u/Im_gnome98

First and foremost I want to say that I do enjoy playing this game, and I wouldn’t spend the time making this post if I did not think it was worth it. It’s got a great structure, great art design, and very fun and challenging gameplay experience especially with a friend. With the right tweaks this is something I could sink a lot of hours into. I just wanted to start with this so people didn’t think I was just complaining for the sake of complaining. I’ve already put 14 hours on the game and I really like what they’ve done so far but it does need some work.

- Camera: This is my biggest gripe with the game right now. Almost all of the bosses are borderline unplayable because your camera is whipping around 180 degrees extremely fast half the time. Not to mention the boss who spawns those yellow eggs only for you to kill the eggs and then your camera gets locked, unable to move and forced looking straight at the ground for a good 5-7 seconds. Also, they absolutely need to make the camera either collide with the walls so it doesn’t go in or behind them, or make it so if your camera goes behind a wall, the wall becomes transparent for you so you can see through it. The amount of times I have been fighting a bigger tougher enemy in a narrow area only to die because I straight up cannot see what is happening is incredibly pathetic. Also this game really really needs camera auto rotating so you do not have to stop sprinting to rotate the camera then start sprinting again. There really is no excuse for this and there is times where I genuinely wonder if this game was play-tested.

- Combat: Combat feels pretty good. There is sometimes what feels like a delay or input latency on attacks which is weird but it’s hard to replicate. Some attack animations can be janky especially if you are fighting an enemy on sloped ground. However it’s not terrible. My biggest gripe is that the lock on doesn’t feel strong enough. For instance in Elden Ring, if I charge a heavy attack facing away from the enemy, on release, my charged heavy will pull towards and target the enemy. In this game you will completely miss the target. Sometimes when I’m playing it is hard to tell if I’m locked on or not because my camera is not tracking the locked on enemy if that makes sense. In Dark Souls and Elden Ring it’s very clear which enemy you’re locked on to because your camera is always centered on them. This game doesn’t have that same feeling. It’s hard to explain this as it’s more of a “feeling thing” if that makes sense. It just feels a bit off and hard to tell who I’m actually targeting. Also, the little dot that appears on the enemy you are targeting is way too small and blends in way too easily on enemies making it hard to see who you are locked on to. Making that bigger and brighter or letting us change the color of it would go a long way. Also just why does activating the angel mode un-lock you from the enemy? I know you have to click both sticks in to activate, and clicking the right stick toggles the lock on, but isn’t there a way to code it so that if both sticks are clicked then the lock on is not cancelled? Very annoying activating my most powerful timed ability to start swinging at the air 5 times before I notice what’s happened. Also there seems to be an issue with some ground skills hitting bumps and not going the full distance. For example, the crescent halberd has a skill where you slam the weapon into the ground and a long narrow ice vein travels forwards on the ground eventually hitting the enemy. Well if there is a tiny bump or ledge on the ground, say a perpendicular wood beam that’s an inch or two higher than ground level, that ice stops right on that ledge because I’m assuming the game thinks it hit a wall. I really liked that ability too, shame it doesn’t work sometimes.

- Boss Design: There’s a lot to be desired here. Camera issues aside, bosses don’t feel “fun”. The vampire boss was an exception to this, that fight is pretty good. But all of the other ones feel either too easy, too spongy, or just outright bullshit. That dragon boss in the tower is absolutely the worst offender. It’s amazing to me that they decided to make a badass literal flying dragon boss but then thought it would be a good idea to limit his arena to a little 5 by 5 square room with objects falling from the ceiling, camera whipping side to side 15 times a second right before he bites you taking 90% of your health bar, and the hitbox for the dragon’s head outright unreachable for your weapons 70% of the time. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, can we please stop with the bosses spawning minions? For Christ’s sake, if you want to make the boss more difficult, make him have faster attacks, harder to read animations, deal more damage, etc. I promise you the last thing we want when fighting a boss is to wonder why the hell we are taking damage from behind by 3 skeletons with a rusty bronze sword. Boss minions might have to be the laziest way to add difficulty to a boss fight. Every time I see them all I can think is that they designed the boss, play-tested it and went “You know what, it’s not challenging enough.” And instead of fixing that by making the boss more challenging they just said “Ahh screw it, just give him a phase where he spawns in some minions.” The only time boss minions makes sense is when the boss is some sort of necromancer. Please explain to me why a dragon has summoning capabilities? It makes zero sense from an immersion and gameplay standpoint. Also, I’m pretty sure every boss spawns minions at some point which is just sad. Just remove them, they feel like a chore and get you killed in ways that will make most players immediately ALT F4 and uninstall the game.

