My general feedback as an RPG, Souls and Indie Game fan

Wicked Feedback
,
1

I very much like the direction this game went with instead of the typical horde spamkill aRpg formula but i think it falls short in both areas in some ways.

Firstly; with parry being a big part of the combat, there is little depth in it. All weapons and shields have the same parry timings as far as I’ve seen. Every weapon and shield type should have a different and fitting parry animations and timings. This was a feature in Dark Souls and testing which one fit you best felt really good. Continuing on the topic of parries, i think the game should be more open in which attacks are actually parryable. I haven’t tried parrying all the attacks of course so I don’t know if all of them are parryable and if so this point can be ignored but some attacks like Infected Darak’s tentacle attack seems like you can’t parry it but even if animation looks janky, you can. If there was an indicator popping off when the enemy did a non-parryable attack like in Sekiro, it would be more fun to fight these enemies. Also I’ve seen varying comments on the difficulty of parries in this game. Because a good amount of people who are playing this game are also enjoyers of Souls games, I think they use the “get good” mentality a little bit too much. Souls games were pretty niche until Elden Ring. And I think every Souls game before Elden Ring was better than it but Souls game were just “hard game” for majority of people. Elden Ring changed that by introducing new ways to approach combat and toning down the chaotic nature of their games, making them more accessible and “easy”. I think parrying shouldn’t be something only skilled players should be able to rely on in this game is what I’m getting at. It is so fun but generally not really accessible in gaming as a whole. This needs to change.

On another note, i know this is a design choice to be made but I hope this game doesn’t go to the direction From Software went with Elden Ring where all the bosses are ten times more agile than you, attack non-stop and delay their attacks like there is no tomorrow. Even normal enemies had these features and it was really dissappointing for me.

My second point is on the loot and RPG systems of the game. I think the rng is way too high for a game like this. I know games like Diablo or POE are all about random looting but in this game where the weapons are not designed to obliterate screens of enemies all at once, it feels too random. I played this game till the last boss, cleared the areas over and over again, went on some crucible runs and just now noticed that there was katanas and rapiers and scyhtes in this game. This feels bad because I really like those weapons but they came so late that I couldn’t be bothered to change my whole build and re-grind for all upgrading materials. If there was no upgrading it would be fine. I think weapon and armor should scale with your level so when you find a new weapon you don’t feel frustrated because you need to grind and spend materials all over again. This is only made worse by materials being limited and you needing to wait in order to be able to even grind for these. Also the enchantment system is weird. It is so much rng that it wasn’t really fun anymore. I know these things will be tuned but as of right now, I’m not really a fan of the whole upgrade and enchant mechanics. Rune system is a good touch though. This system only hinders the experience of trying out new builds. It takes a really unnecessarly long time to set up your build and at that stage, you have nothing left to do in the game anyway. The game gives you the chance of upgrading your stats. You know STR is for melee weapons, you know DEX is for quick melee weapons, you know INT is for magic, you know FAITH is for both melee and spellcasting. But you have only melee weapons so you invest in that even though you want to play a mage. With no respec option, this is unintuitive and dumb.

Another problem I had was needing to wait in real time for things to happen. This is such an outdated design philosopy that i couldn’t believe this was a thing. This is a mostly singleplayer experience (I know multiplayer is coming but come on a lot of people will play this alone) and real time wait is just a terrible idea in my opinion. The time isn’t even server-based as of right now. So you can just speed up the game and be done with it quickly so I don’t understand the point of this mechanic. I think this game should decide which side it will lean on more, soulslike or typical arpg. I picked up this game because the animations, setting and combat looked fun. I’m not really an arpg person but spent a lot of hours in Warframe so I’m not totally distant to everything. But expectations from this game were different on my part.

In terms of difficulty, this isn’t something everyone will agree as I’ve talked about it in parry section. Some people will say it is too difficult while some will say it is actually easy. It depends on the developers. Alienating people because they don’t want to deal with difficult encounters can be bad for you as I’ve said but toning it down too much would have the same effect as well. As of right now as a player whose favorite games are Dark Souls games, I think this game feels like a chore at times. Crucible especially was not fun for me at all. Also Souls games offered much more than difficulty. New breathtaking areas, lore, excellent amount of enemy and boss variety and more. This game is not the same as those games so I don’t really understand the effort to go this hard with difficulty. This is in part because of the lackluster upgrade system. Some enemies made me feel like they are designed just to be annoying. Like the big hat guys, spamming AOE ranged attack as one thing, having uninterruptable 3 4 hit combos as another. The ranged enemies as a whole feel like a chore to deal with. Same with the crossbow guys. It’s always the same pattern, they shoot you and when you are close they dash back and shoot again and when you are close again they do a sword attack which is hard to interrupt as well. So the method of dealing with them never changes and always a chore. Shielded enemies turtle too much too. Don’t get me wrong, this game is not that difficult. It is just annoying at times.Combat mostly consists of hit and run which is terrible in my opinion. Normal enemies should stagger and some of their attacks should able to be interrupted with attacking.

