FOUNTAINS

This game has many positive aspects, but in the end it feels like it took all the wrong lessons from Dark Souls, instead of the right ones. The boss designs timing, hitboxes, tells, bloat of health, consumables being lost on death, etc, all lead to a frustrating experience. Any time I beat a hard boss there is zero feeling of victory or satisfaction, just a sense that I either got lucky or learned some cheese, never that I actually engaged in the mechanics of the game properly or succeeded by my own merit.

This game is too hard. Looks like about 6% of players have finished the game. By percentage, fewer people have beaten the first boss in FOUNTAINS than have gotten the true ending in Silksong. I put about 7 hours in and had a bunch of fun. The exploration and secret finding is satisfying. The map is sprawling and completely interconnected, which is really cool. It's great to beat bosses and get new skill rings that expand both combat and traversal. But I've hit a point where, despite having tons of health and armor, bosses are killing me in 3 hits without giving me time to heal, and I'm so burnt out by wandering around, trying to keep everything in my head. There are modes of fast travel, but even they are confusing and exhausting to keep track of. I wish the bosses dealt less damage or had less health. I wish my health and armor upgrades made more of a difference. I wish the map would automatically tag NPCs and name important places, or at least that the pins I can put down made more sense and were more distinct from each other. It's a really cool game and the dev should be proud. It looks great, the combat works well, and the structure is compelling. I bet I would love it if I had more time and fewer other games to play.

After spending some time on the game, I have a couple things to say, both positive and negative. For a game this size, the amount of content is honestly rather impressive, there's not too much but enough to keep you busy for a bit. The pixel arts, although simple in some places like the designs of the protagonist and some enemies, look stunning, which shines mostly through the looks of the world. The metroidvania aspects makes the progression and exploration somewhat enjoyable and rewarding too. But game overall still has a couple problems, main one being difficulty. Now yes, the game is SUPPOSED to be difficult, but it's genuinely nuts once you get closer to the final bosses of the game. You have little to no room for error and you have to basically memorize the bosses' patterns and master the game's combat to even have a chance of fighting them. Your equipment also doesn't match the difficulty, your sword and/or armor not matching the sudden spike of difficulty towards the end, as you're stuck with a weapon doing 36-37 damage for example. Finally, and this mostly a personal thing, I found the minimap somewhat difficult to read, as it doesn't really make it obvious where you're going or the path you should be following, so I often ended up running in circles or getting completely lost because I was unable to properly read the map. Overall the game's solid and rather fun, and I recommend it, but I was unable to personally finish it.

The things I didn’t like Enemy attacks are very spammy and feel unreactable at times Lack of meaningful combat upgrades (mainly stat boosts and map progression) Confusing map and inconvenient fast travel These 3 things sum up exactly why I do not like this game. First problem: Every enemy gets to spam the same attacks over and over while you just have to sit there and wait it out. This game has massive Elden Ring syndrome, where bosses get to do cool, broken ♥♥♥♥ and you just get to sit there and go, “Man, wouldn't it be fun if I could do anything else besides slash and roll?” Second problem: Combat abilities aren’t very meaningful and use up the same resources as your healing, making them feel pretty pointless to use. Also, what's the point of finding equipment with better stats if every enemy is scaled to the level of the armor you find? It makes it feel like you never actually get any stronger. Third Problem: While exploring, I’ll go walk all the way to somewhere on the map that ends up being a dead end because the map you get is confusing. Also the fast travel is placed very awkwardly making backtracking even more frustrating. I feel bad writing this because this game was made by a single developer and was clearly a passion project, but it needed more time in the oven. While the game is very beautiful, these glaring issues completely overshadow it in my opinion. I think some people will enjoy this game, but most people, myself included, will likely find it more frustrating than fun.

Fun little Zelda/Metroidvania game with elements of a Soulslike with good replay value despite its simplicity. Graphics are charming, music is nice, scenery is well thought out, dialogue leans toward the comedic, which is refreshing. The gameplay loop is pretty simple; attack guys, dodge their attacks, get coins and water (this game's magic source) in order to sustain the loop. Enemies are far too punishing, as most can cause wounds deeper than you can recover with one healing spell. Rings and boss items add magical spells to your arsenal but, beyond that, weapons are limited to swords which feel oddly spaced out and underwhelming to get. There are often elements within the game world that will pique your curiosity but cannot be accessed until later, leading to that satisfying sense of accomplishment when you finally get past the barrier. The bosses are by far the worst part of the game; they lean heavily into the Souls style of being punishing and memorizing the moveset, which is problematic because the graphics are too simple to reliably recognize what move the boss is performing next. Combat is limited to having one button to dodge and another button to strike, both of which drain stamina rapidly. Healing has a charge up animation that gets cancelled upon taking damage and costs the water you need for your other spells and the most common way to get more is to land melee hits. Combine the demanding resource management with boss attacks that often happen faster than you can recover or AoE attacks being larger than your dodge roll, and you get stuck in an infinite loop of being punished faster than you can recover. All in all, a great break from the more ambitious games, and at a fraction of the price. If you're looking for a fun weekend game, this is it. The creator said that his original game had RuneScape style trop-down 3D graphics. I would like to see him return to that idea for a future game.

Gun is fun expect the unfair bosses. Worst boss designs I have ever seen. Tanky, homing attacks, constant same attack spamming, out-of-screen attacks, no time to heal etc .. not fun at all. Overall good game, but **** those bosses. Idk what the devs thought there. I finally beat the game, and the bosses get worse with Kruz .. some of them are complete bs.

It needs better navigation map/system/fast travel whatever. I only played 3 hours and fought 5 bosses, but then I was frustrated enough I looked up to see if any fast travel is on the menu. It seems like some form is there but isn't good enough for end game for some players so I refunded. There's a fine line with getting players to experience the world and making it a chore disrespecting player's time. This feels like the latter. I also agree with the other reviewer that suggested faster healing. Combat is super fast and fun but then you stop forever to heal, sucking the joy a bit.

I really wanted to give this a good review but it's just not possible, it has a lot of elements that i like but after some point in the game the enemies just become damage sponges that 2 shot you, that's not good game design as far as i'm concerned, just lazy.

The type of game whos unique antomsphere and style sits in your head long after you play. Some games you can feel the soul of the developer in them. I feel that in Fountains.