Post-demo feelings and recap

[Lorefiend]

Overall, I enjoyed it. But there's noticeable problems, chiefly in the combat.

I had a lot of fun exploring and navigating the world, jumping down a hole after leaving the tutorial and finding a whole underground section that lead to an elevator with a bunch of silent but friendly robots inside a room. After trying to interact with them for a while I left to go back the other way, stepping out in to the world. I ran up to one of the bird enemies and immediately died. Right. So I went back at it, parried the bird's projectiles and dodged its hook - then combo'd it a few times with the aerial-sword because it felt like it had a higher damage output. Then I got killed by a second bird I didn't realise had started attacking me.

The combat seems very much designed for 1v1s and that's where it shines, but it repeatedly puts you in situations with several enemies and it is very simply not fun to try and keep track of 3-6 enemies (some of which move off-screen, preventing you from even seeing them all). So, the sound cues are ESSENTIAL, but not every attack provides one. I went up a slope after getting better at fighting the birds only to get killed by a scorpion looking thing I didn't realise had even hit me, because sometimes you lose health and the game doesn't even notice - you'll be in the 'red' state and the screen will not flash red until seconds later. Okay, I figured those guys were tougher and probably for later. So I went the other way and encountered the many groups of smaller enemies w/ hammers/maces and guns outside of the city. They didn't take long to learn the patterns of, but as said; you physically cannot keep track of multiple enemies at a time due to how close in the camera is and the fact enemies leave your line of sight regularly. It became apparent pretty quickly that it was less hassle to just run past most enemies.

I went up towards what looked like an arena and saw a glow, I immediately was like 'Breath of the Wild Guardians?' as a sniper took a shot at me that I reflexively parried. Felt good! Running up that approach and ignoring the lesser enemies, I climbed up and around a mountain and parried a few more sniper shots with a goal in mind now. I encountered a 'motherly' robot who asked me to kill the sniper-robot as it was keeping other travellers away. Cool, I was already on my way to do that! So I carried on, reached the sniper and had an awesome battle. I died a few times but thankfully, there was a meditation point right next to the arena that I'd hit up. I couldn't help but notice there were not many opportunities to attack the sniper, the best strategy I worked out was parrying its shots, dodging/jumping over its area attacks, and just holding down ctrl/LT to keep your companion bot firing the whole time. I died about 5 times before from trying to squeeze in my own attacks and then being hit by an attack I couldn't see due to the camera proximity. Once I settled on the parry and whittle down with gunfire method, I nailed it. Strange, I thought, but maybe it's because it's a ranged enemy? Surely there are other fights that encourage melee, I thought. Regardless. I went past the area and noticed I was looking down on the tutorial area I'd not long emerged from, which was nice! Love to see the world being interconnected, even if just for familiarity in the absence of a map. I then ran back over to the 'motherly' robot expecting some sort of follow up or reward, but got nothing. Despite asking me to deal with the sniper, she/it had nothing to add. Weird, maybe just a demo thing?

Looking up, I noticed there was a pulsing coming from the tower I'd seen and opted to move away from. Oh, right, must be a way of saying 'go here'. Sort of happy to see I wasn't completely in the dark, I went towards the tower - veering around the side to stop by a satellite dish, which had another NPC that talked. After a quick chat I decided to stop in the city and actually climb up the two taller buildings to see if I could get on top of the robot in the middle. I could! It was a bit unwieldy, but through the power of dodge + high jump + double jump and rotating quickly, I was able to go up the building one or two floors at a time. Eventually reaching the top, I found an elevator. Unsure if I'd just wasted time or if what I'd done was necessary to unlock the elevator, I shrugged it off 'cos I had fun climbing anyway - but was glad to know I wouldn't have to do it again. I ran and jumped, hovering over to the central robot. I looked over it for a couple of minutes, not finding anything. I gave up because I remembered seeing the 'pulse' telling me to go to the tower. So, I went on ahead.

The tower was cool, full of friendly NPCs and a 'blacksmith' who provided no service which I again presumed was a feature to be unlocked in the full game. I spoke with the central figure who told me I should go DOWNWARDS, below the tower. Cool! I thought, some direction! Let's go. So I leaped off the tower and looked around for some kind of entrance, quickly finding a tunnel that lead in to a mine full of robots with pickaxes. Descending until reaching an elevator, I continued on and was met with some really interesting scenery. I interacted with an ominous looking robot that was very cool and was given some vague notion of fighting an 'X series/model' robot, with my own character being described as a 'rogue/vagabond Sword'. Had a little look around the room and found nothing until I jumped up and a door opened down the middle. Followed a hallway fall of pleasant spider bots, fought a few centipede bots, and found a lovely room full of firefly bots. I'd killed some fireflies before so killed a few more, wasn't really clear on what the items they drop were for - Again, presuming a full game feature.

