ORIGINAL REVIEW: I wouldn't have recommended it. It was hardly playable, the leaderboard is over ran by 3 people, NPC's spawn to quickly after killing, no clear direction, UI was terrible, the game was just not in a EARLY ACCESS stage. This is back in March or April I had these opinions or issues with this game.
NEW REVIEW: I am not giving up hope for this game, though I am sure the developer doesn't 100% realize my original post was not to shame it, it was to help make it better. So now that it's July, I have seen some pretty great updates, and some things that clearly the developer didn't care about when I posted very BIG issues with the game.
The issues:
1) The Leaderboard/Highscores - This makes no one want to play. You have 3 players completely dominating your game, this could easily be from exploits, favoritism, or cheating/hacking. You have made it clear you are a Indie Developer, we both know this, which tells me your Anti-Cheat is not going to be TOP NOTCH, and prevent any or all hacking/cheating. This also isn't going to be a perfect level design, and perfect anything, so I do not know why you took that personally in my original post, but you should really consider removing this pointless feature to hopefully not run off new potential players.
2) The "Path" - Originally there was no clear pathing or direction to anything. You created a character and got dropped into a bot filled environment with skeletons that exploded you. I couldn't last longer than maybe 20 minutes originally and I made 2 different characters, 1 melee and the other a magic. Now there is blue little notes that you run to and they glow and it catches your attention, though it still isn't really the exact direction method I was thinking you would utilize, it is far better than a few months ago when I deemed your game unplayable and "garbage". I would like to see more of a arrow for direction, or even follow the dotted line type of method, but I will say that this was far better this time than the first time.
3) Deaths - The deaths can be very regrettable, and because this isn't a perfect game, with a perfect level design, or perfect anything, sometimes when you die and try to go reclaim your lost souls, they are completely gone and vanished from the world, to never be obtained again. So this can be very irritating for new players because there is like no other way of leveling other than to grind and kill skeletons, run all the way back to some totem thing, to turn them in only when you have enough, but if you don't have enough, then die, you lose all of them if the game decides to just say F*** you and make your souls just disappear. Other than that, I mean I kinda like the combat and deaths. Just wish there was another solution to the souls that you get from killing things rather than your character being a walking vulnerable bank with everything on you.
4) Quests - Still, I gave this game a lot longer than before, and I have yet to see or feel like I am doing an actual quest. I have talked to NPC's and the dialogue is quite boring, I tried to read it, but ended up just making me want to skip it to get to the point, and well, its just talking to a bunch of NPC's that's all it is. If they really are quest givers, maybe make it to where after talking to them, a <Player> is now assigned with a task, that will be displayed in the UI so it feel more like a quest and not a guessing game? I don't know, I just really didn't see the point in running around talking to these NPC's, I obtained and learned nothing from them. The glowing notes on the ground was more helpful than the NPC's.
5) The Reloading Anything - Reloading weapons after 3 shots is super annoying, especially when the combat isn't very "smooth". You can be caught in an animation, can't cancel the animation, and just die for being suck in a stupid "Im out of ammo" animation. I like that you have added more choices and flavor to the game, but the newest edition is super unforgiving, and not very player friendly at all. I know you don't like me comparing to "WoW' because you think it's unfair, but I am not doing that because I think you should be as good or better than a huge developing team, I am doing that to make you realize what does and doesn't work. So with that being said, the newest class, whatever its called, the one with guns, WoW tried to do the whole bullet and arrow thing too, and well they removed it. Why? Because its super annoying and makes combat feel so janky and slow, I think it would be cool just to not have a reload, because all the other classes like melee you can just spam abilities and do damage, but when you want to be a bow or gun dude, you are going to be penalized for it and get killed more often than someone who can just spam abilities.
6) Auto Loot - I really wish there was a Auto Loot option because having to try to collect your loot from a kill with the respawn rates so quick and high like there is 2 million players online is super hard to do. I can try to loot my stuff from a kill, and then aggro 2 other skeletons that just spawned just because I am trying to loot what I killed. So just a thought, it would also eliminate asset clutter if players were rewarded automatically to inventory after killing, just like you do with the souls.
7) Aggro - Just turn off the aggro in the starting areas. There is no reason why someone trying to learn to play your game should constantly be killed by a Skeleton that has a range of 40 miles. Like its just not player friendly at all. The only way your game is going to be successful is by first impressions, and if people don't like the first 20-30 minutes of your game, they uninstall and never think about it again.
Conclusion: I think the game has some serious potential, and I do see the hard work the developer is putting into the game. I just still don't think it's focused on problems to be more player friendly, but I will say there has been huge improvements than previously I experienced. I hope the developer reads my review again since I am going to continue to Update and stay on top of this game in hopes it becomes great, or save many people time and continue their scrolling. Whichever works, but again I am not shamming the developer at all, just sharing my experience, and how I believe it could be better and maybe attract more traffic.
I would recommend playing it for a few minutes, but after that, it just gets old. Will return in another couple or few months to see if developer gave up, or is still working on it. I hope they continue it, I like it so far, just needs more and fixed.
