I’m a veteran player to ARPGs and Souls Like games. I love difficulty and overcoming something I’ve died to over and over. Growing up playing Diablo, over 20k hours in PoE, and Disappointed in D4. I’ve also played every single Zelda game there is. I have not looked at any trailers or dev talks about this game. I wanted to experience it entirely without opinions of others etc.
These were my thoughts as I played through for my first day of the game. Thoughts are broken up into little chunks as I thought something to myself.
= Paragraph is something I think as Good as it is.
= Paragraph is something I think needs to be added / improved / is bad / Has Suggestions.
Immediate Experiences. Great polish. Love the voice acting. Love the Pictures of the person you’re talking to. Love the animations and the art style. Love that the language is brash and the environment is dark. Love the musical scores and the sound effects. Very well done.
When talking to someone in an animation, they have to do an animation to stop what they are doing to face you, if you spam chatting with them it glitches out the animation and doubles up taking much longer to re-engage in dialog. Maybe have them pause what they are doing after you talk to them to like, stare at you for a bit and if you walk away then they resume their previous animation.
Would like to see an Option to adjust the Opacity Gradient for the Text Boxes.
Would like to see an Option to adjust the location of your health bar from the top left to possibly bottom left or a bottom middle option.
Would like to see more seamless zone transitions and less loading screens. When you enter a building the act of walking into the building should just load.
The first chest I opened contained currency. The entire window for the choice to obtain the currency I think was un-needed. When I kick the chest open to obain what is in it, if it’s currency, I think you can just show a currency increase icon like +2 above the chest and then show it being added to my currency meter with a visual transition, like a golden sparkle or something. I shouldn’t have to menu option to choose a currency.
I love the destructible items. I smashed all the barrels.
Found a coin in one of the barrels. Large glowing orb to show me that something is there. I feel like I shouldn’t have to choose to collect currency items. Maybe I just walk over it and it collects with a similar visual aid that i mentioned previously. If the item was something like a weapon or armor or anything other than currency then I think the way it is now is fine.
Collecting herbs and ingredients with the items actually showing with a little glow is great. I love it. And I love that I can choose to collect it if I’m near. It’s perfect the way it is.
Oooh. The D-Pad Menu items is similar to dark souls. I like that for quick use etc. Will know more as I play more.
As I destroy more barrels, I see the option for collecting Fish and Apples arises, but the color of the glowing orb is the same. I think it would be a good idea to change the color of the glow to specific item types. Maybe for collectibles for food or ingredients, they can be a different glow. Maybe have different colors for Ingredients, Armor (Depending on rarity, different colors here too). Currency should just pick up.
I was able to attack a barrel through a wall. Need to tune up the collision detection I think. I destroyed it and it dropped an item, but I’m not able to get over there to collect it.
When equipping usable items, would like to choose where they are put (top, bottom, left, right, etc).
I love the automatic jumping when sprinting near a gap or hole. Allows me to keep moving instead of pressing a button when near etc. Great choice here.
The gap amount for the first tutorial on how to SIDLE along a wall I think should be increased just a bit, it’s very touchy. I fell the first time waiting for the option to dialog for choice. I would rather it just auto do it if you walk against a wall instead of having to press Y for it.
The fighting is hard and great! I had to use a few healing items just for the tutorial area. This is awesome. I’m used to hard games like dark souls and diablo 1/2. This difficulty is right on par with how those games start out.
Excellent Cinematic, Story and Narration.
I love the idea of the fog of war, and the fact that due to the world changing that it fades over time. Great idea!
WHOA! I can swim if I walk into the water. Awesome Idea! And there’s height elements! Awesome!
Ouch. Walking on fire in the firepit is a bad idea. lol. Curious why this is in the game though? Why allow us to hurt ourselves by going into the fire? Does having a burning effect allow us to do something special later in the game? Adding fire attacks to weapons or something?
Jumping to ledges is an awesome mechanic. Love it.
Those Archer Boys are OP! They have separate attack speeds for Shooting and Sword attacks. I had one of the guys switch between the two and was faster attacks than my single sword attack. I was hit 4 times in a row and died. Scary! Hard! I like it. Time to go the other way. Anything I’ve learned in my past games, is when you die, you prob. were too weak to be in that area. That’s the idea I get.
Whispers are a cool idea for progress saving. Could probably also save progress at camp fires too. Just an Idea. It feels weird that the Whispers are always near a Campfire. I think just combine them into a single area / hub.
An enemy was able to hit me while I was knocked down, but when I attacked the same enemy after knocking it down, it did no damage? This should be changed I think. Either take no damage again after being knocked down, or let us do damage to them also.
I’m trying to understand the stat requirement for using items and this is confusing. I have two knives and a sword, one of the knives and sword required dex and int, and then the other knife requires just dex at a higher stat, but it does the same damage as the other one. This seems funky to me. A club full of nails I would think would be a Strength requirement, but its both dex and int. Hmmm. No.
Having to press X to climb up a rock or something is bad design I think. If I’m holding in a direction where it will climb if I press X, just have the character climb. I’ve found myself ROLLING quite often instead of climbing, and I end up rolling off a cliff, when all I wanted my attention to do was to climb the rock in front of me. This should be changed.
When talking to a merchant, if I back out of the buy menu, it should go back to the merchant menu to select buy/sell etc again, instead of ending completely.
I just noticed you can also LB/RB to the other menu items in the merchant store. That’s a good choice!
Dang, everything I explore expecting there to be nothing, I end up finding something! That’s so cool! I also like that as you progress you can kick down little shortcuts to prevent having to backtrack so much.
The darker ambience, musical choice and the ROAR scared the shit out of me. Great job!!
Dang, the battle before entering Sacrament was tough. The first attempt I got the boss to about half health. The second attempt I went in swinging, checked out the merchant and stocked up on some things. I had to use bombs, coat my weapon with heat, craft a bunch of healing soups and even then it was still tough. Great job! Took me two tries to beat it and I was sweating.
Will update more as I play more. This was my first day.