Combat is just not.. good

Wicked Feedback
1

I started up playing 28.11.2024 for about 44 minutes, but at the moment i’m probably going to just refund the game.

At the moment my first impressions of the game, specifically combat just isn’t up to par with what i’ve come to expect from such a title. First impressions are everything to me. I’ll try to list my main concerns with the game:

Animation Backswing
When i swing my weapon, during the backswing my character is animation locked for far far too long. I cannot parry, i cannot shield, i cannot roll. This feels incredibly bad. The reason why is simple, players don’t enjoy being unable to control their character. It makes the gameplay feel sluggish and unresponsive, something that doesn’t belong in any action rpg. The game could do away with a large portion of this animation lock altogether and just be a better game.

Trust Factor and how it correlates to above ^
I want to stress that this is my main complaint with the game and why i’m refunding it on steam. For me it has to do with developer trust, a sort of “ok if developers can’t get this right what else can’t they get right” type of thing. There are developers where i would trust them to drive my car like Valve and FromSoft and then there are developers like Digital Extremes, where i wouldn’t let them anywhere near my car because they keep making content islands instead of enhancing game formula. Right now it’s in the latter. Build trust by getting the formula right. For me it’s like every fromsoft game just does combat effortlessly and everyone who attempts to copy it fails where the details matter. For me whatever trust Moon Studios built with Ori and Blind Forest, is now gone. Maybe that’s due to early access, but that’s the risk you took.

Stagger
-Stagger bar should be on the enemy. Plain simple,. I was confused what all the bars on my character stood for. Putting it on the enemy is so much more intuitive. Armored Core 6 understood the assigment, so please copy from it (it’s a 10/10 action combat game).

Poking
-I feel like combat is just me trying to poke enemy and cautiously restraining myself from landing more consecutive attacks. There was no rhyme or reason as to wether or not i could continue attacking enemies or not. As i always risked getting hit back by enemies suddenly gaining ““super armor”” and could no longer be hitstunned. I have no idea how these mechanics work, but it needs to be more intuitive. Just poking at enemies is no fun.

Swimming
-There being many enviromental secrets. is at odds with swimming as a mechanic. Whenever a game teaches you “there are secrets” in their game, the player will start to explore every corner of the map, but now you have chests that are out in the water. Ok now i will attempt to swim to death just in case, because i don’t want to miss any chests (FOMO is real). I sincerly hope you see problem here. Don’t put secrets in the water when swimming is finite. It will only lead to frustrating trial and error attempts at finding secrets. Games like fromsoft teach you early on that “ok in elden ring everything in the overworld is pointless and there are no secret weapons you will miss so you may carry on to your destination”. Here it’s the opposite. It somewhat begs the question if swimming is necessary for the overall game or if it needs to be finite.

What stats to level
-Giving me choices for levelups is pointless when i don’t know what kind of archetypes are available in the game. Can i play a wizard? Can i play a ranger? I don’t know, all i’ve seen is melee so far. The game gives me choices to select Dexterity, Intelligence, etc. When i no frame of reference. I also need to know how these archetypes play or if it’s worth me dumping my stats into them. It feels like the game could be trapping me into pointless stats. Nobody wants to be fooled. It’s like having a luck stat in a game and having it be the most useless stat possible.

Give me fodder please
-Enemies are actually too hard early. This is a note you need to take out of the souls series. Every starting enemy is literally a dummy target that gets stunlocked by a single hit. You can still throw your hardcore boss in there, but basic enemies are there so players can explore every inch of the combat sandbox before meeting real enemies. After being shipwrecked i must have chomped down on several meals from just regular enemies. Before i could even explore things like i-frames on roll, parry windows, etc.

To roll with it
-Add a subtle flash to roll animations if there invincibility frames. Because i don’t know if there are any. Making it intuitive is a big game changer. I distinctly remember playing Dark Souls 1 for the first time and somewhere near the end i saw someone else play the game and they abused roll for the i-frames. After that it was like i was playing an entirely different game. It shouldn’t be like that, just make it intuitive even if it’s “gamey” to add a flash.

Swim Bar
-Swimming bar should become red near the end. I didn’t even notice the swimming bar first time around and drowned. There’s a lack of visual or audio cues here maybe? The bar being concealed by the waterfall didn’t help. UI elements should be in front of everything and contrasted when around similar colors.

Immersion breaking
-The disproportional bodies conflicts with the tone of the game. I don’t mind the faces, but the bodies presented at the character selection. They look grotesque and have been taking to a disproportionate extreme that i find unappealing and comical. If the game’s intention is to have a serious gritty tone, then it is all undone by looking at my character with giant hands. I just can’t take it seriously. It should be reeled back towards more normal proportions. V Rising has similar body types, but it never went this extreme from what i remember.

