I have been playing the game for a few hours now, but I have found a lot of smaller and bigger things that jumped into my mind almost right away, so I wanted to give a “first impressions” kind of feedback for your consideration.
General
- Stamina consumption:
This is fairly straight forward. Tune it down a little. Unless you are telling us that the infamous Cerim Warriors mentioned in the intro are also famous for having the stamina of a 95 year old with asthma, a bad hip and 75 years of heavy smoking adiction. Yes I know it’s meant to be challenging, but there is a fine line between challenging and hilariously tedious… and the current stamina balancing critically lands in the latter. - Durability loss:
You got feedback to this more than enough, but I have to add to it: It needs some kind of change. Right now the concept of losing durability on death is pretty much at odds with the game wanting me to explore, simply because exploration has an increased chance for being attacked by surprise, and with that losing durability for an important weapon with no potential way of mitigating. I would not be against removing durability all-together (because to me, it never added anything worthwhile to any game that had this mechanic), but durability loss needs to be decreased significantly (max. 10 loss per death). Nothing else should cause durability loss. Items to repair durability need to either drop more or be more easily available early game.
This becomes exacerbated by the fact that health items generally need to be crafted. So exploration pretty much requires to stock up on some health items, but what if I don’t have the materials? Or need to go exploring to find materials to craft health items. Now exloration both became a liability AND can start a downward spiral in which the lack of health items leads to more deaths, leading to less durabilit, leading to increasing risk to go exploring, leading to a further lack of health items, leading to… you see where this is going. - Visual clarity needs improvement:
This is a tough one, because the art-style of the game is fantastic, but unfortunately also around the same level as accessible as a staircase store for movement impaired people. It often times becomes increadibly hard to see what’s going on and where enemies are positioned, because the color-palette and brightness somehow seems to be stuck on the lower end of the sliders in any given graphics program. - Respec attributes:
I wanted to play a two-hand weapon strength build. You advertised the ability to for bespoke builds. All I found the first 3 hours of the game have been faith weapons. You see the issue here if there is no ability to respec? - Equipment slots need to be unlocked from the beginning.
Really nothing more to say here. Why can I only equip one ring in the beginning? I checked multiple times, and I am fairly sure the number of fingers on my character is greater than 1 in total. - Way, way too much backtracking or running from the last Whisper.
You decided on not respawning enemies that have already been defeated, so there should be more whispers, because having to run 5 min through empty areas just because you got suprise attacked and pushed down someplace by a homing rocket battleaxe jump attack from another zip-code area is… not as fun as it might sound.
Enemies / Combat
- Enemy stamina, or the lack thereof:
Enemies should also be bound to stamina, the same way the player is. Having the player character pant like it just ran a triple marathon after one halfhearted swing of a weapon is beyond silly when directly comparing it to the frightened-rabbit-on-crack attack patterns and combos of enemies. - Enemy tracking:
Enemy tracking should be dialled down significantly. The combat is supposed to feel weighty, but an enemy with what looks like 100kg worth of battle-axe doing a full-screen jump attack that would make any professional athlete blush while also being able to change trajectory mid-flight is… silly. Same for enemies doing swing attacks. Their momentum should always carry them towards their initial trajectory, not doing 90 degree turns mid-attack like it’s nothing. Oh, and hand thrown projectiles tend to generally not have homing capabilites, just saying… - Enemy poise:
This needs some slight adjustments. It feels really bad to have enemies constanlty being able to start their attack combos while also having just been thwacked by a massive cudgel right in their face, while the player gets interrupted and thrown to the ground when the enemy even so much as farts in their general direction. Unless enemy farts are super-stinky, but even then, it’s mostly raining, so that should really not be that much of an issue. - Parry does not feel rewarding:
Parries right now do not feel very worthwhile, mostly because the effect on the enemy seems low to non-existent. I cannot count how often I successfully parried an enemy to still be hit by their full combo before my character even fully finished the parry animation. - Enemy damage needs some tuning down.
Considering the quite long cooldown on health items, the fact that early game weapons hit about as hard as a refreshing, warm afternoon breeze in the summer, having basic enemies take up to 30 % of your life with a single attack feels quite out of whack. If their healthbar only moves 0.0042% from my heavy attacks, my healthbar should only move 4.2% at max (which still is 1000x, which should give you pause to think about another slight balancing problem hint hint nudge nudge).
Quest: Potion Seller
- Reduce the strength of the Iona’s Bloom effect. Together with attacks of some enemies, it becomes incredibly hard to actually see anything.
- Give enemies a slight delay before their first attack. Especially the guys that immediately attack you after you climb up some vines. It’s not particularly engaging, challenging or fun to receive damage from enemy attacks before the climbing animation is even finished.
- It might have sounded like a fun idea in general, but running a “gauntlet” over and over again because there is always a “new surprise around the corner” is tedious, not fun. Especially if you “pay” for that “learning” with durability loss.
Alls of this might look light a lot, but in general I really like the game. The art style is fantastic; sound, music and the atmosphere in general is amazing and the story seems really interesting. Keep up the great work!