First I will list all the issues and problems I encountered that are addressable:
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Enemy AI - enemies attack instantly after getting aggro regardless whether they are even close enough to make a hit. So especially when relying on parry I feel like I need to know enemies attack range better than they know it themselves. And just approach them and stand in the range, wait for their attack so then I can parry. It’s very noticeable in the early game when enemies are slow - later enemies are faster and have more range so it’s less obvious.
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Quick access items need to be organized. I want to choose what is and what is not there. I have multiple end-game healing items crafted and once I run out of one the game switches automatically to mushroom that does 10 healing over 10 second and it’s completely useless
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Sprint, climb, jump and dodge all mapped to the same button. I died more times jumping off an edge when I wanted to climb it or when sprinting too close to cliff and character jumps off the cliff. Especially annoying with Durability and experience punishment for death
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Stash space! As soon as start enjoying the game I need to go back to town because my inventory is full. The game gets better after later when I purchased a house. But still having to manage 10 boxes with 20 items each is annoying. And at early game - frustrating.
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Interacting with times, npcs, chests and teleports requires very specific positioning. I have to be at the very specific distance to everything for interaction. And in some cases I was unable to pick up an object because it was on a table or dropped from a chest next to a readable note (again, same button mapping for everything)
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Tapping the same button for healing and pressing for menu open is a horrible mapping. If I just hold the button for a bit too long during frantic fight, I open I menu instead of healing
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when I open the map it does not show the zones and does not indicate which zone is currently the cursor pointing at.
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Kill all crabs/rats side quest - just spending ages trying to find last one in completely empty map. Not a fun quest
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There is no clay in this game. At least not in any of the ground piles I was digging through
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Resources are a bit difficult to spot. In combination with needing to be in very specific spot to interact I was going around every tree and checking if it’s a one I can chop or permanent element of the environment
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Gathering resources is very slow - especially if this game aspires to be combat focused
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There is no way of inspecting several items in the game - for example rewards for bounties and challenges. Even if those are random I should be able to know what potentially could be power/benefit of each item.
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Runes - no tooltips at all! I do not know what those items are doing! I cannot check before I buy, I cannot check before adding it to the weapon and even then I still don’t know what they do. I can just use them during combat I try to guess.
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Durability on tools - Constantly going back to town to fix shovel or pickaxe.
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BUG: Enemies drop items after long delay, sometimes only after leaving and returning back to zone
Now for the good - it’s a short list, but it has the most important boxes checked:
- it’s fun
- it’s beautiful
- combat is great!
- and it’s not broken (playable - still performance issues, but this is just EA, so not a problem)
And now with the ugly… I don’t even know if it could be fixed:
- Readability - it’s so hard to see the player character and what is it doing. Game has so much visual noise, so much contrast, so many detailed textures. I played so many souls games I often was just going from muscle memory during fights because I could not even see where my character was. Same is for health, stamina and focus bards. Is very hard to read this game.
- CAMERA - this is probably the most annoying thing about this game. It’s a top down souls-like and it’s really hard to understand distance - especially that this is far from isometric perspective. Camera has a very wide FOV so everything is really distorted. If the boss is at the bottom of the screen and it’s on top of my character, there in no way for me to know how far it is and if I can parry or should I dodge and if I’m close enough to make an attack. Camera was constantly the biggest enemy I was fighting against.
- My strategy for each boss fight: As soon as the fight starts I would move to very far right edge of the screen to force position so me and the boss are sideways to the camera. Then I could clearly see the telegraphed moves and with very forgiving parry window I would parry then combo and the whole fight was trivial. Or if I was not sure if I can parry I would dodge in straight line from right to left and repeat the same strategy from the other side. So each boss fight became a side scroller game.
- So many times objects that are in foreground / front of the camera are not correctly culled and I don’t see at all what is happening on the screen. Some pipe, boulder or a tree covers half of the screen during combat or platforming and I get to usually die in those situations.
- Platforming - It’s a combination of very noisy art style and wide lens camera it’s hard to read the distances when platforming. Often dropping to beam is very tricky because there is no way of knowing where exactly I need to stand to drop. So it’s a trial and error and dying multiple times in the process.
So for me the biggest issue with this game is that I was fighting against self-imposed rules of the game (camera and readability) rather than challenges my character was facing. I was constantly making sure I’m positioned in a way camera clearly shows me what is happening or kiting enemies to an area with simple flat textures so I can better see what they are doing. It’s a bit heart-breaking, because I think it’s a very fun game, but I feel like I’m constantly making efforts to bypass core design decisions to have fun.