Why the bad reviews?

[shankly1985]

I picked this up very cheap not yet installed it. Is it worth a play? What is the most things people dislike about this title?

[Asphe]

It's relatively unoptimised... it isn't from a AAA studio with the resources and nVidia help, so the game relatively doesn't play very smoothly.

Aside from that, a linear story [nothing bad about that] and all in all a short and simple game. It's also very unique in it's approach... think of it as a RPG-lite meets Doom. Plus it has good voice acting and I hope to see a sequel [not going to happen] or a spiritual successor one day.

Another thing that might cause some bad reviews... the horrible, horrible console port. But that was pretty much out of the original devs' hands.

[shankly1985]

Thanks I'll give it ago.

[[DBH].Whismerhill.{SSgt}]

Originally posted by Asphe:

It's relatively unoptimised... it isn't from a AAA studio with the resources and nVidia help, so the game relatively doesn't play very smoothly.

Aside from that, a linear story [nothing bad about that] and all in all a short and simple game. It's also very unique in it's approach... think of it as a RPG-lite meets Doom. Plus it has good voice acting and I hope to see a sequel [not going to happen] or a spiritual successor one day.

Another thing that might cause some bad reviews... the horrible, horrible console port. But that was pretty much out of the original devs' hands.

I don't agree, I had an issue because of discord but apart from that it's very smooth on my computer with all settings @Max settings
(I7-2600k 16GB & GTX760)

Now the reason why this isn't rated better is that the game has :
-1 a horribly & needlessly complicated crafting UI. it's just unpractical and even the automation is not even remotely good enough.
-2 balance is meh, and optimizing your character is hard if you don't know what you're doing : reason being that you can't actually try stuff, and you can't compare different sigils(=magic elements together in a totally fair comparison)

the main reason for point 2 is that you craft each spell from elements and each element has a lot of random modifiers, so no spells are ever equal to each other, so you can't really compare say : lightning direct damage to fire direct damage & decide which you want. It's mostly a game where you'll try one, decide you don't like it, and then you chose the wrong sigil when the choice was presented ...

so yeah lots of stuff could be better thought out in this game.

However I do love the way you feel like a powerful magician in this game. blinking around in an unlimited way (thanks to agile shields) throwing spells at enemies just gives this awesome feeling of being overpowered while still requiring some amount of skill/reaction time to survive.

check out my review if you wish.

[Stabbey]

I got this game for 50 cents through a Humble-something sale and just uninstalled it with disgust at the eld of level 2.

• Levels are far, far too long. It's tiring, and if nothing else, the same environments for so long is boring.
  
• There are 8 or 9 base spell elements, but because consoles, you can only have access to three at a time, and can only switch them out at the checkpoints.
  
• Your spells each have a direct attack, a nova attack, and an AOE attack. Direct attacks only have three types: a constant beam, a lobbed projectile, and a homing projectile. That's a total of 5 attack types. That might not sound so bad, but it gets worse.
  
• This game is based around applying debuffs (Control) onto enemies, then hitting them with direct damage (Destruction) to score massive criticals. But you can't just spam your direct attack, you'll only score the critical if you charge the attack a bit first. That means that pretty much all combat plays out the same way: Charge your control spell and hit enemies, then switch to destruction and charge that and blast. Repeat several thousand times each level. The alternative is to spam low damage direct damage, but that usually takes a lot of hits per enemy.
  
• Novas are attacks which go off if you perform a perfect block using a certain shield type, or a charged quick-step. The first is dangerous because if your timing is off a little, you miss it or even take a hit. And your timing can easily be off if you are under the time-distorting effects of a debuff.
  
• AoE attacks target an area and require you to hold attack and block at the same time. But again, you need to charge it a bit first. If you just hit the buttons and let go, nothing happens. It takes longer to charge a critical AoE, by which time the enemy will have moved into your face.
  
• Movement is incredibly sluggish because when you're charging a spell you slow down a lot. The problem is that you are ALWAYS charging. You charge to crit your basic attack spell. You charge to use your AoE spell. You charge to use your aimed quick-blink nova. All that charging and the required slowdown makes combat flow badly.
  
• When you're hit with a debuff, you go into some kind of slow motion mode, where looking around and moving happens at an incredibly slow speed, and this takes a while to wear off. I cannot oversell to you how incredibly agonizing this can be to try and fight your way through.
  
• Some enemies (and especially bosses) have attacks which can cut through 2/3 of your health instantly, so if you miss a dodge or block.
  
