Hallo! My name is Evelynn, and I’ve just poured 20 hours into the game. I did not exhaust every piece of available content, so keep that in mind.
The content I have not done consists of: Reaching and beating Echo Knight, maxing out the city upgrades, reaching level 30 and fully exploring every possible crevice; aside from that, however, I believe I’ve done most everything available.
Now, to preface, I play a lotta Soulsian games. I’ve touched titles as vaguely Soulsian as Valheim, to as inspired as Nioh 2. Below, I will list some of my favorite Soulsian games to give you, the reader, insight into my preference of design and style in this genre!
Nioh 2, Dark Souls 2 (I prefer vanilla but love both), Elden Ring, Salt and Sanctuary (and Salt and Sacrifice by proxy), Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen and now No Rest For The Wicked! These are all pretty big/well known titles, but not all I’ve played. I’ve played every From Software Soulsian game, excluding Demons Souls, as well as a myriad of others; some good, some bad.
Now that you, hopefully, understand the kind of Soulsian games I enjoy, let’s get into the meat of my ideas, concepts, suggestions and general feedback.
These are all stated from my opinion/perspective; so take them with a grain of salt. I do not believe anything I feel or think is objective, and understand I have… uncommon tastes!
I’d like to begin by stating that I love the pacing and “heft” of the combat. The poise feels just right, and the overall weight of attacks, especially when you can take hits and keep swinging, is incredibly well done. Please, keep that theme! Feeling like I really am swinging a claymore when I swing a claymore is great, because you wouldn’t just stop swinging because you got hit by an arrow or a dagger. That’s a lotta force in your swing. Additionally, the fact you can poise through attacks and stagger enemies with bigger weapons, while they are attacking, feels incredible. Hyperarmor can be a very valuable tool, and I wouldn’t be against its implementation here, but I do feel that if it appears, it should be very limited for player and AI alike. Hyperarmor can really water down the aforementioned feeling and make things feel too “unbeatable”, in a sense that you cannot choose to play a brute force tank.
Speaking of brute force tank, I wanted to say that I absolutely adore the fact you allow for build variety that allows anything from pure dodging to standing completely still and swinging! Offering variety with associated drawbacks and upsides is perfect in this genre, and an oftentimes difficult point to do well - which you did!
Your implementation of the shoulder bash move when heavy weight was very creative and fun.
I want to suggest a few things relating to weapon mechanics specifically.
Allow players to wield weapons in both hands, rather than only specified offhand equipment such as a torch or shield.
Allow one handing of two handed weapons (at some sort of detriment).
Allow dedicated left handed wielding (this is just a fun little thing that Dark Souls 2 did, that I think is very nice for those wanting to make their Cerim left handed from an RP perspective).
Perhaps consider, if you allow 1/2 handed wielding, alternative movesets for 1/2 respectively?
Let’s get the elephant in the room outta the way. The arbitrary timers on upgrades. I think they’re… a bad idea*.
Why the asterisk? In the current implementation, they are nothing more than a discouraging nuisance that feel very tiring to wait out, especially give the game’s highly limited content - meaning waiting 4 hours for a big upgrade, by the time you can even make it, is more or less… unideal. For example, by the time I got around to upgrading the Enchantress to 3, I had finished the game and been farming Crucible for an hour and a half or so; ground from level 17 to 22.
What’s this asterisk even mean? Well, here’s where I believe the game can get so much better with that specific mechanic - it involves coop. We all know that Soulsian games and coop are very fun when mashed together (usually), but unfortunately, some games don’t incentivize cooping for one reason or another. Whether it’s the fact there’s an upper limit to rewards, or the fact that people aren’t interested in the covenants, rewards, drops, whatever.
What am I suggesting? Coop cuts time off crafting and upgrades if you, as a cooperator, are successful your timer(s) are reduced by an amount that scales off the difficulty, your contribution and overall performance. This would encourage people to coop as much as they can during the grind moving forward, allow you to extend the periods of grinding between major steps forward in the world, whilst also discouraging people who want to put in minimal effort for maximum rewards - what I mean is that to get actual progress toward your timer(s), you’d have to put in the time and effort. The more you put in, and the more you actually help the host, the more you get out of it in your own world.
On the topic of coop, are you familiar with Salt and Sacrifice? While it’s… an alright game, that steps away from the core of Salt and Sanctuary (that makes it so amazing), it has a very interesting mechanic and grinding loop. Bosses have themed equipment, and these bosses can be hunted on the various stages even after clearing them (this would even further vary and incentivize the reason to go back to old areas). You, as a cooperator, can join others for the sole intent of hunting/farming these bosses for their material drops to make their related gear. The motivator to coop is to farm various things; perhaps some kind of temporary visitor that fulfils a mutually helping role would be interesting? That way players are coming for more than to kill stuff and reduce timers; this is where you toy with an iteration of a covenant, a group, some kind of kinship that offers coop/pvp exclusive rewards. This is a rough idea and a finger point in the direction of a game that created a grind loop that explicitly involved coop, although, did develop a strong sense of repetition and monotony (due to the simplicity of the bosses in that game).
