I really, really enjoy this game. I am having an absolute blast with the combat and have played it pretty much not stop since release despite some pretty heavy performance issues on day 1 (which I soon fixed by rolling back my drivers). But that being said, there are many areas that I do not think are working right now and could be improved.
After 40 hours of gameplay, I (to my knowledge) have completed every part of the game that is currently available multiple times, aside from fully upgrading Sacrament. I thought I’d offer some detailed feedback on what I think works well and some grievances I have with the game.
The difficulty, enemies and bosses - As a veteran of the Souls genre, having played every modern FromSoft game with over 1,000 hours clocked up through all the games, I was very happy with the difficulty of this game, it is in a good spot at the moment. Standard enemies can be quite punishing if you make mistakes, but not to a point of feeling unfair, and most attacks are well-telegraphed and predictable. Non-endgame bosses at the moment feel a little too easy, particularly The Riven Twins, I feel that these bosses could benefit from an HP buff of some kind. I was very happy with the difficulty (and the fight in general) of the Echo Knight, this guy kicked my ass many, many times and was extremely satisfying when I finally beat him. I had a couple of issues with the first phase. 1 being the size of the AOE fire did not seem to match the hitbox (which was patched in a hotfix thank you Moon) and the charge attack hitbox can be quite unfair. If you get caught in the charge it is very possible to die in 1 hit from full HP, this happened on my first attempt right at the start of the fight and on quite a few subsequent attempts. Overall, I am quite happy with the difficulty, please don’t make the game easier!
The combat:
General thoughts - I enjoyed the combat of the game quite a bit, attacks feel weighty, have impact and can be very visceral. I have heard some people complain about being locked into animations, but this is why I love souls-like combat. Moment-to-moment decisions matter, a lot, attack when you should have rolled and you will be punished, heal when the enemy is attacking and you will be punished. Being able to cancel an attack animation by spam rolling or being able to cancel a heal will encourage the player to spam and not really think about which action they should do next.
Stamina - Initially on day 1 I had some issues with stamina. I felt like I did not have enough stamina to account for the length of enemy attack combos, and thus stamina was my main focus whilst levelling up. After the stamina balance update, I feel the combat is in a much better place, I have just enough stamina to do what I need whilst still having to actively balance it. I do not think this takes away from the difficulty of the combat, but just a balance change.
Backstabs - Thank you for including an icon that indicates whether I am in a backstab position or not, this is incredibly useful and removes a lot of the frustration that comes with Souls backstabs. That being said, I do find the position of backstabs to be quite inconsistent, a lot of times I feel like I should be in a backstab position but no icon and no backstab. Particularly after a shield enemies shield charge attack; I find quite often that I am either circling more towards their shoulder or having to make little movements behind them waiting for the icon to appear.
Parrying - Parrying at the moment has the opportunity to be extremely overpowered if you stack multiple “damage on parry” buffs, but this is just general balance that I’m sure you will address later down the line. The timing on parries is very precise at the moment, I find myself having a lot of trouble consistently parrying enemies’ attacks and more often than not it feels like luck rather than skill. Parrying should be quite hard to do, I love the risk reward element associated with the mechanic, but I feel some adjustments to the parry frames could be beneficial.
Healing - I am personally not a fan of limited healing items. For most of the game, I think the cooking system is fine, but during difficult boss fights it becomes quite annoying. Running out of healing items and being forced to farm or buy more from town is an unnecessary annoyance. Adding a healing flask that always has a minimum number of charges that replenishes on death could really help to improve this. We already essentially have “unlimited” healing (or the potential for unlimited) with the food, with the timer between being the balancing factor. So, adding in a guaranteed “you will always have at least this amount of healing” for every life wouldn’t throw off the balance. I’m sure all veteran Bloodborne players have had to stop fighting Ludwig or Orphan to go and farm blood vials for half an hour. It isn’t fun, it isn’t necessary and it can so easily be avoided.
This could even be upgraded with Ichor or another resource. Important to note, I do NOT think this should replenish when interacting with a Whisper (like it does with a bonfire in souls) with no enemy respawning or rest mechanic, this flask should only replenish on death
Weapons, stats, requirements, scaling and loot:
Weapon stats - I find the stats associated with weapons to be quite odd and out of place. Many weapons that require magic based stats do not offer anything “magical” they simply scale in those stats and do not deal magical damage. For example, this regular kite shield needs a whopping 22 faith to use but offers no magical properties or abilities. If you are not running a faith build this can be extremely annoying to see as this is a significant upgrade over a tier 1 shield but utterly useless for most players.
