I'm a bit baffled by some of the negative reviews. This is an indie game, and with that comes a bit of jank, but nothing that truly sours the overall experience. It doesn't do a lot to innovate the soulslike genre but it stands out enough to be unique.
What it does right:
-Exploration is winding and fun and quite surprising.
-You'll use a ton of different spells in different scenarios rather than one or two weapons which you just 'make work' because you've dumped resources into them.
-Animations are impressive
-Atmosphere and lighting are superb
-I feel like I could start again with different spells and have a different experience
-Never really resource-locked, meaning I felt it just came down to my own skill, patience, insight, whatever you feel is best, to get me through scenarios.
What it does wrong:
-Can't rebind controls
-Some of the menus are inconsistent (but people basing their entire negative reviews around it come off like Game Design 101 students--it's hardly a dealbreaker)
-Some attacks can hit you through walls
-No buffer for your shield, so when you get knocked down and want to defend you have to try to guess when you are actionable again. (lots of enemies will attack you when you're down--not a negative, it's just the way the game is. I'll get to that later)
-I kind of don't care about the story but I also kind of don't care about a lot of stories that aren't in books so maybe ignore this
-Locking on to a *specific* enemy can be tough, and only made harder by the lack of rebinds
-You can attack foxes. No, I haven't done it. Also, no, I don't care that their guardian tries to attack me, I'm not doing it.
What it does differently (in a good way):
-Elemental RPS. Combat involves you figuring out what enemies are weak to which element is great for spellcasting. There's something like 8 or 9 different spell types and they all function differently. You switch between them on the fly (I'm playing m/k so it's the top row to swap)
-Emphasis on parries. Guarding is kinda bad to do as most attacks really drain your stamina so you want to parry as much as possible. But there's risk/reward here as many stronger enemies attack in combos/strings and if you flub the parry you might get knocked down or stunlocked. But when you get the parry you're rewarded for it by stunning the enemy and you have time to unleash a powerful spell. I mentioned in the negatives that bringing up your shield from knockdown is really tough and I just think it's because you're supposed to parry as much as possible. If you try to parry that next attack that would hit you then the shield would come up at the right moment rather than just holding shield because you made a mistake. Still grappling with this myself.
-Mana regenerates. This is fun. I don't really feel precious about my magic like I should only use it on the boss. Hell yeah, eat this lightning bolt, and you, have an eldritch blast. Spellcasting is FUN and I don't need to manage any items to make sure I can keep casting spells.
-De-emphasis on equipment? Thus far it seems like your character looks the way your character looks and there are different colored robes and hats which have their own stats. Luckily your character looks ♥♥♥♥♥♥ rad so I don't mind this at all.
So far I'm really pleased. I actually want to play this. I haven't dabbled too much into other soulslikes (outside of fromsoft ones) but I've tried things like OG Lords of the Fallen, Code Vein, and probably some others I can't remember. This is easily my favorite souls game since Bloodborne, and if you cut your teeth on Demon's Souls and Dark Souls like me, a lot of the things people are complaining about won't matter at all. The game can be difficult, but you need to, as they say, git gud. I'll keep playing and if I run into something awful then I'll edit this review. Also, I got the game at like 50% off so maybe that's helping, but the price is always gonna change while the game is the game. The price is what you're willing to pay and I'm coming up on a dollar an hour and pretty happy for it.
Update: Alright, many more hours in and I think I found a game-breaking bug but weirdly it doesn't super sour my opinion of the game. I think it's a bummer and even worse I didn't quite realize it until I put a lot more time into my playthrough, but I've since started again and, like most soulslikes the second time around, it's going much faster. And also, I'm playing with different stuff and it's fun to try new things. Might keep going, might not, but overall I'm happy with the game and think it's really cool, but it does have some solo-dev jank still in there.
The bug in question, pretty minor spoilers--I traded final hits with the first "lord style" boss, and killing him forces a key item into your inventory. I used said key progression item, not realizing that the boss had respawned. Not being a little chump, I went back and beat him without the trade and got a duplicate of the key progression item (necronomicon) which spawned a trigger to use it. Again. But the thing you use it on already has it, therefore I can't use it again, and it won't progress to the next book to place down. So two more fancy books in and I can't use either of them and I'm sure I won't be able to use the next ones I find so I'm just calling it good on that playthrough.
