Opinions after finishing Chapter 1

Wicked Feedback
1

A bit of background about some games that I played which could be relevant for this feedback

  • Bloodborne about 1k hours, did bl4 runs
  • Sekiro about 500 hours, did no death runs, did no charm + bell runs
  • About 200 hours in DeS, DS1, DS2, DS3 combined
  • About 400 hours in Elden Ring
  • Witcher 3 several times, probably 300+ hours
  • Skyrim several times
  • Oblivion several times

I started the game before Hotfix 1 played about 7 hours, finished the game before Hotfix 2. Played on steam deck abot 18 hours mostly with Brothers Keepers with light roll, finished the chaper at level 15, I did not do the trials.

What I like:

  • I really like the art style
  • The fact that you can only warp to the Sacrament whisper and the last visited whisper
  • Level design
  • The combat feels impactfull
  • The ability to parry with dual wielding daggers and two handed greatswords
  • The light roll/ heavy bash mechanic, nice to have some extra stuff besides different number of invincibility frames
  • It’s really funny how the character walks with a staff equiped, love it
  • Cool backstab animations
  • The level of weapon customization
  • Since the game has only one difficulty option every enemy can be balanced around that difficulty, please keep this and if you want to make the game playable for the players who do not want a challene just introduce something like the god mode from Hades, maybe even something like the Hell mode for those that want a bigger challenge, but balance the game for the intended difficulty
  • The daily/ weekly bounties
  • Story seems interesting
  • I really like the voice acting

What I really don’t like:

  • The weapon durabily, let me explain: I like the idea that dying should have a consequence but the gear durabily just feels bad, you either make the durability loss on death very high case in which the consequence feels bad, or you make it very low case in which it’s nothing more that adding extra time spent by the player to go and repair the gear, I would preffer to loose XP or even directly substract the repair cost. but once I reach 0 XP or currency do not do anithing else.
    As it is right now the durability loss is not a big consequnce in reality, but feels really bad psychologically, nobody wants to permanently loose a piece of gear, and I hate wasting time to go to the smith to repair the gear.

  • The healing, there are two problems here:

    1. you either do not have enough food and you have to go and farm resources/ coin which is boring, even worst than
      bloodborne since you have to farm for multiple ingredients ( yeah I know about the shop that sells the resources, still I
      have to farm coin, still boring )
    2. or you have too many healing items which makes the boss encounters trivial, Skyrim proved this, every encounter was
      boring since most of my inventory was healing potions
      Keep in mind that even Witcher 3 ( which is not a soulslike ) had healing potions which refilled on rest

  • Not being able to do multiple heals at once with healing items that heal too little just leads to boring gameplay, I would just run away from the boss untill I was able to heal a decent amount

  • The stamina bar is hard to see so I ended up being hit because I had no stamina left to dodge, I would rather have it below the HP because if it is near the character there are 3 locations to look at in combat: enemy, HP, my character to see the staminar bar is is very little, I would rather have 2 locations: enemy and the corner with the HP bar with a big and visible stamina bar. Also I would preffer the HP and stamina bars to increase when I level them up, it’s a better indication of how much of them I have left.

  • The stamina recovery is to slow, I would just run away from the boss untill the stamina recovered, which is a very boring way to play

What I don’t like but I can live with

  • Resource gathering time, it’s just boring, I think that once I got better tools the gathering time was faster, maybe start with that time
  • Randomized weapon stats
  • The reward for killing a boss is just extra capacity in the inventory
  • The parry timing feels either inconsistent or not big enough, maybe this could be because I played on the steam deck where the the frame rate is what it is
  • Once I get a parry I can’t do critical attack even on regular enemies, so I did not use it on regular enemies since it was high risk no reward, the reward felt ok on bosses, I saw in the notes for Hotfix 2 that you removed the even the stagger from the Rived Twins? Again it will be high risk no reward so it will not be used, if it makes the enemy easier than you want it to be maybe find a diferent way to buff him?
  • Not sure about this one, but it feels like the enemies around the world scale around the level of the player? If yes, could it be removed? If the world scales around the level of the player leveling up just does not feel like I made any progress, again Skyrim shows this
  • The items in storage, I don’t even know how much time I wasted going from merchants to storage and back, does not feel entertaining, there are some suggestions to just put items in storage automatically and use them from storage when visiting a merchant…but at that point the storage is just an extended inventory, I would rather remove the storage and have unlimited inventory
  • When fighting multiple mobs they just attack at the same time, if I pary one the other one hits, I just have to run around to wait for a window which is boring or trade HP which is not fun.
  • Found the weakness for 90% of the mobs, they are weak to dash and backstab in combat, sure the animation is cool but it makes me only want to use that strategy, maybe make this harder to get and nerf them a bit so that actual combat is encouraged

