I quit playing after a dozen hours or so.
I returned and sunk another 40 hours in because a friend told me “the game doesn’t really get started until you get a house”. They were right.
Luckily I was on the cusp of being able to buy a house, so I didn’t have to put in much more in to “get started”. Since that point, I’ve mostly enjoyed the game.
However, just because those of us who bought day 1 are well beyond these issues, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t forget how absolutely awful they were;
-
Durability goes from being fear invoking and aggravating to being an after-thought.
-
Heal items, a tedium of collecting and backtracking, to becoming something you buy from Gordon for 30 silver without a second thought.
-
The inventory, a hell puzzle of prioritizing what to keep and what to destroy (before you have any clue what items craft what), to having an armory of medium chests.
I’ll come back around to these issues however, as there are bigger, more persistent issues.
First and foremost, the final boss:
The (A) button.
This button runs, jumps, climbs, traverses, and dodges. In other words, this button is why you’ve died 100 times.
I shouldn’t be fighting with the controls more than I am enemies. If you don’t believe the (A) button is the true final boss, one needs look no further than the crucible.
So much of the crucible is simply about not falling to your death; enemies placed on small platforms, jumping across a broken bridge, etc. Two shield bros and a big guy don’t make me nervous, crossing a bridge at a slightly odd angle with no enemies in sight is panic inducing.
I noticed that most stages of the crucible are designed in a manner that allows you to get the high ground, ideally baiting your enemies, jumping of the ledge, and coming smashing down.
In reality, the jump only seems to trigger about half the time, others, you just kind of run straight off the edge, others still, you flop around the edge back and forth because pebbles.
The (B) button is unused, and on M+KB dodge and sprint are separate. This is a no brainer. This is a big issue, but effectively, its a QoL issue that should be easily remedied.
Potentially a larger issue, albeit on that doesn’t bother me too much atm, but carries massive implications going forward: attributes don’t feel meaningful
A standard exists to nearly every game with attribute points for a reason: beyond damage strength increases load, dex - speed, int - magic resource.
The only games I’ve seen with a system like No Rest, with scaling entirely built into the weapons, are rogue-likes.
In rogue-likes this system makes sense, they are super streamlined. Each run is a one and done, without deep consideration to future runs. In a game where you’re playing 50+ hours with the same toon? not so much.
I can’t help but feel our characters are ancillary to the weapons we choose, this seems very backwards. To further complicate matters, did I chose my build? Or did an early weapon drop decide for me? As I have no way of testing combos with various other weapons, I’m fairly certain this is actually the case.
A few have suggested adding basic classes, ala Dark Souls to the game, I like this idea.
Back to where I began: durability is a bad mechanic.
It is absolutely superfluous at higher levels and utterly crippling in the beginning. I understand the desire to punish death, but this isn’t the way.
Healing could be rethought
As it stands raw ingredients heal a small amount over time, and meals heal large amounts instantly. This makes early game torture and late game a joke. Simple solution: reverse it.
Raw ingredients heal a small amount instantly, enough to help out low level players in a crunch. Meals heal large amounts over time so you have to be mindful of attack patterns. Currently, meals are too much of a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
Inventory issues have been talked about to ad nauseam, so I wont rehash suggestions others have made. However, beyond inventory being needlessly painful as a pup, it’s just plain weird.
I slay a monster, drink its Ichor, and an old dude hands me a fanny pouch. Make it make sense. The most hilarious part is the dramatic animation when I drink the Ichor, as if I’m having some sort of internal transformation to… carry more items.