• The loot and crafting system is pretty boring and annoying, it's mostly a time-waster, and this game has a lot of time wasting already. You'll never create a "new spell", just a variation on the existing 5 attack types.
  
• There's apparently some kind of "synergy" system which can produce actually interesting and cool effects, but that has some incredibly tedious requirements to trigger a synergy. Good luck seeing any of those.

This game is absolutely not worth your time.

[Tiny Trees]

I bought it for £0.75 and am wondering the same as the OP.

However what puzzles me more is how it's gone from overall 62% positive in reviews. To about 30% positive, in recent reviews. It's likes omething suddenly went wrong with it.

I do worry about some of the stuff that I have read in this thread though. Like complicated upgrade paths. I hate that. I hate it when you can't say, easily compare one item with another because so many things affect one item.

[Eden]

Originally posted by jollywoodjuan:

I can't make heads or tails of the crafting system, so all my hits are around 1.2k, crits around 5 when frozen. Not sure how people are hitting for millions but it's become a slog and getting hit a few times is death, whereas even trash mobs take dozens and dozens of hits to kill.

You need to use mastery. There are some guides available that go into more detail but what it boils down to is this: the further you get into the game the more you need mastery to do adequate damage. Craft a mastery attuned spell and debuff enemies before using your damage spells. Your freeze->hit combo that does 5k? With enough mastery that will hit for 50k easily.

[Nacho]

Originally posted by Stabbey:

I got this game for 50 cents through a Humble-something sale and just uninstalled it with disgust at the eld of level 2.

-snip-

- There're also 3 types of AOE.

- You don't need to charge your main spell always. Further in the game spells can have more than 80% crit if you craft them correctly, so you can choose to charge to guarantee a crit and have a possible apocalyptical effect or fire several hoping the majority will crit.

- There're apocalyptical spells that can protect you from status effects.

- If you're taking a lot of damage from a boss, you have to craft a better shield. Or learn to block/galvanize (galvanizing is easy with the shield type that has the extended window of time). BTW there're 3 types of shield.

- AOEs take longer to charge because they're powerful. Later you can craft them with shorter charging time (less than a second). You can always remap the controls to not have to hold 2 buttons (I have a Razer mouse and I use a side button to block and mapped the AOE to the right).

- You get a lot of synergy-capable spells later in the game. Charging them is easy if you master the Overkill system. You can have 3 different synergies equipped&ready to fire, and you can use them often. You can cut through mini bosses and bosses quickly if you unleash 3 of them.

I agree though that crafting is pretty tedious, and in latter stages you'll be likely replacing each spell very often for another more powerful version, but crafting and the RNG are two big factors in this game.

[IIFriggII]

from what i can read from the reviews: people are running too high difficulty and can't understand the dodge, block, passive dmg, multiplier of dmg, etc. mechanics and are therefore having a bad time...

really sad as the game is actually REALLY good if you just read a bit and figure out whats going on.
sad there won't come a second of these :/

[Pr.Jitterskull - best bug fixer]

Because it's not a proper Mage game, I can't even call it a Magic shooter. At best, you get feeling that you play as megaman: first person akshonz that can't even jump (let alone flying\levitate like in morrowind) and have serious lusting fetish for huge numbers.

Basically, the only way to play this game is spam projectiles, and the longer you progress the more projectiles you need to spam. You have AoE? Well, you better use it for stager amplifier (mastery) that does 0 damage and makes your projectiles do even moar damage, and to make it even moar, moar damage, make sure it's used with another combination of debuff (control) AoE, otherwise it's just a waste of AoE ability. You might think that you stacking amplifier (mastery) and debuff (control) will you let any other damaging attack (destuction) do insane damage to them including rays and pool, but nah, the only thing that for sure will do the insane damage and fulfill the synergy as well will be the instant burst damage attacks (projectiles, impact areas aoe) as the only good choice, but considering that AoE is takes too long to actually fully charge and aim it is often impossible at some airbone targets, the projectiles with implemented aimbot is always the right choice. Projectiles, projectiles and projectiles again; that's the real master race of how to play this game.

