I just finished all of the main content except the crucible (more on that) and a good bit of the end game content. I’ve put a few dozen hours into the run, enough that I feel like I’m in a place to finally give some of my own feedback about the game. I’ll go into more detail on some specific aspects of the game, but as a general overview I really like where the game is. I think that all of the recent changes have all been for the better and I think it is setting a very strong bedrock for a great game in the future. I am not sure how much more I will be able to regularly keep up with the game in the coming months, so this is my one attempt to contribute what I can for the game before going hands off and coming back later. I know I am just one small voice in a sea of thousands, but I am engaging with this thoughtfully and hopefully that gives my voice a little more weight. I wanted to just give a big dump because I normally don’t contribute to forums and am not very consistent or active in them to regularly put out multiple posts. As such, in no particular order, here are some of my thoughts.
Resources:
I very much like the changes that have been made. The extra focus is a wonderful incentive and the on hit timing adds just the needed level of engagement. I do, however, still have one big issue, and that is the late game utility of most resources. In many games this is not an issue, late game materials replaces early game materials, and you are none of the worst for it. The issue is, this game is built around revisiting old areas regularly. As I am wandering these old areas, I have a distinct disincentive to gather these resources because I have no need for them. I know this because I already have a stack of 200 in my chest. This is especially the case with food ingredients, though crafting materials is this way as well. You need some copper, spruce and such for upgrades, but how often are we really upgrading? Still not enough to justify regularly gathering all resources around us. Please add more reasons to use resources. I will leave you with the ideas for what that could be, but right now it feels lacking.
Food:
This takes me to a related topic food. For the most part I love the way it is managed. Especially with the heal spell, one can use food as much more a buff potion as much as a healing item. However, I don’t inherently see why a trout should be an inferior type of fish compared to a sea bass. Especially in the food department, it makes no sense why some items just become obsolete. Please add more types of food that require a greater variety of ingredients, some from all over the map. This way, I do not have to feel like after each new progression the old herb is just pointless.
Weapon Progression:
For the most part I really like the way that it is done within the game. It is a bold but refreshing twist to have different enchantment levels that are not necessarily better or worse than others. It opens up a large domain of flexibility, where many different possibilities could be correct. For my own part I actually to think there is a little bit of choice paralysis, where I am still afraid that the choice I make will result in being not worth my while. While some mechanisms are already there, I think a really good thing to do would be to make it as easy as possible to try different possibilities. What I mean is, I am rather frightened if I have only one copy of a weapon, because I do not want to lose that weapon and screw it up. On the other hand, if I could obtain multiples with relative simplicity, I would be much more eager to experiment by starting to add runes or gems. While you can already craft some weapons, I think it would be cool to have a system that allows you to craft almost any weapon given a certain amount of time. Perhaps you must sacrifice five of the weapons first before you get the recipe, or you are left to chance in the shop, but that could be very nice. The ability to craft runes would also be very nice. Ultimately though I think this is one of the strongest aspects of the game. I am a little worried about how progression will feel in later game than what is out now though, because it does feel like maxing out a weapon is relatively easy as long as you put your mind to it, and what would you do then?
Practice Range:
This is a small thing, but I hate not knowing what runes do and I can only try out so many weapons in Sacrament before I run out of focus. If you could create a place where the focus cost wasn’t an issue for us to try out weapons and runes that would be awesome.
The Pestilence:
The end game idea is really good, I liked it even when I was just reading about it. I did not realize however that the plague could theoretically take over the whole map. It adds a new aspect of daily rhythm/quest type of set up, however it clashes very harshly with the daily/weekly items that already exist. The fact that I can’t do a bounty until I clear the pestilence is a pain, especially when there are four bounties in four areas all with a pestilence on top. You need to set up systems to ensure that these things do not stack, otherwise bounties will become irrelevant. I would recommend restricting the pestilence to only two or three places at a time, then ensuring that daily bounties cannot spawn in infected areas. This would also be nice because, while the cleansing is a fun activity with satisfying rewards, it can be rather tedious to do that more than two or three times in a row. The ability to cleanse in the crucible is a good idea, but I was surprised when I saw that it cleanses the whole world. I guess it makes sense because there is no limit to the pestilence spread, but the issue is rarely that I want no pestilence at all, just not in a certain area. As such changing that ability could also work well with the limited pestilence spread. Also, I realize this has likely already been considered, but adding more unique drops from the final bosses would be nice because as of now I have not been getting anything from the bosses. I’ve defeated around 7, not the highest number but also not an insignificant number either. I’m sure that is in the works, but please add it because otherwise killing the bosses just feels rather anticlimactic.
