Crea offers compelling exploration, gathering, crafting, building, and character customization experiences. Unfortunately, it also offers a poorly explained "chaos" system that may or may not pertain only to crafting and terrible controls. Be prepared to unexpectedly fall and to be overrun by enemies while switching item and spell sets or trying to use your grappler.

Combat is rarely fun regardless of weapon choice or enemy type and it is often very difficult, like when ghost-like enemies called Harvesters move and shoot through terrain in a tight cave system, killing you without much of a chance. Some monsters seem to trigger a jarring player-character teleport like what happens in some network games when players have network latency issues. I did find a boss or something rather boss-like that seems to be invulnerable until one figures out how to drop its shield or does so by accident, but I haven't yet defeated it because it and its minions are better at attacking me than I am at fumbling with Crea's controls.

The user interface could use some work too. For example, the set-switching feels clunky (especially while in combat), it looks and feels strange to have placeable items hovering at the mouse pointer when I just want to gather or harvest, and after picking up a spell or item icon there does not seem to be a way to cancel dragging the icon (e.g., the escape key, which closes overlays). On top of all of that, overlays just kind of end up all over the place, blocking the view of the game environment. It would be nice if they could be more neatly arranged and controlled (e.g., auto-arranged, snapped, and toggled in sets) and perhaps translucent.

Hopefully Crea will improve in time. I am sure many people will enjoy the game as it is, but it stopped being fun for me long before I could discover all it has to offer.

Crea offers compelling exploration, gathering, crafting, building, and character customization experiences. Unfortunately, it also offers a poorly explained "chaos" system that may or may not pertain only to crafting and terrible controls. Be prepared to unexpectedly fall and to be overrun by enemies while switching item and spell sets or trying to use your grappler. Combat is rarely fun regardless of weapon choice or enemy type and it is often very difficult, like when ghost-like enemies called Harvesters move and shoot through terrain in a tight cave system, killing you without much of a chance. Some monsters seem to trigger a jarring player-character teleport like what happens in some network games when players have network latency issues. I did find a boss or something rather boss-like that seems to be invulnerable until one figures out how to drop its shield or does so by accident, but I haven't yet defeated it because it and its minions are better at attacking me than I am at fumbling with Crea's controls. The user interface could use some work too. For example, the set-switching feels clunky (especially while in combat), it looks and feels strange to have placeable items hovering at the mouse pointer when I just want to gather or harvest, and after picking up a spell or item icon there does not seem to be a way to cancel dragging the icon (e.g., the escape key, which closes overlays). On top of all of that, overlays just kind of end up all over the place, blocking the view of the game environment. It would be nice if they could be more neatly arranged and controlled (e.g., auto-arranged, snapped, and toggled in sets) and perhaps translucent. Hopefully Crea will improve in time. I am sure many people will enjoy the game as it is, but it stopped being fun for me long before I could discover all it has to offer.