I actually liked the game at the start, but the more I played, the more frustrating it became. I don't really like complaining about difficulty in games, but there's a huge ramp up in it right around the first boss.
You do not regenerate health passively. Nor do you mana from what I could tell, at least not without the proper skills obtained after 10 or so levels. The more I'll explain the game, the more you'll understand why this decision hinders the game at every turn.
There's a weighty-ness to everything you do, while it doesn't hinder the gameplay per say, it doesn't contribute the weighty impactful melee combat feeling to the game that I think the developers were intending for it to, instead it feels like everything is underwater.
You start the game as a melee focused warrior with some minor magical abilities that felt pretty inconsequential to everything you do. While the telekinesis ability is used for some 'puzzles', it feels like it's not needed for much else. Or at least, that is the impression it gave.
The actual magic attacks are these wide-swinging, fast moving spells that do basically the bare minimum amount of damage to an enemy. Your mana pool is incredibly small and does not regenerate, meaning after 3 fireballs, you're unable to cast another, and the base enemy you have managed to hit with all three might still be up and kicking. That is unless you landed 2 in a row and got lucky enough for him to catch on fire, which won't happen if your second fireball decides to go wide and slam into the ground cause someone on the development team thought the visuals of the wide-swinging proton torpedoes looked cool and didn't account for how that actually functions in gameplay. (Sorry for the strays whoever you are, sure it's visually cool, but I guess now you know how that wall felt.)
The number of swings it takes you to kill enemies with your melee weapon, and the number of swings it takes for them to kill you, feel roughly the same, somewhere in the 4-6 hit range. Sure, you can block, dodge, and kick, all at the cost of stamina, and even when you get ganged up on, which you WILL, you can still come out on top most of the time as long as you're smart, careful, and concise. Which would be great, however...
Maybe 40% of enemies will actually try to fight you in melee, in this seemingly melee-focused game. Most of them throw rocks with shocking accuracy, shoot bows at you, with infinite arrows, which do very high, unblockable damage, OR they hurl stink bombs at you which leave behind a cloud of poison and by the time they dissipate, they've already hurled another into the exact same spot, forcing you to pass through them to proceed. Taking basically unavoidable damage... With non-regenerating health. Do you see the issue here? You don't start with a shield and I'm not sure how, when, or even if you get one, which might stand a chance at blocking incoming arrows and rocks, but you basically have to be spamming your dodge button as long as you're in the open, or taking unnecessary damage that will not regenerate on its own. And dodge of course, takes up stamina, along with every other physical action, meaning you can't do it forever, and you especially can't do it while also fighting.
But you're not totally helpless, you have potions you can craft, with finite resources. Potions that, depending on the situation, you might get stunlocked out of being able to use in the most dire moment you NEED to use it in. Because yes, despite the enemy already having such clear, numerous edges over you, you can still be affected by stun. Which has a way of leaving you open to more attacks, and kind of sending you quickly into a damage > stun > damage > stun death spiral. Meaning if you get surrounded and hit even once, there's a chance can very quickly find yourself from having control of a situation into restarting from your last save point.
But, speaking of potions. There are also vials of weapon coatings you can craft and deploy, which, on the surface, sounds very cool. But when should I use them? On the enemies that die in 3-4 normal hits? On the rare boss enemies that don't show you their health bar so you don't know how much damage you're doing or NEED to be doing? What are their weaknesses? Why do I need to cover my melee weapon in poison when I can just kick enemies in melee range into these convenient walls of spikes for an instant kill? I don't see ever spending my finite alchemical ingredients on making these things. Ideas that don't get overly considered like this is how you end up with feature-bloat.
'Difficulty' is a very tricky thing to handle in a game. You have to get the rules just right, and make sure they stay consistent, as it can very quickly feel more like blatant sadism if not handled precisely and correctly.
Finally, I'm aware that this is still an early access game and as a fan of Dark Messiah and other similar games, I will say this game does have potential, so I do genuinely hope they improve it down the road.
