After about an hour of playtime I've gathered my first impressions, overall I like the game but I do have some issues I want to bring up.
First up, the good parts:
The core idea of the game with the grafting system is great, concept is well thought out and executed
The game is challenging, and I mean that in a good way
Sound design is overall very good and clean, proper mixing, satisfying sfx, etc
The thematic is great so far, and monster design, while simple, is well done
Controls feel responsive, there wasn't any obtuse wind ups or recovery animations and chaining attacks together back to back felt nice
Now on to a few nitpicks, these are things that while they didn't really affect my opinion of the game too much they did bother me a little:
Firstly, the music is great, but the boss music in particular feels like it's way too short of a loop, it actually caught me off guard that I noticed the song ending and starting so soon into a fight, I feel like an easy way to fix this would be to add in the little instrumental flourishes heard in the out of combat music to fill the empty space
additionally I really wish it was possible to use the right stick to adjust the aim of attacks, having to flick the left stick back towards whatever you're trying to hit while strafing attacks or kiting with ranged arms just feels awkward, didn't ruin the experience for me, but I just feel like it's weird that that isn't a function since the right stick on controller goes completely unused otherwise
Now on to the part of the review I don't want to write, the bad, I hate bringing up negatives about the first game a group ever releases, especially an indie title, but I feel that it's necessary to give my full honest opinion on the game, bad included.
To start with a minor issue, enemies that move to the bottom of the screen in most rooms simply cannot be seen properly, while I never encountered this issue with a boss it was a frequent issue with major enemies, especially the gecko as it purposefully runs away from the player making it difficult to get it to leave the corner so you can properly fight it. I feel like this could be fixed by just not having a wall on the bottom quadrant of a room like a lot of other isometric games tend to do, or at the very least fully highlighting an enemy that's behind a wall so that you can at least recognize the silhouette of attack animations
and for my major gripe with the game, hitboxes of attacks and enemies simply do not feel like they line up with the models or animations. Using any melee attack just felt like a coin toss on whether it would connect or not, rather than me being able to obviously tell that I just missed, this problem is present even when right up in an enemy's face, and is especially bad with minor enemies, meaning I tended to actually end up losing more parts and health to them than major enemies or bosses, it got so bad during my first run that during my 2nd run I exclusively used aoe and ranged abilities simply because they actually hit every time the animation connected, I honestly think the achievement for completing the game without grafting any limbs is going to be difficult moreso because of the fact that the only range you can hit anything at is the range that seems to be least consistent with attacks actually connecting
Overall I probably will continue to play the game, and will definitely recommend it to people interested in something like this, but I do really hope the hitbox issue gets fixed with an update somewhere down the line
