TLDR: There are fundamental issues with the game of which I’m concerned the developers are unwilling to move off of; it feels like they are wanting to fight against our success in unnecessary ways, through poorly allocated friction.
Foreword: 20 years of gaming (starting with D1) and I have never posted feedback on a game’s forum, nor have I made a steam review. This is a first for me for both, and it’s solely because I want to see the game do well. I’m sure there will be those that comment about the game “not being for me,” however looking at steam numbers, overall feedback sentiments and what seems to be the attitude of the developer, it’s likely to end up for a minute amount of people.
I am a new player with the breach patch; I currently have 20h. From the start, there were aspects that I felt were issues solely because of it being EA, which is expected. Concepts/mechanics/directions are not explained well, KBM are in a horrible state (even the default key bindings/controller settings are terrible imo), collision is not where it should be, fall damage is way too high, movement can be buggy, etc.
However, what genuinely concerns me is two-fold:
Firstly, as a very heavy soul’s like and ARPG player, I think Moon studios is trying to rewrite the script to souls/arpgs, with zero experience developing either type of game. Ori is a great game, but it’s not this type of game. In turn, most of the changes I see being implemented just plain feel bad or regressive to player satisfaction. POE2 took the same stance in the last patch, and they have since begun to change direction after player feedback.
Second is the attitude of the developer: it seems Moon studios has hills they will die on. Hills that will absolutely leave them with extremely low player counts in the long run. Fundamental issues they don’t seem to want to come off of.
I’ll give some examples, as a mixture from both categories:
-Farming just feels bad. The friction in farming within Soul’s likes is generally low due to a low barrier to upgrades that are found simply through exploration. With ARPG’s, it’s done through killing monsters. The system we have now seems MMO like, however unlike most MMO’s, it’s so integral to your progress that it takes a main place in your playtime. This isn’t the only issue: repeatedly having to return to the same small zone to farm a particular resource 20 times is exhausting, especially when there is no fast travel. You want us to explore the world–we will. Give us an interesting world; I’ve searched every square inch of the lands between and fast travel is readily available.
-Monster power jumps are insane. You HAVE to over level a zone to move on from it. Spending 10h in the first small zone is tedious as heck. I know they patched some of this, but it was so apparent when I started playing I wondered if there was any actual play testing done. In tandem, the variety in monster strength is way too wide. I shouldn’t be getting one-shotted with medium armor and adequate life by a white mob in a zone I’m leveled for.
-In that same notion, they seem DETERMINED to prevent anything being OP. This results in only a small number of builds being viable, with the vast majority just feeling like crap. Soul’s like, especially Fromsoftware, does this wonderfully; they don’t restrict particular mechanics (ie bows), or power. Virtually all builds are viable, simply from differing move sets that may suit a particular player, and balancing pro’s and con’s that seem integral to what that weapon actually is. They also allow the player to over level, integrally giving a form of choosable difficulty.
-Loot: It doesn’t feel good. There is no deterministic crafting in the game besides gems, it’s all RNG. Even D2 had runes that could be combined in a particular way to give a particular output. Plagued items are also one of the worst loot ideas I’ve seen in a video game. These items will not be used; the drawbacks are beyond reasonable. The range of loot available IMO is off. They take a more ARPG style here, but we have two choices: normal, or magic. Finding cool items is integral to BOTH soul’s and ARPGS, and it’s not implemented well here.
-Monsters. This is an issue that has plagued POE2 and is currently plaguing wicked; the symptoms however are a tad different. With Wicked, its not usually a gross amount of monsters were having to try and combat at once, but rather the fact that the move sets (witches constant teleport, zero cooldowns + multiple little spinny dudes with insane, constant movement) do not leave us any option but to roll and pray. The environments these encounters happen in usually don’t help; they’re small. They don’t leave us enough room to maneuver . With multiple enemies in souls, they’re either typically weak enough it’s not an issue, or I have room that I can learn movesets and deal with them.
-Other things that don’t need much explanation: Adding an elemental gem causing us to do significantly less damage. It should ALWAYS add IMO; the amount can depend on monster resistances, down to 0, but you are still striking with that physical weapon. The healing system goes with the gathering section, it sucks–I can’t think of one other game that takes this approach. No fast travel at all sucks. Time gating aspects in a single player game sucks, bad. Plague Ichor rewards and restricting inventory/item slots from the start sucks.
I’m sure there’s more. What it boils down to is not difficulty. Difficult games can be wildly successful, when they feel “fair.” The notion I get from the devs at wicked is they want to fight against our success, not through difficult but beatable boss encounters, but from unnecessary friction along the way that feels like it’s meant to restrict us from getting there. When success is achieved, it does not feel good like DS or any good ARPG–there’s just lingering frustration. The art style is beautiful here, the bones could be great, but if they don’t rethink the fundamentals I truly feel like they’re going to miss what could be a huge playerbase.