Finally finished game - feedback to devs

[Pönnukaka]

After painfully returning I finally am done with game on my Switch. Around 26 hours. I would say you guys need to work more on your ideas of how to not make your own design work against you.

If you decide to skip story, not go crazy or innovative on graphics (they are decent at most), don't have unique idea (yep, Hades, although your development process probably overlapped simply) - your basic mechanics and what you give players has to be top quality.

Mechanics of fighting? I think they are great. Parry is more insane than in Dark Souls, so that's worth pausing a second. But you don't need it to finish game(I almost didn't parry at all). I had fun when it comes to this and I didn't experience bugs. So 10/10.

However:

- Forsaken weaponry. About 40% can and is skipped by smarter players. Cause why would you dilute your chances to get good weapons? Your idea to reset it/allow players to manipulate it(the pool of weapons, some youtuber told me this change is coming in next patch) is completly wrong. You should rework those badly designed weapons. Cause this is core of your game. 40% of one of cores is just bad. Boring/slow/not viable. Nobody sane uses maces on harder diffculty. All useless weapons with useless effects in arsenal should be reworked. This is how you will make people come back to try some new builds. Not by allowing to turn on/off what weapons are in pool of weapons players gets. That's just LAZY. 6/10

- Jade rings. Outside weapons there should be use for them..unless you will rework Forsaken weaponry?

- Blessings. I like those I used. I unlocked 10, I won't go into details. That leaves 10 blessings I didn't even felt like using. And how many players did this as well? Probably a lot. Sadly this shows you did not work enough on it. Did you play Hades? I have literally not skipped any possible mechanic there. Even if I just tried weapon one time. I did it. Your 2 core things, I skipped and didn't enjoy 40-50% of them. This should be red flag for you. You did not test it enough, didn't try it enough to see if it's fun. Cause I love 'the completionist' in me, I love to have everything unlocked, tried, done, you know. This leads to last thing. 5/10

- Divine favours. Great, you copied someone. Sure it works, but not thanks to you. Also fact you can't reroll upgrades, you didn't copy enough in my opinion. 0/10

- Tables and quality of weapons - I think you did solid here 10/10.

- Feeling of the game. I understand you wanted to create hard, dark and difficult challenge. You did. But it lacks one huge thing that makes such challenge worth returning to. That after you overcome the odds, you simply either get something or new lore is revealed, something is changed, the secret sauce recepie is showed to you by divine hand. The obvious and not obvious gratifying effect. The mystery that you want to keep exploring. This game lacks this factor and painfully so. Most players even if they will sweat like mad and struggle with developers creation, if they feel satifsfied they will keep coming back to it. Sadly I think you missed that. I stick with my general 5.5/10 score of whole game. Lot of those points came from price.

And you should not only take mine but multiple opinions. All those non francophone users giving you feedback here. That you made quite a few mistakes. Like lack of testing and finetunning harder Temple of Eagle. It's unbearable to play it compared to other ones. So either bring up challenge everywhere or change balance everywhere,

At the end of the day you have to compare your game to other in genre/style.

Even if Hades is lacking in some places, players are willing to forgive those mistakes cause overall feeling and core mechanics are magnificent. It feels like pleasant bike ride everytime. Wind in your hair and tons of fun no matter where you go.

Dark souls 1/2/3 is cruel, but addictive. Once you get hooked you can't stop. Gambling your life away becomes a must. You have that progression and whole mystery you try to understand, but mostly you just stumble in the dark and get backstabbed. It's amazing.

You created something in between, but you didn't capture either selling points. I am certain I won't be playing this game again, and if there is DLC I won't buy it. Being small team doesn't pardon you from anything, it should be much easier in fact to get face to face to your community.

The mere fact that you didn't prepare easy way to mod game and there is no mods still on NexusMods should tell you a lot. Huge mistake and it will make your game much less popular, less replayable and less fun. Cause games like Darkest Dungeon even if did have finite gameplay, became infinite thanks to it's community. You can play completly different game thanks to modding. You can indulge your need to change how it looks. New way to have fun thanks to modding.

Maybe I will try your next game. Good luck.

[D7Watch]

Agreed. 100% The Devs failed to finish their game. You don't release something so broken in terms of balance (looking at you eagle temple on hard, hell on normal).

[Robja-Mysan]

Agreed for the most part, though perhaps I'm less harsh.

I love the combat - actually more than Hades (which I also love), mainly because of the challenge imposed by stamina management and having multiple weapons per run. Hades feels "spammy" by comparison (not in a negative sense - it's still quite fun).

If a weapon needs to be earned and unlocked, and the reward for unlocking is adding it to your pool of potential weapons, it needs to have competitive attributes. There are - as you say - many weapons that simply aren't worth it. Why would I want to invest in them and dilute my arsenal?

My main issue is a lack of significant character progression. I'm a sucker for story, but I don't need it to enjoy a game. But even (or especially) without story, I need some sense of improvement to keep me coming back. As illustrated above (and in greater detail in the OP), the progression as currently implemented feels significantly limited.

