"Finished": Closing Thoughts

[Cleric]

So with the rescue of Erin and completion of the story as it is, I guess I have some closing thoughts. Overall, I really enjoyed it, and while I liked both the beta and the release, I kind of liked the map system of the beta, but understand that that was a LOT compared to a couple nodes of randomization and the ability to reroll them. Both systems were fun to progress through, but can understand why the 2000 grid-square version was replaced.

Also, by finished I just mean the Erin quest and credits. I did not achievement hunt yet.

Anyway:

The annoying (not ultimately gamebreaking):
1.) Sometimes one of the spirits at the end of an adventure just jumps around. I've tried to avoid moving, being at a fully flat part of the area, and nothing seems to work - it seems to be random. It's frequency varied often, and it had nothing to do with the Interior - all of them had the issue at least once.
2.) No stats are saved when leaving an adventure. Given the above and the only solution being to portal out or Save and Quit, losing all the stats (enemies killed, critically struck, assassinated, anomalies, books, traps AND interiors despite restarting inside the interior) are wiped. The anomalies and things gathered are kept, of course, but the end screen for the adventure will not reflect them. Luckily a speedrun is usually enough to get A or B rank if other enemies are killed on the way to the end.
3.) This might be my bad luck, but I had an AWFUL lot of Revenant faction adventures. Revenants being the least fun to fight as a sneaky type, and still annoying when you're TRYING to get as many kills as you can on your way to objectives.
4.) In Beta, the anomalies showed up in Astral. I get not wanting them to, but having an easier way to spot them would be nice as I found quite a few adventures wouldn't spawn them in the interiors or on the critical path of the map. This is like.. the least of my worries, though.
5.) Glyphs don't seem to activate on many large enemies. Usually only the smaller adds will trigger them.
6.) Don't know if it's intended, but a couple of the end shrines don't spawn bosses. The inconsistency sometimes led to a letdown. I'm ready to fight some big dude and the game's just like "good job, all done".

The good:
1.) The movement is so much better than beta. With the new levitation and vaulting, even my least favorite maps are relatively fun to navigate.
2.) The perks available help hone in a playstyle.
3.) While the adventures are all basically the same, it does remove the "dang, I do NOT want this objective on this map with these enemies" moment. Rerolling maps is good, too.
4.) Enemy casters are much better balanced than the beta. They were just as fun to fight as the other enemies rather than a completely unbalanced dominating threat if you lose track of them for a split second.
5.) Some of the final objectives (the shrines, etc) change up the pace. I ignore notes pretty often until I realized that one of the notes at the offering shrine gave a hint. The little puzzle to get the 'right' answer is a good moment to pause and work the brain for the half second it takes to get the right answer.
6.) Interiors! I thoroughly enjoyed this second half of each adventure. Having a tighter map to just slaughter through after the exploration half of the adventure was extremely fun. My favorites are the tavern and the dungeon - winding passages with encounter rooms works really well for the game.
5.) This list seems short, but the whole game was really good. I enjoyed the time I've played a lot, minus the frustrations above and below.

The bad:
1.) The defense perks are nice, but the least interesting ones of them all. While even the mana/health perks have a place in shoring up the weakness of a specialist perk, the defense perks are just straight bonuses for a sneaky type. The closest to interesting is the parry one, and I've only ever parried by accident, leaving 2 or 3 levels of that perk line completely boring if you are a parry god, and all of them boring otherwise.
2.) The generation of maps is neat, and a good way to keep things interesting even when replaying maps, but it caused quite a few issues quite a few times, with notes spawning inside blocked off rooms, or even more damning, levers or interior entrances. A couple of the maps with buildings had me constantly recasting because of this, and more than a couple times I had to abuse the movement or combat system to get to a place that I probably shouldn't have been able to normally.
3.) Levers for one interior inside another interior. Not bad on it's face, quite fun to get to do two interiors (which, again, I enjoyed thoroughly!). The problem is that the objective system does not really point out the other interior you need to enter and since interior entrances can be off in the woods somewhere away from the main building structures, this can end up making things absurdly drawn out.
4.) Sometimes notes just don't work. The ones I usually had trouble with were the ones outside of a door with two lever locks. It'd say "Discovered Multiple" and then just not show any new objectives. Considering those levers can be hidden rather well, this had me recasting quite a few maps.