For old areas, perhaps offer a choice when a player goes to create a new realm (for the sake of farming/grinding). Linear or randomized. I understand the immense challenge of constructing a randomization method, but it’d even further incentivize farming if the realms made for that intention are mixed up (based on your progress), so you aren’t just doing the same monotonous climb through the game (with the knowledge of what to do/where to go). I don’t personally feel that replaying the game on a fresh world with a geared character is very grindy, when that replay involves explicitly partaking in story content. I view grinding/farming more so as redoing non-story content, quests, bounties, dailies, etc; something that is not reliant on fixed story content and has room for variance beyond that of which you (the player) have already encountered.
A “boss gauntlet” would be nice. Similar to Sekiro’s implementation, or the high stages of Nioh 2’s Underworld (where it’s just boss after boss after boss).
If you want some awesome ideas for the development of the Crucible, which I think could be an incredible piece of content, I strongly implore you to gloss over Nioh 2’s New Game+ additions and the Underworld and how that functions! It’s an amazing endgame grind system that I feel has some things that really do shake things up.
The ability to track and untrack quests would be nice, so you don’t have to explicitly hover over a marker and check if it is related to your currently active quest (as in, what you’re doing). Also, so that a person can comfortably ignore a quest if they want to.
Please, please, PLEASE add more to the NPCs. What do I mean? More dialog, reactions to your acts (for example, compliments from the Enchantress if a person rolls some nice stats, or an expression of gratitude following big purchases/sales - things that show some level of additional life from them.) They don’t need to be grand or extensive, but even a variance/randomness (and actual logic) to voicelines/interactions can go an astoundingly far way in making the world, and its inhabitants, feel more alive.
The ability to move vendors might be nice, for the sake of utilizing more of the city (if a player cares for more than a central trading location). I, for example, would love to run across the city to visit different people. It gives me a really nice reason to trek across the beauty that is Sacrament and enjoy the wonderful design of it all. Currently, most of the city feels uninviting unless I want to explore for secrets. Many areas go unvisited as a result, which is a shame!
Unless I missed it, some sort of training dummy or testing dummy for weapons, skills and combos would be nice.
On the topic of skills, descriptions of the runes and what each does would be incredible!
The ability to remove a rune (without destroying the weapon) for a cost would be nice. Not to keep the rune, but to open a slot. For example, being able to remove Heat Enhancement off a sword that I wanna replace that skill on without losing the sword, would be very nice and allow people to hang onto gear they like or want for even longer while they hunt something “more perfect”, it’d also fit with the respecc addition for changing playstyle or build.
More impact from stat levels would be nice. Tie something unique to each one beyond their associated scaling/requirements, or give them all some sort of varied benefit. Nioh 2, for example, has each stat give more than just scaling to an associated weapon!
A way to plant and farm plants/vegetables/roots would be nice! Just so one can have a slow but consistent source of a specific organic material! It’d also give a person reason to visit an area like the farm of the city!
A skill tree, to lean into the RPG side of things, would be amazing, but is also contradictory to the Soulsian leveling method. Though, I do feel it can be done… as it is in Nioh 2 (a name I need to stop saying).
A Crucible type mode that’s comparable to… a gladiator arena, with configurable settings. Maybe a few varied maps; from a flat round room to a parkour heavy ravine stage. The settings would allow the choice of enemy type, faction, level range, number, even bosses with respawn options. This would allow people like me who just enjoy the combat to, well, fight without any real reward. I’d absolutely fight hordes of enemies just for fun. It’d also let you practice specific bosses or enemies that you find troublesome!
For bounties, perhaps allow the hiring of city guards as NPCs to accompany you? Or, perhaps, specific bounties come with allies, such as the first Darak fight where guards are there (but don’t respawn after the first encounter), or the prologue, where you have allies with you on the boat for a brief time.
Now, here’s some rapid fire ideas, simple concepts, that I feel are very self explanatory:
Transmog for gear!
More consumables! (The ones ingame are cool and fun!)
More item rarity!
Hide hud option!
Photo mode!
Full damage type conversions for weapons!
Map filter that shows resources in some way (nearby or far away)!
An art book (eventually)!
This is a lot of words, some of which may seem insane to read as suggestions. I really hope you don’t view this in a negative way, and at least come to consider a few ideas, even as soft inspirations. I really loved my time playing this game, and am extremely eager to watch it grow. I genuinely hope to see it succeed and change in a positive manner. I will note, there are various pieces of the game I really dislike, but that’s why I love it so much. It’s not perfect, even though unfinished, and has many things to appreciate, and things to not appreciate. It feels like a strong experience to encounter parts I do and don’t like for personal reasons. I much prefer to dislike a design choice due to liking different implementations than feeling it’s poorly designed. I don’t really feel anything in this game is poorly designed without reason except the time gate for upgrades (and smelting), but I also feel that can be a wonderful part of the game with the specific suggestion related to it.
Overall, I want to say that I found your game to be amazing creative and unique amidst a genre that’s seeing immense oversaturation as an attempt at piggy backing off the success of the more grand titles. I don’t want you to view my constant mentioning of Nioh 2 as a comparison; they’re nothing alike. I simply believe in taking concepts from other games and reviewing them for inspiration. I think it’s awesome to toy with ideas and alter them, just as you’ve done here with this fascinating interpretation of a Soulsian mixed with ARPG elements and platforming.
Genuinely, incredible job. Whether you listen to a word of this or not doesn’t matter, because I have faith in you and, as I said, I look forward to where this game goes.
Thank you, developers, for this bold attempt and please, please, please, keep to your vision. Crafting something others like is fine, but at the end of it all, it is your creation, do with it what you want. Be proud, be firm and keep being amazing. <3