I'm fairly new to rogue likes/lites, and I can understand if devs wanted to lean toward the "like" side from a design perspective. I can certainly understand players who strive to complete run after run for the pure challenge of it. Personally, I need more to keep me going. Perhaps that means this isn't my ideal genre - if so, that's fine, I can accept that. But if devs are looking for feedback, instantiating more substantial character-based progression is what I would recommend. I suspect I'm not alone in this, and it could open up the game to a much wider player base.

All that being said - I've enjoyed the game, I'm not quite done with it yet, and I look forward to future updates/projects from Passtech Games.

[Szaal]

I think it'll be helpful to address the cause diff-spike on Eagle temple. I personally don't find it that hard (close call with Serpent), but I do feel the Air Statue (the one that shoots electric balls) are the most tricky among all traps (even I prefer its cursed version as it's simpler). Elite Lightning Babies can return back to the womb with their homing AoE that can't be dodged if you're in melee range. But otherwise, statues, mines, and dynamo-thing traps are all welcome mechanics.

On Blessings, I think it's fine. Some are niche, some are hi-skill hi-reward, some are pointless as their benefit hardly procs or requires you to harm yourself to trigger them (Furious Skin). Sich'al's blessings the best. I do think that the devs might benefit more by straying away from 10 blessings per gods model and instead try to create interesting ones (even if it means T'amok only has 0 blessings).

As for the end-game, I do think this game is the most lackluster among other roguelitkes I've seen. Some suggestions: Monster Train has achievement stamps for each card you cleared a run with; Enter the Gungeon has secrets that, when unlocked in a run, can provide an alternate ending to the resolution of the run/lore; Dead Cells has difficulty mod when you clear a run (NG+) which, if you unlock a secret in that NG+, reveals its truly truest true ending. I do feel the core loop of CDG is very solid and I think the content for end-game (and some mid-game) are still very open to develop further.

[Doozie]

You were unnecessarily hard on the game and while I agree it has flaws you seem motivated by more than a desire to give constructive criticism. You actually seem like you're lashing out emotionally over a roguelike and that's makes you a straight up weirdo, go for a walk.


We agree difficulty is over tuned in areas, weapon selection isn't as deep as the system purports, and a better realized sense of progression would elevate this game significantly.

We disagree on graphics. I love the art direction and I would love to see more of it.

I am an emotionally stable person reviewing a game video game.

Combat is fanfkintastic. It's crunchy, visceral and with top tier feedback mechanics.

Devs are solid at their craft and they have my respect. I'd like to see the game improved if only because there's a gem here, just needs a little polishing.

[RdRStar]

Originally posted by StereoLoveChild:

You were unnecessarily hard on the game and while I agree it has flaws you seem motivated by more than a desire to give constructive criticism. You actually seem like you're lashing out emotionally over a roguelike and that's makes you a straight up weirdo, go for a walk.


We agree difficulty is over tuned in areas, weapon selection isn't as deep as the system purports, and a better realized sense of progression would elevate this game significantly.

We disagree on graphics. I love the art direction and I would love to see more of it.

I am an emotionally stable person reviewing a game video game.

Combat is fanfkintastic. It's crunchy, visceral and with top tier feedback mechanics.

Devs are solid at their craft and they have my respect. I'd like to see the game improved if only because there's a gem here, just needs a little polishing.

I agree. Also, OP I'm not insane, and the slaver's mace is pretty solid on any difficulty. I prefer maces to most of the lower dmg weapons.

My main complaint would be the hp scaling of some of the bosses on hard mode. Getting through them with your greed counter intact becomes an extremely tedious and drawn out affair that is simply not fun even/especially when done perfectly. This is probably the biggest reason I prefer maces to lower dmg weapons. They just kill ♥♥♥♥ faster. I agree that some of the weapons could use another pass from the devs.

Aside from that I just wish there was a bit more to do. Maybe DLC some new temples?

[paincanbefun]

This game is actually 10/10 on every vector

[Verssetti]

I can play good runs with every kind of weapons

[Pönnukaka]

Originally posted by StereoLoveChild:

You were unnecessarily hard on the game and while I agree it has flaws you seem motivated by more than a desire to give constructive criticism. You actually seem like you're lashing out emotionally over a roguelike and that's makes you a straight up weirdo, go for a walk.


We agree difficulty is over tuned in areas, weapon selection isn't as deep as the system purports, and a better realized sense of progression would elevate this game significantly.

We disagree on graphics. I love the art direction and I would love to see more of it.

I am an emotionally stable person reviewing a game video game.

Combat is fanfkintastic. It's crunchy, visceral and with top tier feedback mechanics.

Devs are solid at their craft and they have my respect. I'd like to see the game improved if only because there's a gem here, just needs a little polishing.

Maybe. It's subjective after all. I have only few games on my Switch and I regret a little buying this one. I am software tester by trade, so I am brutally honest when it comes to my messages to developers but I took my sweet time to log in here, write that thing and leave it unedited here only cause I see the potencial. That team can create something even better, and you can only reach that if you take feedback seriously and improve upon your mistakes, if there is feedback to take,,

[♡ Yoonz ♡]

Yikes. Imagine slandering a good game like that.

[Professor Hugedix]

Originally posted by ♥ Yoonz ♥:

Yikes. Imagine slandering a good game like that.

It's not slander if it's true.