In general, a lot of the stat requirements seem out of place, equal strength required for a pair of daggers, dex required for a slow club over strength, faith required on a shield etc. This below weapon, is a good example of a magic scaling weapon as it has the magical ability ice throw. However, I still find the requirements to be odd. I think every melee weapon should require strength AND dex to use but not always scale in both stats and only infrequently as equal requirements. For example, a dagger would require the base or below strength offering a very little amount of scaling and require a lot more dex and offer more scaling in dex. If they are magical, they should require the associated magic stat. Take the Astora’s Straight Sword from DS1 for example, it requires 10 str, 10 dex, and 14 faith. It offers magical damage and scaling, hence the faith requirement, but this requirement isn’t leagues higher than the base stats. If a weapon is quite slow and heavy, then str should be the primary stat, if it is smaller and fast, dex should be primary. If it offers magical properties then int or faith. And if it is a staff or a bow, then, yes higher int only or dex only would be appropriate.
The below weapon is the best example in game of how it should be handled, it is a slow and heavy weapon so requires strength and has a fire throw attack so also requires faith. I personally do not like the equal stats, in this case I think maybe the faith requirement should be raised and the strength lowered to 10 whilst still scaling in both but primarily faith.
And this weapon below is my biggest example of how NOT to handle it. Seriously, 26 faith and 26 int for a completely normal curved sword? WHY?! I don’t think int and faith should be a common combination and I certainly do not think they should be the only 2 stats for a melee weapon and not require dex. You can certainly have int and faith as a requirement but not to this absurdly high standard. If I was creating this sword, I would require 16 dex and 12 strength, with a primary scaling stat being in dex (these are just ballpark figures that I feel are appropriate and based on my history with souls games). And if I wanted it to be magical, I would add one magic stat and replace slashing pirouette with a magical runic attack.
My biggest issue with stat requirements is that they are unreasonably high.
The above weapon was the first unique/legendary weapon I found and thus was very excited to use it as it was the same weapon type as my current one. Then I read the stat requirements. I can’t remember what level I was at this point, but this dropped from killing Sewer Darak as my second boss in the game (not counting bridge Darak), in order to use this weapon I would need to dump 8 full levels into strength and faith, with the faith offering no benefit to my current build and ignoring health, stamina and equip load. With 30 being the current level cap, that is almost a third of my total levels, but made even worse as by the time I had killed the Riven Twins and unlocked the endgame I was only level 16. So, half of all of my levels would need to be spent on using this weapon that I may or may not even like to use it for the endgame. A weapon I received after killing the first major boss! And it isn’t only on unique weapons, many ordinary weapons also suffer from the same issue.
I think that these “skill” stats should not be used to so harshly gate weapons, but instead increase the amount of scaling damage to heavily incentivise players to level up these stats. I think this gives the player a lot more freedom of choice but also incentivises them to create a particular build. Weapon stats are currently my biggest problem with the game, I really hope some changes are made here.
Scaling - I think the way scaling is currently implemented is too basic. Having every weapon scale the same way with the same modifier reduces variation in weapons and doesn’t incentivise us enough to level scaling stats or use weapons specifically for the best scaling that fits an individual build. Having some weapons scale significantly in dex, but only a little bit in strength or greatly in faith and a little in dex I believe is a better way to handle skill stats than heavy gated requirements. Maybe implementing a similar system to the S - E system in Dark Souls (where S is the best scaling and E is the worst) would help out?
Loot and early build variety - I find the early game to be particularly restrictive, especially for dex players. I created a second character with the intention of running a dex build. The random starting weapon I received were the twin daggers. I tried these out for a bit and wasn’t really a fan. I had heard that the last patch added more weapons to the blacksmith’s shop so I intended to buy another basic dex weapon from him. When I get to his shop, I find he sells 4 strength weapons and only 1 dex weapon, the same weapon that I already had. This was quite frustrating as my options were to continue using the weapon I didn’t like, pray to the RNG gods (they did not answer) or switch builds. I ended up switching builds to use a strength weapon until I found a better dex weapon. I am now at the mountain pass on this character and have still yet to find one. Please either add more dex weapons to the blacksmith’s loot table or increase the drop rate of weapons in the early game.
