After about 18 hours, I beat a full run at least once, tried out most of the gear that's available, unlocked all the characters, and got most of the important stuff in the skill tree. I think the game is pretty fun, but it still needs a lot of improvement, and it takes A LOT of patience to get to a place where the game was enjoyable. I would only recommend it if you are a die hard Hyper Light Drifter fan like me, otherwise you should definitely wait for this game to improve. I see the devs are responding to a lot of reviews and are taking criticism really well, so I want to give my list of complaints and suggestions here: [*]A big reason why this game got so much negativity in the first day was because the first impressions and on-boarding experience is awful. That's why I said it takes a lot of patience to make this game fun for you, because there's so much friction in the early game design that makes it so difficult to enjoy. [*]There needs to be more dynamic objectives when you're out in the field, maybe some random encounters could help. [*]Vendors in the Overgrowth need to be more interesting, and offer something exclusive from the main hub. Right now there is zero reason to visit them unless I desperately need to buy a key. [*]The randomly placed points of interests on the map need to be more interesting and have more variety. The ones with jumping puzzles were the most fun, maybe try double-downing on that aspect. The underground labs are honestly awful. It's just a room full of enemies, and you can't even fight them properly because they instantly aggro you in the tight corridor to the room. I was hoping labs could be mini-dungeons, like how they were in Hyper Light Drifter. [*]Even with the 20% buff to loot rarity, and some extra stats in the OPS stat, the loot in the Overgrowth has consistently been lackluster. Holobytes are fine because you can make good use of all of them, even the grey ones, but the weapon drops are 90% grey. Because of that, I solely rely on the vendors in the hub area. This makes exploration less exciting, because I'm now just skipping half the points of interest on the map. [*]Make build crafting more interesting. I think the Holobyte system is good for setting up a baseline plan for your build, but the stats on the weapons need to be more exciting and more beneficial to build crafting. And let us reroll weapon stats, that can easily be added as a vendor upgrade. [*]Status effects feel really weak, and I can see that some weapon stats help push towards that status effect focused build, and the synergy nodes on the skill tree pushing that idea even further, but it never feels worth it every time I try to build around it. [*]There are some very clearly overpowered Holobytes, and it didn't take long to figure out a really strong meta to absolutely stomp the game. Specifically the one that gives 25% damage to blades or guns per 150 blood. Stack that with other percent stacking Holobytes depending on your weapons, and some crit buffs and you're rolling. [*]Sycom passives are boring. All Breakers feel like they play the same. For a game that seems very melee focused, 4/6 passives are gun based, one is a parry buff, and one is just more stats. [*]Shop and vault UI can use some improvement. Scrolling through a single column list to find what I want to sell is annoying. Let me organize it based on what type of item it is. Same with the vault. [*]There is so much confusion around equipping, unequipping, and looting gear. We can put weapons in our vault when out in the field, but if I'm full on Holobytes out on the field, I have to delete one. I can't unequip gear directly, so to work around that, I equip the same gear on another character to get rid of it from another. [*]Let us refresh the world at anytime without having to do suicide runs. Or at least give us a different way to collect our Golden Rations. [*]The meta progression skill tree is just bad. Extended hoverboard time is useless considering it's already pretty long, refined blade will only be good if they buff status effects, 15% flash step damage is just boring, synergy is also reliant on status effects buff. Literally the only things worth getting are the medkit slots, vault slots, skeleton key, and the increase percent of rare drops. And the way you acquire is through buying the skill with golden rations, and then placing them in skill slots that you need to buy more golden rations with. Limited skill slots is a good idea to extend build crafting even further, but none of these define a build whatsoever. OG Cyberpunk had the same problem with the skill tree, most of them being boring small percent increases. They fixed it with more fun gameplay defining skills. [*]Half the melee weapons feel really clunky, mainly because of how animation locked you can be with little directional control. [*]Add in-game challenges that reward you even further. They could range from character specific things, kill counters, exploration, combat, etc. Most rogue-likes have it, and it's another fun way to add to the meta progression. [*]Add a codex to keep track of everything in the game, like enemy types, Holobytes, weapon types, Amps, etc. [*]Add a training dummy please, would love to test new weapons without risking them out on the field. Really looking forward to seeing how this game evolves! Edit: I've beat the game about 10 more times now. Stacked up some insane gear that makes me almost unkillable and one-shot bosses, plus I maxed out every stat for the Tank Sycom. Pretty overstacked on boss mats, cores are a bit annoying to get since the most reliable way to get them is through marked chests on the map, and I only see like 2-4 of em per run. Getting everything to the max is definitely a grind, and I wouldn't mind that if the current build-crafting environment wasn't so boring. I'm a bit burned out now, I got nothing left to do. I'll be keeping a close eye on upcoming patches, because I really like the core of the game.
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