Stamine and equip load are way too low. I can’t think of another game where equipping one clothing item in 2 or 3 separate slots is enough to push me into heavy. It feels really punishing to not be able to equip “normal” items into different slots without running into issues.
Stamina in the early game runs out way too fast, and leveling up honestly hasn’t seemed to make the issue much better. Every single action requires a lot of the stamina bar, and there’s no easy way to recover stamina outside of the potion. I can’t quantify it, but stamina management in other games just doesn’t feel this cumbersome.
Others have said this as well, but something needs to change with the approach to food and dying. I am simply dying too often, and punishing that death by then destroying the weapons I’m using (and trying to get used to using), feels like recovering from the death is just way too hard.
I think the game is simply packing too many systems into one thing, and making each one of them hard. Stamina? Hard. Mana/focus build-up? Slow. Death? Destroys your weapons over time. Lots of enemies? Every single one of them hits like a tank and doesn’t reward nearly enough XP outside of the very, very high leveled enemies. Resource management? Wait hours for the upgrade to happen, even if you found all the equipment for it.
I think this is a “me” problem but holy hell I cannot figure out how to reliably parry in this game. I have 0 trouble doing so in Sekiro, which is the staple of a good, functional parry system. This game? I’m lucky if I hit it a tenth of the time. A quick cursory look across forums is telling me I’m the minority, so maybe I just need to get good or something.
I really don’t understand what the resource management and timer on building upgrades does for the game. Where is it adding meaningful difficulty for players vs simply slowing down how players can upgrade weapons/buy equipment that they want.
This game has so much potential - the combat can feel really incredible when it works well, but these things need to be tuned to “feel better” more often and more predictably. Right now, it feels like a toss-up.
It is expected to invest heavily into Equipmentload to be able to carry heavy gear. Items can also have reduced weight or increase your equipmentload. Also - Its not so bad to be on the heavy side - armor upsides are really good and you get the special shove ability.
There are ways to manage stamina - for example green gems in certain gear slots - If you want to play more actively. Otherwise its mostly about staying out of range for a little bit. But I agree that it can feel too punishing especially at the beginning. Slow down - That helped me.
If you get into cooking it gets easier. Collect resources and craft food as much as you can. Increased healing on some items also does help. If you are truly getting stuck you can start a new realm to farm some food, though i agree that is not ideal. One thing they could do is allow food/healing resources to respawn when you die (though that doesn’t solve the gear issue).
Once you get through the start, u can buy the most necessary things and repair for cheap.
They are ambitious… That’s what this EA is for. Try to give feedback - What do you like? What don’t you like? Have any ideas or alternatives? Share it in the Forum.
Yes, I agree. - You could add to this post - link. A lot of the animations are too whacky - Seems like you have to learn every single one to be able to parry efficiently. I’d love a clear indicator (color / sound / some stylistic element).
I am also not a fan. I’d much prefer a minigame or no waiting at all. But I think they do it for multiplayer and resource economy, which they are planning to implement. In singleplayer it is simply annoying.
These are complaints from the beginning of the game. To some degree these are a consequence of the game trying to offer character “progression” by starting you in a weaker state, in other cases they may be a questionable decision.
Maximum equipload begins low because it can be increased dramatically by investing points into it. This continues to scale up as your character levels, and remember level 30 is not going to be the final level cap, until you can carry significantly more weight. You should keep in mind that weight reduction affixes and Equipload up Enchants are very significant and make it practical to Medium roll in Plate with relatively little attribute investment. This is arguably a mistake, as the vast majority of armour in the game is lighter than Plate and we have an entire armour class (Cloth) with beautiful hand crafted models and unique fashion which is currently made wholly redundant by the progression of available equipment weight and the lack of any reward for keeping your character light.
The Repair cost “penalty” for death is relevant only for the first hour or so of the game, because it is free during the tutorial and then barely scales up in cost at all, to the point that it is functionally free at all times other than the moments immediately after exiting the tutorial, and literally free if you just Rune the Repair spell into a spare weapon.
Durability/Repair is currently very questionable as a mechanic because it does nothing outside of that tiny window of progression where it scares people by making them think death is going to be harsh (It isn’t). It is difficult to balance this durability cost mechanic because if you make the costs relevant then there is no safety net or upper limit on the potential penalty for dying over and over to a boss. A better system would invert the mechanic - Have the blacksmith “Sharpen” your equipment providing a small damage or mitigation boost for a limited number of deaths. This type of system would mean that if you do die repeatedly and can’t afford to “Sharpen” the maximum loss incurred is that you don’t have the small stat boost.
