Firstly, I am really enjoying the game. I decided to give it a go on my Steam Deck (docked) and It runs pretty well. However, there are issues and I am not sure if it is the game or issues with Steam Deck specifically. I have spent 7.5 hours in the game and just now reached Sacrament.
- I have had 3 hard crashes all during cut scenes
- Healing only through food is not a good idea IMHO. Bloodbourne had the issue of having to farm healing and that was not great. I like the idea of having food as supplemental but not your only healing. A flask system with limited charges would be much better. I have now taken to exploring without healing EVER. I just go until I die and respawn. Then when I am up against an elite or boss I might heal if I am doing well and close to a kill. Warrick was a pain because of this. But in the end I ended up doing more exploration and found some more of the area before Warrick, so I guess that is a plus (I love exploration)
- The healing animation is too slow. I am not saying that it should be instant but it shouldn’t be a fumbling geriatric movement like it is now,
- Healing appears to use stamina. I get it from a “realism” stand point but it sucks to be mashing the heal button, it isn’t on cool down and the character just stands there. Maybe it has issues with the frame rate on Deck so the input is not getting received? But from my testing, when I had stamina, full stamina, healing was fine. Less than full or regenerating stamina? The character just stands there. I think it’s overly punishing the healing. I don’t mind having to time healing but this is just beyond brutal.
- I really like that the blacksmith has a variety of starter weapons so we can try different things. Please keep this
- The exploration is top notch, however portions of the game are way too dark, especially with a fixed camera. I hope that there are light sources available. If so, providing the option to use them early would be better. Of course if you play stealth, like I like to at times, that light source takes out the element of surprise.
- I really don’t care for the returning Fog of War on the map. I find it pretty irritating to be honest and think it’s really not needed UNLESS the actual geography will change in the time it takes to re-fog the area. As I explored the geography did not change at all in the time it took for the map to re-fog. To be fair, it isn’t black still but instead is a layer of grey over what I had explored, so maybe it’s a non-issue
- I think the stamina system needs tweaking along with weight.
- I am fine with the idea of durability loss instead of dropping items and having to corpse run.
- Thank you for NOT respawning enemies. At least not immediately (no idea if it will eventually happen). It let’s me keep a sense of progress, because even though I died to those poison dudes at least some of them are DEAD.
- Speaking of poison, the poison clouds are way too persistent. I get that it serves as an area of denial tactic, but when I literally have to wait 15 or 20 seconds for the cloud to dissipate AFTER the mob is dead, that is way too long.
- Consider tweaking the twin daggers. I ended up opting for the single dagger as it hit just as fast, for just a little less damage and way less stamina.
- Please map parry to something other than a trigger. Triggers have way too much dead zone for this to be effective. It would be much better on a bumper
- Application of the Rune attack is really poor. It says to use lb-rb together, which is for two handed, but I found I could only access the single handed weapon rune attack by using just rb.
With that said, I really like the game so far. Very well done, it just needs some extra attention in places for it to become a great game.