Hey there, I have almost 16-18 hours into the game already, and here’s my thoughts and concerns on it.
Combat feels amazing, bosses are fun (even if I feel like there’s really not enough at the moment, 4 I think?). Voice acting is phenomenal, and I wish we had more of the story to go through, there was so few, I really wanted to see more, but amazing start so far.
DURABILITY
I think Durability overall is fine as it is, except for tools. The idea of having the tool just disapear when it breaks feels simply frustrating. There is nothing fun to bringing multiple pickaxes and axes to gather ores and wood in case the first one breaks, or if you simply forget to stop using it before it breaks (especially the silver ones). If anything, maybe make the tools a little harder to come buy or harder to craft, but just have it drop to 0/50 like any other item where you can just repair it. Honestly I feel like just having no durability on tools would just feel better.
FOOD
I dislike it. I get the appeal of making meals that also give you a buff for a duration, but maybe having it work a little bit more like flask like, you craft 1 mushroom soup, you get 10 uses of it, and you can only ever carry, let’s say, 3 different food. The way it is right now you can end up with multiple stacks of 20, and feel like you’ll never run out, and a few hours later its the complete opposite where you can’t find any, and ran out of materials to make more, will save the rant about materials when I get to the inventory point, but yeah, so many different ingredients, not enough room.
INVENTORY
I think it is the biggest concern at the moment, you need so many different materials for so many different things, but don’t really have the room for it. I did buy a house, and its basically an empty room with 8-10 medium chests in it, I’m trying REALLY hard to manually sort items into crafting materials, ugrade materials, etc, but it is VERY painful. Also, you can’t craft outside sacrament, one massive QOL of ‘‘what’s in your chests is in your pockets’’ when you’re IN TOWN would be the best feeling ever, walking down to the blacksmith to see what material I need to upgrade my weapon, running back into the house, search in all the chests if I have said materials, run back down to the blacksmith, get my ugprade done, go back into my house to deposit the excess that I withdrew, please, no, its tiring for no reason really. Campfire in outdoors area would still be a ‘‘quick stop to make food with whatever ingredients you have on yourself’’ which makes complete sense, but while you’re in sacrament, does it really matter? I don’t think so. Also, better ways to sort inventory, move things, ESPECIALLY IN YOUR CHESTS would be a big plus.
BOSSES
Not much to be said, they’re awesome, I just really hope there was more. I’m not a fan of the one in the crucible, simply because you have to go through those 5 or 6 rooms every time you die to get another attempt? I didn’t play much after beating this boss so I do not know if there are more bosses, if there are please correct me, but I feel like having only 4 bosses (yes its an early access, but still) isn’t fun. The open world exploration is amazing, but I felt a lack of challenging boss fights at the moment.
ITEMS
Not much to be said about common and enchanted. Cursed on the other hand, I love the idea, but getting a cursed item out of enchanting in town feels a little frustrating. I think cursed items really should just be something that you find out there fighting. Uniques (gold) items, correct me if I’m wrong but I feel like they only drop of bosses? I got the greatsword from the first boss 3 times, but haven’t seen a single unique from other bosses yet. I like the idea that bosses have a loot pool for uniques, but besides making a new realm and going for a boss run, the only realistic way to farm them is to load a backup after killing said boss over and over and over and over (which honestly I didn’t know until a few minutes ago). I don’t think its fun gameplay at all, and maybe having a way to spawn those bosses again later down in the story if we want to farm for specific uniques would be much better. Also finding a unique by just opening a chest or killing a random mob would be great (If it can happen, disregard this comment, I just never had it happen yet).
PERFORMANCE
I’ll make it short, I’m running this on a 4070, tried to do a resolution downscale, play on performance, and its really either stuttering and struggling at 30-35 fps in some fights or area, or going extremely smooth at 95-100fps in other parts of the game, it sucks, and I really hope we can see some changes soon, though you made it clear that you’re already on it, good job keep it up!
TARGETTING
I gave up on mouse and keyboard, seeing my mouse on my screen and feeling like its completely pointless that its there was just annoying me, I understand the autolock, but please give us an option to prioritise locking on the target closest to your mouse (or better ways to change target with controller). The amount of time that I missed my focus attack because instead of aiming at the person right in front of me it just decided to aim at the mage on the rock on the side instead and end up missing it was just painful.
BED
Can you even sleep in it to fast forward time at all or its just there for the mysterious rested bonus if you log out more than 4 hours? I honestly didn’t even notice a buff when I logged back in this morning and I logged off in a bed inside the inn.
ZONES, STORY, FINAL THOUGHTS
Honestly, maybe I was expecting too much, but I was hoping for more than 2 areas, they are beautiful, I had a blast exploring it, I’m a little irritating because there’s maybe 1 or two ladder that I still can’t find where to go to get there to kick em down, one of them in particular I’m seriously starting to feel like that area is just unreachable at the moment, but story is interesting, voice acting makes it a million times more interesting, I just want to see more of it, I know 1 more area is already confirmed after multiplayer, but I feel like if its only going to be 1 or 2 quest, 1 or 2 cutscene, 1 and MAYBE 2 bosses, its going to feel short. 90% of my playtime was really just running around exploring, falling to my death, rinse N repeat, the actual story feels like it can be done in less than 2 hours at the moment, its a REALLY GOOD 2 hours though, I just want to see more.
I really want this game to be the best it can be, it is very original, and I’m absolutely loving it. Great job so far.
Quick side note : FARMING CLAY IS AWFUL, feels like it just doesn’t exist at some point and you need to make a new realm to go see the junk vendor over and over again XD