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.