I’ve played this game for a decent amount of time now. touched all the content it currently has to offer and wanted to share my own thoughts with the game and my experience.
First off, my overall experience with the game has been top tier. I’ve loved playing this game and what it has to offer and the possibility of its future has me hyped and attatched to the game.
Im so invested in the world and its story. The voice acting is so good, and I usually find English voice acting a turn off with how fake it feels. But, I think its done really well here. It’s convincing, its emotional, it sells me the personality of its characters and the world they live in. The art is amazing! It’s so unique! It makes different regions of the world feel so different. Every place is so appealing and the sites to see are pieces of art on their own. It sets a seperate feeling from other games and grounds its own originality within their artstyle. The characters feel different. You can see their stories written in their designs, only strengthened by the amazing voice acting and the way the characters are performed. I’m yet to meet a character I havent liked. I’ve left the game with an overly positive opinion of it.
The story and main campaign: I prolonged the campaign. Doing a lot of side stuff, like, collecting, dailies, expanding the town and exploring. I think it took me close to 30 hours to finish it. I loved every second of it. I found every character really interesting. I was sold onto the world and its story. It builds itself really well and opens up a lot of questions about the main character and the worlds lore. Even with my distractions, i felt the story progression felt well paced the whole way through. leveling up, unlocking new weapons, going from weak to strong and feeling like powering up mattered all felt really good. Being locked to what you statted into at the start did feel pretty bad, but, I understand that respec is coming, so, I take this fault with a grain of salt for now.
Weapons:
Good: A lot of variety with a difference in feeling with playstyles. Ive been enjoying the differences that the runes bring.
Bad: currently locked to your starting stats with a certain weapon and playstyle. I fear that respec may be too punishing once its released. A bit appeal to me in this game is the weapons and possibility of other builds. You can make a new character to try another weapon, but, thats time consuming and annoying and will take more and more time as the game expands. It’s also too easy to cheese currently with stuns and freezes, make the enjoyment of the difficulty passable.
Housing:
GOOD: I LOVE that housing is an option. I like that there are multiple housing options. I also like how open it is for us to place things anywhere.
BAD: The obvious chest spam due to stack restrictions. but, its been mentioned that this will change. So, I will just overlook this for now. I personally wish the housing was a little bigger. Or, maybe the oppurtunity to get bigger housing in later updates? It would be nice to be able to add extensions or make the inside look different for more customization and a feeling of our own. But, I feel like that may be hard if they are trying to match the outside to make the inside believable. Also, I know its optional now. But, I dont like the idea of making my home a workshop with work benches. They have mentioned we will get access to higher tier benches in the future. just hoping the NPC’s still upgrade as well, as I want to keep my home as “homely” as possible. I would like to avoid having work benches in the home and just focus on decoration.
Dailies/Weeklies:
I can tell this is just the barebones of this system, currently. I do like the idea of dalies and weeklies pulling us back to the game. especially when multiplayer is added in. I would like to see more future things to do and incentives for coming back to play often.
BAD: I think some of the dailies you get at the moment just dont work as well with the current system. Do they want people to horde a low level of each type of weapon just so they can clear out dailies that require a specific weapon? maybe it wont be as bad with expanded storage, but, atm, I dont want one of each low tier weapon just so I can do these dailies.
Crucible:
This is where I think my opinion may differ with others. I really did not like my experience with the crucible at all. My fun with the game ended at this point. I think its build in a way that forces people to cheese their way through it, instead of enjoying its difficulty. it’s extremely annoying to make it to any point in the crucible to have to start all over again on a loss. it encourages freezes and stuns and heals to cheese through the content to avoid dieing and starting from 0. I understand that they are just a part of the game, but, I feel like it takes away from the soul of the game, incentivising and having ways of avoiding the difficulty with cheesy tactics. But, without them, you just have frustration filled attempts as you try to take the boss on naturally and die and start from 0 again and again as you try and learn its patterns and get a victory. starting from 0 works in rougelites because you gain rewards as you progress which help you in further attempts. having mobs in the way in darksouls works because you can run past them. Here, you HAVE to take out all the trash mob floors AND beat the boss, with 0 reward if you fail. It becomes very time consuming after multiple attempts. It’s just not fun or rewarding. like I said before, this is where it became an unfun slog for me. I would like a rework on this system, preferably being able to avoid the some of the trash mobs, if not, all of them. maybe, allow people to run past them, but, reward those who fully clear out a room with a chest or something.
Overall: I loved the game, im gonna still play and keep playing. I see a lot of potential and I hope the future is bright! My only downside was with the crucible, which, I hope gets a noticable change in the future so I too can find enjoyment with it.