Hiho, I’m an arpg enjoyer (more Grim Dawn, Last Epoch, PoE than Dark Souls/Sekiro/Elden Ring but I also really liked Elden Ring + pre difficulty patch DLC) with now around ~12 hours into the game.
I did not look up anything about the game beforehand. I only roughly knew what kind of game it was due to some interviews and trailers.
I expected an ARPG in the hack and slash style with a little bit of “meaningful combat” sprinkled in.
So now to the actual feedback.
First Impressions:
The game start is awesome. The cut-scenes actually grabbed me right from the start. I like the setting (though it did not grab me so far) but I’m in love with every character so far. The dialog and the presentation is just absolutely awesome and I enjoyed every little bit of it so far. I actually caught myself speaking with almost every NPC in the town just because. Artstyle is growing on me as well.
Gameplay wise it’s also fun. The first few enemies were easy enough. Though I already was corrected in my first assumption. The game is not hack and slash with a little bit of soulslike it’s the other way around. Not that I mind but the game feels a lot more like a Dark Souls in isometric than a Last Epoch or Grim Dawn.
Exploring the maps is also really fun. A lot to discover but I’m not sure yet if that is actually worth it. Most of it seems to random loot.
First boss fight was fun and I managed to do him first try. Always a feels good. Even managed a parry which I normally avoid. No special reward (just a stagger) for the parry was a bummer.
Second impressions:
A lot still holds true. Exploring is still fun and in my opinion the strongest part of the game. So far I’ve come up to the Nameless Path (up to the Riven Twins) and I’ve gone down into the sewers to fight the Risen champion (the second fight with Darrak I believe his name is.. Darrik?).
Fighting random mobs while exploring is also fun. As long as they stand on a flat surface. Targeting seems to work fine for the most part as does tracking. But stuff gets really weird when the enemy is below or above you. Like really weird. Targeting freaks out and hit boxes randomly decide to disappear. At least it feels like that. Fighting on stairs is a nightmare due to that.
Fighting and exploring gives plenty loot… And this leads me to the inventory. And I’m still undecided on how to feel about it. It worked okay so far, the chest in the Rookery helps, but I wonder why do the invetory system the way it has been done? If you are full you die, go back to town, stash it. This takes a few minutes and is annoying. Make it so we are able to stash stuff from the Rifts (or whatever those respawn points are called). The inventory limit does not seem to be a limit already so either make it impossible to stash stuff away this way at all or give us the QoL to do it as efficient and fast as possible.
The additional inventory slots you can buy with ichor are weird due to this system as well. So far they are QoL upgrades (albeit huge QoL upgrades) that compete with actual power ups (like more heals and weapon slots). To me this feels weird. Option A) Make the game’s inventory management less painful. Option B) Get stronger.
These should not compete but should be separate progression tracks. It just feels bad.
Weapon skills. Or whatever they are called. I actually don’t know because I only realized like 8 hours into the game that I can already use them thanks due to a missclick on a parry (LB instead of LT). And that they need something to use which I don’t know what is called as well. I think it’s focus and I think it’s gained through attacking.
There needs to be some kind of tutorial on how you do things and what you can do with your gear.
I must have missed the pop up window that explained this and then simply didn’t know stuff existed (or was already accessible to me).
Boss fights. Oh boy. At first I really liked them. I still think they are stylish and mostly well designed. Then I got farmed for an hours by the Riven Twins and gave up. Decided to quests first and come back stronger. Now I’m down in the sewers and I’m getting farmed by Darrik (holy moly he hits like a truck).
My problems with them are as follows:
-
Hitboxes are whack. Or feel weird. One example is the rotating move of the twins (he swings several times in a circle, moves himself during it and his body sometimes becomes a hurtzone, but only most of the time).
-
The perspective/isometric view makes it sometimes incredible hard to tell what the boss is going to do and how far the move is gonna reach. I honestly tried really hard, but as soon as boss is below me and is looking away from the camera (i.e. up at the player character) shit gets hard to see. The body is in a weird angle as if the boss is blocking the view with it’s own body. And then because of the perspective the moves always reach further than I think they do. I don’t have this issue in PoE2 so I don’t know why this is fucking me over so hard in this game. I legit died more times than I can count due to these reasons.
-
Healing in these fights feels bad. I’m not a good player. I must say this. But I’m also used to it. In these kind of games I’m a masochist. I like the learning experience and I like to overcome a challenge even if I need to attempt a lot of times. But the healing system frustrates me really hard in this game. Why? Because there is now way in hell I’m gonna farm up 100+ healing items before a boss fight. I need at least 10 attempts for a boss to have a fighting chance. I used up all my healing at the Twins and let me tell you. If there hadn’t been the option to do something else and come back stronger (and more prepared hopefully) I probably would have quit the game right there. The game actively punishes me for being bad (which is a fine motivation to become good…) and then prevents me from becoming good. And then after farming your healing items up again, meanwhile forgetting most of the bosses moves, you can’t even fast travel back to before the boss but need to run through the dungeon again. This is not as bad thanks to the shortcuts but it feels very unnecessary. That is a whole new level of Dark Souls “walk of shame”. Maybe I’m not getting something here?
So for now my tactic is to not use healing items. At least until I know for sure that I have a shot at beating the boss. And that means I need to at least have seen the “second phase” a few times without healing. This means a lot of dying. This means a lot of durability loss. This means a lot of unnecessary trips back to town to repair.
As much as I enjoy the crafting based healing in the regular exploration where I think it works well, running out of healing during boss fights is the worst.
Durability:
Let me prephase this with this - I hate durability. In almost every single game. I quit Breath of the Wild and Dark Souls 2 beccause of it.
- Most of the time durability is not a factor. Which is good. But then why does the system exist at all?
- My first “break” was a tool. It breaks completely. This led me to believe the same goes for armor. So I always checked my gear and went to repair early. Well, then Riven Twins happened and I forgot to check. Armor did not break completely (thank god). Make both - durability for tools and for armor/weapons work the same. Monster Hunter did away with breaking tools and it was for the most part a welcomed change.
- I don’t know what durability in this game tries to accomplish. The gold sink is so far is negligible, you only lose durability after you die so can instantly repair. So there is no gameplay there. Just running back to repair and stop doing fun stuff.
MMO-Elements:
I honestly have no clue what these things are doing in the game. I’m talking less about durability (though I do count it among those mmo-like elements as well) but about bars you need to fill up before you can harvest or real time building durations. Like is this game supposed to be a massive multiplayer game with free to play pay mechanics at some point?
Time gating stuff is useful (but not fun) for games like Warframe where they try to make you pay real money to skip those timers. But in a single player game with co-op? I have no idea what they are supposed to accomplish besides annoying the player. Maybe you are trying to work these “problems” into the game so you can sell the solutions to those problems in cash shop after release? Ubisoft did the same with xp boosters so the assumption is not really far fetched.
To be fair I don’t believe this to be the case. But it is very reasonable to believe otherwise when seeing stuff like this.
I’m taking a break now from getting farmed by bosses and will come back to the game for the next few days. I need to find a way to make bosses fun for me or I’m gonna quit the game. Maybe it’s engaging more with the skill/rune/crafting systems, maybe it’s just mindlessly farming healing items for a few hours.
Everything else are just mild annoyances that are covered up by the awesome characters, interesting world and great exploration.
It’s already a great game! And I hope I will find it is also a great game for me.