- Executions: These looked and felt absolutely incredible…. the first 6 times I did them. Now all they do is slow you down, pull you into an animation that removes all of your awareness of your surroundings, and gives the enemies all the time in the world to group up around you and immediately hit you as soon as the animation is over. It gets so old having to do it over and over and over and over again. It’s literally just a speed bump in the gameplay. It also really sucks when you are playing co-op and you get locked into the animation when your teammate REALLY needs your help in a fight or needs a revive and all you can do is watch the timer go away as you “look cool” cutting off the head of an enemy. And, as if that were not enough, 90% of the executions I do I’m either floating 4 ft in the air while doing them or I’m stuck in a wall staring at a black screen while it’s happening AND I’ll be lucky if I don’t get trapped in that wall and have to restart the run. Get rid of them ASAP they serve no purpose to the game other than to get some cool shots for the game trailer.

- Boons: For the love of god MAKE ALL BOONS STACKABLE. This is not a multiplayer PVP game that requires this sort of strict balancing. Part of the reasons we play these games is to progress and feel that power creep as we get stronger. And yes, if I want to stack multiple boons that make each of my light attacks apply 1,000 frost I should be able to do so. Because, in doing that I have to seriously forgo some other very strong boons that would help with my health, stamina, damage, etc. Also, it is entirely possible that when you complete a section of the run, and you’re presented with your 3 boon choices, YOU ALREADY HAVE ALL 3. It just doesn’t make sense to me to not let these stack. You should be rewarded for getting lucky and stacking multiple of the same boons. Who cares if it makes you too strong. There is no ranked, no leaderboard, and no PVP. Becoming overpowered should be encouraged.

- Items/Loot: Gold, potions, consumables, throwing daggers, etc. should all be auto picked up by simply walking over them if you already have them equipped. Also loot needs to be spread out a bit and unable to be stacked on top of each other. There is really not a clear indication of which item you are highlighting and getting your camera angled juuuust right to select the item you want can be frustrating. There should also be a “Are you sure you want to equip this item” pop up before equipping gear. It’s way too easy to accidentally equip a piece of gear you did not mean to and lose it on the floor. Enemies who die near walls only makes this so much worse by stacking all of the loot on top of each other.

- UI: This game could really benefit from a UI size adjustment slider. There is no reason why the 3 sentences of objectives at the top left of my screen should take up 25% of my screen real estate. This is a super easy fix so I won’t complain too much about this and I’m sure will be addressed.

- Game Info: We need a way to see what exactly some boons do. “Killing an enemy grants rage.” Okay, what’s rage? Too much is unexplained and we kind of just have to guess on what we are selecting. There needs to be a way for this to be toggled on and off to where you can see exactly what it does mid game. We should not have to rely on a wiki to research what “Rage” or “Sunderance” does. Also, it needs to be made very clear which boons stay on gear and which ones are removed from gear when purified. It’s frustrating picking up a great piece of gear that would fit for a different build idea only for it to be purified in your armory with the boon gone. There is currently no indication on which gear boons do this.

- Enemies: Overall not too bad here. Most of them look pretty cool and feel unique to fight. I like how some of them are infused with fire, ice, poison and bleed which you can see by the glow of their weapon making them immune to that element. I think the game would benefit by having more variety of enemies. Fighting can start to feel repetitive after a few hours of gameplay because it’s a lot of the same enemies. I’m hoping this is something that is added later on throughout the games lifespan but I would say it’s acceptable in its current state. Enemies also feel pretty balanced based on how much damage they do as well. After playing for enough time you start to learn enemy attack patterns and know what to look out for.

- Gear: You should absolutely be able to edit your loadout halfway through a run. I’m sure this was intended that you are locked into your loadout once you start and can’t change it unless you find better gear in the run. But I still think we should be able to edit and swap gear before every instance just like you do right before you start the run. It’s annoying finding a good piece of gear, defeating the boss and purifying what you found, but then having to wait until the entire run is over before you can switch up your build and use that new gear. Also a major problem with this is if I’m playing with my buddy and we stop halfway through a run and want to pick up where we left off the following day. When he joins me the next day, he’s stuck in all grey gear and can’t edit his loadout before we go back in halfway through the run. This has forced us to restart from the very beginning of the run multiple times. Game crashed? Restart as you just lost your loadout. Need to take a short break? Restart again as you just lost your loadout. I understand the thought process to locking in your gear at the very beginning and only upgrading with what you find but the reality of this is that you feel punished when you do finally get that piece of gear you’ve been looking for and have to wait to use it.

All in all I think this game has the potential to be great. It is very fun and I will continue to play it for now. I really hope they listen to the community and are proactive about tweaking the shortcomings. I would love nothing more than to see this game succeed. So that’s it. That’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth. All I can hope is that at least one developer sees this post and decided to bring up these issues. What are your thoughts?