First boss and sewer boss beaten so far. Have bought a house, done some bounties and challenges. Haven’t made it to crucible yet.
Graphics - Gorgeous art style, animations and effects. Last patch made things easy to see with rim lighting etc. Beautiful game.
Performance - Obviously still needs a lot of work. i7 12700K/RTX4080 and on 3840x1600 80% render on performance graphics, a stable 70fps is the best it can do.
UI/Map - It’s fine. Does the job. Looks good. Item comparisons from equipped to inventory would definitely be good. Also a general area marking for bounties/challenges would be nice. I can find them, but just a nice little QOL thing.
Combat - Really pleasing mechanics in terms off attack, evade, block and parry, but I feel like weapon stats are very limiting in terms of being able to test different weapons and really find a style I enjoy. We should be able to equip/try any weapon, just with a big damage debuff based on how far off meeting the stats for the item we are.
Levels/Exploration - Amazing. The shortcuts you unlock. The secrets you miss the first few times. I’ve really enjoyed the design of the levels.
Gear - Need a way to target gear. In 25 hours I found 1 Katana. I’ve barely found any metal shields to enchant. If enchanting it gives me a dud that doesn’t match my build, it’s useless. I’d suggest letting us break down an item and pay gold at the smithy to learn the crafting recipe for an item. At least if I roll a dud, that item can be broken down into a recipe to further craft and enchant. Also, gear drops just aren’t super exciting. There needs to be a chance to find some truly awesome gear. Maybe a tier in between plagued and legendary that can roll with enhanced stats? Or can maybe drop with a gold version of a rune that is stronger we can extract? Gear drops are just missing… something…
Also, i’m a sucker for fashion, so transmog or even cosmetics would be a welcome addition (Cosmetic vendor with rotating stock? Cosmetic drops from bosses?).
Enchanting/Runes - Let us pull runes from legendary items. It would also be nice to ‘target’ enchanting a little more. Maybe the option to pay more on a roll to at least get to pick the first stat on an item from a selection of three or something, with the rest being random? Just needs to be a little deeper and rewarding. Also, runes need at a minimum a description of what they do. Little videos would be even better. So many I really have no idea what they are and I’m not going to slot them into a good weapon when I don’t know what they do.
Items/Inventory - Bigger stacks (50?). More slots or stack amounts for chests in your home. I’d say inventory is by far the most tedious part of the game. I know vendors pulling from your stash is coming which is much needed.
City/House - Vendors all together is great, thank you! Fixing up the city is a good little side thing to invest into. Having the house choices is good, but with inventory so tedious, definitely need a house as soon as you get into the city. Maybe just the small one as a reward for killing the first boss? Then you can buy the bigger ones after the sewer quest? Also, let me go full ‘fashion’ and give me all sorts of fun furniture/items to buy and deck my house out with please.
Death - Constant repairing was just tedious, so glad it’s cheap. Current state death has no real meaning. I had an idea for a plague meter that fills up the more you die with debuffs coming each ‘stage’ of the bar you fill up. You could offset it with buffs at each stage too so death can have a risk/reward component to it like plagued gear does. Need a potion to remove the plague if you don’t want it. It’s just an idea, but I feel like something needs to change with death, even if it is an XP loss or needing to collect your XP from where you died.
Overall, the game is very good. The combat and art style are fantastic. The difficulty in trying weapons due to no respec needs to be changed. I don’t want to respec my whole character when respec comes to the game just to try out some dex weapons to see if I want to go down that path. Inventory still needs some tidying up. Gear and enchanting needs a more targeted approach. Runes need descriptions/stats. Death needs to be a bit more meaningful, but fun (plague meter?). Expand house decorating and possibly add some trasnmog/cosmetics.
Great work so far though. The game has been a blast to play. It just feels a little restrictive with some of the current functions as the are.