Hello There,
I wanted to write a detailed review of this game but as its still in Dev I thought it might be better to put my feedback in a place where it could potentially help.
I have played almost every style of horror and “souls like” games. I play them properly, then once complete, play to break the game. My feedback is based on my own 200 hours in the game.
Going to TLDR with a pros/ Cons list, then explanations below.
Pros (the good) - Obviously this included the story, the art/sound design, graphics the combat & the crucible. The tone of the game feels right, and most of what has been included is specifically the fun aspect of other games.
(P1) Armour and weapons having static base stats & weights for their class!
(P2) Having chests provide random tier loot.
(P3) Customisation -homes, weapons, Runes, builds & the city.
(P4) The menu system is Optimised.
(P5) The theme - Charming horror
Cons (The Bad)
(C1) Early game stamina, weight and weapon requirement..
(C2) Early game city upgrades /crafting.
(C3) Charge attacks & Great swords
(C4) Legendary Weapons
(C5) Combination Statuses (and bleed)
The Ugly (Or the Dev cycle)
(U1 ) Rune attacks are OP.
(U2) The game crashes if you try and make an offering at a fast travel location to quickly,
(U3) No Buyback shop.
(U4) Cursed Items Vs Enchanted (item curses)
(U5) No Stance break attack/ execute.
Final thoughts - Crucible, Focus, Duel wielding +
This is an excellent game, hence why i have spend the time to write this up. What we have is an 8/10 that can be an 11/10. So if this helps anyone even a little i will be content.
(P1) You can lock in your weight to the play style you enjoy rather than the item/ armour you enjoy. This is excellent for not having the wear the padded bra of Barbara because it gives you 5 more Armour than the god slayers bloody chain mail, this is very welcome allows for true customisation & fashion.
(P2) Never again will i spend the best part of 2 hours searching only to find a crazy Lads cookbook#3. NRFW encourages exploration by REWARDING IT!
(P3) Being able to find a weapon you like, and make a viable build around it (with time) regardless of that weapon is excellent. The home decorating along with the city expansion is charming, and the world in an of itself is excellent.
The Rune system allowing players to make a weapon with 4 (3) Unique attacks you enjoy is brilliant, more so that some of them only require stamina so you can mix and match them into a fighting style to develop your own flowing combos. A reaper charged attack into a Turn kick into a dodge slam into a Pestilent Recoil looks and feel appropriately epic. This game allows you to lean hard into your preferred playstyle in a way that makes YOU feel like its your character, rather than one type of character.
(P4) Play arch raiders and tell me a bad menu cant hurt a game. in NRFW you can find and access everything you want more or less where you expect it to be and quickly, meaning more time playing the game. (crucible rune store could use a tooltip).
(P5) there are many games of this nature set in a dying world due to X. Lies of P had petrification, Elden Ring had Death blight, Bloodborne had corrupted blood ect ect. NRFW has the plague, the standout is that the plague has been shown to mutate, indoctrinate & assimilate. This twist lends to multiple branching paths of enemy design, motive & ability. It could be man made, a sealed illness, a by product of something more, and eldritch horror.
(C1) Early game stamina, and stamina in general is low. Making the early game in particular be constant choice between dodging or attacking because you often cant do both depending on your weapon. This is pronounced if you decide to go for a two handed weapon. Weapons having stat requirement to wield that are way in access of what you are likely to be able to do for the next 10 - 15 levels early and often makes you feel like you are under levelled at level 1. The weight increases this immensely, as you are likely in 1 of 3 boats, all all 3 if early enough, that you cannot equip the weapon you want due to weight, due to lacking the required stats, and lacking the required stamina to use it. The first 15 levels will be investment split into Stamina, Equip load & the minimum stats to wield the weapon you want.
(C2) Early game crafting and city upgrades is an extension of the issue i had with NRFW, Expanding hte city and upgrading the shops should provide the most value at the first upgrade, so you can start to craft and make things with relatively little grind. Having to get tier 2 on so many things in such a item intensive way slows down the game and isnt fun.
(C3) Two handed swords are so slow it almost feels glitched. Trying to swing the Corpse blade legendary felt like i had been cursed in real life. They are so so slow in a game where you are often against multiple opponents or at the least agile opponents makes the slower weapons feel very bad to play, and if they were 20% faster, they would still feel quite slow (tested by making them 20% faster). Charged attacks have a lot of support from runes ect, i was surprised to not see these on every weapon. even more so that they are not on some legendary weapons (Wind of death for example). I assume this is in the works.
(C4) Legendary Weapons are slightly missing the mark. Their affects should be unique and or interesting. Winds of death for example, is cool, but its a slightly longer samurai sword that doesn’t have a charged attack & besides from increased damage its negative outweighs the 2 positives it comes with compared to a weapon i can build myself. They should be their own build. Leave after images on dodges, make the user feel like the have something unique and powerful.
