DREAMWILD

I think I'm not really the audience for this kinda genre, but the artstyle and music is amazing and I've become a huge fan of Karbonic's other work, so I really wanted to like this game. But GOD, the gameplay is just horrible. The game, especially the movement, just feels so difficult, not in the challenging way, just frustrating and not fun. I tried to power through and at least see everything even if I don't enjoy it, but I literally just can't, it's too incredibly frustratingly hard and the fact I even got to the castle once is a miracle. I really like the castle, wish there was a whole game like that.

Beautiful game hindered only by the strange decision to make it a fast paced roguelite. To get the negatives out of the way first: Game is insanely unbalanced. The first area has frustrating enemies that seem almost anti-fun, and I have a feeling this plus the lack of direction will end up gatekeeping a large amount of people. Combat with no upgrades is also very annoying, since more prominently enemies have iframes that can cause you to waste attacks, and less prominently the game has the master sword mechanic where being above a certain amount of HP makes your sword a gun instead. Thankfully the sword itself hits like a truck if you actually use it to melee which is nice, but I'm of the opinion that enemies really just shouldn't have iframes, or the attack rate of the sword should be reduced + an accessibility option to hold left click should be added instead of forcing the player to discipline their attacks. One could say that the player learning to play around the iframes is skilled, but one could also say it doesn't matter when your 30 damage light beam two shots everything, No ? However, staying in the area then getting even a single attack upgrade pretty much flips this instantly. When I chose to just get enough Gubbins to buy upgrades and came back instead of exploring or seeing what's out there, I pretty much one shot everything and could never take damage ever again. Additionally, once you progress past the first area, the enemies are far more reasonable and I would even argue underpowered until you get to the "final" level. Additionally, the game has an expectation for you to like the protagonist and deuteragonist, but I finished a regular run of the game way too quickly and witnessed basically two conversations between them. I think it's a massive sin that this game was designed this way instead of some other kind of traditional action rpg, because there's pretty much no space for the deuteragonist to be cute when I stop sugarcoating it after 3 upgrades. There should be way more story and way less Quake Dogfighting Simulator. As for the good, psychedelic visuals and soundtrack make it very worth getting over the first bump. The game is actually fun once you make it out of the first level. The game could use more things to uncover, but there is an okay amount to find. Also, for some reason, they just give up with this pixel-y vibe in cutscenes. Don't tell me that a higher resolution will mess up the pixels if you remove the shader yourself.... TLDR combat sucks at the start, upgrades are op. add more story. make dreamwild prequel where you walk instead of ignore the environment while Thé à la Menthe plays everything else is good and beautiful and sound good your ears remove that annoying ahh eyeball enemy from the first area or at least make him spawn with a slow spawn animation near the player so he doesnt push gubbins and other enemies 560 meters away