Warning to consumers, grumpy feedback for devs

[Human Required]

Hopefully this serves as a warning to consumers and, at least in part, a useful slice of (mildly toxic) feedback for the devs. I tried the demo and every step of the way, I was let down.

Game was off to a bad start with lore dumping/copious fantasy lingo before giving us a real, human reason to give a f*ck about ANYTHING in the story yet. Even Immortals of Aveum, another generic fantasy game, understood the importance of having meaningful personal conflicts kickstart a fantasy story before throwing uninspired lore dumps at the player. No one cares about your made-up proper nouns until you give us characters to care about!

Then we got a budget Vox Machina cutscene. Vox Machina and Critical Role are already bottom of the barrel fantasy, so to see that lazy art style and storytelling done at even lower framerates with even less detail... yeesh. Western anime needs to go away.

Then we get aimless wandering gameplay ala Genshin Impact/BOTW with stock Unreal Engine 5 physics and assets.

Then we have to backtrack via a cumbersome guiding tool that moves too fast for the player to keep up with and has a cooldown for NO reason. Not to mention, the guiding light goes through textures b/c it's just a compass, meaning you can't actually follow it.

THEN we finally get to the sales pitch of the game, the colossus battles, and Jesus, they're even jankier than Shadow of the Colossus' fights, which are the clear source of inspiration here. Not to mention, it takes forever to down one of these things via chip damage/removing plates/etc. Ouch.

I had to turn it off after that. The whole demo reeks of a new dev team trying to imitate a bunch of vastly superior games and entertainment products and failing to match even one of them.

A LOT of first-time studios go under after releasing far better games than this as their big debut, so I fear for Yellow Brick.

[cimerians]

It actually plays very much like Dragon Age VeilGuard. Between that game and this game it feels like I'm back in the PS2 era of Hack n slash cracking open barrels. The whole thing is uninspiring. One thing I would recommend to the devs and I'm not going to be buying this but it would really help with some aim assist as an option.

[Human Required]

Originally posted by cimerians:

It actually plays very much like Dragon Age VeilGuard. Between that game and this game it feels like I'm back in the PS2 era of Hack n slash cracking open barrels. The whole thing is uninspiring. One thing I would recommend to the devs and I'm not going to be buying this but it would really help with some aim assist as an option.

I'll have to take your word for it; no way I'm touching DA:V with a ten-foot pole after the clips of in-game writing I've seen.

[Catsim]

Originally posted by Human Required:

Game was off to a bad start with lore dumping/copious fantasy lingo before giving us a real, human reason to give a f*ck about ANYTHING in the story yet.

That's what got me sick of the story before it began. It's the "Proper Noun dump" style of storytelling where they have to make up new/lesser-used words for common fantasy terms like wizards or mages by calling them "weavers". They do it to make their setting unique but all it does for me is make it feel even more generic because there's nothing for me to latch onto as a solid motivation. I'm too busy, trying to keep track of a bunch of factions and places I don't even have a frame of reference for yet, to truly care about any of it.

And Vox Machina is a good description for the cutscene after it zooms out from the book, because the first thing you see after the protag looks out of the wagon is a group of what looks like a bunch of theater kid's D&D PCs.

Getting into the actual gameplay didn't wow me either with the slip and slide movement and the usual "we watched Dark Souls on Youtube at 480p for a few hours before making our combat".

[Meiki]

Originally posted by Catsim:

Originally posted by Human Required:

Game was off to a bad start with lore dumping/copious fantasy lingo before giving us a real, human reason to give a f*ck about ANYTHING in the story yet.

That's what got me sick of the story before it began. It's the "Proper Noun dump" style of storytelling where they have to make up new/lesser-used words for common fantasy terms like wizards or mages by calling them "weavers".

Albeit I do agree with the story being a bit lacking so far, especially when it comes to setting up the premises and even the whole point of the "adventure" to begin with... The terminology is not really all that new. Especially when it comes to using "weaver" for spellcaster. It actually makes more sense to call them "weavers" in this case since they are lacking abilities of their own, but can tap into and weave the abilities of monsters instead; there are also many other media that use the term weaver or weaving as either a general term for the practice of magic or to distinguish a specific branch of magic users.
But that is not to disagree that so far most of the aspects were lacking - yet I would still rather give a chance to this than to DA:V as it at least tries to make its own IP and be its own game; and I pretty much would like a bit of a monster hunter scratch before Wilds release.

[Kopseer]

Originally posted by cimerians:

It actually plays very much like Dragon Age VeilGuard. Between that game and this game it feels like I'm back in the PS2 era of Hack n slash cracking open barrels. The whole thing is uninspiring. One thing I would recommend to the devs and I'm not going to be buying this but it would really help with some aim assist as an option.

No, Veilguard has smooth and reactive combat. The combat here is so clunky I really don't like it one bit. Only thing this game has ging for it in the demo is that the locations can look good, I like how colourful it is

[Rheetro]

The game for me, was like reading a long novel, not playing a game, if I wanted to read a book, I would go to the library - WAY to much dialog for my liking, then janky controls and tedious boring gameplay and backtracking, not for me but to each his own, glad I tried the demo, otherwise I had refunded, it's just not good IMO

[Fiach]

Lol at the Veilguard hate 🤣

[Caxius]

OP is the same type of person that will read the first chapter of a book then never touch it again because the story didn't play out fast enough for them. Then go on *insert review source here* and write a review on the entire book as if they read it all.

