Getting the game for a dollar was a mistake. I kinda wish I paid full price for it. There's a lot here, especially considering it's made by a single person. You see a lot of attempts at soulslikes fail and while this game is far from perfect, there's quite a bit to enjoy here. I played through the game in multiplayer, with one other person. Here's some notable stuff (in no particular order):
Pros:
- The movement is a bit clunky, but responsive. It's pretty fluid and you get good feedback for when you're properly dodging and perfect parrying.
- The combat is pretty tight, and there's a lot of variety there too. You only have four main weapons, all with varied attack speeds and combos, and then you have a dozen or so additional weapons that serve as quality of life or bonus attacks based on your playstyle. Being able to switch between two main weapons on the fly while using additional weapons during downtime sounds like something min-maxxers might enjoy dissecting. You find these additional weapons scattered all over the map, and they feel like genuine rewards whenever you complete a location.
- There's a surprising amount of interconnectedness in the level design. Some paths feel a bit redundant, but they might have been placed there for making full run-throughs a bit easier. For the most part, shortcuts were useful and fairly common.
- Enemies have good variety, but odd balance. For the most part, enemies aren't much of a problem but some can be such a pain that a full team gank feels like the only way to deal with them (ribcage lamp enemies were the bane of our existence). Some have such wide attacks that they'll just never hit you.
- The boss fights also feel balanced, for the most part. They all have a wide variety of moves and offer their own unique challenges, no real complaints there.
- The multiplayer just... works? It's buggy (a bit more on that in the Cons section) but I experienced no lag for 99% of my run. There was the rare bit of desync when an area transition didn't quite work or an enemy was in a different location for both of us, but this was rare. Only the host can level up, but this levelling up transfers to everyone in the party.
Cons:
- Dying in multiplayer feels unfairly punishing to whoever is left alive. When you die, your partner gets their health lowered so they'll die in one shot, on top of needing to wait ~5 seconds to revive whoever died. Feels like a lot to ask for.
- I have no idea how the stagger mechanics work. Sometimes enemies get staggered from one hit, sometimes it takes dozens. Neither I nor my multiplayer partner could figure this out.
- Multiplayer is fairly buggy if you aren't the host. Resetting the level will remove EVERY consumable item for the joinee, except Medicine. This means you are constantly playing without White Petals, Additional Medicine, or any other consumable you can find in the game. The map is entirely unusable and stays black throughout the run. You can still play just fine even with these issues, it just sucks being stuck with 5 heals for much of the game.
- Speaking of heals, it would be nice if you could get an increase to the amount of Medicines you could carry, or upgrade Medicines to heal more later on? By the end of the game you're spending 3-4 meds just healing from a single attack. It's not that big of a deal for the host, but other players are limited to 5 Medicines for most of the game! Having something to counteract this would be nice.
- The lighting was a mess for me. I had to run the game in DirectX 11 and no matter how much I played with the settings it was usually hard to see either because of harsh bloom-like effects or pitch-black darkness that made progression without the floating lights almost impossible.
Other:
- The story leaves a LOT up to speculation, in true souls fashion, but without the fancy lore descriptions on items you find. I thought it was worth noting as it may bother some players.
- I have no idea what most of the consumables do, due to the aforementioned multiplayer issues, so I have no clue if they're good or not.
Overall, it's clear that a lot of work went into this game, and I have nothing but respect for Rone Vine in making this happen, but there are certainly a lot of problems. Playing the game in multiplayer makes the whole run smoother, but if you get stuck, you're REALLY stuck for a while due to how punishing dying is for the surviving player.
Oh also screw the Third Guardian. That fight took us HOURS to finish, and it's the only one that gave us some real trouble throughout the run. Wah.