I think the best way to solve this problem though would be implementing a soft-class system similar to Dark Souls. Giving players the ability to choose starting gear and stats would allow for more playstyles early on and improve replayability as you’d be able to start a new character with a unique playstyle than your last.
For example, you pick between a Warrior class that has extra str and less dex and has a str scaling weapon and a shield. Or a Mage class that has lots of magic, less str and dex and starts with a staff and magic scaling sword etc.
UI:
Equipment screen - There are quite a few small updates I would like to see on this screen. Most importantly, a comparison between equipped gear and selected gear. Right now, the only comparison made is between damage and poise damage, armour and poise, and resistances for rings, but only the first ring slot. A Diablo/PoE style comparison widget would be a great quality of life update. Basically, we see the card for the equipment we have selected on the left, then the card for the gear in the associated slot on the right allowing us to easily compare enchants, gems and other stats without having to switch back and forth. For rings, this should show every equipped ring not just one.
I would also like to see the scaling damage next to the weapons base damage. For example, 15 + 7 similar to how it is shown in Dark Souls. Yes, we can see the total damage at the bottom of the screen but it would be nice to see the individual damage and where it is coming from. Also, please add a counter for our total poise on this screen as I could only seem to find this value on the stats screen.
Cycling through consumables and quick slots - It can be very annoying to quickly find that blade oil you want to use, or the food that you want to eat when everything is displayed in the list. Please add a set of quick slots to the inventory where we can equip say 5 pieces of food and 5 items. Then when we hold either down or up on the d-pad we only see those equipped items allowing us to easily find what we need in a pinch.
Inventory and general grind:
Inventory and stash – Okay, so the thing that basically everyone is complaining about, and for good reason. I do not think that resources should take up inventory space (by resources I mean specifically CRAFTING resources) I can’t think of any other ARPG that does this. I think the ability to sell resources should be removed and resources should be sent to a magic resource inventory that has unlimited space and is separate form your main inventory. I see no benefit from limiting the number of resources you can hold; I see it as an artificial grind and simply makes players constantly return to town to stash their resources then warp back. Personally, I have my entire community chest filled with resources plus two additional chests in my house. This would also remove the need to have to run back and forth from my stash and my house looking for that one piece of clay I need to upgrade the smithy.
I want my stash to be full of useful things, such as other weapons, armour sets with different effects that I may want to use situationally, rings and spare consumables. With this, I think the stash could actually be decreased in size and the same for chest sizes so the player has to make more thoughtful decisions about what they want to keep and what they want to discard.
The gear and consumables inventory I think are fine as they are now. We should absolutely be limited in how many consumables we can carry around at once and if we could carry unlimited gear then there is nothing stopping us from collecting everything, selling it all and making a whole bunch of money reducing meaningful choices of what to keep and what to discard. E.g. keeping the expensive stuff and ditching the rest.
Wait timers - Why? Seriously, why are we forced to wait 1, 4, 8, 16, 24 (I don’t know how high this goes) hours in order to upgrade our town? This is not an MMO, this is not a survival game. For most people this will be a singleplayer game only. So why implement these mechanics into the game? Gathering the resources to upgrade buildings should already be enough of a time sink to unlock the upgrade, but being forced to wait even longer is just annoying. This is the main reason why I haven’t bothered to upgrade my town much. I loved upgrading the Glades in Ori 2, watching it go from a run-down place to a thriving village for the Moki was quite a satisfying experience. And through the upgrades we unlocked more of the map, sprit rewards, charms etc. I was very happy when I saw that a similar feature would be returning for NRftW during the reveal but the wait timers have killed a lot of my investment in that feature. I really hope that this feature gets changed, I understand that this was probably done for multilayer reasons, but as I said most (or at least a lot) of players will only play singleplayer, myself included. With the occasional multiplayer crucible run with a friend.
Plague ichor and inventory upgrades:
If I understand the lore correctly, the Cerim are a balance to the Pestilence. Not only are they immune to it, but they become stronger from it. So why does drinking what is essentially the blood of our fallen enemies, make our pockets a little bigger? It doesn’t resonate with the narrative and lore and is quite an underwhelming upgrade from defeating a boss. Why not instead offer permanent stat boosts, or let us pick from a set of passive skills? Something that implies we are made stronger from the plague. Inventory upgrades could just be given to the craftsman or blacksmith or use another special resource to upgrade.