My experience with the bosses in order of encounter spoiler ahead

  1. Warrick the torn - cool boss, beat him in 3rd attempt
  2. Falsted Darak - first attempt barely tried, maybe I was overleveled maybe I had to many healing items
  3. The Rived Twins - cool fight, around 10 attempts, I had to go and farm for healing items after several attempts, the farming was really boring, got back to him, the parry felt rewarding but not OP ( fought him before Hotfix 2, I would like the parry to feel rewarding as well, otherwise we just have no reason to use it ), but in the second part of the fight it’s really annoying when he throws poison on half the arena, maybe limit the poison or make it disappear faster?
  4. Second Falsted Darak - first attempt, phase one was cool did some pary did some dodge propper fighting, phase 2 well it was about 2am, I was tired I just pushed through with a lot of healing items, did not feel rewarding
2 Likes
2

Hello, some spoiler below.

I’m now very concerned about the enemies scaling their level through the story.

I mean, after killing Darak, all enemies in starting areas (swamp, shore and the Mariner’s Keep) are replaced with the creatures of the sewer. So immediately it became very hard for me to backtrack to grinding resources, also I noticed for these kinds of enemies it is impossible to do backstab.

I understand that the opening of the sewer has flooded the surrounding areas with these creatures, it’s lore wise, but now all human enemies are disappeared from these zones.

Not only the rebel humans have weak mobs but the armoured ones with big weapons, which are harder to kill, are a lot easier to defeat than the new big monsters (like the dude in the war room of the weekly bounties), and I find two of them in the Keep gate.

Also, the fatty exploding leech and the siren generates multiple enemies, maybe it could be better to reduce their number with weak-monsters like the equivalent of the human rebel mobs.

Or even level scaling a bit the human rebels, reduced in small areas, like Darak’s remnants, holding some fortified zones (like the Keep) and adding the new monsters there and there or during some moment of the day or randomly on different days.

I agree with you about levelling up all enemies just does not feel like I made any big progress.

I find my build: with gear, improvements and statistics spent pretty useless with these new monsters and I invested a lot of points in statistics that I don’t need any more, I’m not so sure about this last point but I have a bad feeling, I’ll spend more time on that to investigate and have a better idea of the problem.

3

I quite sure there is no “traditional” lvl scaling and more a progression scaling like after every boss certain areas get a “upgrade” on mobs with higher lvls but i cant 100% confirm that however im 200% with you i dropped so many “RPGs” that had 1to1 lvl scaling just removing the whole reason why “we” love rpgs

  1. Lvl Up
  2. Get stronger
    Scaling enemies with the players basically removes all rpg elements implemented (ofc not all but im quite sure people understand) or makes the redundant since why bother lvling and taking your time if it only makes the enemies stronger with me
4

If it is just lore related like @LordCarmi suggested I am fine with it

5

Update after 30 more hours. Will provide some updates on the things I complained earlier

  • The weapon durabily, well it only became a minor annoyance but it still is annoying
  • The healing, ok on this one I see that it does not oversimplify the game due to the cooldown but it still disrupts me from the action every once in a while when I have to go and buy resources and craft the food, I would still like some sort of system that I don’t have to think about it, just have estus like in dar souls, or some heal that replentishes over time in combat, or some potions like in witcher 3. The foods could be kept for those buffs but please give an option to eat multiple at once pre boss fight
  • The stamina bar is hard to see so I ended up being hit because I had no stamina left to dodge, I would rather have it below the HP because if it is near the character there are 3 locations to look at in combat: enemy, HP, my character to see the staminar bar is is very little, I would rather have 2 locations: enemy and the corner with the HP bar with a big and visible stamina bar. Also I would preffer the HP and stamina bars to increase when I level them up, it’s a better indication of how much of them I have left.
  • Resource gathering time, it is faster once you get some better tools but still boring
  • The reward for killing a boss is just extra capacity in the inventory, I would still like something more rewarding
  • Storage, even with bigger storage I still have to waste time to deposit/ retrieve items from it…but it is less annoying at least
  • When fighting multiple mobs they just attack at the same time, if I pary one the other one hits, I just have to run around to wait for a window which is boring or trade HP which is not fun…yeah this one is still annoying even after 30 more hours.
    A friend of mine looked at some gameplay on youtube and saw a dude fighting several enemies at once and just running around them, his reply not my knid of game, but he plays both souls and diablo type games.

How were those 30 extra hours spent?

  • I gathered resources to repair the town, this one was painfully boring
  • Digging for infusion items, maybe more infusion items should drop in the crucible?
  • Died a lot in the crucible because I started it a level 15, but probaly in the full release this should not be an issue since I could just do more story content before the crucible, once I had a decent level the crucible was ok and the echo knight was fun

Overall even with those annoying time wasters I liked the game and I really appreciate the speed at which Hotfixes are delivered.