Souls Inferno

The first half of the game was ok, but it gets really tedious later. The problem is that most of the games mechanics dont work on the last boss. Spells and elemental weapons dont effect it. AOEs don't matter since its just one enemy, and the boss has extremely high armor and damage. So to beat the last boss you need to have a very specific build. 3 hours of my 5 hour play time was spent grinding to get that build. This was boring. Then even when you have that build, you need to get somewhat lucky with crits and parries to win. This is a baffling design decision. Again the first two hours was ok, but even there the game isnt anything special. There's little depth to the combat and no story. The atmosphere is neat, but it doesnt change throughout the whole game. Even color changes for the environment, and some distinct music could have helped a lot here. The best thing I can say is that progressing through the map and leveling up are compelling at first. If the late game gets reworked it could be worth picking up on a sale, but as is it's a chore to play.

Really enjoyable overall. I haven't finished it yet, to be clear, but I'm like 80% done. The early-to-mid game is very addicting and your character's power grows quite a bit each time you return to town. It does get a bit tedious to move around the map as you progress, though. There are shortcuts but you still have to mow through like 15 fights to return to whatever zone you were exploring before. I think adding maybe 2 more camps on the map where you can upgrade would solve the issue. Don't even need fast travel, tbh, because if you have to move to another camp, at least you'll be rewarded with some upgrades when you arrive. The playtest had a mechanic where you would find triggers + effects after battles. I understand it had issues and would add to the tedium of going through 15 fights to travel. But I do miss some kind of additional character customization. As it stands, the only thing you really choose is which elements to use for your weapons vs your shields. I hope the dev perhaps gets some momentum and releases Souls Inferno 2 with a bunch of new stuff / additional layers of depth, etc.