Wanna cause armageddon, manipulate time, teleport from one end of map to another wherever you point, manipulate weather and summon lightning storms, able to control telekinesis and push up and forth enemies like Yoda, summon\conjure\create minions to fight for your by your own will? Sorry buddy, wrong game. While this game has something that called "synergy" that lets you do some of these fun things like summon single tiny mini meteor or summon a single minion to fight for you (which is not much of things they let you use, it basically only a different reskined burst damage skills, a few constant damaging skills and few of summons), you're technically not allowed to call them on by will, you'd have to rip your arse off, to full fill that a scale in order to use it a SINGLE TIME only, and unless you have no interest in combination of amplifier damage AoE + debuff AoE to do insanely undeserved overkill damage to single weakling skeleton to fullfill your huge number fetish and fullfill the synergy scale in 1-2 hits, it will take you literally a full playthrough through whole level to fullfill it only once or at best twice, especially if you're a fan of beautiful Pool and awesome looking Rays.

Never gonna bait on the same "hurr durr no mana ur puwurful baetlmage" tricking lie. They'd better actually put mana system which would serve as some kind of cooldown\balance system so you'd could use actually powerful and awesome skills once 20 second or spam boring projectiles non-stop for 40 seconds than have this.

The worst feature I really despited in ANY game where you play as Mage, is the freaking boring lame skills\spells which do not kill or even do damage, but only amplifier damage of other enemies or place pitiful effect on them like stun that are used only for mere combination, and in this game it's not only in there, but the game forces down your throat to abuse these elements ALL THE FREAKING TIME. You wanna use fun and interesting synergies attack that trully make you feel versatile Mage with lots of knowledge and skills? Nah, go spam more projectiles. You wanna have versatile and variety gameplay where you could shoot lightningbolt strikes out of hands, zapping and damaging enemies at the same time, control time and space, teleport from place to place, summon armageddon while flying at the same time? Screw you, this is not a game where you play as Mage, you play as pitiful egocentric weakling dummie who can't even perform elemental jump and that fall on ground from a single arrow hit and whose power he gets of fancy trinket from a stranger that at best let you fade 3 meters far at best. You wanna use fun and beautiful AoE damaging pool and Ray attack that makes you feel like you're shooting flamethrower out of your hand and burning everything around?? Too bad, damage of these is pitifully small and you'd be forced to use the same boring overused combination cancer of debuff + amplifier + le powerfulz projectile to achieve the effect of "omg see how I rekt dat scrub, I've did 234239048239048238 gorrilion of damage to that single defenseless scrub with this projectile Xddddddd oh wow these huge numbers give me so huge boner ; ; I literally love this game 10\10 gonna fap again".

I've talk about projectiles a lot, but projectiles itself is not bad thing if they are just beginning element that let you used in the very beginning of game and not force you rely on it all the time, or at least have real upgrade\vartiety of these. Now what projectiles in this game are? Just literally a slow moving dart that you must charge in order to do decent damage and not fully charged projectiles here is merely for visuals since it hardly have any use if any since it won't kill even weakest enemy and DPS wise it's irrelevant, i.e. there is literally no reason to spam projectiles not fully charged, and casting not fully charged projectile is even some kind of punishment you get for not fully charge it, because not only it does weak damage, but will be a waste if you use it against amplified stagger damage + debuffed enemy that won't get le "apocalyptical" huge number damage. And yes, it have aimbot, means you're not even trully in power and control of your spells\powers\skills, and they automatically find what target they should aim at even if you want to hit the other guy next to him or one deadly demon far away rather than this pitiful skeleton infront of you; yet some enemies can dodge this projectile at range, so you can't even predict the enemie's future movement and aim it there to trick them and hit them if they dodge. Oh, and projectiles has no AoE splash radius damage, not even these that visually have one; means, if you hit a floor or a wall next to a enemy single milimeter away, it won't do a jackcrap to him.
The game also has grenade-like spells, but these are even slower and range is so small it won't have much of use unless you just want to have fun spaming it everywhere; the game also have Ray, but like I mentioned about it earlier, the damage, range, DPS is sooo tiny, yet while using it you're completely immobilized (or very very slow to be exact), and doesn't even do instant insane damage against damage amplified + debuffed enemy, so there is literally no use for it.
And the most sad thing is, even same attacks are divided by 3 category of destruction, control and mastery. I.e. if you craft a Fire Ray, you either be able to damage enemies with flame and they will never set on fire, no matter how long you will hitting them, or will set them on fire but the flaming ray itself of +700 celsius fire will do 0 damage to enemies, no matter how long you will hitting them. That is not only unrealistic, but absolutely anti-fun, dissapointing, frustrating and annoying.

The craft system is quite the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ which is mostly a luck based, and often just give you feel like it's here to waste your time even more. The leveing system is even bigger dissapointment, since if you change your element, you lose all the effort and time you spend in to it to level it up.

