Here’s my humble story and feedback after around 12 hours of play.
What is obviously top notch is the art. Graphics, sound design, both are hands down on the top tier, cutscenes are astounding and include details like really accurate facial expression !
Story is intriguing so far, but I consider we don’t know enough at the moment to have a proper opinion on it.
All of this makes me wanting this game to encounter the success it deserves, but I have to say it made me rage too.
And here’s why :
- Combat needs to be somewhat reworked (not a problem of difficulty in itself) :
- enemies pattern are sometimes difficult to read, the more enemies at the same time the worse
- enemies hurt each others, in particular grenade launchers and big units in heavy armor and big hammer/axe/you name it. That’s the dumbest thing to me. No one in a fight launches an attack or a grenade that risks to hurt a buddy in the pack. This could make the fights with multiple enemies more readable and manageable.
- The autolock is frustrating and contribute to make the fights against multiple enemies a real mess. You never know which one you will attack when you face them. I would suggest to add the use of the second stick to orient yourself (just like in any twinstick shooters), this will make sidesteps and evade manoeuvers more acurate.
This makes throwing a weapon such as a grenade really inacurate. Frustrating. - You never know when you can block or parry an enemy’s blow, as soon as they are wearing big weapons (same for the bosses : do I have to parry or dodge ?/ can I parry and counterattack ? / can I parry with the risk to be stunned ?). This makes the combat feel unpredictable and really frustrating.
- Parry is not enough rewarding to me. It’s frequent that enemies recover from a perfect parry really fast and don’t allow us to relocate or counterattack. Again very frustrating.
- Enemies’ attack that follow you even when you dodgeroll are the most enraging to me. The best example is the big female soldiers in heavy armour and wearing heavy hammers. EVERYTIME I rolled around them, I saw their attack follow me and land on me. Again frustrating to the most.
Make enemies attack more readable but more unpredictable and your combat will feel rewarding.
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I assume you focused on the close combat for now, and that you will make the use of ranged weapons / magic much more interesting, because in their state, they don’t feel intergrated. Why in the hell do I have to hit an enemy with my staff to generate focus to cast a spell. This makes absolutely no sense to me.
Same for the bow. You cannot shoot an arrow if you don’t have focused beforehand. Absolutely not logic to me and unintuitive. Plus, the arrow damage is laughable (I emptied my focus gauge shooting at a rebel grenade thrower without managing to kill him…). This makes the bow useless at this point and in its state.
All this needs to be reworked to become interesting.
We need to be able to build our character the way it suits us (warrior style, thief/assassin style, mage style and so on), not just a warrior in every case, only able to use swords and shield, with the option to use a bow and/or a magic staff. This is not fun to me and feels empty. -
Quests and the way the different areas are populated.
Well, I got your trick. The world does not surprise us and is predictable, and that’s why we can’t select multiple quests at the same time : it’s because the activation of the quest changes the way a particular area is populated !
Where is the sense of “living area” ??
No, in that state, you cannot expect a living area with surprises, and sometimes roaming enemies that have a logic reason to be there outside the moment you activate a quest.
And again… PLEASE ! enough with these fedex/rinse & repeat quest ! We are in 2024, and we can expect some NPCs to give us some interesting quests just because we were here at the right time and place, or because we asked them the right question ! Here we have Diablo-like NPCs repeating the same sentences again and again (“…gives us salllVAAAtion !”) everytime we walk around them, and giving us only fetch/fedex quest, and that’s boring as hell.
Again, I really feel the love you put in the game, and I’m sure it will be a real gem in the future. I hope my words can give some hints on how to improve some points.
It’s only the beginning, but if you want your game to be a REAL revolution (and not just another so called revolutionnary game wannabe), then there’s some work to be done ! 
Thanks for reading me, and I will update my feelings as I continue to progress in the game !