Edit: Redcrown update fixed a large portion of these complaints Now that I've completed what's available of the game so far, overall it's disappointing. On first glance there's a lot to love, the art direction for the world, tough souls like fights mixed with jump king mechanics. Unfortunately, once you play, the flaws become increasingly glaring. Fall damage - I didn't mind it at first until I was close to the end and realised, what is actually the point of it? Falling is already a punishment and enemies will already frequently send you back down anyway. Fall damage is such an unnecessary problem that it was far more ideal to let an enemy kill you rather than risk a jump and potentially experience a double fall. Boss runs - The devs clearly had intended paths to climb back up when a boss defeats you, but there's also an issue that I think isn't intended. When you take lethal damage, you will fall to the floor and drop down a map level, and it's apparent where the devs wanted you to land for the return trip, that is unless you take lethal damage AND get thrown out of the arena. This will cause you to fall down one map level, hit the ground and then fall further. This is honestly unnecessary added frustration. Chain falling - When you fall, upon hitting the ground you will still have 0 HP, and if you have no slop, you'll need to desperately find slop to heal. You'll often find yourself landing near respawned enemies with no way to recover HP and getting sent further. After a player has taken lethal damage and experienced a major fall, wouldn't it make sense for them to at least have half HP at that point. In most games, when you die, you usually respawn will full HP. Boss arenas - There was so many bosses I wanted to like, that were ruined by arenas designed with frustration in mind. Redcrown Cavalry is a very small arena surrounded by water, and has a mob that will join the fight midway, as if it wasn't already annoying. Frank Bastian has absolutely no need of a roof that low. I understand he's easy, but there's other ways to add difficulty rather than adding annoyance. Fat Don's arena isn't a huge issue, but like... why? Almost all the arenas have cliffs on either side, that I wouldn't mind if not for the previous flaw with fall damage. The bog - this area has zero slop spawns, and is an area you can fall back to quite easily. Often it means you will have to avoid the hands hit-less or keep getting reset back to the start. The only fortunate part is that you can't take fall damage in this area. The new hp gained on death mechanic alleviates the majority of this area. Stat balancing - This is an extremely convoluted idea for what little it does. The health gained from balancing is considerably low compared to the potential DPS loss. Not to mention the stats are not explained in any way other than through storytelling. To do this mechanic you'll find yourself trying to invest in 3 different coloured stats and hoping that the weapon you want to use has scaling for all three. This would be so much less of a hassle if re-speccing wasn't such a pain to do. Not to mention you lock yourself out of a stat at the beginning of the game. I was told that the barbarian cannot be balanced anyway so ultimately I maxed out instability and went full glass cannon instead. Merchants - Being unable to see any of the stats on equipment prior to buying them is not ideal and could do with some quality of life changes. Some equipment has bugs where you cannot equip them, the famished thrall hat being one of them. Mob density - There are areas in the game where mob density is a complete joke, Tripe's landing and Vallum Primum being one of them. You can take these areas slowly and eventually push through, but god help you if you fall back down here. Commune vases (forgot the name) - Their intended use is for going down to a trader and coming back up usually. But this isn't obvious to begin with. I streamed this game 3 times and this was a CONSTANT question, which is a likely indicator that most users won't understand how they work, or what a link is. I get that the devs don't want checkpoints, but considering there's bosses hidden around the place, why not? It's just artificially inflated game time to go climb back up a previous area just to find a boss. Boss AI - This game had Co-op in mind, which is clear from the trailer, but bosses will sometimes act strangely or just not function. Frank Bastian can completely stop working as he tries to pick which player he wants to focus. He'll suddenly start spinning rapidly, lowering and raising his shield over and over again. Lord Gnoddrick can get stuck choosing which player to go for when he points his finger. This one seems to be based on player positioning. This boss can also push you off the platform accidentally with his body, which doesn't seem intentional when you compare to every boss so far. Birds - There's no reason players should have to wait 5 to 10 seconds for these inbred tuna melts to descend from the sky to grace you with an opportunity to hit them. There's also no reason why they can attack from beneath you, considering there's no wait to guard from it, although I never tried shield surfing as a defense for it. Online - If you play this with a friend it gets extremely laggy as times passes on. It gets a lot worse if one of you falls a large distance from them. But returning to your friend doesn't seem to fix it. The lag gets so bad that you'll frequently encounter screen freezes of almost a full second. If a friend dies in the boss arena, be prepared for your screen to freeze multiple times. The only fix it for both players to restart the game and create a new multiplayer lobby. I encountered a bug where archers could attack you from different rooms. in the feast halls, I passed by the archers and entered a new room, to my surprise, the archers kept firing at me until I left aggro range. Another bug I encountered was the character jumping in the opposite direction of where you pressed. I used a PS5 controller for this and can't rule out it was the controller, but I only encountered this issue at the Gurgling tower. Overall I really wanted to like this game, but about halfway through I couldn't wait for it to be over.
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