Hi team at Moon Studios and to whom it may concern. First, I’d like to just say that I have been looking forward to NRFTW ever since the surprise trailer at the 2023 Game Awards. I have been an eager fan of Moon ever since Ori and the Blind Forest release in 2015. In my opinion; both Ori games are the two best examples within their respective main genre, that being Sidescrolling-Metroidvania, these 2 games are peerless in that category.
That being said, neither game is perfect (no game is), and both had their share of issues upon release, namely performance, but also softlock bugs and a few issues with cutscenes etc. However, thanks to a dedicated team, many of these issues (if not all of them) were addressed and fixed rather rapidly. This being the case, I absolutely did not expect any different from NRFTW, especially for an early access title, for which there should be additional and more detrimental issues expected for any responsible consumer.
Having played the game for a little over 50 hours total, I have some thoughts, concerns and suggestions for possible solutions, if I may. The most obvious and somewhat overly discussed topic being performance. Though I expected rough performance on my aging machine, and I’m happy to see at least some progress in certain areas regarding this, there is definitely a lot more progress that could be made. Though, as I’m typing this, I imagine the team has been hounded by many an anonymous persons about this, so I won’t bother with specifics.
As far as the core gameplay loop is concerned, I feel like the team have absolutely nailed a perfect marriage between souls-like and traditional ARPG. The combat pacing (in general, there are specific issues, but I’ll get to those) is great for the most part, and the two part UI means I don’t have to take my eyes too far off my target to spy my current status (whoever thought of and implemented that pinned-to-player character HUD is a genius). The bones for this system are, in my opinion, near perfect. No notes.
Where the game currently struggles is the push and pull between melee vs ranged, or if you’d prefer, non-focus vs focus. Whilst yes, melee can be both focus or non-focus based or a mix, I feel like the game (especially with the recent and somewhat knee-jerk changes, at least in feel) can somewhat pigeonhole the player into either non-focus based melee or all out focus based ranged, using either bows or magic. I imagine this issue likely comes down to a numbers game when it comes to balancing gear. Speaking of gear, while I understand the need for a game like this to have largely randomised loot, I feel there needs to be more reliable ways to attain early game gear that may entice players to experiment more early on, instead of relying to heavily on the tried and true big-smack or mage go pew pew. While I don’t have any real specific suggestions on how to fix this beyond having access to a merchant like Finley, far earlier on and more often than portion of only one day in the week, I feel like this needs addressing, lest players grow tired of the same thing over and over.
As far as specific build diversity and power levels go, I feel there is a good amount of differing kinds of build possibilities at current (as stated earlier, there just needs to be ways to start down certain build paths sooner than the end of Act 1), the differing power levels however, that is a different story. As it currently stands, Intelligence builds are the easiest and most powerful throughtout all stages of the game. This includes both story and within the crucible. The problem here is just how far behind all other build types are in terms of power level, ease of use and time needed to start. If you didn’t pick one up early on before Mariners Keep, you can purchase a staff from the blacksmith. For my part when trying an intelligence build for the first time, I did what I always do when starting a new game (I did have more experience with the game by the time I tried this build, so that may skew the results somewhat), I looted all the chests along the shore (including the hidden ones to the east at the start behind the waterfall and on the shipwreck), harvested all the dig spots, copper nodes and trees, killed every enemy before Warrick (including doing the potion maker quest in the mine), before finally confronting him at what I believe was level 5 or 6. To my shock, this was the most one sided fight with this boss so far, and I’m pretty consistent with parrying all of his moves (save for that one overhanded slam that comes out so fast that my old brain is too slow to react to). By this point I had put every point into Intelligence, giving me a total of what I believe to be 25. I dodged out of his initial charge, hit him with 2 unchagred fireballs, parried his next attack, drank a focus potion, hit him with another 2 uncharged fireballs, at which time, he jumped to the middle of the arena to transition into phase two and then… died. I was mid drinking my second focus poition and had not bothered to check his hp when he expired to what I can only assume was the damage over time effect of the fireball spell. The whole fight lasted less than 15 seconds. How do I know this? Because I healed right before triggering the cutscene, which I skipped, and the eat cooldown is 15 seconds, which finished right as I checked. I have killed Warrick without taking damage a number times before, but the fight had always lasted at least 40 seconds (thereabouts, I never timed it), even with the next most powerful build which was my twin daggers build.
So, after that little encounter, what I took away from it was three things.
- The scaling on intelligence to spell damage ratio for uncharged spells is too high and needs adjusting.
- Charging spells is not worth the risk in the vast majority of scenarios to justify the 5-15%(ish) damage increase per charge and needs increasing, perhaps with additional focus cost, but always improving cost to damage ratio per charge.
- The other build types need to be brought more in line with with intelligence builds on most fronts, but especially ease of use and early access (haha…)
I was going to do a breakdown of all build types, but after that wall-o-text likely causing people headaches, as well as my food to go cold (whoops), I will instead bring up what I believe to be the weakest way to play the game at current, which is single-handed melee weapon builds, especially if non-focus based (bow builds, especially after the recent nerfs, are not far in front of these either). There is not a single thing the single-handed melee weapons bring to the table, at least the ones I’ve had experience with in early access, that the two-handed melee weapons don’t do better by a vast margin. It seems that at current using one-handed melee does only one of two things, that being either to use a shield to use in a parry based build (which two-handed weapons do better with anyway) or, to get your bow build off the ground, until you have the gear, gems and buffs necessary to have your bow sustain itself, upon which the one-handed melee weapon becomes superfluous. I honestly don’t know what I can suggest here besides tweaking numbers on enchant/gem buffs for certain parry builds, or unque passives gained when using one-handed melee weapons and a shield in offhand, in order to make these weapons more enticing to try/play. I just know that I enjoyed the game the least whilst using one-handed weapons at current.
I have some more thoughts, but to conclude for now; I believe the core gameplay is solid save for some issues with build balance (which is natural for this kind of game). The somewhat signature artstyle of Moon Studios is, as always, gorgeous. No notes there. The performance is rough, though that’s to be expected with an early access game that looks this good (especially with my aging machine I will not be able to afford to upgrade for a long time, so I’ll deal with it). BG3 also had a lot of performance issues during early access, so don’t let certain people get the team down over it. There are certainly some QoL improvements that could and should be made to the game, crafting of any and all kinds taking from your storage as well as your inventory in my opinion, is an absolute must, and I’m disappointed this was not the case day one. The almost gacha-mobile game aspect to the time-gating on town upgrades is puzzling, to say the least, if there is a good reason for this design decision, I’d love to hear what it is. Respec to try different ways to play without needing to resort to starting a new character, though I know this is being worked on already.
Finally, I’d like to say thank you to the team at Moon Studios for their hard work, artistic vision and their passion to push the gaming industry forward.
Sincerely,
Rez Instance.