slow or this easy. I will continue to support this game, but I do wish the developers had done more consulting with more experienced mainstream gamers who are blind. As it is, this is another step toward the right goal... but the execution falls a little short for my taste, for the reasons everyone has already mentioned.
This is a smaller issue, but I am also not a fan of how eerily this game seems to portray the movement of a blind person. For the first few minutes, in order to find your goal, you have to, no pun intended, wander blindly until you find it, all the while hitting walls and hearing your character say things like "hmm, another way then" or "not this way!". Thi sets my teeth on edge... because aside from not giving the equivalent to a navigation beacon for objectives in sighted games that would eliminate needles wandering, it perpetuates the already too cmmon stereotype that blind people cannot move with confidence and constantly bump into things.

I've still not recieved my copy, yall think this is a bug in the servers or something?

Hello,
Yes, I'm also encountering this problem. I don't know what's the fix or it has been discussed here.

Right. I have not read through this topic, but here are my thoughts after playing this demo.
I: The combat. I honestly didn't expect much difference when I heard of the main character being blind. This game didn't disappoint me in that aspect. Now, it might sound that I'm pleased with the mechanics, however, let me assure you that I'm not. I want a more strategic approach. The fights aren't just based on standing and swinging, you know. They involve moving around, watching your enemy, and learning their weaknesses. In that aspect, this beta failed to live up to my expectation. It's another let's play bop it deal, which is starting to be cumbersome.
II: "Describe it to me..." I don't wana be rude here, but, uh, have you actually interacted with a blind individual? Now, forgive me, but I do not think a blind person would ask you for so many descriptions of places. Granted I might be wrong but, assuming the mc has been blind since birth, he won't give that much attention to places. He'd most likely prefer to explore the places in question himself.
III: Another guide, really? I honestly feel like this has been done once too many times. Every game that has a blind character has somebody following him or her... It's just... odd. Do people honestly believe that blind folks require a guide? That can not be farther then the truth...
IV: The amazing tutorials? No, really. The tutorials aren't that bad. What's bad is that the tutorials assume that you're playing with a controller, which was false in my case. Often I got told to press my right trigger or hold down my left stick half way, which I could not do since I was playing using the keyboard.
V: The iffy sound design. No, for the most part the sound design is quite good... however, I do have issues with it. Why does a shield sound like it's made of wood? You do know that swords are sharp, right? A sword would be able to break a wooden shield in 4 swings, max. However, I do not think the mc uses a wooden shield, I think that the sound designers simply forgot to replace the sound.
That's it for now. It's not all of my issues with the game, but those that are listed above are the main ones for me.

Hi all. I've finished the demo. All-in-all, I really enjoyed it. I do agree with all said above. I did get some stuttering during a few parts of the game, but, it wasn't a game breaker. I wish we could at least have been able to travel to river town and do things there before the demo ended. I understand this is a public beta, but, I felt it was quite short as well.

@Assault freak I'm not sure what you mean about no navigation beacons, I always found one, indeed one thing I liked about this game particularly was that it made some effort to naturalise the script as regards beacons, E.g "head towards the tavern", rather than "Head towards the sound of a musician playing, that is the tavern"

I agree on combat and moving around as I said, but in terms of a guide, there is an issue.
Sight is a direct sense, people look at things and are able to say This is a chair, this is a house, this is a blackberry bush, this etc. Lacking sight people work on indirect perception, working out that because your in someone's living room, a roughly knee high leather thing must be a chair.
Games however don't have the luxury of letting players make those sorts of judgements because in an audiogame you only have one sense to deal with, hence the need for some sort of guidance, since if you need to go and find the big oak tree  the treasure is hidden in, you don't have time to look at lots of different objects, go through bushes, stacks of fallen branches etc to find the one big oak tree, and of course having your player stumble because they  happened to not see  pot hole wouldn't work mechanically either.

The main character saying "describe it to me" didn't bother me other than the fact that it seemed to make the shepherd come off as a bit dense for not really giving enough info first time around, and I did like the fact that a lot of the object sound design here was less obvious, EG the horse  in the quest was cropping the grass, not clip clopping or neighing just to give a sound to follow.

In general I personally had less issue with the audio navigation as audio navigation in and of itself, I just would've  liked more chances to explore along the way as I said, though as this is manifestly an early beta and the developers are asking for all this feedback  hopefully we'll be seeing more of that in the game soon.

I'll certainly agree that the story and audio, what I've ehard of it, are pretty awesome. But I will agree that I would prefer it not to be yet another Blind Legend style fight system. That's one of the things that turned me off Echoes from Levia.

Wow, I can't even get passed the combat scene where you and the shepherd meet the people by the fire. I end up dying for some reason. I try to block them, but somehow I still die.