(C5) In my 200 hour play through i noticed this once ( i missed the tool tip). But it naturally happened one. Its a very cool concept, but whilst adding a bleed gem removes my innate Flaming facet and replaces it, i don’t see the combination status being to impactful outside of casting. I like that having multiple weapons equipped doesn’t affect weight, so you can quick swap to another element if you wanted to, but i feel this s underutilised currently and i’m not smart enough to offer a balanced way of this being implemented. Bleed obviously needs more support beyond lifesteal vs bleeding, but i assume that’s coming.
(U1) Rune attacks are by and large better than normal attacks in every single way, and hte only limiting factor is can you afford to do the rune attack or not. I LOVE that you can use stamina for some attacks, but i make a character to fight like an anime protagonist, with flowing moves that seem to fit into each other. That is fun. However, if i wanted to make a build in which i can just use my rune attacks over and over, i could, and i would never normal attack or charged attack again. And many people don’t.
Rune attacks need an inherent cooldown, (1 second for every 25 focus cost e.g) in order to stop players using these on loop. If the attack has an affect, it should have an additional cooldown. but most importantly, if it has a knockdown (that worked on bosses) it should be on a massive cooldown, or bosses should only be able to be affected by it once.
Lots of fights become (use knockdown - beat boss whilst down, regain more focus than the move costs, use it again as he gets back up, repeat). Having a static cooldown of 5 seconds for knockdown increasing by 1 seconds per 25 focus cost) would make players weave in rune attacks rather than rely completely on them. For casters, they should be using the low focus/stamina rune attacks whilst the big nuke are on cooldown, otherwise what’s the point of having weaker attacks at all?
(U2) This is the only issue of a bug i have faced in 200 hours, but its happned a few times. When you get to a fast travel rift that’s inactive, if you immediately go to make an offer, the game will take you to the offer menu without giving you access to items. so you cant offer anything, its like the game doesn’t know what menu to bring you, and so you need to hard reset out as you cant quite through the menu that comes up.
(U3) Just a little addition that everyone likes. Accidentally sell Radiant upgrade? Well, the senechal has the ability to buy back items sold to any vendor within 24 hours of it being sold. a nice touch, in theme for that guy (thing). Gives us something else to spend our points on beyond plague eradication. Easy win (if its easy to implement)
(U4) Cursed items carry a terrible affect but the trade off is you get a single extra positive affect. It implies the cursed items are “stronger” variations but that’s not true. They both get the same ranges in terms of effects (10% fire damage). You would expect Cursed items to go up further (13/15) but they are infact the same caps. In some cases, you can put an effect on an enchanted piece of gear that you cant on a cursed piece (25 Max focus helms E.G). I would like to see either/or/and increase in affects of the ranges cursed gear can go up too, reduction in the cursed affects (some of them are re role or don’t use item bad). A good potential would be making hte curses both negative an positive in one affect. So you then have access to unique trade offs rather than just an extra positive for an extra negative.
E.g attacking a Bleeding target give you 20% increased healing and 10% physical damage however bleeding targets get 10% faster attack speed and damage)
Frozen duration is half but they take double damage ect.
(U5) I’m surprised once you break the stance there isnt an option for a visceral attack that uses the back stab stats & animation. If added, there could be a build around it but this was just something i noticed rather than a criticism as the game plays well W/O it, i just don’t like moving behind the stance broken enemy to do something they couldn’t defend from the front.
Final thoughts - and personal opinions.
Crucible - this is great, like a mini night reign. The random runes, the random mobs, the feel of it, the fact you can keep coming back. This is Endgame, i really hope the Devs open up the rooms and eventually have different bosses to face. This is where a lot of payers will find themselves eventually and so far its very good, I’ve just played it to death now so waiting for some variety.
Duel wielding - every game with ths feature (two random weapons not paired weapons) has balance nightmares trying to make a single weapon viable vs being able to due wield them. Im ok without this feature but i know a lot of people have mentioned it. If it were me, i would make a duel wield subclass of weapons (like the daggers) but have duelling swords, duelling axes ect as its own thing, you could balance rather than trying to account for people having active 2 lots of enchantments on 2 unique weapons and trying to account for all the variation)
Focus - my build has 4 pieces of equipment with the effect (lose 10 - 15 focus on hit). And as previously mentioned i use rune attacks that flow into one another. So if i get hit just once, i cant use abilities until I’ve hit with normal attacks to build it back up, it feels like a combination style of play where the better you do the better you get to do as you have more resources at your disposal. But one hit and you need to build it back up. I use every aspect of my weapon (even a stamina rune attack incase im out focus) but without this personally imposed restriction, i could just spam Rune attacks until the game was over.
This is true of bows (which i never use) in that they are too good and too safe for their output.
I would say the focus/ rune attack situation is the only real difficult hurdle to overcome - and if you didn’t do anything it would really matter as it only affect the individual experience (and they chose to do it) but on the off chance you add…
PVP - this could be a fun addition to the crucible. simple PVP arena. Even if you only added PVP without balancing the game around it, this will give the game longevity as people love PVP.
Expansion and companions - I love the city expansion, it would be amazing to be able to upscale this and have little homes in part of the world outside of major cities. They could even get attacked and our need to defend them ect. And in keeping with thee game being charming, having a companion, even if its a squire that doesn’t help in combat but provided ect carry space, could be fun.