Atmospheric, immersive and smooth.

Tedious, shallow and wasteful, even on explore mode.

I just can't bear running down from the top again. After two deaths, I'm no longer interested in the game loop.

I didn't read any reviews but saw some negative ones in their. I was so excited about the game cause I really lived the atmosphere and the sound designs and I was ready to get immersed in its world same as I did with Hyper Light Drifter and other atmospheric isometric games. After starting the game I noticed the cutscene at the beginning was something around 5 to 8 minutes (I don't remember cause I got distracted and checked other stuff) to a point that I thought either game has stopped working or it expects some input from me. After pressing ESC I noticed that this is cutscene. Then the game starteed slowly you jumping out of your boat. I started walking around and checking buttons to figure out the game controls. I started running around and picking stuff up even though I was stuck a little with E button for interaction. The crafting was vague at first and needed me to press "CLICK" instead of E button to craft and caused me 20 seconds of confusion. Then when I started to explore the map I had to keep holding Shift for sprinting and it got annoying so I opened up the options to find some toggle option for it. I searched around and saw the controls that said Shift (Hold) and it is not customizable. I said "ok maybe the game has some gameplay aspect around toggle running and it is some ability..." and tried the game more. I kept going around and all the time bugged about the holding Shift button. In the middle of the game I opened Steam overlay and searched in discussions someone complaining that game needs to add toggle run and it was from 2018, I bought this game in 2024! But despite all of this I kept playing and gave this game a chance. The exploring and slow speed of the game really didn't made me enjoy and I was frustrated and was thinking of all the reasons to why this game doesn't have toggle run! I was feeling bad for some poor guys that playtested this game (I even doubted that this game is play tested!) and kept playing. After getting lost and picking random stuff that I didn't know what were they alongside the running problem, I was thinking of a way to put a micro or find an application for toggling my shift then I just stopped caring and didn't want to continue the torture that this game made me endure and just wanted to die in the game. I thought to myself "if the developers don't put their time to add a simple toggle run to their game, why would I bother to find a way for it?". It doesn't make sense in anyway! If you don't add a simple accessibility and ease of use to your game like this better at least add an ability that makes the character run faster or something to compensate for this torture! YOUR GAME IS MEANT TO BE PLAYED MULTIPLE TIMES AND YOU MAKE IT SLOWER TO ANNOY YOUR PLAYERS?! AT LEAST TELL US YOUR VISION FOR THIS SLOW PACING IN YOUR GAME!

TLDR; This game hasn't been much tested and pacing of it is wrong. The pacing is not related to gameplay or atmosphere of the game, it is caused by lack of play testing and developers understading of players. If you want to play this game, consider sitting on a stone for 2 hours for no reason just to test your own patient and see if you are capable to get tortured here. Refunded!

Hope you like insta-kills and a crafting system with items that don't stack.
3 sticks make a bundle? You can't uncraft it to make that crucial torch, arrow, or anything else.

F*ck this game, and the instakills behind isometric-view objects.
"Oh, I'll give it another shot." Then you get impaled by spikes you can't see.
Even guides talk about how much of the game is about farming, like it's WoW.

If "player punishment" was a genre, this would be a top rated title.

nah

While the game starts out with great aesthetics and soulful design it quickly goes into the other direction: boring procedual maze-like structures that are hardly visible if you don't waste your torches all the time. The game lost its appeal quickly when I died and had to rush through these halls for a second time, fighting the same boring looking enemies again. The combat is mainly "click a few times at the right moment into the right direction".
It just enhances this feeling of foul play by the devs. A supposedly deep, powerful experience wasted by rogue-like mechanics and boring combat, plus boring level design.

Man what a bummer..
Great presentation, visuals, soundtrack. I should love it in fact there's been plenty of games that are similar that I adore. And with the explore mode I hoped it would remove a lot of the tedium and frustration I had with it initially. But nope!
A lot of it had to do with the general mechanics and approach.

-The gameplay just isn't satisfying enough to fight against hordes of annoying enemies all the time.

-The exploration of the different levels is fine but realistically you'll revisit them a dozen times at which point you'll want to punch a wall.

-Gathering resources is not difficult but again, you'll be doing all over again multiple times because some knife wielding douchebag decided to hit you through your shield.

-The explore mode makes it easier but it doesn't really fix the main problem which is the whole backtracking thing. Oh and guess what? Now that you dropped your lamp on level 10 you'll have to fight through the knife guys again to get it.

It's THIS close to being a great experience but the mechanics hold it back so much it's insane. In fact to this day it's the only game I literally wanted to remove from my library as soon as I was done.

This game really makes it a point to waste your time. In every instance of choosing between "make it fun" or "make it tedious" they chose tedium. Because of this, I can not recommend the game. It just doesn't respect your time at all. I think it's a perfect illustration of an artistic idea being put on a pedestal to the detriment of everything else. So, as an art project, it probably works. As a game? Absolutely not.
A shame, I really wanted to like this one.

The music and visuals are charming and beautiful though.
Also, they did add "explore" mode, but I played it the "intended" way (survival), and have zero desire to go back and check if explore is worth it. Besides, unless they also multiply the character's speed by at least two times, it is still going to be way too slow.

I didn't remember why i uninstalled this back when the game released so I gave it another try. I enjoy the atmosphere and art style. The gameplay is fine, immersive even. Then... I died. Not so bad right? I'll just start back at the... whole ass beginning of the game with all of my stuff gone. No thanks.

I want to like / love this game, love everything of what is trying to accomplish... but unfortunately there is that one thing that unless its added I won't change it. ADD A ZOOM IN AND OUT FUNCTION!!!! i've played souls game so this is an relatively easy game. Most of the time I have to get in close to the monitor just because there is a MO-FO trap right behind a pillar , so besides being tiny pixels I literally have to analyze if thats a trap or not by being 6 inches from my monitor. I cannot see if I have a bow or sword when I switch as its so minuscule small that in the middle of a fight i'm using the wrong weapon just a small icon letting me know what the f__k i'm holding would be great.

ITS BEEN YEARS IN COMMENTS / YOUTUBE OTHER MEDIA ASKING FOR JUST A Button press that allows to get close to zoom in to focus on close quarter and zoom out for exploration mode for your character, ironically when you die you get randomly generated individuals and I can barely see their different clothing or art styles.

I know its trying to say "oh look how big the world is and how small you are" , but you get that at the beginning of the game I dont need to know the entire time except in cutscenes. Literally i can't even enjoy watching other players on streaming just because of how tiny it looks and I don't even see on my phone what they are doing except seen slashes.

Please for the love of GOD , just come back to do a final update to allow us to ZOOM IN/OUT THE CAMERA!!!!!

Way too hard and annoying mechanics