Story/Theme:
This is actually the one I care most about actually. Y’all have built a great reputation for wonderful story telling through the Ori games and you have set yourselves up well for doing the same here, but a few things that I think are crucial. First, thus far you have set up a pretty consistent pattern of introduce character, infect them with plague, turn them to boss fight. Just off the top of my head you had the Riven Twins, Lara, the Risen leader and the old guy at the temple. Each one of those we either have direct interaction with or else read or hear about before then finding out they are infected and fighting them. It is a fine trope and one rather essential to a game centered around a growing corruption, but it needs to be less obvious. The main issue is you only introduce the characters soon before you corrupt them. Each character is corrupted the same story quest we meet them in. Too many of those types of bosses and the surprise of corruption will begin to lose its weight.
Second, are there different types of corruption? I have become pretty confused with this, because some corrupt enemies are drastically different from others in atmosphere and tone. Is there an in-story reason for this? Does the corruption change its nature depending on what it infects? That would be really cool, but as of now I see no pattern. This would be very nice because to my third point, the individual factions are beginning to carry less and less weight. Especially once the pestilence is released, I basically understand two modes, pestilence, or no pestilence. Because I don’t think there has been a single main boss that was not corrupted, it very much feels like I’m just fighting the pestilence with some other factions sometimes being and inconvenience. Especially because of the drastically different tones of corrupt characters, I have a hard time even knowing if a character is supposed to be corrupted or not. I know this game wants to carry an element of immersive world building and story telling through atmosphere, but this is a very important detail that needs to be tackled if that goal is to be reached.
The Crucible:
I hate the crucible with a burning passion. It is the only thing that I haven’t finished with the game, it is unpleasant enough that I am happy to forgo 100% the game in its current state in order to not play it and it is enough of a turn off for me to genuinely stop playing the entire game, as good as it is, if I need to play the crucible in order to progress further. I tried to like it, I really did. I played enough to max out the vendor and I’ve tried on the boss many times. There are a few reasons why this system simply does not work too well. First, the boss is so much harder than everything that comes before it. The first nine rooms are easy every time (assuming I don’t fall off the ledge randomly) and it’s just tedious having to do go through them every time. It creates an atmosphere where every single echo decision is based on the final boss. Even with sometimes as high as 75% damage increase (maybe more, I’m not sure), killing the boss takes forever. It makes investing in armor, health or defense useless, because you always need more damage. Why would you skip rooms? There is no benefit to that, because the rooms are easy but you need the echoes. It is a combination of the boss is way too hard to fight, it takes way too much time and work to get to him to try again, it takes an incredible set of echoes to even be competitive against him and no matter how good of a set you get it always feels like an uphill battle. Ultimately there are two types of roguelikes, the short term and the long term. The long term creates a massive, super difficult boss that takes the entire game to complete. The short term, more of a rogue-lite, has lots of smaller, easier bosses. They still present challenges, but none so hard that you can’t defeat it after a few tries. The first rewards you for just trying, because you are going to be trying a lot. The second rewards you for finishing, because that should be the goal round one and will likely happen with just a few tries. This game needs to make up its mind about which one it wants to be. The first nine rooms are a traditional rogue-lite, with little to no reward, but the boss is a painful, tedious boss that requires a ton of grind to defeat. Yet this pain feels all for naught, because there isn’t a single reward for trying.
The vendor is really great, but he does not serve as an incentive to play the crucible, because getting to him is a piece of cake. The difficulty does not lie in getting to him and as such he is completely removed from where the actual pain lies. Maybe I’m just bad, but I’m not completely out of touch from playing games either. I would bet I’m a pretty good representation of the average player, so I have a feeling this is going to be a turnoff for a lot of other people as well.
I know this feedback is really long, but I also tried not to ramble. Hopefully it all gets read. Overall, it’s a really good game. I can’t wait to see what the finished product is. I would also love people's thoughts on any of these topics!