The game itself is relatively very easy if anything, but at the same time very annoying, frustrating, boring, awfully desgined, overely emphasized (unbalanced) toward certain features and very repeative. Not to mention developers do not really cared about what people say or suggest, since there been really a lot of people asking developers back when the game was in alpha stage to allow the player to carry all 8 elements with him rather than just 3, which is not something too hard to implement. So these bad ratings and negative reviews are rather well deserved.

[AbedsBrother]

Originally posted by ;133256080235704763:

I bought it for £0.75 and am wondering the same as the OP.

However what puzzles me more is how it's gone from overall 62% positive in reviews. To about 30% positive, in recent reviews. It's likes omething suddenly went wrong with it.

I do worry about some of the stuff that I have read in this thread though. Like complicated upgrade paths. I hate that. I hate it when you can't say, easily compare one item with another because so many things affect one item.

The game was working fine before, then the it was ported to console. For some reason, the Steam version was updated to that version of the game (because yay! controller support I guess, I don't remember if the original version had full controller support), but it actually runs worse on PC than the version that was on Steam prior to the port. Incidentally, the second boss got buffed for some reason in the new version - and it was already a hard boss. Now it's near-impossible on Battlemage difficulty.

The levels are long, and combat is repetitive. Boss fights can be epic. The crafting system is good once you learn it, but that's an issue: there's not much to help you learn it, except the developers own guides posted here in the Steam forums. Synergies and Apocalypticals are pretty awesome, though.

Here's the first boss, if you want an idea of how the game plays.
https://youtu.be/1zdNF5wgAng

[AbedsBrother]

Originally posted by Pr.Jitterskull - best bug fixer:

While this game has something that called "synergy" that lets you do some of these fun things like summon single tiny mini meteor or summon a single minion to fight for you (which is not much of things they let you use, it basically only a different reskined burst damage skills, a few constant damaging skills and few of summons), you're technically not allowed to call them on by will, you'd have to rip your arse off, to full fill that a scale in order to use it a SINGLE TIME only, and unless you have no interest in combination of amplifier damage AoE + debuff AoE to do insanely undeserved overkill damage to single weakling skeleton to fullfill your huge number fetish and fullfill the synergy scale in 1-2 hits, it will take you literally a full playthrough through whole level to fullfill it only once or at best twice, especially if you're a fan of beautiful Pool and awesome looking Rays.

FYI Minion-summoning isn't tied to Synergies (though the meteor, as you stated, is), and you can create as many minions as you want. You can only take three of them with you throughout a level, but that doesn't prevent you from converting a dozen others to fight on your side in a single encounter. (Once you go to a new level, your "collection" of three minions resets, and you have to start over.) Once you enter combat, your collected minions automatically spawn, so there is no summoning or dismissing.

[Pr.Jitterskull - best bug fixer]

Originally posted by AbedsBrother:

Originally posted by Pr.Jitterskull - best bug fixer:

While this game has something that called "synergy" that lets you do some of these fun things like summon single tiny mini meteor or summon a single minion to fight for you (which is not much of things they let you use, it basically only a different reskined burst damage skills, a few constant damaging skills and few of summons), you're technically not allowed to call them on by will, you'd have to rip your arse off, to full fill that a scale in order to use it a SINGLE TIME only, and unless you have no interest in combination of amplifier damage AoE + debuff AoE to do insanely undeserved overkill damage to single weakling skeleton to fullfill your huge number fetish and fullfill the synergy scale in 1-2 hits, it will take you literally a full playthrough through whole level to fullfill it only once or at best twice, especially if you're a fan of beautiful Pool and awesome looking Rays.

FYI Minion-summoning isn't tied to Synergies (though the meteor, as you stated, is), and you can create as many minions as you want. You can only take three of them with you throughout a level, but that doesn't prevent you from converting a dozen others to fight on your side in a single encounter. (Once you go to a new level, your "collection" of three minions resets, and you have to start over.) Once you enter combat, your collected minions automatically spawn, so there is no summoning or dismissing.

You don't really summon them, you only convert one enemy to fight on your side for short time, using it twice on same enemy doesn't work. Or in case with necromancer element, you don't really summon them, you basically kill enemies and then resurrect them in form of souless\mindless skeletons.

Also the summon synergy, which are two of these, are the only summoned allies that actually trully useful.

[cromignon]

Looooooooong unskippable cutscenes. I just wanted to get into the game and play. No, I have to wait and listen to an old man drone on for an hour first.