It's a demo, guys. Nothing about it is feature complete. And if using "weaver" instead of mage/wizard/sorcerer/sorceress to describe magic users really bothers you that much, you're just being ridiculously picky and gatekeeper-esque at that point.

"Too many factions", "cooldown on the guidance tool", "too many new words that don't fit the fantasy world that I think it should be", "too much exploration", "story isn't explained within the first 30 seconds of the game", "the lore is uninspired and they just dump it on you", "I have to actually engage in battles with the colossi and can't kill them in 3 hits", "this looks and feels like a new studio".

And you wonder why new studios barely take any risks nowadays. None of your feedback is constructive. Every bit of it (comments too) is "game bad, don't touch, would refund" before ever even touching the full release of the game. Gaming has become a cesspool of the vocal minority that only come to forums like these to trash on games because they aren't 'perfect' in their eyes. And, sadly, those are the only voices that get heard because very few people actually come to these forums unless they have something negative to say (and very rarely is it constructive feedback). The people that enjoy the game? Well, they're too busy playing it to no-life a negative forum.

[e_galahad]

Originally posted by Catsim:

Originally posted by Human Required:

Game was off to a bad start with lore dumping/copious fantasy lingo before giving us a real, human reason to give a f*ck about ANYTHING in the story yet.

That's what got me sick of the story before it began. It's the "Proper Noun dump" style of storytelling where they have to make up new/lesser-used words for common fantasy terms like wizards or mages by calling them "weavers". They do it to make their setting unique but all it does for me is make it feel even more generic because there's nothing for me to latch onto as a solid motivation. I'm too busy, trying to keep track of a bunch of factions and places I don't even have a frame of reference for yet, to truly care about any of it.

Reminds me of that movie, John Carter, where they just have silly fantasy names for absolutely everything.

[Human Required]

Originally posted by Caxius:

OP is the same type of person that will read the first chapter of a book then never touch it again because the story didn't play out fast enough for them. Then go on *insert review source here* and write a review on the entire book as if they read it all.

It's a demo, guys. Nothing about it is feature complete. And if using "weaver" instead of mage/wizard/sorcerer/sorceress to describe magic users really bothers you that much, you're just being ridiculously picky and gatekeeper-esque at that point.

"Too many factions", "cooldown on the guidance tool", "too many new words that don't fit the fantasy world that I think it should be", "too much exploration", "story isn't explained within the first 30 seconds of the game", "the lore is uninspired and they just dump it on you", "I have to actually engage in battles with the colossi and can't kill them in 3 hits", "this looks and feels like a new studio".

And you wonder why new studios barely take any risks nowadays. None of your feedback is constructive. Every bit of it (comments too) is "game bad, don't touch, would refund" before ever even touching the full release of the game. Gaming has become a cesspool of the vocal minority that only come to forums like these to trash on games because they aren't 'perfect' in their eyes. And, sadly, those are the only voices that get heard because very few people actually come to these forums unless they have something negative to say (and very rarely is it constructive feedback). The people that enjoy the game? Well, they're too busy playing it to no-life a negative forum.

This studio isn't taking risks. It's poorly imitating other games' design choices and melting them into a chef's blend of mediocrity. You smell like an undercover developer account.

And as for your "it's a demo" defense--yeah, it's a demo, i.e. the developers' best consumer-facing sales pitch. And it blows. I don't know how much you $$ invested in Yellow Brick, but just admit that your money is gone and move on.

[Billy Blaze]

Nah, from what I've played, it's super fun.
And as someone who despises climbable bosses, it felt really great here.

Also, just because you learned somewhere the term "sales pitch" doesn't make you sound smart if you use it at random places...

[-Virtux]

Story and combat games might not be for you.
Art style can be seen without installing demo, from there you can define if it's your taste.
The guiding tool can be upgraded about 1hr into the game to have no cooldown. WIth no cooldown on the tool, I don't see a problem with it showing direct path. It directs me past this gap? Ok, I'll make a ice bridge to traverse it. Though I can see some wanting step by step guidance, to each their own taste. My guess is they want players go off path and explore more or use their imagination.

[Human Required]

Originally posted by -Virtux:

Story and combat games might not be for you.
Art style can be seen without installing demo, from there you can define if it's your taste.
The guiding tool can be upgraded about 1hr into the game to have no cooldown. WIth no cooldown on the tool, I don't see a problem with it showing direct path. It directs me past this gap? Ok, I'll make a ice bridge to traverse it. Though I can see some wanting step by step guidance, to each their own taste. My guess is they want players go off path and explore more or use their imagination.

I want good story and good combat, not unedited first-draft drivel and impact-less attacks. Darksiders 2, Dragon's Dogma, and even Forspoken all knew how to at least grab attention with their stories, combat, and fantasy settings. They all knew how to make traversal engaging and ensure combat packs a punch.

This game just throws narrative tripe at you and then drops you into an Unreal Engine test map to putz about. This is not good game design.

[bobhome2]

After playing it for a few hours, there are some things I like and some things that are just "meh."

I'm curious, though: anyone know where to see stock UE assets? I want to see how much of it is just the baseline stuff you get - but I'm not finding a site that shows these assets.

[The Comedian]

I reached the title drop and alt+f4'd. The art style and character design are generic and "modern" in a bad way, the combat is super basic, and I just couldn't bear the constant interruptions, there is a cutscene every two minutes. I'd rather replay Psi-Ops again, which I already did a few months ago. Speaking of, in that game telekinesis is WAY more impactful and brutal, it doesn't compare.