The suggestions:
1.) I would, and many would, obviously love more content. More story, even if it's just snippets from Erin's experience in the dream world when picking up signs. Another faction or two would go a long way to the same-y-ness of the maps after awhile, but I understand that takes a lot of work with modeling, animating, AI, etc. New content would go a long way to even out the perk progression. As it stands I was about level 30 at completion and it felt like I had ONLY just gotten the perks I wanted to feel good about how I played. Another 20 or 30 adventures would have cemented it for me. I think, from how long it took to get levels, etc, the aim was to have players complete the game before all perks and perk lines are unlocked - incentivize specializing and careful choices with materials, etc. (The obvious downside is that switching your focus is harder the later into the game you are without actively refusing to play maps you haven't gotten Erin signs in).
2.) Weapon progression is a mixed bag. Swords are straight upgrades while ranged weapons and spells have a lot of horizontal progression - you can get a ranged weapon for stealth or impact to unlock weak points, or you can go in guns blazing. Spells have a good mix, even though I used them very little (though glyphs, shadowstep, and lightning charge saved my life more than I'd care to admit. I'd love to see weapon progression have a horizontal axis as well. What immediately comes to mind given the stats we can see when choosing a weapon:
Impact: Broadsword > Katana > Magic Sword
Weapons that can stagger better than others. They'd have higher damage than daggers, but less critical and damage than the other classes.
Critical: Dagger > Stilletto > Magic Dagger
Weapons that can be used on those weakpoints. Lowest damage and impact, but the damage really comes out when you work the enemies well or get the assassination.
Damage: Rapier > Estoc > Magic Rapier
Deals the most damage to all enemies, but they don't have the impact of Broadswords nor the critical damage of daggers.
What I'd love to see is Critical Hits and Assassinations being split, let the rapiers excel at Critical Hits in combat, daggers get the assassinations, and heavy swords get the base damage. Impact doesn't seem like it plays a huge role when it comes to swords at the moment.
3.) An option to have 1-step casting. I dunno what to call this, but the current casting method is 1-8 to choose a spell and then one of two additional buttons to cast a spell. For me, this felt like keybind bloat. I am lucky to be fully able and have access to good peripherals, but people who do not have full movement as well as people with bare minimum gear are going to struggle with 8 spell choice buttons and 2 spell casting buttons before considering everything else that needs binding. An option to press 1-8 AND cast that spell upon release of that button would greatly improve the experience. This casting method was my primary (read only) hurdle to actually using magic. I just kept shadow step and one of two damage spells memorized because I couldn't deal with the two step process of spell casting - especially in a chaotic situation.
4.) Related to the previous, but also it's own suggestion: RMB (ranged weapon) to cancel spells. Currently I have 2 buttons for spellcasting and you have to press the opposite button to cancel a spell you've started to target. Making RMB (ranged weapon) a universal cancel would help a lot in intense moments when I can't immediately remember which spell I am using and which button to press to cancel. Usually I just let the cast happen, but that causes issues sometimes if it's something like Shadowstep. It doesn't HAVE to be the Ranged Weapon keybind, or ONLY the ranged weapon keybind. It could be dodge, sprint, regular attack as well or instead, but a neutral button would be better than accidentally double tapping a different button and accidently performing an action that can have consequences (i.e. canceling a Glyph and accidentally Shadowstepping into a moshpit of death). Ranged Weapon aim is the most neutral keybind since ADS isn't used for spells, can be instantly stopped, and doesn't interfere with any movement options.
5.) Specific to the revenant faction: A way for us to identify revenants would be wonderful. Even if it's just letting our Astral Projection see and mark them like other enemies. They have just so many things going for them compared to other factions, that being immune to detection aside from actively mousing over them to see a cursor change or walking right on them is a bit much. They were the only faction I actively bee-lined the objectives and gave up having fun killing them on my way to an objective.

[SHOVEL]

I've got 35+ hours logged and am about 3/4 of the way through the main story line (mainly taking my time). I agree nearly 100% with you summation of the game except I'd also like to throw "rocks" without having to drop my ranged weapon. (Even it it became a default spell or something like that).

I also think that you should be able to BUY ammunition rather than the weapon (which includes ammunition?).

Also I 100% agree on finding the Revenants(?), trying for 100% kills when you can't find them is annoying. (Same with Anomalies.)

[Cleric]

I forgot the throw rocks thing xD was nice, and I wonder if it stacks up with weapons at all. Would be a nice competitive choice if they did or were affected by perks in.