Hey! I posted some feedback over on the steam forums, it was suggested that I post it over here just incase it’s helpful to the devs, so here is a link to the thread and the text from my post for those that don’t trust links lol.
Note: I’m sure some of these points probably have answers/work arounds. This is just my raw feedback based off my first playthrough and how my intuition guided me through the game/how I felt about it afterwards!
Loved playing the game!
Had some critiques from my play through. – As usual I wanna give some chefs kiss compliments to things I loved first though.
1.) The visuals. My god the game is a living painting. Absolutely nailed it.
2.) I mainly used the dual daggers for my run, but I really enjoyed them. It was a lot of fun trying to roll behind enemies and backstab them/learn to space my attacks and weave dodging and attacking in. The combat was really fun – and I can imagine if you find a really sick set of daggers it would have been even more fun!
3.) I love the animations. Everything looks so stylized and still believable. Even chopping trees down I found was fun to watch the animations.
4.) I enjoyed upgrading the town, and the concept of putting time in to rebuild what had been destroyed.
5.) I really want more, and can’t wait for the full release!
Now for some critiques!
1.) I don’t like the level requirements on gear, it felt like the game was telling me I wasn’t supposed to be in certain areas… which seemed odd? Cause I was pretty anal about exploring everything. The transition into the sewers was brutal, until I could equip my Tier II dual daggers.
2.) The whole RNG gear system is a bit annoying imo. Typically when I’m playing games like this, I have a specific build in mind… and I felt like my only option to get a decent set of dual daggers was to grind silver, buy multiple dual daggers from the blacksmith, enchant them, see if any are worth anything, then settle on one that is “good enough” and upgrading it.
I also noticed that when buying a white item from the blacksmith, the white item could vary in stats – and that also wasn’t clearly communicated or intuitive. I was pretty upset when I was having to immediately sell and re-buy white items from the blacksmith before even trying to enchant them.
This also put more strain on the UI for both the blacksmith and the enchanter because I had to go digging around the UI to find what I had purchased/enchanted to determine if I needed to sell it. So the whole interaction was really not very positive.
It felt like I kept buying lemons from a car dealer. Though I imagine to the blacksmith I probably looked like some kind of knife junkie cause I kept selling everything I owned to buy his knives, lol.
3.) Because of the RNG gear system, I almost wanted to try playing the game like a roguelite? But that doesn’t really work either cause you need to invest in stats… and most of what drops is kind of useless for whatever you’ve invested into. So I kinda found myself annoyed… because the game isn’t deterministic enough to build what I want… but it also isn’t supportive of just making a build based on what the gods throw at you.
I kept getting really cool items I wanted to use, but I just didn’t want to waste 2-3 levels on stat dumps to try them. It seemed like a waste.
4.) I haven’t tested this… but since the realm levels up with you… I’m not sure how making a new character on a realm would be feasible. Being level 1 with full T1 items would be pretty miserable if the T1 area is full of TII+ monsters… even if you had a bunch of hammydowns from the community chest – you still gotta be able to equip those items. I didn’t even really feel like testing that so I could be wrong about how that works. If it doesn’t work that way, some in game tooltips/info would be nice!
5.) The upgrade system is kinda vague. It’d be nice if it showed you the stats of what the weapon will upgrade into so you can make sure you aren’t gonna brick your weapon by increasing the stat or level reqs to use it. This concern made my first play through harder than it needed to be.
6.) The Enchanting system can just straight up brick anything… for me personally… I felt like the only reason I was even using the enchanting system was because I was already getting screwed on loot drops. For the enchanting system to just ruin an item… I really did not appreciate that gameplay loop.
One I finally got a good weapon, the game became super fun again… and I had to kinda stop and ask myself… what is the point of making this system so RNG? Playing the game with a bad weapon feels bad. Playing the game with a good weapon feels good… so why are we intentionally making the player waste time to get a weapon that allows them to have fun?
I want to work towards making my weapons/gear better… but I don’t like the whole “Grind to get resources to buy a thing and run it through the RNG box until you get something that doesn’t suck.” It just kinda feels like it’s trying to make me waste my time, and not like a deterministic way to improve my character.
7.) Dailies/Weeklies. I have ADHD. Dailies are not quests. Dailies are chores. This whole system took a lot of will power to force myself to participate with. The whole UI for this system needs some work. The activities don’t show up on the map, some of them have to be active to get progress on them, healing items are too precious to be turning them for quest rewards that don’t feel impactful.
8.) Healing. I really think the game needs something better than consumables you have to farm. My gameplay loop started becoming “Sacrifice my body to kill a few mobs to get them out of the way so I could progress further into an area cause I need to save my healing items for important mobs.”
Then I got health regen on an item, and I pretty much stopped caring about having food unless I was going to fight a boss. I found the game was more fun when I wasn’t constantly freaking out about how much food I have.
I don’t have any good solutions for the food system. I just know that I don’t really like the way that it currently is.
9.) Fast Travel. I know we all want to put our own stamp on things when we use a popular formula… but the game definitely needs fast travel to any waypoint. Running everywhere wasn’t really making me enjoy the game more.
Final thoughts
I love the game so far but I think there needs to be more thought put into the RNG vs Deterministic aspect of the game. Right now it feels like a bunch of conflicting ideas kinda being smashed together, and it sorta works… but it’s not really a fully fleshed out well oiled machine.
Personally I don’t like Diablo style loot systems. To me they’re just inventory organization simulators and an endless grind… my brain just sees that as a repeating pattern and completely loses interest in those kinda games as soon as I beat the campaign.
What pulls me to this game is the souls-like combat with a new perspective and the absolutely stunning art style… but that combat isn’t fun when you feel like you don’t do any damage. In my playthrough – the RNG system did not help me in any way shape and or form. I had to brute force getting a decent weapon via grinding silver, buying a weapon from the BS, enchanting it, selling it – over and over and over again until I got something that I could live with. I absolutely did not enjoy that.
If I could make a suggestion, it would be to split the game into two different game modes. One that is very deterministic, and one that plays like a Roguelite. I don’t mind grinding in a deterministic progression – but it is actually a waste of my time to grind for RNG. It registers in my brain like a slap to the face.
This game would have a lot of replay value as a roguelite where you just speed run the game getting totally random upgrade options from every boss/chest… though you’d really have to work out how to handle that so there was some theory crafting involved. Kinda like Hades.
All in all though, I think the game has a ton of potential. Sorry for the wall of text – hope that is helpful if any dev actually reads this.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Good luck!