Every choice, every breath, has led me to this moment...as the moon bears witness, my time has come!

The aura. The witches. The cats!! The intro theatrics to this game had me completely hooked.

This isn't a negative review where I am 100% saying to not buy this product. It's more of a "not now and give it more time to cook" recommendation. The story and premise have my interest but that is not where the problem lies.

This game suffers from a couple things. I won't get into the AI stuff, you can go to the forums for that. I am here to talk about the game and how it plays. I have tried the game on my gaming laptop, steam deck and steam machine. It is unplayable on the steam deck, has been since the demo. Just stutters and lags. It will play on low-medium settings on the steam machine and I have had no issues with it on my laptop. But as other people have pointed out, it does feel unoptimized. It doesn't run consistently for me on any of my machines. Sometimes it looks great and runs smoothly. Other times, it looks grainy and stutters. I’m constantly fiddling around with settings.

This game feels like it is trying to do too many cool things at once. Lots of interesting concepts but they feel like they don't flow together naturally, resulting in clunky gameplay. An example being the water gliding and combat. In order to cast spells, you need to "focus" or zoom in on targets to interact with them. This is so distracting. When you are gliding on the water, you are going at faster speeds. Trying to zoom in to focus while zooming around is no fun. Water gliding is also a pain and trying to figure out how to jump and get out of the water is a headache. Like intuitively, on controller you ‘press x’ because that’s how you climb on the ground level. But no, for some reason being in water is different. Let’s make it ‘up’ on the right joystick randomly because you don’t have enough to remember -_- Controls seem off at times. It shouldn't be this complicated. Also ong, do not try to cheese the tutorial!! There is lots of valuable info and if you miss it, the game actually gets confusing (and frustrating) pretty quick.

Similarly with combat, you are trying to focus targets to cast a spell but while you are zoomed in, you are just getting bludgeoned to death because your FOV is limited in this stance. It also takes forever to collect energy on the field and cast during combat. May I suggest either a) slowing or stopping time while you are zoomed in/focusing so you have time to plan and react or b) removing the whole zoom in feature and allowing players to free cast in the normal FOV. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel and make comfortable gameplay a priority. Because this isn't comfortable. It is annoying. And makes everything feel disjointed instead of fluid.

The combat seems basic so far. I am sure there will be more spells to use along the way but right now it is just a melee attack, a temperamental dodge that is hard to control and sends you all over the place and me blowing up things with magic in the environment to kill enemies. There needs to be a block of some sort, because the dodge cannot be trusted. The camera can be janky and bothersome during combat, especially so if you don’t lock onto the enemies while dodging. I already discussed it above, but there is too much going on in the environment and having to constantly zoom/focus to interact with things takes away from the whole experience and immersion.

The best part of the game is the ability to not only control Noa (the main character) but also your chosen familiar. You can actively swap between the two to progress the story and I am having fun with that part. They have different roles and tasks, so it adds another interesting layer.

Follow the game and see where it goes for now. It isn't there yet. But I will be eagerly following the updates in hopes that one day it will be. I see potential in the gameplay but it is very rough around the edges. As always, I will update my review as needed. Best of luck!!

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I wanted so badly to love this game. I have had it on my wishlist since I first heard about it and have been waiting for it to release. At this point in time, I can't recommend it. It is overpriced for what you get in early access and still has a lot of issues.

Pros:

I love the atmosphere. The medieval gothic horror-like witch theme is everything I hoped it would be.

Noa's character design is beautiful. The colors and design of the game are beautiful. The music blends well with the atmosphere and theme. The voice actors did a great job in my opinion.

The gameplay elements like the cat and the magic system are fun and engaging. I enjoyed the potion making although I think it is a bit oversimplified and could use more of a crafting mini game.

I love everything about the cat. Playing as the cat is fun, the various skills you can do are really enjoyable and it is fun to figure out how to get past obstacles with a combination of the cat and Noa. My favorite part of the game hands down.

Cons:

Generative AI - I won't go into this much but I didn't know before I purchased and was disappointed in the developer response. It looks as though it is still there, so I would be surprised if they claim they got rid of all of it.

Lots of early access glitches which I hope will be fixed. NPCs moving in unnatural ways, or chopping invisible food on an invisible table. NPCs falling out of the sky. Honestly the NPC behavior in general feels like a sad version of old skyrim NPCs and not at all what I would expect from a modern game. The NPCs often don't see you even when you are looting right next to them, they inconsistently seem to notice you doing unnatural things. They don't react in a way you would expect real people to react and often just stare at you frozen which is immersive breaking and weird. They don't move around naturally and sometimes just glide around the screen or through other NPCs.

