I have played this game off and on over the past few iterations, but I’ve never typed out my feedback anywhere. I feel now is the time as I got my friend to play with me over the free weekend and he completely bounced off of this game so hard. This is despite this game being right down his alley.
First, issue: The movement
I can understand being slow and clompy in a suit of armor, however if my character is near naked, they should move a bit faster. It feels like no matter what your weight is you are always walking around in concrete shoes. I understand you want movement to be important and combat to feel tactical, but choosing to play as a fast, low weight melee character, as me and my friend did, does not feel good in this game. Especially, when everything flails around, has a 10m reach, has an attack string of 5 to 6 attacks, and tracks your character for a 360 no-scope. The input reading on some mobs is incredibly heavy, add the tracking on top and it makes a very frustrating experience as a slow-moving melee character (despite being almost naked).
The auto jump is very hit or miss. There are quite a few jumps that are very hard to line up without a lot of trial and error (aka jumping, missing, dying, and running back) It’s not fun. This game is not a platformer, and the platforming sections generally suck to playthrough. My friend actually quit in the nameless pass because of the jumping. I told him it only gets worse and chose not to continue.
Second Issue: Combat
Generally, I like the flow of combat. I don’t really like playing ranged or caster, so this perspective is from melee only. I played a low weight, agile build, with fist weapons. My friend played medium with a rapier and shield. Overall, outside of the clompy movement, we enjoyed the combat, for the most part as it is much easier to deal with some tricker enemies with more than one person.
However, from my own perspective, playing solo, the player tracking and input reading are a major turn off. Not only can a mob track the player, but also adjust mid attack string up to 180 degrees. It’s ridiculous. You dodge the attack only for the mob to adjust their attack string toward you, so you end up either getting hit, or furiously attempting to roll away. Tone. It. Down.
This goes for input reading as well. The mob with the two pick-axes in Nameless Pass input reads like crazy and can only be hit by adjusting and moving the mob so it’s back is against a wall. This wouldn’t be too bad if they didn’t also have 10 meter standing forward jump, into a slam, and then spin that has tracking on it. I feel this mob shouldn’t be all that difficult, but the input reading and tracking make it feel like the hardest mob in the game. I don’t remember them being this insane when I played last.
Don’t get me started on the bosses, because they are the same. I also do not remember this level of input reading on them.
Cooking
Why did you make it so much more difficult to attain the recipes? I got all the ones available from the scribe’s desk, but I’m still missing many that I would have had in the old builds. Why? It adds nothing but frustration of not being able to cook the materials you have gained.
Crafting
Think about adding a quest for the player to make a crafting table at Whitiker’s, using his crafting table. I already knew, but my friend had no clue and asked why he learned a crafting table from the scribe’s table that required a crafting table to craft the crafting table………
Upgrading
It’s way too much of a time sink. I’m assuming you’re using the random enemy bits to delay upgrading too much. However, I have upgraded my Deadfang gauntlet’s thrice and they are hitting like noodles in the meadows. I would like to upgrade them, but they are locked behind bear claws. It sucks. A lot.
Armor with increased gear levels require too much primary stat investment. Especially since you cannot re-roll character stats until the end of the game. If you over invest in the non-primary stats you are stuck with low level weapons that must sink time into upgrading. This is an easy mistake to make and can totally brick your character.
Ore is too rare and takes a significant amount of time to mine the amounts needed for building the town, crafting, and upgrading compared to every other resource. I have hundreds of every type of log, but I cannot progress very quickly, despite dedicated ore farming, because ore is such a slog to farm.
Finally
I’m only adding this because my friend made mention of it, many, many times. The arms. Why do the characters have ape arms? Seriously, it’s worse than Bloodborne and looks so stupid.