I'm not too far in the game at this point, Just got to Cuvas and talked to a few people, and I just felt I had to leave a positive review of this game. I played Dread Delusion in EA as well, it's not the type of game I prefer to play anymore, but the story and the world building was so fantastic that it more than made up for the fact that it's not my preferred genre. To be clear I'm not knocking the gameplay, I didn't have any real issues with it, it's just not what I prefer. I played through the first two areas of the game as that was all that was out and I didn't play anymore once you released more, I didn't not want to, I just never really got around to it, but once I finish what's out for EA for this I'm going to go back and play Dread Delusion. That is how excited Entropy has me right now. I absolutely love the world building, it is so unique and interesting, and delivered in such an organic way, but along with that turn based RPGs are definitely up there for my favorite type of games and you're nailing it. Again so far I haven't completed the early access, if need be I will edit the review, but these are my initial thoughts, and I am playing on hard mode.
The combat is difficult enough to be engaging, but I haven't encountered anything that has felt unfair or like it didn't make sense. It does a good job of applying pressure, but no situation has felt unrecoverable. For example in an encounter a few enemies acting before you have a chance to all target the same person, I haven't had a situation where I have had an enemy just delete one of my characters in that time, allowing me to heal and buff/debuff if needed. This is super important in any kind of game that hands out potentially permanent punishments for characters going down in combat. This allows that mechanic to enhance the gameplay, it incentivizes making sure I am well equipped and making good decisions lest I suffer a realistic consequence of battle. If I do suffer that consequence it's on me, it's not because the game is unfair. Now there's the potential of a really unlucky crit, but if that's something you truly couldn't live with you can also quit and reload before the fight, but in my experience so far, you can prepare yourself well enough to play around crits.
The world so far has been incredible in my opinion. It is constantly keeping you curious about the mysterious unknown nature of how things function with strange things being dropped into conversations naturally. I love when people do this, it is how people would be talking, the character you are playing has lived in this world and they wouldn't be asking questions about how things that are common practice or straightforward function. Now obviously we as the player do have questions, but you satisfy the questions by providing enough contextual evidence that it makes sense. Now it may not be enough to answer every question but is enough to kind of have an idea about how things work, and then it is incredibly satisfying when through later dialogue something else provides more context and sharpens that image. Also a lot of these ideas are so unique, and idk it may be gross to some people, but in real life I'm a nurse that works primarily with gastrointestinal surgical patients (I see a lot of other stuff too but that is my primary patient population), so like the dudes just bathing in skob vomiting to balance their magical microbiomes with the local population both doesn't gross me out and speaks to me in a weird way that I'm sure will resonate with almost no one else.
The visuals are great so far. I am very much of the mind that good style is more important to visuals than graphical fidelity. Entropy has good visual style, the graphical fidelity also isn't bad, yes it is low poly, but models still look good, and there is a very wide range of style in them, so it isn't just slight tweaks being made to the same model. The portraits are good, the drawn vignettes are good, equipment looks good, and importantly changes how your character actually looks. Visuals are the least important aspect of gaming to me, I can play a game I actively dislike looking at if it draws me in with good enough story or gameplay so I don't have tons to say about visuals other than I like it, I think it looks good and it's clear effort went into it, but if high fidelity graphics and like modern textures, shaders, lighting, and things like that are critically important to you, obviously this game probably isn't for you. To be very clear, I think this game has good visuals, visuals just aren't that important to me and as such I don't have tons to say other than to probably say too many times that I am not saying the visuals in the game are bad, I just don't care about visuals other than if it's clear lazy, which this clearly isn't.
Quick edit, right after writing this and returning to the game, the music is great. The sound effects are fine, I don't have any real complaints about anything, similar to visuals sound effects don't matter too much to me, and I only really notice them when the are obstructive to my enjoyment. I also can't say tons about music, my actual knowledge about music isn't that great, but I can tell you when I like music, and I like this music.
Haven't had any real issues with bugs, just a very minor visual bug once that I couldn't replicate.
Just wanted to leave off that I really think that this is a phenomenal game, and if you do read this, you really have made two pieces of art with these two games. The creativity and passion that has gone into these games is very evident, it is what drew me to Dread Delusion despite the fact that I prefer more turn based/strategy stuff now, and it is there in spades in Entropy too. Keep up the great work, truly excited to see where Entropy goes, and to go back and play through Dread Delusion!
