Figured I’d give my feedback as I’ve reached the point of ‘quitting’ for a while and the game’s framework certainly deserves some serious feedback that I’ve felt the same way about for at least 30hours.
ART direction 9 / 10
It strikes all the right chords. I absolutely adored Ori series, which is why I got excited when I heard this team was making another game. It’d be 10 / 10 if there was more variation in type of environment, but staying in theme is also worth a lot.
Combat 7 / 10
Mostly has to do with weapons as I’m taking into account that you’ll balance a lot of things over the next few months and years. The reason this scores low is because weapons simply don’t have any ‘real animations’ yet. It makes testing these weapons and doing combat a lot less fun and weapons that can be bought at the blacksmith should have all their combat mechanics ready, or not have been added, yet.
Yellow weapons text stuff doesn’t work yet. Big oversight. Painful enough to make me put down the game until it’s fixed.
But the combat is also very good. The hits, feel good, getting focus, good! Backstabbing is good! Lots to love, but the oversights need to be (hot)fixed, so people have a reason to play.
Systems and completeness 3/10
Why am I being such a negative nancy? Why not be more of an optimistic Olivia? Well here goes…
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Realms will ruin your game.
Shops should be exciting, right? Finley showing up every Saturday, the general items shop spawns exotic items daily at level 3, I love it! having realms means optimal play would be to make 50 realms, farm 50x finley + level 3 shop and check my realms on the daily to get some juicy items. This should not be the case. -
Alts and respec
I’m currently working on my second alt. I’ve leveled these alts by showering them with XP pots until level 21. I have farmed the crucible a lot and feel the XP potions should be a far more regular drop if you’re not going to allow a respec.
I wanted to see how the best rolled weapons would work out, only to find out ‘The Last Word’ has no charged attack yet, so cannot be ‘tested’. I leveled an alt, put 42 stats into faith to get rewarded with a half-assed job. Tough pill to swallow I tell you. Then I noticed there’s a faith item available at the blacksmith. Bought 15, enchanted them, took the best one out and found out this doesn’t have any mechanics at all yet. What the funk? I would not have prioritized the same way you have. It feels like a huge oversight and as if your devs forgot to really play the lategame extensively enough to figure this out.
- The 4 copper items
Looting should feel good, right? There are places in the crucible where the item you find is always something crappy like 4 copper. Sometimes these jumps put your life in jeopardy and when you find out it’s for 4 copper, you realize you’ve risked a lot for something that made you feel bad, but even if it’s a simple walk, Looting 4 copper in the late stages of the game should not be possible, because it always feels bad. Crucible should feel like value.
The Campaign
Felt great, but very short. The boss fights could’ve used some more variation in attack types, the voice acting was great. Animations were fantastic. Loved the campaign, but felt like I was 15% through the story when my game was over and I hope to play the remaining 85%.
Closing thoughts
I watch Youtube a lot. I follow Gingerprime for his news coverage of your devs and try to find other interesting tidbits whenever I find myself thinking of NRFTW. Gingerprime has shown many promises have been made and you want to add lots of systems which shows. The game shows a lot of promise, but is undercooked. I know you’ve now become aware of certain issues, but you’re losing your playerbase and getting rated negatively by issues that really deserved one of the hotfixes.
Right now it feels like you’ve tried building many lategame systems to keep players engaged, but then managed to work them out too poorly to keep your playerbase engaged for more than this old grinder managed to stick around for.
Hope the feedback helps.
