First, game is amazing. I can see the passion behind the project. It shall be awesome and stunning and you’re supposed to spent time in it. At least, this is how I feel when am playing it. Unfortunately I have three kids and can’t do it!
Anyway, I am very interested to see the final product.
Here my biggest thoughts:
Performance: short, sucks. game looks great, but at what costs. With a lot of effects or camera zooming out, performance drops from 60fps to 20fps. When I come to sacra for example or enemy’s doing their effects.
Maybe my Laptop is not the newest, RTX 3070, AMD Ryzen 9 5900hx, SSD. But demanding and as well great looking games like Hellblade 2, Alan Wake 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2070, Crysis;), they are running constant and good. With the specific scaling even better. Here NRFTW performs not good either. On my system it seems making no big difference between performance or quality settings. Stuttering and frame drops still happens a lot. That’s annoying.
Upgrading my char and weapons: Spent now like 30 or more Points in my skill, wisdom and using a staff with cold which is also on level 6 or seven. Still have to fight a lot and challenging, even “weak” enemy’s needs at least five hits. Those lizard like creatures in the black tunnel which are bursting and splitting into two. Even the smallest of them needs four hits with a staff, that makes 60 damage as the table shows in the character menu.
After spending so many points I would like to see a progress, but I don’t. That’s frustrating. Spent like 2000 hours in FromSoft-Games which this game relates somehow, and here it’s much better balanced.
Against Bosses I feel that upgrading, but not against the common enemy. That’s strange and makes me rather avoiding fights then enjoying them (like in FromSoft-Games)!
Focus Enemy’s: Here FromSoft is another good example. I have the feeling, in their games the focus on the closest enemy works 95% to 100% automatic. In your game, I do it better for myself. And even then, game do decides often to focus automatically and not on the enemy which is closest to me. First I loose the overview, second the control over the fight. Would like to see it better.
Enemy on the edge: your enemies seems to aggressive. When I climb or swim and want to go on land it’s not surprising if i am attacked already before being ready to fight. That’s not fair and frustrating since there is not much you can to.
enchanting on weapons or armor:
After breach I think, what the f… Moon thinks here? I mean, what I like in this game is that each cropping or collecting or grabbing feels important. My character is doing nothing just for the fun. But here I also see a problem.
A lot of things seems deliberate or very much wanted…but not well thought out!
That a buff comes with a debuff is okay, but in games like grim dawn it feels much more logical, if this is possible. Maybe naturally is better. If you dodge a attack you have a 10% chance to make 5% more damage for 5 seconds depending on the durability? That’s not a real example but I feel, a lot of this buffs are unnecessary complex and doesn’t give me joy that I have them now. It just feels sometimes this game is supposed to be unfair or better, you’re not supposed to feel strong and have fun. Everything has to be a challenge, even hacking the tree! or as written above, hitting a weak enemy with a character level 20 and 30 points spent in one attack skill.
That’s what I mean when I say, everything seems to be important in that game. While it’s nice in a certain way, it’s frustrating in another.
Enchants and buffs are supposed to make me better, but the debuffs make this part less enjoyable. I mean, the gems go in the right direction. But finding stuff already enchanted or pink (don’t know what they are, legendary?) is for me till now rather disappointing or I don’t have fun to find new stuff.
Feeling unnecessary complex and unfair is somehow a thing that comes along with NRFTW. The fact that you have to unlock something like 20 different rows or slots to improve your char in terms what he can wield or collect is another thing. That you increased the amount of collectables In a slot is nice but not enough from my point of view.
I don’t say it’s necessary to have full access from the begin, but as mentioned above. Since a lot of things are somehow wanted, makes the experience unnecessary bulky so far.
Since I like moon studio and the vision behind NRFTW I spent 80hours in the game and now one hour to write this. Hope you can use it for good!