Great level design that promotes exploring and learning the layout and finding shortcuts
Combined with fixed camera to make it very satisfying to run through the world
Combat feels impactful and smooth, satisfaction when hitting and parrying through the roof (A bit slow for my taste)
Item design was interesting but I feel like the curses were a bit too strong and never felt worth it over using blue/white items with gems. Cursed items probably for endgame where you don’t need gold/experience or can counteract stamina and equip load penalties.
CONS
BIG THINGS THAT ANNOYED ME
While combat felt amazing, I quickly felt like the best way to play is to just wait for the enemy to attack, get tired and then hit them once. Whether you had a fast or slow weapon made very little difference because the fast weapons never staggered enemies making them hit you back and the slow weapons were too slow to hit first.
Stat requirements for weapons and not being able to reallocate stats makes it feel like it’s not worth putting points into weapons that you’re afraid you’ll swap out soon. I was consistently sitting on 5 skill points in case I found a weapon I wanted to play with.
Too far between save points and not being able to teleport to your previous save points sucks ass (dilemma making more save points or traveling to them more accessible makes the rewarding feeling of finding shortcuts weaker)
Fast travel is confusing? How does it work? Sometimes want to suicide to move places. DYING FOR FAST TRAVEL IS NEVER THE ANSWER???
Placing furniture in the house was ABSOLUTELY AWFUL on PC and barely functional with a controller. Please fix it so you’re able to place furniture with a mouse/keyboard instead of having to aim in front of the character.
Small things that annoyed me
Game pause while in solo play in inventory (Maybe they don’t want this for quickswapping potions/bombs in combat)
Discard/Throw stuff out while looting chests
Talking to npcs is difficult the hitbox and aiming towards them sucks
Stash/inventory space - Ability to buy more stash space earlier?
Tools shattering when durability is gone? Repair? Get back how?
I agree with most of what you’ve written, though I disagree about the combat. Waiting for the enemy to get tired and then attacking is definitely the safest way of playing but that’s true for literally every game in the genre and I don’t think that strategy being present is a problem. I also completely disagree on your assessment of fast/slow weapons, depending on the weapon type I found that faster weapons did stagger certain enemies and I found myself approaching enemies differently depending on what they were. As for the slow weapons, I found myself far more dependent on parrying enemy attacks or staggering them for a longer damage window in order to fit my attacks in. I felt there was a nice level of playstyle diversity present after the initial period of “getting good”.
As for the rest of your post I pretty much completely agree. I think the lack of a respec option means the devs possibly intended for you to reroll characters for different builds which, since the realm is persistent, seems fine but it kinda sucks that the character you experiment on to try new styles/weapons is ruined in the process. I think a free respec for the first character as part of a main quest reward or an expensive respec option is warranted. I found myself holding skill points for the same reason as you.
Traveling in general could use a bit of a rework, I know the maps are cleverly designed to reduce the walking with shortcuts but it’d be really nice to have a consistent fast travel points at the start of the glades, in the sewers, and at the end of nameless pass. I also found myself wanting to commit suicide for sake of fast travel which definitely seems wrong, so maybe an option to do that from the menu (travel, not suicide) would be nice. The current implementation of house decoration is a pretty terrible experience, though I’m pretty happy that feature is there at all.
I think the only other thing I kind of disagree about is the tools, tool durability/breaking is pretty common in games that have them and you can simply buy more from the blacksmith. I don’t necessarily think it should change but I do think the feature should be better explained to the player as I don’t think it’s something prospective players will be expecting. That said, I’m not exactly sure why tools exist as equipment at all right now. Advancing their quality is a common way to give a sense of progression in farming/sim games but here, when we already have stats/levels/gear/housing? They don’t seem necessary in their current form, it’d be nice if they found a way to do more with them.