I found a checkpoint and a way down, or an alternate path that led to the same destination - the weapons factory. I tried descending both ways and died a couple of times to the enemies within, and again found that these enemies weren't worth attacking directly - just parrying their projectiles & holding down ctrl/LT was the most effective method. I found another NPC to talk to who told me I was at the 'wrong end' of the bridge, and protag asked about getting their permissions increased to no avail. Turning the other way, I was met with a warning that I wasn't permitted past a clearly visible 'barrier' of sorts, so figured I'd need to come back after finding something to increase my permissions. I went back in to the weapons factory and fought some more enemies until one displaced itself from its platform and became unkillable. I died a few times and had to jump back down repeatedly, which was a bit frustrating. After giving up on trying to deal with the unkillable enemy, I just ran past to see what was behind it; a presumably locked door and another warning for leaving the permitted area. Really unclear on what I was supposed to be doing, I went back to the NPC and noticed an elevator I hadn't before. I dropped down to it and rode it waaaaaaaaay up, climbing up a couple of reasonably marked climbing points after trying to manually jump up. Climbing up the third climbing point, I emerged from a hole that was in the temple/arena area where I'd fought the sniper earlier. Huh. Cool to know it's there, I suppose. I wandered outside and got shot by some enemies I didn't see, which killed me and sent me back down near the weapons factory. Groaning, I climbed back out through the original entrance and left, unclear on what to do. I stopped at the meditation point outside of the tower and got another 'pulse' marking the robot in between two tall buildings that I'd climbed up earlier. Huh.

I went and took the elevator I'd learned was there, went back across to the robot and looked around thoroughly. Through pure chance, after getting frustrated and dropping down, I hit a pretty unmarked and unclear 'hole' that led down some stairs. Praising my fortune, I went in and interacted with two buttons to disable the dome, wondering if I could have done this without going down to the sewers and weapons factory. I was given the cutscene to show a boss's arrival and its arena pointed out, so went right over to fight - I climbed up my way, high and double jumping up the building floor by floor. Arriving up top, I was killed in less than 2 seconds. Alright. Thankfully, it auto-set my respawn point to one by the boss that was next to the intended route up, a climbing point. On my second attempt I parried a few times successfully, noticing Sin's slower 'walk up to you and attack' move left them staggered after being parried - very briefly. When I tried to use that stagger window to get in attacks, I was punished by Sin's incredibly quick recovery and died. I climbed up and tried to fight Sin more than 10 times, again trying to FIGHT and use the combat system. Can you guess what the tactic was that worked? Holding down ctrl/LT to fire on it the whole time while never attacking, only parrying and dodging. Once I got Sin's pattern down and did this method, it was pretty fun and manageable. I was surprised to be thrown in to a second fight straight away, and I got that one much more quickly - dodging under the boss's hands and parrying its sword strikes. This one felt awesome. The boss had a VERY generous stagger window after being parried three times, which did actually allow for me to run over and get in some melee strikes. I only died once here. I did note that it was unhelpful for the camera to be so close again, but found it pretty easy once realising the pattern went > robot hands twice > spirit swings sword thrice. So, you can just aim at the robot to see when to dodge, then quickly look to the spirit to get ready to parry. The key here is this second fight actually gives you the time to figure out and manage its mechanics, unlike the Sin one which is pretty unrelenting. Regardless! The demo was now beaten.

In summary/TLDR, I really enjoyed two of the fights (the sniper and the final boss of the demo), but every other one was a chore. The Sin fight was fun once I focused only on parrying, but that was a continuation of a problem I'd noticed with almost every other enemy in the game; the game actively punishes you for trying to fight and use its own systems. Everything flowed a lot more smoothly for me exclusively using the parry and gun - especially since parrying attacks heals you. I don't really know how to fix this beyond revamping the whole thing entirely, because it just isn't fun and it's barely fit for purpose - as others have noted, combos and weapon inputs are inconsistent, and the parry button is also shared with secondary attacks. The best part of the game, by far, is the feedback from parrying something. Probably why the dev is focusing so much on that as a mechanic! It just makes me question the weakness of the attack mechanics, though. Everything else was kind of universally positive- the art is quite unique and not necessarily pleasant at times, but I enjoyed wandering around the demo area and taking in the sights. Exploring was fun and I really hope it's more rewarding in the actual game, because the demo just ended up leaving me feeling confused when emerging from the sewers/weapon factory. The game was very quiet so when music did kick in, it was very noticeable and nice. Overall enjoyed my time in the demo, but I feel it desperately needs a balance pass and many combat adjustments - enemies being able to kill you before you have time to learn and react becomes frustrating the more it happens, and enemies themselves take so many hits that your own weapons feel weak in comparison. Looking forward to exploring the full world and fighting more bosses.