I already put my review on the steam but the dev asked to post it here. Created an account and here i am.
My play time: 5h
In one sentence: The game has great potential.
The game is good. It has many good aspects. Combat feels good, there are many interesting elements like upgrading (repairing) the city and the bounty/challenge system. The cutscenes are amazing - never seen better. The poses and faces that they make are amazing. I would totally watch a tv series with your animations!
But there are many aspects that i dont like: Inventory constraints: Limiting amount of items that u can hold in your eq is a little bit annoying. Not because of slot limit but rather the stack limit - 20 items in stack is not enough in my opinion. No pause model: I play alone, why cant i pause the game when i want to go make some food or tea? It’s bad practice. This needs to by fix asap. I just dont feel comfortable playing. What if i need to do something when fighting with a boss? Pls fix it. Character movement: Character sometimes moves to responsive. I tried playing on controller and then on keyboard and mouse. I fell from high places so many times that i dont remember dying from a monster. This needs to be toned down or just make some invisible barriers around the edges that prevent from accidental jumps. Enemies Health: I dont play many games like this but i feel like the normal enemies take to many hits sometimes. I guess u could mostly kill them within one stamina bar but i feel like basic enemies should have less health. It is not making the game hard, the mundane basic fights just take more time. The map: Fast travel. Maybe im doing it wrong but i thought i could teleport to any blue thingy but the portal in the city only allows the last used portal to be used again. I dont feel like it is good for the game.
And one last thing - it is a bit annoying that the quest givers and traders and all the others are spread out around the city.
I really like the core of this game. I like that enemies stay dead. Each fight encounter matters and feel hard enough to feel kinda like mini bosses. Hard enough to realize you can’t just hack and slash. You need to be strategic in your approach but not too hard where it feels impossible.
I like that the downside of dying isn’t that all enemies reset like in souls like games but rather you take durability. So not wanting to die has some other incentives like it’s gonna cost you coin and finding a repair vendor use your reagents.
I like the feel of this game. I like the sound effects, the combat seems good and I like how the dev’s here kinda blended some of the best games into NRFTW such as: Elden Ring like battles in that strategy is key. Diablo like dungeoning view. BG3 like in that you can interact with the environment more and climb up on almost anything. I feel like this game is unique in that way.
I would like a better way to map buttons to actions in this game.
I would like to be able to regen focus by attacking boxes. The focus regen in this game if wanting to use staff is really bad.
I’m also having a really hard time using runes, potions, blade oils quickly with a controller or M+K. I think there needs to be better tutorials on how to use these items. I’m 6+ hours in and totally lost on using these things except for food.
there are several “infinite focus” builts. in fact it is quite OP and infinite focus + rune spam is the current “meta”. I do not want to promote this boring playstyle, but various enchantment affixes basically grant you focus on hit/kill/parry etc.
What you’re referring to, is this something that gets better further you are in the game? Cuz I dont know what infinite focus + rune spam is. Maybe I’m just not far enough in the game? I’m almost at sacrament. Can’t get past the forest troll that lies ahead after running and hopping across the invisible paths from doing the side quest in the cave for the old man needing a special flower.