I had my son play the game (he’s low 20s age wise).
He didn’t find a weapon until Finnigan.
That’s a terrible first impression to give someone. He happened to miss the knife on the beach (which let’s be honest kinda sucks too). But killing all those mobs and not getting a weapon to drop? That just shouldn’t happen. People with short attention spans could easily quit and refund the game.
Maybe let the player choose a weapon at character creation?
Or perhaps on the ship give them an area where they can try out different weapons (like one from each type)? Then let them wake up with that weapon on the beach.
The part in the boat where you have to jump over the hole is perhaps not ideal as if you can’t get past it you already start off with a bad impression. He literally fell down multiple times. It wasn’t intuitive that you can just run at it and it auto jumps. Perhaps put the hole jumping ‘teaching moment’ in a situation to get a chest, NOT for progression of the game.
Otherwise he likes it and will give it a shot when there is co-op. In his opinion, you need multiplayer these days (I don’t think that’s 100% true but probably for many it is).