General feedback

[null]

For starters I love how you handled the meta-progression. Using aRPG style item progression on its own (without grind for flat stat buffs or levels) as roguelite progression is very refreshing. The fact progressing NCPs helps with items, but isn't strictly required is also a nice touch.

Hope/Despair

Interesting concept, but it's completely diminished by the fact that quite early on I start completely recovering Hope at the end of each stage. I don't think I will ever run out, so some tuning down might be in order to make that hope sacrifice more nuanced.

Ignore it if it's addressed later in game and I didn't get to it.

Equipment balance

I found balance on individual pieces of equipment to be off (forgot most names)

• Burning shoes (yellow tier). They break boxes. The actual damage they do probably 1/sec, because in about 10 seconds of walking an enemy over my fire I didn't see the healthbar move.
  
• Spinning sword (legendary). It spins around me, which sounds like the spin-to-win weapon of this game. I felt like the damage and range combo on that weapon wasn't great and lead to unnecessary damage being taken without dealing enough damage to compensate. I guess it's meant to be synergized with attack size items, but a weapon isn't really legendary if it needs multiple other items forfunction.
  
• Lightning staff (yellow tier). The one that shoots projectiles chains/forks twice. I equipped it onto my lightning staff(blue tier) build, which has 80% lightning damage boost among other things and I felt like I was doing 5 times less damage. The yellow one is slower, has worse AoE coverage, worse damage, and somehow worse scaling with upgrades.
  
• Bows are bad in general. Swords are superior AoE and staves are superior ranged damage. Outside of few exceptions bows just seem to have inferior damage while having no AoE. Even a legendary bow I found felt useless in most cases, as it required many enemies lined up.
  
• Similar problems with daggers. Tiny AoE, same power as a sword - no advantages.
  
• Shields might need some love. I got the stunning shield early on and never had areason to switch. I've seen 1 that COULD work on a specific build, but my current shield would still remain as good. Other shields I've seen so far are completely useless in comparison. I would suggest playing around with stamina consumption on different shields, so taking a basic shield with lower stamina consumption might sound more appealing than the stunning one.

There's more, I just couldn't remember all of them.

Stash

Stash being as limited as it is isn't great. What you have is effectively an aRPG and stash space is the thing that enables trying new builds.

I'm showered with unique (green) items that I feel like I can't throw away, in case they are not retrievable. Also I am getting a fair amount of legendaries for various builds I'd like to try, but I have to toss other legionaries away to do it. Stash management becomes difficult to a point I don't upgrade any NPCs to max tier, because I noticed many of them give uniques.

I hope stash tabs are in the making. Make them progressively more expensive, but don't lock stash at current limit.

Multi-character

You've built a game that is essentially an aRPG. There are many builds that can be tried and potentially swapped between. Let us create/unlock additional characters. It would be a lore-friendly way to alleviate the limited stash problem, and enable having different builds without cluttering the stash with items required for those builds.

I'm only suggesting multiple character (not necessarily classes), but I think it would be a cool idea to have 1 special character gain an additional effect for having all slots equipped with uniques.

UI clarity

• Categorize special damage types to make synergies clearer. The example I mentioned with 2 electric staves is a fine example where I don't know if the weapons is bad, or items just don't work with that staff.
  
• Add a mini-tutorial on Melding. I'd suggest 2 screenshots displaying an example meld.

Corpses as obstacles

I wouldn't call if a bad mechanic, but current implementation blocks me with me rarely understanding what blocks me until I see the corpse moving with me.
In rooms with hyper spawn rate (described in bug section) it's impossible to see what's blocking me due to sheer amount of corpses, making it impossible to move consistently without dashes.

Either visually emphasize blocker corpses, so I can tell which ones are blockers, OR remove/fade out non-blocker ones. Remove the corpse collision until you can work that out.

Melee vs ranged

After playing a staff for a while and trying going back to melee I realized how bad it felt.

• Less opportunity to attack. First of all, you have to get close to enemies, which takes time, which gives enemies opportunity to attack. Secondly, enemies get free attacks because they start attack prep while you are getting in position. Finally, If there's a huge group of enemies they can just chain attack and safely attacking them is impossible (even with shield that stuns on block).
  
• Damage is pretty much the same. I have multiple staves that can safely 1 hit kill stuff at range. I've seen plenty of bows that have high attack speed, which allow me to maintain mobility.
  
• The only advantage is AoE at the cost of health. Also many melee weapons don't have that great of a range to make for decent AoE.

This doesn't apply to like 3 melee weapons that have decent range.

To give an example, why would I use a Dagger over sword, or a sword over Thunder saff? Dagger has nothing. Sword might have better AoE than a staff, but it effectively costs HP to use that AoE.

Melee on it's own is not great. It takes a good build to make it usable and a good build makes ranged weapons godly - not just usable. I think melee should have better options for damage mitigation OR better damage than ranged.

Bugs

• Some items don't display upgrades in the forge. For example shoes that double amulet effect when upgrading from 0-->1 shows nothing, when in reality the effect stays the same.
  
• I had a few undead rooms which spawned WAAY too many enemies, almost as if all waves spawned at once. It happened multiple times in Mausoleum, but it's not consistent. Usually when it happens those hunchback enemies are there.
  
• Despair achievement appears to not work. When I started the game I died many times to the guards, maxed out despair and died again. I saw the cutscene play, but didn't get the achievement.

[RonEmpire]

I agree with more stash space. And additional save slots or profiles so I can create new characters to get different builds on.

[IndiePoppinOff]

I agree with everything said here. Also running a lightning staff build on my first 2 hours, its doing ok work, but I can't find any good upgrades for it, not even its gold arc version, which is weaker. Also no idea if the tome that gives electric damage works with it, im not seeing a DPS increase on the character sheet, maybe on actual mobs?

I also don't know if the lightning staff itself works with lighting triggered/condition effects. Does its damage inherently deal electrified? Game is as vague as PoE used to be. Do i need the robe that makes damage do lightning damage in order to enable the lightning staff to do electrified?

[null]

Originally posted by IndiePoppinOff:

I also don't know if the lightning staff itself works with lighting triggered/condition effects. Does its damage inherently deal electrified? Game is as vague as PoE used to be. Do i need the robe that makes damage do lightning damage in order to enable the lightning staff to do electrified?

Character sheet shows "<elemental effect>: enabled" when you have equipment that triggers it.

I'm using the blue staff (thunder?) and some book that increases AoE and Firelightning +20%. One of them triggers it according to char sheet.

[CLYDE]

Really excellent and detailed feedback, thank you so much. I will take all of this into account for updates.

[null]

Added a section "Melee vs Ranged" to highlight that melee feels inferior to ranged damage.

[BurrowBird]

Originally posted by null:

Added a section "Melee vs Ranged" to highlight that melee feels inferior to ranged damage.

I think melee is way better than ranged.

[null]

Originally posted by BurrowBird:

Originally posted by null:

Added a section "Melee vs Ranged" to highlight that melee feels inferior to ranged damage.

I think melee is way better than ranged.

Care to share how you use it? Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

[MayorOfBrownTown]

Originally posted by null:

Originally posted by BurrowBird:

I think melee is way better than ranged.

Care to share how you use it? Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

I have a ranged build that sprays homing piercing arrows non stop with 60% fire and lightning chance. helm that spreads fire, a lot of stuff dies before it even comes on screen. When all the monsters are close to eachother i can left click once and everything on the map dies.
it went from workable to op when i combined the hotshot with a fire staff, cant remember which staff exactly, like a flamethrower staff i think.
I have never found a mellee build that comes close, so i think you are correct that ranged is better.