If I was told anywhere on the store page that this game was a W.I.P. or was marked as Early Access, I would've been more forgiving of the current state of the game, though not by much.
I joined a public lobby & spent no more than 10 minutes going through all the stages. Running it on my own for my second time running through, I took maybe 30 minutes. Nothing new happened on this second run aside from having the chance to actually fight the enemies, as my first run was cleared by everyone else before I even had the chance to swing at them.
For $25, you're given... [i]5-6 small stages(?)[/i], some of which are the exact same maps but with a different time of day. The enemy list includes : Robot w/ sword, Robot w/ 2 swords, Robot who runs away from you while shooting orbs at you, & giant Robot w/ sword. The final stage is huge Robot w/ giant sword & an obnoxious amount of orbs. After that, you go back to the lobby & run those same exact stages again.
Combat feels confusing & unresponsive at times. I swing a sword at an enemy, and I either do very little damage, or one-shot it, regardless of its power. Some of my attacks don't even land, even when I'm right in front of the enemy. The AoE swings that enemies signal are way out of range of where it actually swings. Sometimes when I stun an enemy, they move back just far enough to where I can't actually reach them in time before I can actually strike.
I've been able to block 99% of hits, but the orbs feel like a chore to block. The warning attacks that hit me have an awkward delay before I actually get hit by these attacks. Having my view then leave my body for a moment to watch my character get knocked over feels like I'm playing a VR port of a screen game. If there was some magical looking soul-tether that my perspective was attached to, then it would make a bit more sense, but this implementation is very out of place.
The movement system feels bizarre. You walk [i]very[/i] slowly, and if you want to dash, you double-tap your joystick forward. Not press any button, you move up twice on your joystick to dash, and half the time, this doesn't even respond smoothly. In order to jump, you *hold* your hands up, not swing them, & press both triggers. You don't jump very high either. Gliding will happen if you hold those triggers down & keep your hands up AND your head forward, but you don't have much place to go except going to a lower level a bit faster & a tiny floating island w/ a chest.
The loot itself is... okay? Looking at the several different gems & coins you need to loot, it's easy to tell this is meant to be a grindy game. Only problem is that there's not much reason to grind. The enemies are the same, the boss is the same, there's no tiers or any new arenas (as far as the game as communicated) to work towards.
The lobby itself has everything all over the place. Storage is a chest, that's fine. Buying items is a lectern, alright. Upgrading items is also a lectern, but has the same visuals, okay. Upgrading yourself is an entirely separate lectern, different from the item upgrade but looks the exact same as the other lecterns, weird. Meanwhile, having a separate sub-room for changing which gear you want to equip, instead of having it inside your menu, is the most unnecessary feature of the game & makes navigating your menu and the world around you extremely confusing, especially considering that I had no idea there was a portal for this until I asked around & someone showed me this portal, which is located downstairs towards the empty void of the world. You'd think that they would let you change & toss the gear you're constantly looting from chests in your inventory.
I will consider buying the game again in the future, but I would not buy it in this state, [b]especially[/b] not for this price.
