question regarding difficulty

[Peanutman]

Game looks awesome but I'm hesitant to buy because people are saying it's a soulslike, which i don't like due to the difficulty. I'm not the biggest fan of games where their biggest selling point is "it's difficult" e.g. dark souls, cuphead, super meat boy. I can handle some semi difficult games like isaac though.

[Burzz]

It's both a soulslike and an extraction shooter, and there is a lot of grinding. If you don't like the difficulty associated with soulslike games, you won't like this either.

[Otets Oleksii]

At this point "soulslike" is a bit too vague term, so the devs define Witchfire as an RPG shooter. See their article:
https://www.theastronauts.com/2024/09/witchfire-rpg-shooter/

As for the difficulty, you'll find mixed reviews here on the forum. Some say it's too easy, others that it's too hard. I'd say the game is balanced.
We have the Gnosis system, which is our difficulty levels. We start at 0 and by completing certain milestones we get the opportunity to increase it. Increasing the Gnosis won't change the enemy HP, but will add new enemy types, new traps and new events. It is required to progress further in the game and to unlock some gear, but the choice is yours when to increase it.
Here is another dev's article:
https://www.theastronauts.com/2024/10/witchfire-difficulty/

I don't agree about grind. You do need to fulfill different objectives to upgrade your gear like "kill 150 enemies", however that's exactly what your gameplay consists of anyway - killing mobs, so where's the grind? The same goes for getting gold from chests and events, that's what you do during a run anyway. I'd understand if there were stuff like "kill only this type of enemy found on this specific map" but there is none of that, so upgrading your gear feels natural.
If Burzz was referring to grinding souls to level up, then I'd disagree again.
In my opinion, you don't progress through this game by grinding a level over and over again to increase your hp so you can face tank some hits, you progress by personal player experience. In other words, understanding new enemies and threats, learning the map, getting better at positioning, all this would contribute to your success far better than grinding levels so you have better stats.
This is why I'm so surprised to see people grinding a tutorial map for many hours before going to Scarlet Coast where the actual game is, only to get hurt because they have some extra hp or stamina but no experience.

[Burzz]

Locking content behind difficulty is poor design, for the record.

[It'll Bee OK]

Don't buy it. They haven't figured out leveling yet. You actually get punished for leveling. There's no story to speak of so don't expect anything RPG-ish. There's no respec for when you invariably make non-optimal choices and it's a total grindfest to re-unlock all the gear on a new playthrough. All of the difficulty mechanics, like reduced damage at range, only affect YOU, not the enemies. Later in the game it's just a swarm of HP sponges that take half your health in one hit while draining your ability to move - in short, if you like being angry - buy this game. If you want something worth spending your precious free time on, pick something more polished.

[Millk]

Originally posted by It'll Bee OK:

Don't buy it. They haven't figured out leveling yet. You actually get punished for leveling. There's no story to speak of so don't expect anything RPG-ish. There's no respec for when you invariably make non-optimal choices and it's a total grindfest to re-unlock all the gear on a new playthrough. All of the difficulty mechanics, like reduced damage at range, only affect YOU, not the enemies. Later in the game it's just a swarm of HP sponges that take half your health in one hit while draining your ability to move - in short, if you like being angry - buy this game. If you want something worth spending your precious free time on, pick something more polished.

Hey,

I just wanted to clear this comment out with a post from the dev team regarding some of the misconceptions around the difficulty system in the game.
https://www.theastronauts.com/2024/10/witchfire-difficulty/

But to TLDR this post, they have tied some of the procedural generation mechanics to leveling but increasing your level will not increase the difficulty of the game, you could max out every stat prior to entering Gnosis 1. All that increasing your level does is make you stronger and reroll some of the enemies to either begin spawning elites or spawning more of them. But enemy health is fixed so it will always take the same amount of rounds to down your target. They have confirmed that there will be a respec system when the stats 2.0 update is released.

Deus Vult,