I tried to respond to each item specifically. However, from the entire post I did get the feeling that you didn’t play far enough into the game. Since some of your points are overturned with what combat turns into.
That said, I agree with some things and disagree on other things.
Edit: in case this causes confusion: Fluidity in combat for me is the dance between player and enemy. It needs to be a harmony and responsive in nature.
Character Design
The character design is something different from what people are used to. So, I can understand not everyone liking it. I didn’t like the midget character design in Enshrouded, for example.
That said I do appreciate them making diverse male and female character’s rather than ‘’modern’’ day androgynous characters. Male characters are masculine and female characters are feminine, I love this approach.
Default Movement
Nope, there are people who like to roleplay (rp) walk; like myself.
Additional Movement Options
Hard disagree on the stealth element. It adds roleplay for those who want to stealth up to characters and assassinate them. Having this option is therefore not useless.
Platforming without jump key. I’m not used to the isometric view and have poor depth perception. It took me quite some time to adept to jumping with shift. And even then it is hard to see where you are jumping to. Once I figured out I could jump with Shift or Alt and my mouse, things were a bit easier. Would have been nice if this was in a tutorial.
I don’t mind the sidle. That said we don’t use it that often. Would be cool if it had more opportunities to be used in the maps. Or if we could sidle above enemies and then drop down to execute them, that would be cool.
Souls-like
The more you play games with the same specific genre the more you refine your opinion on the genre about what you do and don’t like. I have a similar thing with CRPGs, I like the ones that require more knowledge and skill. Whereas, easier games that will ease people into the genre, I tend to dislike. So, I can kinda see where you are getting at. However, if this was a souls game I wouldn’t have bothered. It depends on prior experience with the genre, as a lot of the ‘’Souls’’ crowd seems to dislike various things with the game.
I partially agree with you on slow combat. However, only in the early game, it feels a bit too slow. Don’t get me wrong I like the visceral feeling, but, I think the combat flow can be improved upon by being a bit quicker. Maybe having more attack options with various stamina costs. The further you get stamina becomes a non-issue, however. And, from what I have seen people seem to invest between 3-9 points out of 87 currently available. So I don’t think it is that bad.
I don’t know Wolcen, but I do agree that downtime isn’t fun. Now, I do think you haven’t reached the later stages of the game. Since those incentive Focus-Neutral Builds that abuse Rune Spam to Stagger Bosses into infinity. So, eventually you go from downtime to perma spam. I don’t think either is good. Runes should add more depth to the gameplay. Where you interweave runes into your attacks and use them in reaction to the enemy. I personally would like it to play similar to V Rising. So, runes have a 6-9/9-12 second cooldown, have more mechanical distinctions, cost no focus and can thus be used more freely and with more purpose. I have a lot of extensive posts about this, so I won’t go into too much depth here.
I agree with combat needing to be more fluid, I have other posts where I mention this:
The first part of:
And:
Parry & Block
I disagree here since they serve a different purpose. I can block ranged attacks but I can’t parry them. I can block multiple attacks at the same time but I can’t parry multiple attacks at the same time.
Mini Map
They plan on having you replay the same area several times. And because of that I internalized the map layouts to a T. I’m at a point where I don’t use the map at all.
Build Variety
100% agreed. Currently we have a Meta of Rune spam and a severe lack of variety in builds. Again, 100% with you on more depth and theory crafting builds. I come from CRPGs like Wrath of The Righteous and Rogue Trader. So I love those aspects to the point where I make entire excel sheets with graphs. For this to happen, we need more affixes, which they are working on, we need a talent tree, which they are working on, we need a more in depth enchanting system, which is likely to happen. And we need the rune system changed to incentivize different types of builds beyond rune spam. I want each of my 4 runes for different purposes and use them accordingly.
Other
I find it quite odd that you say the game direction is all wrong and is garbage. I find it refreshing to have an ARPG focus on immersive elements. Since all games you mentioned and most other ARPGs severely lack that.
Calling the characters ugly and saying they need a revamp is a bit silly. For once we get a unique character design. On top of that we get masculine man and feminine woman.
Reply 1
Hard disagree on the waves of enemies. If what you want becomes reality the game will fail it’s original promise of visceral combat as it implies combat is meaningless and should be a power fantasy.
I personally think they should look at V Rising in terms of their rune system and Vampire Survivors for enchanting (the levelups).
I agree with you on the balancing of Souls vs ARPG in terms of combat. It starts out as a Soulslike, but a bit too slow and then spirals down into a 1-Button spam ARPG.
Reply 2
Agreed that in terms of combat several aspects need to come better together than right now. For me, again, it is runes. Disagree with you on stamina as it becomes trivial later on. Would be better if it served more purpose and runes for melee users cost stamina instead of focus maybe.
Again, I think you haven’t delved deep enough into the game to see the ARPG elements of combat taking over the Soulslike elements.
Showing it into multiple discord servers and saying people dislike X is a meaningless argument. Someone else can show X in their discord and people will love X.
Reply 3
Again, agree on combat fluidity. Would love it to be more like V Rising with short cooldowns on abilities that are used in a reactive manner.