Art/Graphics:
Basically perfect. Optimization issues are annoying but when the game is maxed out it is one of the most gorgeous I have ever seen.
Storage:
Storage is very tedious. I like the community chest idea for sharing resources and I think that should be expanded upon but there’s many issues that come up with personal storage and how chests communicate with the rest of the game.
I think that at least for world resources, there should be no inventory limit. You should be able to have every single resource in your inventory at the same time. It’s not fun or engaging to have to go to Sacrament and filling your chests with resources so you can go farm more. Also, NPCs should be able to access chest inventories. There’s no way to easily find resources in chests and it would make everything easier if NPCs could just read resources from your chests for crafting stuff!
Resource Farming:
Resource farming is probably the gameplay system that needs the most work right now. The act of acquiring resources is very tedious. I like the idea of having to go around to places you haven’t been to get resources which puts you into new encounters and all that jazz but when you actually get to resources and start farming them it’s extremely dull. I can’t say what exactly could help, I’ll leave that to the devs, but it definitely needs work.
Attributes:
I think stat requirements are a bit egregious for most items. If that’s how they want to go that’s fine but when you also have no respec system it doesn’t really work. There needs to be a respec that you can unlock relatively early on because without it you’re missing out on much gameplay. It especially hurts on the first playthrough because you have no idea what you want and you can easily mess up your stats.
Combat:
1v1 combat feels very good, especially with bosses. I like that they can track you well throughout combos and it makes dodging more engaging. I don’t like, however, the lack of ranged options. It’s disappointingly easy to just run away from bosses and heal up and I don’t think it encourages players to get better very well. I know this game takes inspiration from monster hunter and souls games and in those games the bosses all have ranged options or easy ways to catchup to you if you attempt to run. It’s a little bit more lenient in monster hunter but of course that game is a lot more open with its bosses.
Groups of enemies feel alright, nothing much to say besides it feeling like there’s a bit of a lack of room for openings especially as you go to 4+ enemies.
Lastly, the parry. I think parries can be a very good tool for games like this but the way it’s implemented currently completely kills the flow of combat. A successful parry on a boss completely stuns it, and parries work on the majority of enemy attacks. If you get the timing down you can effectively stunlock bosses which I think is ridiculously powerful for a game like this and should not be an option at all. Seeing as we have a poise system and you can see the bar, I would appreciate a parry system like Sekiro’s much more. You can parry and not take damage but instead of stunning the enemy they build up poise and continue there combo.
Also a little note about stamina, I think the base stamina level is a little too low and it can make early combat a bit tedious. Besides that it’s fine imo.
NPC Mechanics:
I think building timers are fine to an extent, I think they should be toned down a bit to only like an hour two max. Also I haven’t tested but just in case they don’t count when you’re offline, I think that is horrible. If not though no issues.
Also I know for some NPCs there quests aren’t pointed out and I think there should be a bit more to guide players to NPCs in case they miss them. I enjoy the souls like aspect of being able to miss quests and I think it creates more unique experiences for everyone, but NPCs are a vital part of the game that you shouldn’t be able to miss on accident.
Durability:
I don’t see any reason for this to be in the game. This isn’t a game like BoTW where you’re constantly finding and replacing new weapons. In this game you’re finding lots of weapons but it’s for the sake of heavy build variety, and weapons don’t have fixed spawns like in BoTW so you can get back weapons again and build up a stockpile of weapons you go back to over time.
Durability just adds tedium to this game. I think if the devs are adamant on there being durability it should be all out (i.e. no repairs and your weapon disappears once durability reaches zero) or no durability at all. I think it should be no durability at all though because this game also has weapon upgrades, enchanting, and runes and it would be aggravating to lose a weapon after building it.
End:
That’s all I got for this post. Game is still very fun and it did only just launch in EA so I’m excited to see how this goes and I hope the devs are responsive to player feedback!