One of the reasons I have praised this game to no end before launch was the talks about the very balanced and thought out itemization system of this game. No bad rarity types, different animations for every different weapon type.
But playing through the whole first part of the game, until you reach Sacrament, I exactly found 1 single weapon type for each style: blood rusted sword, claymore, hunter knife, wooden staff and a bow I guess? Only common items. No affixes. And the fact that there are so little enemies compared to a normal arpg and these enemies don’t even drop items most of the time compared to a normal arpg and the most efficient way of farming items is letting time pass and opening chests, you have little to no items dropping which is ok for this part of the game I guess because all you find are the same common items over and over with stats varying between + - 2 damage and weight. I would believe that many people who come from arpgs into this would think “What is this? I’m out!” I don’t think it would “overwhelm” players to find a magic or cursed item already before beating Warrick or was it your intention to let people beat him purely with the fighting mechanics of the game rather than the stat system?
Also so far I am kinda worried that the “creative build making through affixes” could suffer from the fact that most items I find so far only add effects to resistance, life, stamina, focus, parrying. I know the parry is an essential part for the game and I suck at it but regardless I don’t think it will make for a very long term build crafting game if that’s the only thing the itemization system is able to offer. I hope I am wrong and things will open up later on. On hit effects, auras, passives, speed, rolling, getting hit (one jewel gives thorns luckily), I know that this part of the feedback might come too early but I just talk from my perspective at this point where if I wasn’t as invested in the concept and success of the game I might have dropped it due to it simply being an isometric souls and no arpg at all. I also understand that you don’t want to loot pinata spam most arpgs have. But fighting a strong enemy/mini boss and beating him after 2 or 3 attempts and then they drop not a single piece of armor or weapon but just a piece of wood and a mushroom or something feels really discouraging. And since I don’t see the enemy density increasing that much later in the game I don’t see why they can’t start dropping items at least after Sacrament (where the items that drop are actually different).
Sorry for the long rant but I mean it from a good place. I really want this game to succeed and I was so hyped for it to redefine the genre but the genre is defined by loot so loot has to be on point with this one.
(And more loot would probably also require a few more inventory slots)
Also please make it automatic or map a button to compare loot to the currently equipped item. This should be obvious while testing a game tbh.
