Feedback after 2 hours of play

[Danial]

Just wrapped up playing and unless some things change I don't think I'll pick it back up. I'll start with the pros and then go over cons.

Pros
- Graphics are great and run more or less smoothly on my machine.
- The characters are likeable, seem to at least be a bit interesting
- The hint at a storyline in the beginning is a nice touch, if short

Cons
- First and foremost, the grind. This is the reason I won't be playing again without the system changing. After dying a few dozen times in this first "mission" I've had enough. There isn't enough progress through anything tangible to keep my interest. I levelled up some well perks, make a shotgun, upgraded the shotgun, made the eye and so on. But non of it seemed to really make a difference during the levels.
- There is no healing ability that you are guaranteed to get, meaning there are many rounds when I simply was never able to heal. That may be exciting to some, but when I get two different healing abilities one run and none for several after that it becomes annoying.
- The crafting. A game like this has so much potential when it comes to crafting, and I am disappointed that we only see one gun, one eye and a necklace two hours in. The upgrades are not even that exciting. Give us upgrades that add electricity, fire, stuns, anything that we can see with out eyes and not just some unseen stat. The passive skills that we get in a run, those are what we should be upgrading our weapons with!
- Shooting/enemy hit Physics. The guns don't feel weighty enough. They are not far off, but feel light. The enemies on the other hand need to be reworked. A shot from a revolver shouldn't send them flying across the terrain like a superball.

[Echorion]

Honestly I didn't even make it to installing the demo.

I am looking at gameplay in the trailer and it looks insanely floaty and they move so janky like.

[Apox]

yeah feel like the same its a nice ground base but need more content end imrpovments

[Rhyono]

The healing is a big issue. I've made it through the boss fight (and also failed the boss fight) with extremely low HP going in. The entire fight was dashing, fire, dash, in the hopes of killing them before they can hit me.

Some runs I'll get an exploder spawned in right behind me and instantly deal damage and I'll be 5 minutes into the run and know the run is dead, based on how much damage I've taken so quickly.

[ϟ OLi$?!]

Grinding: it's a roguelike, grind is the basis of roguelikes, you die, you start over, it's normal, it's not some mmorpg where level progression gives you the ability to kill low level mobs with 1 hit, if you die, you start over and so on, that's the whole point of the genre, look at the binding of isaac, unlockable items don't give you any advantages unless you have some adequate build, and it can be built with a hundredth attempt and that's normal. Without grind - roguelike - it's a game for 15 minutes and no more, and the most important thing in the roguelike is always - it's achievements, obviously in the demo they are not, but as it will be, passing the game will be considered knocking out all the achievements. Same Isaac, 400+ achievements and it's only passed when you've knocked them all out.

[ElysiumNight]

Originally posted by ϟ OLi$?!:

Grinding: it's a roguelike, grind is the basis of roguelikes, you die, you start over, it's normal, it's not some mmorpg where level progression gives you the ability to kill low level mobs with 1 hit, if you die, you start over and so on, that's the whole point of the genre, look at the binding of isaac, unlockable items don't give you any advantages unless you have some adequate build, and it can be built with a hundredth attempt and that's normal. Without grind - roguelike - it's a game for 15 minutes and no more, and the most important thing in the roguelike is always - it's achievements, obviously in the demo they are not, but as it will be, passing the game will be considered knocking out all the achievements. Same Isaac, 400+ achievements and it's only passed when you've knocked them all out.

you cant compare this to binding of issac Issac has a Crap ton of different items and abbilitys that change up game play alot this is lacking in that department at least from the demo it feels it will get boring after a few runs unlike cult of the lamb or dead cells i play alot of cause of content and game play loop

[CONDOR V]

I am 6 hours in and I have to fully agree with OP. The game has a lot of potential but very early on you will start noticing the flaws.

Design is too constricted. Arenas are too small and restricting player movement more than necessary.

Economically unbalanced. You will have to do the tedious grind for what seems an eternity to get a handful of essence or what ever that is. And yes I get it's rouge like, I have enough games like that, but something is missing here.

Combat unbalanced, The two existing weapons are crap. And don't get me started on the reload animation which at the higher tiers becomes problematic as player will take unnecessary damage while the reload takes it sweet time. Not to mention the most inaccurate ADS I've seen in any fps in a while.

The narrative at the start was good but as you get to Haven the development becomes shallow. The two characters in Haven start repeating the same lines after run #10 or so and you learn nothing new about the lore or the characters.

The grind is repetitive, tedious and becomes boring quickly. Maybe if more arenas are introduced it might help, but please let's have a little room to breath.

The healing is plain crap. Not even sure it actually works. I've never seen my character regen health in any of my runs, and when I find health in the crates it usually gives you +1 health. Why bother? In some loads the level will spawn a health orb/stand which is very helpful, but usually comes in too early in run when you don't need it.

So after 6+ hours everything that could be done on the workbench has been done. So no more incentive there. I still have a few perks/skill that I could unlock but that will have to wait.

I am very happy I bought the game and hope that it improves and grows as it progresses through the roadmap. The game is beautiful, the story has potential if the writers keep developing the characters and the lore. I've enjoyed the time spend but nothing motivates me right now to go grind the same maps over and over again just to level up the few skills I have left.

[Dark Master]

Originally posted by CONDOR V:

I am 6 hours in and I have to fully agree with OP. The game has a lot of potential but very early on you will start noticing the flaws.

Design is too constricted. Arenas are too small and restricting player movement more than necessary.

Economically unbalanced. You will have to do the tedious grind for what seems an eternity to get a handful of essence or what ever that is. And yes I get it's rouge like, I have enough games like that, but something is missing here.

Combat unbalanced, The two existing weapons are crap. And don't get me started on the reload animation which at the higher tiers becomes problematic as player will take unnecessary damage while the reload takes it sweet time. Not to mention the most inaccurate ADS I've seen in any fps in a while.

The narrative at the start was good but as you get to Haven the development becomes shallow. The two characters in Haven start repeating the same lines after run #10 or so and you learn nothing new about the lore or the characters.

The grind is repetitive, tedious and becomes boring quickly. Maybe if more arenas are introduced it might help, but please let's have a little room to breath.

The healing is plain crap. Not even sure it actually works. I've never seen my character regen health in any of my runs, and when I find health in the crates it usually gives you +1 health. Why bother? In some loads the level will spawn a health orb/stand which is very helpful, but usually comes in too early in run when you don't need it.

So after 6+ hours everything that could be done on the workbench has been done. So no more incentive there. I still have a few perks/skill that I could unlock but that will have to wait.

I am very happy I bought the game and hope that it improves and grows as it progresses through the roadmap. The game is beautiful, the story has potential if the writers keep developing the characters and the lore. I've enjoyed the time spend but nothing motivates me right now to go grind the same maps over and over again just to level up the few skills I have left.

If you have only seen 2 weapons, then not everything is done at the workbench. There are a total of 11 craftable items you can find and craft in the game.

Also, worth noting that if you use fast reload, you can reduce reload times to less than half!

As for motivation: the story progresses as you progress! So if you beat the endboss, new things will happen in Haven!

[CONDOR V]

If you have only seen 2 weapons, then not everything is done at the workbench. There are a total of 11 craftable items you can find and craft in the game.

Also, worth noting that if you use fast reload, you can reduce reload times to less than half!

As for motivation: the story progresses as you progress! So if you beat the endboss, new things will happen in Haven!

Thank you for letting me know. Will go explore further.

[Engels78]

I've managed to beat the Boss in Demo, a bit of luck and a bit of skill. I grind a bit but not much. And shotgun was bad for me, I stayed with first gun...