Parrying in Sekiro is intentionally very easy because you’re supposed to be doing it all the time, so it has a full 500ms active window which is larger than the available parry window in any Soulslike. The reward for one successful parry in this game is much much higher than it is in Sekiro so it isn’t supposed to be trivial.
Build timers are clearly a deliberate pacing decision because the developers want you to go out and play the game instead of feeling like you need to spend hours maxing out vendors in the city. It is bizarre that people complain about this instead of simply leaving them to build and moving on with the game. You’re surely not standing there at the vendor waiting for 4 realtime hours.
The others have already answered your post quite well, so I’ll just add this:
You’re very early in the game (had some of the same feelings early), keep going and it starts to make more sense
you don’t need to parry. May not be good advice, but I use items that reduce my equipment load (principally rings) and play in the light class for weight - i just dodge everything and rarely have stamina issues. But you need to invest in stamina and equipment load to play this way.
Regardless of how you play you NEED to learn attack patterns of enemies. When you’re OP for an area it’s less important, but it’s the most vital part of progressing through the game - good luck!
Everyone above explained things pretty well but I figured I’d throw in my 2 cents since I have about 150 hours across around 20 characters.
Stamina
Stamina is the first thing you level up. Get it to 13 and you’ll be able to roll after attacking, 16 and you’ve hit the sweet spot. 19 is the most you want to do because it falls off a cliff after 19. For the most part 16 is what you want to hit and then you work on your other stats after.
Parry
Parry, for me, has been easier with the weapons than with the shield. I’m not sure what you’re using but unless they make the shield window better, I would lean towards weapon parries.
Gear Breaking
You shouldn’t be having your gear break after the day 1 patch. They made this system extremely generous in multiple ways…
Repair powders drop very often if you open chests. I usually get 5 by the time my gear is damaged.
There’s a repair rune, it repairs all gear for 100 focus. Throw this on a support weapon (one you use for things like repairing, healing, teleporting, etc)
The blacksmith only charges like 1 silver for a complete repair on all your gear being broken. That’s the price of selling 1-2 pieces of gear.
Overall though it takes about 10 deaths for your gear to break. If you’re dying 10 times before you open a chest, or getting 100 focus, or visiting the blacksmith… you’ve just gotta get better. This is not a punishing system compared to most souls-likes where they make you lose all the money you’ve ever earned from 2 back to back deaths.
Build Timers
Yeah I don’t get this either. I get it makes more sense that it takes a in game week or such to build something but timer systems to me just feel like the game telling you to stop playing (or in mobile games, to pull out your wallet, luckily that’s not the case here).
Good luck and if you need any tips I could hop in the discord and see what you’re doing and where you could use some help.
The parry aspect of this game does indeed need more attention. I agree it is unreliable at best. I have played other games you have mentioned and parry in Seiko for instance was not complicated. I agree that needing some kind of signal to indicate when a parry is viable should be in the mechanics. There is just a ton of inaccuracy and uncertainty with animations currently to know when it is definitely time for parrying. I have said this in other posts. I am 93 hours in and still cannot say I can parry well at all. I find myself dodge rolling 98% of the time due to the unreliability of knowing when it is appropriate to dodge enemies.
Parry needs to be more satisfying, so it is worth the risk. a short 1s stagger is not worth it in my opinion. At least give us a crit like with backstabs.
I can say tho, that i find the parry window to be quite forgiving. But is easier when the enemy used “swinging” weapons like swords. When trying to parry poke attacks i mostly eat it.
I do not want to let the “weight class” point from the original post out of sight tho. Sure, the current max lvl will surely not stay as is, but it feels really punishing to put 5 or 6 points in equip load, just to be able to wear leather or mesh.
It sure is a design choice to give some sort of limitation for heavy builds, but when i need 26/26 or even 42 in a stat to use the weapon i want, i just do not have any points to spare.
What you describe sounds to me like something i also thought… in the beginning.
The learning curve of the game is right now somewhat flipped… When you are stranded, you are hit by a brickwall. Later in the game, it becomes a walk in the park.