Lastly I will talk about little things that frustrated me and things I suggest.
1-The control scheme for keyboard and mouse especially with middle click being parry should be tuned.
2-When platforming (especially with keyboard) seeing where your character will actually jump or go towards is really annoying at times. I imagine this is a problem with controller too. A solution would be to be able to see your direction with an arrow or something. And for keyboard, a toggle for platform mode where you control your direction with your mouse so you have more than 8 directions.
3-World scaling is just so bad in this game. It depends on bosses as far as i’ve seen. But doesn’t that into consideration your gear and level.
4-Performance is not the best but this is known and worked on I’m sure. I have a 6800XT with a R5 5600 and get stutters and frame drops at times.
5-The bounty with the axe where you fight near the gate (I don’t know their name but you get it) have a broken hitbox on their back after the non jumping dash attack. It literally hits you out of nowhere from miles away.
6-Sometimes bounties just don’t spawn even though they show up on the map. I don’t know if I’m missing something. And for the wolves bounty, I think some of them bug out and don’t spawn because when I kill every one of them the bounty just doesn’t complete and there is no enemy left.
7-Character creation system will be improved I’m sure and I have no problem with the body proportions but more options would be appreciated like scars and more face customization. Also add a randomize option please.
8-Interaction prompt is too tedious to make it appear. And sometimes 2 things stack and one becomes unavailable. I had one chest that can’t be opened because there was a digging site in front of it and it was stuck on the “This resource is depleted” text.
9-Add character to the game. Add weird and unconventional weapons, add musical instruments that can be played like in Mordhau (People love being bards). Make them able to be used in combat even though they are weak. Add spectating in PvP matches where you can chat and play music (again, Mordhau had this and it was so fun) Add weird magic like casting spells with a flute or a guitar. Telekinesis makes every game more fun. Make us cast spell with our hands, add visuals to our characters for self inflict spells like burning hair with a fire form. Things like that. Make this game different from the other RPG games, make it have different concepts from other universes. And please add twinblades.
10-Please don’t make this game into a “Let me do daily quests and log out” or “Let me grind 9 hours for this material/gear” This game too much potential for it to be wasted with tropes from decades ago.
11-Some doors look like they are openable but in fact they are not. Visual clues for this kind of things would be appreciated.
12-I feel like herbs are too scarce, it could be just me though.

These are all I can think of right now. It is a long text but I love this game and want it to get better and not be wasted. I might come off as too negative but don’t get me wrong, this game was a really refreshing experience for me. Also English is not my native language so sorry if some parts are hard to understand.

3 Likes
2

I agree with some things, like performance being a problem, but they improved that by a lot already, nameless pass entrance was a sttutering city for me, took a long time to even load the whisper.

Parry imo is fine, if you do cues, or make it easier the game will become trivial, the whole thing about parry is that you must memorize the enemies moveset, thats it, if thats not required than whats the point? Parry must have a element of danger, you risk that move, gain enough focus to use a special attack and finish the fight.

The world scaling is awesome imo, you are asking for level scaling and thats as old as the timers you complain about, remember Oblivion with all those bandits in daedra armor? The area scales as you kill bosses, some areas even change layout like the first one where passages that were open before are closed now, and new ones appear. If you killed the boss the enemies in the area shouldnt be a problem, if they are you should check if your gear is upgraded.

You dont have to grind for better gear, i used the old sword from the beach all the way to the end of the EA, because every armor or weapon has the same potencial, later you will find ones already upgraded that wont need the materials, so the afixxes are the key here, and if you want you can test those new weapons you found, if you like the moveset the crucible has a statue to respec your character too.

I think the world building is great, talk to the NPCs, they have a bunch to expose about cities that are not even in the game yet, areas and enemies too, after Darak dies in the sewers you can find that guy who was crucified near the cemetery, theres also a woman that talks about why Darak went mad, but i like your idea of musical instruments, the more the merrier.

Telekinesis though, i dont thing that is good in this game, opens up a whole other game mechanic, i mean BG3 had it, but even BG3 cut some things off like Dispel magic due to the ramifications that would have in the game.

