TLDR: Could have been a decent game, for $5 its probs worth it, but it has a major design flaw with combat, which results in dungeons/boss arenas being covered/spammed in AoE effects and melee builds becoming jogging/rolling simulators. Ranged builds are much much much better off tho.
if you see this game on sale for $5 its worth it imo, but it does have a major flaw.
the progression systems are cool, the world is cool, the characters are varied, i like the art style but the game has some awful combat (if your melee).
the difficulty of the entire system relies on aoe spam. not precise timing, maintaining combos, knowing the range your attacks and the timings it takes to get them out, knowing what moves to use, none of this matters.
all that really matters is running around in a circle for 90% of the time if youre melee.
if youre ranged you spend maybe 10-20% of the time running back and forth instead of a circle because you can easily avoid most of the aoe, and the fact that the boss/enemy is standing in a giant pool of fire doesn't matter because you can shoot him.
enemies spam aoe attacks. these aoe attacks will cover 3/4 of the arena. this happens every 5 seconds.
aoe attacks dont align with their zones so you will often get hit despite standing outside the circle, or the aoe will go off despite not completely filling the visualized area.
some aoe attacks will damage before their animation or visual effect even begins.
guard break doesn't break enemies out of their animation when it should.
bosses will stand in aoe effects for long durations and just spam ranged attacks.
if you ranged you can just ignore 90% of the mechanics.
if your melee you just run around the arena for 10 minutes.
the aoe spam makes melee fights last 10 times longer.
on the bright side you can just play with a ranged weapon and ignore the majority of the mechanics.
the difficulties that the game advertises don't seem to make an actual difference. the main difference is ranged vs melee. it really is that bad.
EDIT: after facing the final "story" boss of the game i cannot recommend it purely because of combat. the final phase for the final boss has meteors landing all over the stage.
one of the meteors is always centered around you, the rest of the meteors are on the boss or randomly placed to land where on the stage.
because of this, as a melee character, you have to run around the stage for 20-30 seconds, wait for an opening, get 1 or 2 hits in before another meteor targets you or the boss does another aoe laser attack, run away, and repeat. eventually, maybe your ult comes off cooldown so you can dps.
this isn't particularly difficult, it took me 3 tries to beat on the hardest difficulty with a melee build and one try with a ranged character (you can just dodge the meteors and not worry about getting close), but it is incredibly boring and annoying. the entire time i was running in circles asking myself what the hell is the point of this fight. then i remembered, just about every single boss fight in the game is like this, and most of the imbuements (which are modifiers you use to spice up dungeon and loots) also result in the same playstyle.
it really is a shame that whoever decided to spam aoe as a method of "difficulty" ruined the entire rest of the game. there is a good game here, its just buried under entire maps worth of AoE effects.
