Love the game, but some feedback for things so bad it ruins it.

[DragynDance]

So there are four major issues I feel with the game right now holding it back.

1. The two hardest enemies in the game are also the most abundant.
-The little two legged, no armed guys (don't know their names) that have a breath attack are extremely frequent and the ONLY thing they do is spam their breath attack, and they can't be interrupted, hitstun, or staggered. You can power attack into them and they'll just tank it and then one shot you with a point blank breath attack, leading the only tactic that works on them a slow and tedious hit and run. The other is the flying little wasp guys. They are crack shots, they lead incredibly well, are stupid accurate, and just chip you down, and there are always a half dozen of them at least. They just aren't fun to hit. Didn't spec into ranged? Have fun taking forever to kill them because you do no damage with ranged or because they easily kite your melee.

2. Invulnerability frames basically don't exist.
-I play a lot of games with invulnerability frames. This game claims it has them, but I'm not seeing it. No matter how I time my dodge, unless the animation physically moves me out of the way of an attack, I get hit by it. Dodging projectiles feels useless because enemies lead or curve their projectiles to hit you during or after a dodge. Even path of exile 2 has a more generous dodge then this game, which is saying a LOT.

3. Power attacks feels clunky and bad.
- There are two power attacks. The running one and the stand still one. The running one is great, the standing still one is BAD. Like SO BAD. It is the "woops, I accidently hit this button so I guess I die now." If I accidentally do a standing power attack, it's just GG, start the level over, because everything dogpiles and staggerlocks you to death. The standing power attack should just be removed from the game, it serves no purpose except to kill you when you accidentally trigger it. Even if you don't die, it will always miss because enemies easily move out of the way of it. You HAVE to do a running power attack for them to not dodge it or just hitstun/kill you before it charges.

4. Enemy hitstun is REALLY strong.
-Every level up a point goes into my stability, and it still feels like EVERY hit always staggers me. Worst of all, there doesn't seem to be any sort of forgiveness or cooldown on being staggered, so if you get dogpiled, you just get hitstun locked to death. Again, this is something even path of exile 2 or dark souls/elden ring is more forgiving on, all of them if you get hitstunned too frequently in a short period of time, it gives you temporary hyper armor to roll out. This game does not have that, and it needs it. Lingering DoT affects like breaths and poison clouds do damage WAY too frequently. If I get caught in one, I die INSTANTLY. Playing barrier guardian and putting points into stability EVERY level, and I still just instantly melt if I am caught in a field or breath attack, there is zero forgiveness, it is ALWAYS death instantly.

Minor side note- Please give the shop a buyback, I keep forgetting not to organize my inventory in front of it and selling my gear. I'm still wearing level 2 and 3 equipment at level 10 because the drop rate of gear is awful and when I finally do get an upgrade, I usually accidentally sell it. And add a confirmation to respec. I keep accidentally wasting my money missclicking the wrong respec option, and then I have to painstakingly remember where my skills went. I just want to respec one beast form and often end up accidentally destroying my entire character.

Other then these issues, I love the game, and the build variety, but these are suuuch frustrating things really holding the game back, it makes it feel like despite all the variety there's only one or two "right" ways to play, which tends to be hit and run or ranged.

[Aftnareld]

Thank you for playing the game and your extensive feedback!

1. We will take a look at those enemies.
2. Yes the game do have invulnerability-frames. We will take a look and see if something is wrong. Is it certain attacks from certain enemies that are hard to dodge or do you feel that it is hard to dodge in general?
3. There is a risk versus reward factor for sure with the power attacks. We will explore the possibility to improve this though.
4. We will work on making the damage stuns more forgiving!
5. The shops have buyback, next to the buy tab you'll find buyback. :) And we'll add a confirmation to respec.

By the way what difficulty are you playing on?

[DragynDance]

Originally posted by Aftnareld:

Thank you for playing the game and your extensive feedback!

1. We will take a look at those enemies.
2. Yes the game do have invulnerability-frames. We will take a look and see if something is wrong. Is it certain attacks from certain enemies that are hard to dodge or do you feel that it is hard to dodge in general?
3. There is a risk versus reward factor for sure with the power attacks. We will explore the possibility to improve this though.
4. We will work on making the damage stuns more forgiving!
5. The shops have buyback, next to the buy tab you'll find buyback. :) And we'll add a confirmation to respec.

By the way what difficulty are you playing on?

I started on the hardest, but turned it down when I saw how hard guard missions are. I still had the same issues, but instead of dying, I just stood there with no control for 3-5 seconds until the game let me move again, and had a lot of the same issues, they just became frustrating rather then frustrating + fatal, and the game became way too easy when I wasn't encountering the frustrating issues. It is less that the things I mentioned are too hard, and more that they just feel annoying/unfair. Enemies are EXTREMELY good at dodging power attacks, enemies are EXTREMELY good at tracking your movement; small fast and ranged flying enemies are way too frequent and numerous, hitstun is too strong against the player, and not strong enough against enemies.

I recorded a video of me attempting and failing a mission that was one level under me, to try and demonstrate some of the things I am talking about. It didn't go too bad at first because I wasn't really encountering too many of the annoying two legged guys, but as soon as I did for the first time, I got completely bodied. But you can see what I am talking about with how frequent ranged, flying enemies show up, and how easily they track you through your dodge. I don't think I invulned a single attack at all either in this entire video. Also you can see me just suddenly stand stil land freeze a lot, those are times where I accidentally started charging a standing power attack.

https://youtu.be/NpFL3qhENvI