Unfortunately this game is going to be a free to play game on release. I say unfortuately because while i love the overall concept and game play and aesthetic - almost every bit of this game feels very much like its designed to waste as much of the players time as possible. The moment you get through the onboarding you start to get a whiff of the actual business model they are putting in place here.

You then see the events they have like these time limited twitch drops - which are asking you to tune into twitch every week / working day to get a single item that, if you watch the whole week, gives you a full set. Who the f*&* has time to do that or is able to do that while working? There are other time limited events in the game as well that feel very much designed around FOMO.

I'm very much fatiqued by these types of games. I find my own time far more valuable to be wasted by a game that feels like its progression is designed purely to squeeze the player into buying stuff. It's also a very careful balance and the developers know this - so they will invest a great amount of time into that aspect instead of actually building out the game to have more variety in maps, enemies, classes and gear / loot and stuff will have artificial progressions that are far more bloated than a paid game would ever have.

I would have very much liked this game to be a paid for game with an offline component. I really like aspects of what i have played here but by the time i fully realised what this game ACTUALLY is (vs what the store makes it sound like) i was past my refund window.

Maybe there are people who still enjoy the free to play live service model that's revenue is tied around player engagement but i'm personally well over it. Not only are this business model fairly old hat these days - we have also seen plenty of examples of these types of games getting the plug pulled if the sales aren't there. So the fear also is that you then invest time (which to me is far more valuable than any money this game might have cost me) into a game that you then won't be able to play because there is no offline mode and they have shut down the servers.

The TLDR here is that this could have been / had potential to be a really great game but the free to play aspects of it are all too present and bring an orignal concept down to the level of yet another generic live service game that wants your time and money.

It's a good game, the backgrounds are insanely good to look at and the gameplay is pretty refined. Definitely something worth playing if you love ARPGs and Beat 'em ups.

I just wish the progression was less focused on just getting the highest rank items (you get to max rank after less than a week of playing) and coop worked a bit better.

So I started playing this game during the early access version and at the time it was pretty fun, I am glad they took off the skills from the weapons and you can free customize your skills to how you want them to be. Free character editing is great so you can always change whenever you want to. Now I will say I do like the combos for each class, very unique and you can even cancel out of some moves into others, so much possibilities.

Now the thing I don't like in this game is how later on, tier 4 and up if you are alone or with another person, not a full party of 3 or 4. The amount of enemies on the field is crazy, the damage they do is honestly a little much especially at 5. Even with some damage reduction which is RNG if you get it on a piece of armor or shard. The enemies have a lot of times of having super armor and hit you three or four times and you are down to like 25% health. Bosses start out fine but by the time they have around 30% health or so, they spam moves so often that you can inflict a lot of damage. Most of the time, they most damage you are going to deal is damage over time(DOTs). So burn, poison and bleed. If you have have high Crit Damage then that works too but i feel like at Tier 5 I should feel power but getting slapped around like a fly. Me and my friend usually play as like Sword and Shield and the Dual Daggers(I forget the actual name of the classes). We do damage but its not enough to the point the enemies just endless spawn or just take us out in a few lucky hits if we can't dodge in time or don't see them. I like the game but just feels like I am just not doing enough damage, I built mainly for poison, the mobs in the game aren't really tough; they just get some lucky hits in. That and environmental damage like the thorn bush, my pinky toe hits the bush and I am taking insane damage over time. Same with burn and poison. Wish getting my armor and weapons with certain stats were a little bit more manageable or at least the shard but more balance with stats we want. Playing over and over to get something good can be a chore. But I think I am done with this game, if I was with 3 to 4 people then it would probably be fine. 1 to 2 people at tier 5 feels like its not adjusting for that group, just what I have been noticing and my friend as well.