Recent reviews by [TWO!] THE COUNT ))<>((

Already unlocked everything the Earth Access title has to offer (every Arcana/concotion/aspect/heat challenge unlocked/completed). This game has the same polish of Hades 1, but with even more added content. I definitely recommend it.

The runs are a little longer, but there's lot's to see and do.

If you read a negative review talking about the MTX just ignore them.
If you read a negative review talking about how the save files work, that is valid.
If you read a negative review talking about the performance issues, I can believe some are valid.

I will say I've been getting a steady 60FPS on a AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D with a MSI RTX 3060 Ventus. So if anyone with similar cards are saying it is dropping to unplayable rates, sounds like they are trying to play it in 4K, with all the settings on High. My settings are all on high, but I'm on 1080p. I also see that apparently (according to the developers), that the issues are that there are high CPU loads. Luckily the 3800X3D is designed for high CPU load, so that's probably why I have next to zero performance issues.

The game definitely needs to be optimized more, as I've seen brief drops to 50FPS entering town but it just goes back to 60FPS after a few minutes there.

The combat feels fluid, the banter and pawn interactions with the world is great. The graphics are great, exploration feels so organic, and exciting. I love that stats are tied to vocation rather than something that you are committed to regardless of which vocation you switch to.

Hopefully a future patch or mod will be able to address the camera behavior (if that's even possible), when you are sandwiched between a wall and a monster (needs some clipping). Put 9 hours into it on launch and played until it was time for work.

Because I'm completely unaffected by the "MTX" (which are all farmable in-game), the save file (because I spent time to make my character and pawn not look like memes that I would get tired of staring at for dozens of hours), and the performance issues (because I play on 1080p with all settings on High), this game is highly, nay, extremely enjoyable.

Gave it an honest hour, the concept of using the cards to enter worlds is brilliant, but the early part of the gameplay is marred by a forced tutorial that if you deviate even slightly from it, can completely halt progress.

The always online aspect of this coupled with what feels like 300 - 700ms ping when building structures, gathering resources, fighting monsters, or even just exploring, leaves much to be desired.

Building feels very stiff and there is no flow with how to navigate through the UI. At one point all my items were displaying weight, but not their quantity. Shift clicking items did not split it because I did not complete the tutorial. Third person (experimental) is a nightmare, impossible to interact with anything due to the objects already not really standing out in-game, being even further from the camera in third person.

Mousewheel does nothing, rebinding keys does nothing, indications on your hotbar are almost imperceptible to know what is highlighted and what is not, unless you intensely stare at the hotbar. Durability is not always displayed, sometimes durability is hidden until you break it.

Foliage grow too fast sometimes, a tree grew through my foundation while I was waiting through the lag to finish building my foundation, hitting the said tree left a stump, hitting the said stump, broke the foundation and eventually the stump.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to a lot of the pacing, other than to pad out the refund window. When you are forced down a hard single track for a tutorial that does not respect the player and the point of the genre (curiosity, discovery, etc). You are left with a hollow nothingness that is also frustrating to play.

Optimizations are poor as well, there seems to be a massive memory leak coupled with the fact that if you "sequence break" the tutorial, you can be essentially left in a perpetual infinite "death loop". The exit from the tutorial is also a coin toss, if the server lags enough it will bug out the exit and you will be forced to recreate your game (alt + f4 does not work) from scratch and speedrun the poorly done tutorial all the way to the end again.

I'll refund it for now. If the game is coming out after a year in Early Access, this game is not worth your time.

The game is not as over the top as the trailers were, it's actually better than the trailers.

An interesting take on roguelike and life sim. They've thrown together a lot of development and likeable characters pretty nicely.

Game definitely does not take as long as they say it does. Beat it in 12 hours.

Regardless, it's not bad. But it's exactly a Bethesda game.

Accidentally killed the first village due to my friend choosing to pickpocket and getting caught. We don't save scum so we just had to follow through with it. Made a mental note to try a different approach in my solo playthrough.

Led a goblin invasion into the first village in the solo playthrough.

10/10 would druid again.

It's a never ending vertical grind.
If you get burned out, consider yourself a winner of the game.

If you're stuck and playing the same thing and watching your pity counter increase, you're still losing the game.

As someone who enjoyed the earlier releases of the titles (talking SNES/PS1/PS2 days). I thought I'd give this a shot. Fundamentally, the game is beautiful, and I enjoyed putting wacky cosmetics on my characters that persisted through cutscenes.

However, it came to the point when I realized just how much excessive "side dialogue" that shows up. I think about 15-20 minutes alone was just listening to the protagonist and the supporting protagonist ping-pong back and forth with each other about, "You're not so mean," "What..!? What are you talking about, I was never mean" "Yeah, I just thought you were a little at first, but I can see now," "*hmph* that's just how it felt to you", etc on multiple different instances.

The combat has a great foundation and they built on it wonderfully. But in-place of steady pacing as you go through the game. They've replaced it with turning all fights into damage sponges, no matter how much you overlevel.

The story so far, is pretty much Bandai Namco standard fare. Nothing horrific, and nothing stellar. Just down the middle and acceptable.

Why did I vote it negative? Primarily, when it came to deciding to start each play session, it was more of a dread of starting it because of how much damage sponge I was going to have to slog through, while traversing it's unimaginatively designed environments. The castle arc that I just did (the second boss), had the most uninspiring interior design ever, that just did not seem sensible. There were so many random dead end hallways and staggered elevators, etc.

I may play it again when I am desperate, for the time being. It's no thanks. I don't understand why it was so "acclaimed", unless standards have dropped. Or the amazing art team of Bandai Namco has successfully distracted fans of the series.

This game is a much more polished Vampire Survivors. Easy to play in a quick sitting. Looking forward to the new things that will come with the future updates.