Slider based character customization, no thanks
-Add some presets to character customization i can select from. I’m too lazy to customize, but i don’t want un-customized either. Nothing is more snoozey than character customizer with sliders, i want to yawn. The best character creator is in dragons dogma 1 and 2, take notes. DD only has presets, no sliders, so choices feel more meaningful and you instantly see the changes when selecting from different brow, eye presets. When they dare release a character creator on it’s own before the game even releases, i think that really speaks volumes.

That’s it. I don’t really have any other gripes with the game. Again my main concern is the animation backswing lock. It really just needs to go… No fromsoft title i know of even has this level of egregious “slow but deliberate action” combat. Other then that i don’t conciously think about sound, visuals too much, but if gameplay ain’t right i’m just putting the controller down.

Steam Reviews
The steam reviews are quite negative on timer based stuff and grinding materials. I’m not into that, so that just kind of reinforces my thoughts on refunding the game. These voices need to be taken seriously. I honestly don’t know if i’ll pick up the game again. It relates to trust factor that i spoke about. At the moment my thoughts are kind of “devs are clueless about combat” if they can’t fix something as simple as animation lockdown on backswing, it just feels horrible and it’s so plain to see…

I was looking for a game to fill the void before PoE2’s release, but i’ll probably just end up playing Grim Dawn or finish Elden Ring DLC instead. I thought i’d at least give the game some fair feedback and not drop a negative review too early.

Background reference:
Just so you don’t dismiss me as someone of “not the target audience”. I’ve got maybe a thousand hours on Dark Souls 1, played all fromsoft games and completed them. Dropped 2.5k hours into Path of Exile. Action RPGs are right up my alley.

Hope that helps.

2

You played all the souls game and this combat was too hard for you? Really? 1k hours in DS 1 and this game broke you in 44 minutes because the inicial enemies were too tough?

You cant even swim on DS, i dont see the problem here, i died too the first time i went for a swim and then i scratch my head and saw it consumed stamina, havent died since them, explore at your own risk.

The bodies being disproporsional are there because this is a soulslike combat game in isometric view, you would be complaining about the lack of those big arms for you to view the movement and swings of your enemy to parry, block or dodge if they werent this way.

The dodge is fine too, you need handholding to tell when to dodge? Do you need a flashy flash to tell you when to parry too? Dont you have thousands of hours on souls game?

Devs said they will add a skilltree, so we will have builds eventually, you can play a wizard, the builds are around the weapons, so a warrior must have higher STR to use those bigger weapons, you know like DS.

You didnt stun a single enemy? They do have a stagger bar, some have hyperarmor, usually the big ones with treetrunks as weapons, those wont flinch after being hit, so, as in every souls game, know your enemy, his moveset and weakness.

As for steam reviews, they are from a bunch of people who thought the game was Diablo, got their asses handed to them by the soulslike combat and didnt expect the EA to be EA, so bugs happen in EA, shit gets delayed in EA, and no, the game wont be released in 2 months after going to EA.

1 Like
3

I disagree on the premise that animation locking is bad, but I come from a background in monster hunter where most animations lock you in significantly longer than in any dark souls game.

4

Well the game is far from finished so there is that. But I think the game handles just fine myself and I’ve played all the games you have mentioned. I’m thinking this just isn’t the game for you.

1 Like
5

Of course that could be the case. Develop the game for an audience, if a majority of people are fine with it, then stick with it. Personally i think the animation lock is too much. Like someone else mentioned it’s similar to Monster Hunter and that game didn’t strike well with me for the same reason. MH does have more emphasis on charging up attacks. Maybe people who come from a MH background enjoy it more?

6

You played all the souls game and this combat was too hard for you? Really? 1k hours in DS 1 and this game broke you in 44 minutes because the inicial enemies were too tough?

Please read properly before commenting, you’re just creating a strawman. Easier enemies allow players to experiment and work out the mechanics of the game in stress free enviroment. It’s common thing that most games do. All fromsoft games do it, if you want to use that as an example… This game just puts you straight to normal enemies. How are players supposed to learn the parry window when they get punished for trying?

The result is players forming poor habits that hinder their progression long term by sticking to one default strategy that “works”. Like lets say just rolling roll and using melee and ignoring parry even if it’s the optimal choice in certain situations.

There was a recent game i played where you could even practise parrying against an NPC. Not sure if it was Wukong or Sekiro, but that was a smart choice.

I’m not going to respond to the rest as you’re being condescending.

7

Parry windows always vary from enemy to enemy, thats the norm, some attack faster, others slower and with the delay that makes you wanna break the keyboard, thats true in this game too.
So you might wanna try DS again, because the zombie hollow enemies at the start will have slower attacks, you will have to learn the movesets of a black knight for instance, learning to parry all over again.
Sekiro is a poor example, since fromsoft changed the whole mechanic for that game, and i still think this game has great combat, all thats is left to do is some balance adjusments so people dont spam runes all the time.

2 Likes