Just finished the game. Here is some feedback.

[Victor Miller]

Just finished the game with one optional boss left. Here are my thoughts:

1. I am binging on metroidvanias right now. Usualy they are 50% or more about traversal and platforming challenges. This game felt like it was 80-90% about methodical slow combat and only 20-10% traversal or in this game rolling because there is no jump button.
I actually found the combat super satisfying and refreshing.

2. I give credit to devs for clearly really trying to make the mechanics of the game see trough for player. It really apreciated it that I could with right joystick look at all my blessings and curses and see more about them. I also really chuckled when I read in game that there was art of war and it just explained some of the glossary terms which actually really did help.

I think the game does not fully "earn" this art of war lore text because I allmost read it as our game does these things so much better than other games with obtuse mechanics. But there where still a lot of mechanics ands things I never understood even after beating the game.

3. It was really nice that the weapons actually felt different from each other. There are a lot of games where I can't even notice a difference if I am using one handed sword or one handed axe. Here the feel of the weapons really felt different. This was really good.

Here are just some of the issues I had:
1. There was a cultist that where I could pray and I lost all my armor for 1 and all my health for one. I almost got the feel that I have killed some npc I should not. can I fix this? Whats the point of praying for your sins if you just lose most of your armor and most of your health if it does not even do anything. if I could kill story npcs I did not know this and I don't remember kiliing anyone innocent so whatever I was missing the game did not clearly communicate this to me?
2. What does the meter most top of the screen and most left do. It allmost seems like morality meter but I never understood how to affect it or why I should care?
3. There was a quest in the very first area of ancient dungeon and I was waiting whole game to get some skill to traverse there but I never got it. It's cool if I just missed a secret but it almost felt like I was missing some traversal mechanic.
4. Some of the blessings and skilll used very vague language like somewhat or little etc. (I don't remember excatly but I see no reason why could not give numerical values to those abilities or blessings for player to better understand what they do.
5. Some skills where obstuse. I got a boss skill that my spear and bow take up more stamina but I get some electric skill? never got this to work. There was a skill to make my hand hard as shield. I thoght I could use unarmed to block like I had shield but instead it just gave me stamina regen or something very odd not related stuff.
6. Most of the bosses were awsome and overall the bosses where memorable and diffuculty curve was really good. There where some exceptions I think the ritualist and the last boss of the game where too hard skill checks and even if you want to make your game that hard you should do the difficulty curve a lot smoother.
7. This is just a guess but I was wondering if there was issue that two handed weapons where too lackluster and then devs patched more range into two handed weapons but the animations don't really match the actual range anymore? I used most of the game two handed spikeclub i got from a boss and it had by far the biggest numbers on damage for the longest time and the range was absolutely insane but also the animation seemed a lot shorter than the actual reach of the weapon. This resulted a lot of misses with the weapon that felt unfair.
8. some of the permanent upgrades like crit damage and even normal damage (just 1 point per found piece) seemed not where useful and I was not ever happy to find them. Then again getting more faith or more stamina was really strong. I don't know if its possible to average these somehow to make them all interesting to find maybe this would actually need more stats or less permanent upgrade altars to work. not sure.

Final thoughts:
Overall I really liked the game lore was subpar but not terrible. I did not like to read textwalls just before boss it seemed lazy. some of the stories where interested and I actually read all the pieces of lore I could find so I guess this was still better than average lore pickups in most games where I just don't bother.

So I give this game 8.0. I hope if you ever make new game you fix some of these issues and great work on the devs!

[Xsoul]

Glad you liked the game we created Victor, we definitively evolved as developers since Dark Devotion, at least we hope so!

Have a great day,

Louis

[ladaas]

1) I agree. The movement is limited, but feels fine once you get used to it.
2) I will agree that some of the mechanics are a bit obtuse. I personally have enjoyed digging in and unraveling them, but that isn't for everyone. There is a fair amount of lore hidden all around.
3) Agree that there is a fair bit of variety. The blessings (and occasionally curses) tied to items can add a lot more variety as well.

1) That shine becomes active after killing one of the two Templar bosses. One is optional, but the other is required to beat the game. There isn't any drawback to having it active since you can just skip the shrine. The only real purpose for it is to allow for the Messiah achievement by beating the game with the curse active. That said, the game doesn't clearly explain any of that.
2) I am not sure what meter you are referring to. The yellow bar between your health and the list of blessings is your stamina. The vertical bar to the left of that is just a visual garnish. I am not aware of any morality system in the game other than what I mentioned in #1.
3) There is a breakable wall (to the right of the shrine) what can be broken using a Godless Idol. The only to get that particular one is for the first enemy you meet to drop one. It isn't as bad as it sounds because you only need to get it to drop once so you can save the npc on the other side.
4) Ya, a lot of the blessings are quite vague. You can look up a lot of things on https://darkdevotion.fandom.com/ if you want more details.
5) Ya, Static Electricity is a pretty meh.
6) I personally found The Ritualist to be on the easier end of the bosses, but to each his own. I will agree that the final boss is very tough, though I wouldn't consider that a terrible thing.
7) Hezek's cudgel is a solid weapon. It is balanced a bit by the fact the it takes twice as much stamina to swing as most weapons. I will agree that the hit boxes can be a little wired.
8) the fact that you found the damage boost upgrades underwhelming was likely tied to the fact that you were using the cudgel. They are much more impactful on faster weapons. It can double the damage on some (good) weapons. I found that heavy 2 handed weapons were good early on before I got the upgrades, but eventually the upgrades allowed faster weapons to improve and eventually outshine the slower weapons.

This game can be very obtuse, but there is a fair amount there once you dig into it. I became one of the admins on the wiki because I have had fun digging into all the nooks and cranies of the game. I think that there is more to it than a lot of people give credit, though having a resource to unveil some of the difficult to decipher parts is useful.