General control feedback:
Rebindable keys and pause - So, I know you guys are already working on it but I can’t stress enough the importance of rebindable keys and pausing in a singleplayer game. Not only are bindable keys an essential quality of life feature, but also an essential accessibility feature. Not going to beat a dead horse, I know you’re working on this already I just wanted to stress the importance.
Separate sprint/roll and jump/climb - The B button literally does nothing in gameplay. Its only use is in the UI. Please change sprint/roll to be the B button by default as it is for basically every other game ever that uses a similar combat system. Dark Souls, Sekiro, Bloodborne, Lies of P etc. It’s like if suddenly the attack button was Y instead of X, it goes against what most gamers are going to expect the default control scheme to be. Also, there have been many occasions where I have jumped/rolled to my death whilst trying to climb. Adding a dedicated “Climb” button would be a massive QoL change and avoid these unnecessary deaths.
Fall damage - Fall damage is far too punishing and incongruent with the level design. The verticality in the level design is great, exploring the map and finding hidden routes is very satisfying. But in combat I am not encouraged to use this verticality to my advantage, in fact I am actively discouraged by the high fall damage. I think you should take a page out of Sekiro’s book and severely reduce fall damage. This would allow us to take advantage of the levels you have made and be far more creative in combat without having to worry about falling to our deaths. I would even advocate for the removal of “death by gravity” by adding a teleport back to the top on a severe fall leaving the player with very low HP (or if the player already has low HP then they should be killed). With the emphasis on platforming in the level design, gravity has been my biggest killer. I find the jumps to be quite frustrating and a teleport on critical fall mechanic would encourage me to explore even more whilst still punishing me for failing. It worked for Sekiro, I don’t see why it can’t work for Wicked as well.
Changed my mind on this point, I do not think that would be a good way to go for this game. I do still find the platforming to be problematic, but a better solution would probably be to just refine the platforming controls, increase in-air movement and maybe adjust the threshold for lethal falls.
A lot of my feedback is very negative. That doesn’t mean that I hate the game, in fact the opposite, I really like this game. If even some of these annoyances are addressed, I may even love the game. Thank you for all your hard work, Moon. I can’t wait to see how this game evolves.
EDIT: Spelling and grammar mistakes, proof reading is important lmao.
EDIT 2: Change to my point about fall damage.
EDIT 3: Since making this post, I have thought about a few more smaller things that I initially forgot to include. Below are some additional quick fire suggestions.
EDIT 4: Small change to make my position clearer on weapon stats.
EDIT 5: I think I initially over exaggerated the amount of fall damage taken and most of my complaints came from the day 1 build. After the curve was reduced, I find fall damage to be far more manageable. I still take issue with the platforming though, as there are still many instances where lethal falls can feel unfair, especially without a dedicated jump button.
EDIT 6: I think there may be some confusion with my point about healing. I am NOT advocating for the cooking system to be removed. The healing flask idea was simply so you will never truly run out of healing items during a boss fight and be forced to farm. I would prefer if food provided better healing and additional buffs as well to incentivise it over the flask. It is currently possible in the game to have a food inventory full of stacks of 20 of the best food. So adding in a guaranteed set of healing wouldn’t throw of the balance of having too many healing items. Having this many items is not going to be the case for the vast majority of players, most will probably run out at some point. Especially when the subsequent chapters are released. I’m sure Moon have some very challenging bosses in the works. I can absolutely see myself running out of food (as I did many times whilst running the crucible) then using this flask for the boss.
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Allow us to enable a stamina bar under the health bar. At times, the stamina wheel can be quite hard to read clearly and my focus is usually on the enemy that I am fighting. I also find myself quickly glancing to the top left of the screen out of muscle memory from playing so much Souls. An optional stamina bar would be a great addition similar to enabling poise bars and damage numbers.
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The focus UI and system needs some love. It is not always clear to see which target I have in focus, maybe increasing the size of the focus reticule or increasing the contrast would alleviate this issue. If I manually deselect a target, auto focus should not re-snap to that target. Finally, I find switching targets to be inconsistent. Often I find myself attacking the wrong enemy or attacking behind me as the game has targeted a different enemy.
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Ledge grabs are very inconsistent. Often I find myself having to repeat a jump multiple times for my character to grab a ledge (most notable example is in the crucible room with the stone bridges) even though I am jumping from the same point every time (or close enough to the same point that it shouldn’t cause me to fail) Most of the time this is just a small annoyance but can have dire consequences if the fall is lethal.
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