I bought Septerra Core from GOG, and started playing it for a few days already. Anyway, to cut thing short, there is this item slot (only one slot) per person, and you can buy special item for this slot. there are three aspect : hit point, attack, and armour.

the interesting part is that in this game, health point doesn't come easy - you either need to rent a room (cost money), buy health item (cost money) or to cure using core magic (but to increase this, as it move slowly, also need item). so if you install a health point item that increase your health point, when enemy attacks, you still need to patch up your charater, and therefore, cost money. however, if you install attack item, it will make the fight shorter (as you kill the enemy faster), and attacks is free, and you save money by not having to heal your character. armour reduce attack power, and also free in a sense,but I prefer attack as the best defense.

this mean health point increase item is practically worthles. this is my viewpoint after playing the game for a few days (my character level is 10 - on the windy planet). it cost you money at first, and still cost you money as you go.

do they got game mechanic wrong here?

what is your opinion?

Moving you to Game Design.

I prefer attack as the best defense.

That's the "secret" of all games, OK, maybe at least 1vs1 games. The thing is designer can not really design it other way. Offence has to be always superior to defence. If it was designed otherwise the combat would become too long or even worse both fighters would become invincible.

There is some freedom for designer if it is multiplayer or a variable number of opponents or changing number of opponents. But if there are only 2 fighters exchanging blows... I can not see, even theorethical, possibility to make defence equal or superior to offence.

HP is generally worthless when you have an easy source of regeneration. This is because the usefulness of extra HP is only when you get below the extra HP. This means if you have 100 HP and add 20, the 20 is useless unless you get below 20/120 HP. You would never allow yourself to drop that low, so you never hit the required threshold. Requiring to pay to regenerate that extra HP makes it even worse. Compared to defense, you end up paying more because you lose more HP for the same number of attacks. So yes, they got it wrong here in my opinion.

With the choice of HP | Attack | Defence

HP - This will (usually) only benefit you if one of two conditions are true. 1) You're being hit so hard that you'd die before being able to heal, or 2) Regeneration or healing items/skills are percentile based. Most games, stacking HP isn't important unless you fight gimmick/special fights that normally alpha strike you. MMO's are a different story

Defence - Generally, stacking defence only helps if you can control which target the enemies are assaulting. So unless you have that kind of control, the trade off isn't worth it. As with HP, an exception would be where one attack round can kill you

Attack - In most games, this is what you want to bump up. Not only does it shorten fights (which means less enemy rounds and less healing), it's the only way to ensure that one has enough throughput to defeat the enemy.

-- About Septerra Coree, your assessment is spot on. I played it and HP regeneration is an absolute dog. Trying to dish as much damage as possible was simply the way to go.

If this game is a multi-player game then I would rate the following:
* More HP = better survivability against critical hits and other bursts of damage
* More Defense = best to conserve mana of healers in order to minimize overall downtime
* More Attack = as you say a good offense is the best defense

I wouldn't say that the design is flawed... it sounds like they've boiled the customizability to its core essence. Rather, what you're experiencing may suggest that balance is off but it's hard to say without playing the game and experiencing both solo and party play.

If you're soloing then #3 is almost always the best option.

it's a solo adventure / rpg games. FF7 wanna be. what necrea said is spot on, maybe because s/he played it before. i forgot to add that you control 3 character, and you didn't know which will be attacked - so defense it pretty flawed too.

you have normal defence item, defence against ghoul item, defense against poison item. but the thing is, you don't know who will be attacked. i once got defense against poison item and defense against ghoul item. but since you don't know who will be attacked, and some enemy cast poison on all three instantly, i prefer to focus on the attack.

so i guess both increase hp item and defense item is pretty flawed. they give you one slot so that you can have customization. but it seems attack item is the only useful there.

If the only favorable outcome for a fight is the death of your enemy, then you're right. Being able to hold out a little longer, at the expense of needing to hit the enemy a little longer to kill him, would serve only to extend the fight, without influencing the outcome. That's going to be the same for either defense or HP items, with the added problem of restoring HP in your example. Attack items will influence the same continuum, but it'll bring the fight to a close more quickly, saving time without seriously impacting the outcome.

So a guy with 50HP and 10 attack, fighting a guy with 100HP and 5 attack, will be on basically even footing, since they both need ten successful hits to kill their adversary. The HP guy will suffer between fights, since his HP has to be restored by twice as much, costing him more. Armor guy, with 50HP, 5 attack and a 50% reduction in damage received, will find himself on even footing with Attack guy in terms of combat performance and health restoration cost, but his fights will take twice as long.

The way this can be corrected is by deepening the combat system, either via mechanics or victory conditions. If you have to get through a burning building that damages you over time and ignores your armor, the HP guy will have the endurance to complete the task where the others will fail. Special effects, fights that must be won by defending, situations in which an enemy cannot be killed, but you have to fight for a certain amount of time while the rest of your team escapes the area, etc.