There is no manual save, so it is important to keep track of the auto-save which isn't always triggered by a set amount of time or any particular actions, so if you are grinding away just keep an eye on it because one mistake can really mess you up.

Keep an eye on the awareness level when you are at your house, it resets once you are inside but randomly comes back when you go back outside unless you go in and out a couple times.

The combat is garbage and my least favorite part of the game. I had a really hard time with it, and I typically don't. I also wouldn't consider myself a beginner or casual gamer by any means. The game doesn't really give you a lot of guidance or tutorials on the combat. For me the dodging seemed inconsistently responsive as were all the actions. It is difficult to cast spells due to the awkward amount of steps and sequence of keys to cast them and since your health is laughable you often will die before you can even cast one spell. Very rarely the enemies are stunned and you could maybe cast it then. This could be user error, but if I struggled with it this much I can't imagine what a casual gamer would do. The screen prompts for the spells also only show up if you line it up perfectly and will sometimes randomly change spells in the middle and you can't really be moving or dodging during it. I found potions more reliable than spells and just ended up grinding forever to get enough potions to survive. Since there is no difficulty setting, this is a huge downfall to the game. It is also pretty punitive in that you lose your perks and any potions you used if you die and will have to go back to grinding all over again. It also restarts you back at the house every time which is annoying. My best recommendation is it is better to quit the game and restart as soon as you die rather than let the game take away all your stuff, either way it restarts you at the house. I realize it resets the perks so you can choose different ones, but I didn't find this helpful and it's not worth losing the potions. The only reason I got the full 15 hours of gameplay was from having to spend hours grinding to get my potions back up after I did not quit and restart, and some other things which I'll mention below. The locked on targeting is awkward and makes it difficult to move Noa around and almost ends up sucking her in too close to where she gets pummeled.

The gameplay is not smooth. It is difficult to get action prompts to line up and sometimes you're just moving around until it shows up. Noa is painfully slow and inconsistently follows commands. There's no jumping, climbing, or freedom of movement as Noa which can be frustrating to get her to do what you want. There are very few characters you can interact with at all and some of the conversations are really pointless and strange despite how few there are. You should be able to eavesdrop as the cat, I didn't like that you could only eavesdrop if you are on the arm of a possessed person while staring directly at the people you are eavesdropping on. I wish there were more NPC dialogue or conversations rather than just mumbling.

The game gives you next to no guidance and when you ask the cat for help he just tells you to look everywhere. I missed a paper on a wall that didn't even stand out that much and ended up on the opposite side of the map aimlessly searching houses because I didn't know where I was supposed to be looking. It took a few hours before I really felt like I understood what it wanted me to do. If you take out that and the grinding from punitive battles, you could easily finish the early access portion in under 8 hours even with a lot of exploring. The game wants you to do things in a specific order, but doesn't guide you to do them and if you miss the subtle clues and end up somewhere else you can get the story out of order which ends up being a bit confusing. The steps guide you to what to do next, so if you miss one or skip you will miss crucial clues on what to do. It took so much trial and error for me to figure out what actions set off the guards and what you can get away with, and often it doesn't really make sense. Sometimes you can walk all around a house with people in it as long as you aren't directly in front of them and other times if you so much as step in a house the guards are all over you. Both houses were restricted, it just isn't consistent.


Overall, my biggest complaints are you don't get much for early access, your health is a joke and the combat is difficult and punitive, the gameplay isn't smooth and the NPC behavior is weird. I love the idea of the game, the story and some aspects of the gameplay, so I am hopeful that when the full game releases they will fix a lot of the issues. For how much work and how much game feels unfinished that seems a long way off. I don't want to wait years to fully play a game that has been so hyped. I feel like they should have waited and fixed more of the issues and released more of the game.

I've put a little over 3 hours into the game so far, making it through the first Coffer, and wanted to leave some feedback based on my experience.

There is a lot that I really like about Amsterdam 1666, especially the story, but there are also some things that have unfortunately stopped me from being able to continue.



The performance was great going into the game and running through the prologue, and I had a similar experience when I played the demo. However, the moment you're put into Amsterdam and get introduced to the living world, the performance takes a pretty big hit.

I was running at a comfortable 60+ FPS during the beginning of the game, but once I got into Amsterdam and started dealing with the first Coffer, I was down around 30 FPS or lower, even with an RTX 5070.

I wasn't too surprised by this at first, since there are a lot of NPCs walking around and the city is clearly doing a lot more than the earlier areas. Still, the drop was pretty noticeable, and I think the larger populated areas could definitely use some optimization.



I absolutely love the storytelling, the drama, and all of the little bits of lore that get shared throughout the game. It honestly takes me back to the peak of Assassin's Creed storytelling, where the setting and history are a huge part of what makes the game interesting.

