"What if Brotato was bad?"
EDIT:
I couldn't be bothered at the time, but here's a detailed, snarkless explanation in case the devs are reading and looking for feedback - because I don't think this game is so fundamentally broken that it couldn't be fixed, but it needs drastic reworking, for reasons that I think are more than just preference.
[h1]First, a few things I like:[/h1]
[list]
[*] The dodge roll and active ability slot are nice additions.
[*] The art and presentation are really solid.
[*] The codex/bestiary entries demonstrate the effort and earnestness put into this game.
[*] The "Mutations" customization slots have [i]potential[/i] to be an engaging system.
[/list]
[h1]Big issues:[/h1]
[olist]
[*][h3]Metaprogression:[/h3] This is the biggest problem. Including permanent, objective power increases is a dangerous thing. If this part of the metaprogression is brief, it [i]can[/i] serve as one method of gating players' progress as a sort of pseudo-tutorial. This is especially effective when what's being offered are mutually-exclusive choices (e.g. a skill tree), as presenting it to players one choice at a time prevents them from being overwhelmed. This is neither of those things; this is game-warpingly powerful, grindy, and [i]diminishes the impact of player choices and strategy[/i] rather than introducing them. For example - I've played for about 12 hours, and my starting HP has gone from [b]10[/b] to [b][i]over 250[/i][/b] and my damage starts at 315%, and I'm nowhere near capped. How can the game, which presents a single, intentional difficulty tuning, possibly be balanced to accommodate such ludicrous variation in starting power? This game's answer seems to be that the later, harder levels are the solution. Well, that's killing the content of the game. Each level seems to have its own boss (props on that), but after a bit of metaprogression, you [i]can't[/i] go back and play against the earlier ones - there's no game to be played when I'm strong enough to stand still from the start and just [i]win[/i]. That aside, it's highly grindy, and the equipment unlocks (separate from the raw stats you can dump points into) are pure RNG lootcrate drops, which is frustrating, aimless, and again, grindy. Scrap the stat-boosts altogether and tie equipment unlocks to completing challenges - note how every unlock in Brotato and other good bullet heaven or action roguelike games are either rewards for demonstrating progress or unlocked through challenges that encourage the player to experiment with and learn from strategies they wouldn't usually default to. [b]I don't know where it caps, but this game's metaprogression feels like it's "rewarding" me by making the game easier and less interesting and muting the impact of my strategic choices.[/b] I bring so many stats into a run with me that they dwarf the stats I obtain during the run, making my decisions toothless and nullifying run-to-run variety.
[*][h3]In-Run Pacing, Power Curve, and Item Impactfulness:[/h3] Stats provided by items and level-ups are too small to be noticeable, which [i]feels bad.[/i] 1% crit chance? 2% attack speed? Small boosts can add up, but seeing those numbers (and being unable to feel their effects) isn't just unexciting, it actively drains excitement. It diminishes the value and impact of the choices you're offering your players. And there isn't even time in the run for them to significantly add up - runs are half the length of Brotato runs, AND the items are more expensive, AND items don't drop during waves, AND the shop only houses 3 options at a time (which really diminishes player agency), AND rerolls are expensive, so you'll have way fewer items and levels, each of which is significantly less impactful. This is made so much worse by the sheer volume of stats you [i]bring into a run[/i] from the metaprogression systems making the relative impact of the upgrades you acquire during a run even smaller. If you want runs to take half as long to play as Brotato, that's fine! But you need to adjust the power curve to match, with both obstacles and the player scaling much much faster to allow the player's choices to add up and differentiate their runs (or punish them if they've built poorly). Intended run length also needs to be considered when designing and tuning stats - XP Gain and Interest are bait if you're just playing to the boss but broken in Endless. It's also worth noting that there are few to no items that meaningfully alter gameplay - nearly all are strictly minor changes in stats (with the exception of a handful of passive weapons), with none offering impactful tradeoffs, altering how weapons function (e.g. adding piercing as a common example), making players re-evaluate the relative value of weapons or stats, or changing how players interact with enemies (the items in the game that give stat boosts on dodge are the closest example in this game, but dodge is too inaccessible for them to be actively incorporated into the combat loop). There are no items that are exciting, make players think twice, or cap out build fantasies.
[*][h3]Low Variety:[/h3] Everything above contributes to the overwhelming sameyness of this game's runs, which meaningfully differ only in the types of weapons you spec into despite the many levels and large number of modifiers that must be adjusted before starting a run. Take the "characters" - they differ [i]only[/i] in minor buffs applied after using the dodge roll, e.g. +30% attack speed for 2s after rolling (which has a ~8-10s cooldown). That's not enough to meaningfully differentiate a character. [i]Every one[/i] of Brotato's plethora of characters embodies a unique power fantasy and playstyle and encourages you to wildly alter your playstyle and strategy to succeed with them.
[/olist]
[h2] UI, QOL, and other less-critical problems:[/h2]
[list]
[*][h3]Inconsistently incomplete information:[/h3] Most items in this game provide complete effect descriptions, e.g. ", +3% crit chance, +2 ranged damage." Some decidedly do not. "Saturn" is the worst offender: "Small chance that 4 bullets will spawn from a killed enemy." How much is a "small chance"? How much damage do the bullets do? Do the bullets scale with ranged damage? I can't know. The similar "Explosive Bean" is also missing a lot of important information, but it at least states that it has a 5% chance to proc, so there's no explanation for the inconsistency. This sort of inconsistency appears elsewhere, too - for example, the damage and crit chance shown on weapons reflects your stats, but the cooldown shown does not factor in your attack speed. Weapons show which stat they scale with but do not show how what ratio they scale at.
[*][h3]Caps are not shown:[/h3] Many (most?) items either cannot be stacked or can only be stacked a limited number of times, but this is only specified in the out-of-game codex, which isn't very helpful. Likewise, some stats and items appear to have hard or soft caps that aren't stated anywhere. Dodge is capped at some point (and it should be, or give diminishing returns if you want it to be an infinitely stackable stat), but the stat screen was happy to claim I had 103% dodge chance with no qualifiers. The Fedora item doesn't *seem* to continue scaling ability CDR past level 10 or so, but its description is extremely vague.
[*][h3]Hotkeys (especially on controller) for rerolling are sorely missed.[/h3]
[/list]
[h2]Bugs:[/h2]I consider these the least important and most likely to be fixed, so I don't hold these against the game, but I figure I should report the ones I remember:
[list]
[*]Magic Knives frequently get permanently 'stuck' on large enemies (especially bosses) and fail to return or attack again for the rest of the wave.
[*]Tapping "Reroll" on a touchscreen (Steam Deck) sometimes instead puchases the item that was hovered. This could be a Steam Deck issue rather than an issue on the game's end - hard for me to say.