I agree with the daily quests, i dont like repeatable bounties, i would prefer they ran out of bounties in the area, there are at least 2 other cities in the island that are mentioned by NPCs inside Sacrament.

3

Tbh I’m undecisive about parries. One side of me says the difficulty is fine, other says it can alienate some people (I don’t want this game to fail). I agree with your point though, it is a high risk move. But I’m still behind my point of having an indicator on non parryable attacks. I should be able to say “Yea that was parryable and I screwed it up”.

I don’t think world scaling is awesome. After you kill the last boss, the world becomes a literal hell and this convoluted upgrade system makes it even worse. If you don’t have a good enough build you are screwed. I’m not saying it should be like Oblivion. I’m just saying it shouldn’t be this drastic in its difficulty spike and actually consider your gear a little bit. And I don’t even like world scaling, in fact I hate it but I understand it is necessary in a game like this. Having to deal with overtuned normal enemies is much more frustrating than dealing with hard bosses. I’m sure devs can figure this out.

In grinding for gear part, I think you misunderstood me. I’m not talking about grinding for better gear. I’m talking about having to grind for finding new gear. This is a result of extreme rng. I saw many weapons and armor that I never know existed in my 30 hours of play time. I finished the game with the default sword too. But if I had a scythe earlier, I would use that instead. And I don’t like that you need to upgrade every weapon from beginning if you found a weapon you liked better. On the topic of finding weapons that don’t require materials, how does that even work? Looting enchanted weapon is one thing, those enchantments being actually good is another thing and looting the weapon you want with good enchantments is another thing. And I understand this is an A-rpg thing but this game aims to carve out the old arpg norms. So yeah, it should just do that.

I didn’t say worldbuilding was bad, if it sounded that way that wasn’t my intention. I absolutely loved the second Darak fight with him going crazy. Also I liked the overall setting,talked to every NPC. My point was different there.

Telekinesis is just one example, not saying it should be in game necessarily.

4

Yeah the rng is bad, when the crucible came out the devs put a lot of new armor and weapons in there for us to find, not to mention killing the echo knight dropped some legendary itens.

I think this will change a lot though, because right now the crafting system is not fully implemented, so you might find some recipes for the armorsmith but rune table is not there yet, enchanting is not good too, so we will see some of these get fleshed out as the EA progress.

When the new areas open up you wont need to search hard for a new weapon or armor to drop, the loot table will be different, the new areas will come with materials that are not found in the early ones too, like bear claws, more silver nodes etc.

5

I have not played the EA throughoutly for above reasons, so take my comment with a grain of salt.

I think the problem is fundamentaly if the “game”(or better each enemy encounter) wants to be played or beaten.

Playing:
Souls games from DemonSouls up to EldenRing at its extreme were all played. Some bossfights had annoying moves, but you could change your playstyle accordingly, mostly even without stepping out of your role(RolePlayingGame).

Beating:
Sekiro on the other hand is not much “roleplaying”. Your progress and options are pretty streamlined; beating the enemy works here.

For me, the fights in No Rest for the Wicked felt moslty like trying to beat the enemy, while the enemy is playing me.
Which does not feel good for this kind of game.

Dont want to dive deeper into reasons and details, if my fundmental take here doesn’t find mutual understanding.

6

I dont understand the difference, all enemies in soul games have movesets, paterns that you must memorize if you want to beat them easily, parrying is very good here, and you have videos of people on ER parrying minibosses and even Malenia, making the fight way easier, and here the parry is easier, window is larger imo.

In those games you could overlevel, here too, on Sekiro you could grind a bit and upgrade those arm tools, changing your playstyle, like using the fire umbrella against the demon of hatred, test new ones against the bosses and enemies, here its the same thing, go around grind some food and levels and then come back to the boss.

7

Yeah thats true, but in NRFTW most movesets i have seen were quite hard to read because enemies delay attacks often or making odd moves.
SoulsGames have this sometimes too, but it is usually one of their moves or a specific enemy, where it’s odd moveset is it’s whole thing.

Learning parry timings gets also harder through hard to read movesets.
Generally speaking, most people don’t know or learn exactly which attacks are parryable in SoulsGames, they just try it on attacks that look parryable.
Ergo are readable.

Now don’t get me wrong, i am not saying that i know the solution and they should change A exactly to that.
Me as someone who recently started playing NRFTW, i found it quite frustating. Not because it is necessarily super hard but annoying or just too much annoyance at the wrong time to keep new average players motivated.

8

Its easier to parry here than in any other souls games i played, in ER i couldnt parry for sh-it, Sekiro is mandatory though, but most of them i went sword and board to tank everything while overleveled.