Learning about the Zandaris tribe and their customs, Aaron and Noa, the witch trials, and the history of Amsterdam kept me really invested. This is probably the biggest selling point of the game for me because I actually want to know what happens next and learn more about the world.

The problem is that I feel like some of that immersion starts to disappear once combat becomes the main focus.


Going through the prologue, I was starting to get into the rhythm of the combat. It seemed pretty simple: dodge until the enemy gives you an opening, then attack. That worked between all of the enemies I fought, including the first bookmaker boss. I could learn their attacks, dodge them, and then take advantage of the opening they gave me.

Because of that, I assumed the first Coffer boss would continue using that same system.

Unfortunately, this is where things started falling apart for me.

When I got to the Fox Coffer and confronted him, I was able to cast the spell directly in front of the entire court and seemingly faced no consequences for doing it. That immediately broke some of the connection I had with the idea of being a hunted sorceress who needed to conceal her abilities.

Then, later that night, I ended up fighting him in the middle of a crowd of people who just stood around us like we were in a fighting arena. I kept thinking there had to be some explanation coming for why this was happening or that there would be consequences for openly using magic in front of everyone, but that never really came across.

Maybe this is something that gets explained later, but at the point where I got to it, it just felt really strange. It made me question why I was being so careful about hiding my abilities earlier in the game when I could apparently just use them openly in front of a crowd.


The boss fight itself is where I think the biggest issue with the game currently is.

The previous combat encounters had taught me that I should dodge until the enemy gave me an opportunity to attack. The Fox Coffer, however, seemed to attack almost constantly without giving me much of an opportunity to actually do anything.

For what I assume is supposed to be an early introductory Coffer boss, having three health bars while constantly attacking felt extremely punishing.

I died on my first attempt, which honestly wasn't a big deal. I expected to die a few times while learning the fight. What I didn't expect was to then find out that dying means losing the upgrade I had and getting a random selection of new ones.


I don't necessarily think the roguelike system is a bad idea. I actually think it could work really well with this game. The problem I ran into is that the upgrades are random, and some of them seem to be focused more on free-roaming and exploration than combat.

The first couple of times I died, I was given upgrades that improved the free-roam experience but didn't really help me with the boss. That's great when I'm exploring Amsterdam, but when the thing preventing me from progressing is a boss that keeps killing me, it doesn't really help.

Eventually I got an upgrade that gave me two additional health bars, and I thought that would give me a better chance.

Then I noticed that the boss seemed to change his attacks and movement after each death. I understand the idea behind making a roguelike boss change things up, but it also made it harder to actually learn the fight when things I had already learned could change on the next attempt.

There was also one attempt where I skipped the cutscene to get back into the fight and the boss seemed to be able to attack almost immediately while I was still loading in.

The worst example was an attack where he rapidly swiped around five times in a row. On that attempt, he basically took all five of my health bars before I had a meaningful chance to react.

Then I died, and the next upgrades I received were once again mostly focused on free-roaming.

At that point, I felt like I had hit a wall and simply couldn't continue.


I don't mind difficult games. I also don't expect to beat a boss on my first try.

What I do want is to feel like I'm actually getting better at the fight. I want to be able to think, "Okay, I died because I did this wrong. Now I know what to do differently next time."

Instead, my experience with this boss started feeling more like, "I died, hopefully I get an upgrade that helps me fight him, and hopefully his attacks don't change in a way that catches me off guard."

That's the part of the roguelike system that really frustrated me.

If I keep dying, I don't necessarily get stronger against the thing I'm dying to. I can get upgrades that help with exploration while the boss remains the exact wall preventing me from seeing the rest of the story.

I think there needs to be a little more player control over the upgrades, especially when repeatedly failing against a boss. Maybe give the player a choice between a combat upgrade and an exploration upgrade, or have some kind of guaranteed combat upgrade after dying to the same boss several times.

It doesn't necessarily need to make the game easier. I just think the player should have some way of improving their chances instead of having to rely so heavily on getting useful upgrades randomly.


The frustrating part about all of this is that I really want to keep playing.

The story is probably the part of the game I'm enjoying the most, and I really want to find out where everything with the Zandaris, the Coffers, Aaron, Noa, and Amsterdam goes.

But right now, the Fox Coffer is where my playthrough ends.

I don't think the boss needs to be made easy, and I don't necessarily think the boss itself needs to be completely redesigned. I just think there needs to be a better balance between how aggressive the boss is, how often the player gets an opportunity to attack, and what kind of upgrades the player receives after dying.

Right now, it feels like I can die, get upgrades that don't help me with the boss, go back in and deal with a boss that may attack differently than the previous attempt, and potentially lose most or all of my health before I even have a chance to react.

The frustrating part is that I genuinely want to continue playing.