Fatekeeper

Fun has promise but not even worth 10 dollars for a few hours of play

There is a kick button There are spikes on the wall There are holes in the map I enjoyed Sparta kicking almost every enemy into the abyss while yelling "THIS IS SPARTA" For $10, I wholeheartedly enjoyed my roleplay as a Spartan solider in the comfiness of my underwear Jokes aside, as it stands in EA, this is a short game, it took me about 2 hours to get through. This game has incredible potential and its well worth the $10 that is it currently at. There are a lot of things that are done really well for an early access game. The map is beautiful, the models are detailed, there is weight behind each swing of your weapon, and while the gameplay is linear in nature, the meandering of the walkways and little areas to explore here and there don't make it seem like its too linear. Criticism: Knowing this game is in early access, there are a few things that could use improvement. None of these would make me drop the game or return it, just some things I felt could use improvement - Predefined save points. I don't really understand why the save points are predefined. It sort of takes away the enjoyment of exploring as there were a few times where I died and had to backtrack the same route. Maybe I skipped a save point, I'm not sure, but overall it kind of annoyed me that I needed to cook all the stuff again, and then explore the same areas that I already did. I would understand the save points being predefined if exploration wasn't a thing, but I'm thinking the final product is going to reward exploration and having to backtrack everything you did between saves would be a massive annoyance. Let us save anywhere. Maybe the campfire can serve as a predefined save point or and also be the the alchemy pot/quick travel instead of just removing it outright. - Stamina drain outside of combat. Maybe I'm just being nitpicky, most games only drain stamina in combat. Stamina always being drained regardless of combat state is a bit annoying. Not so much an issue, but it would be a quality of life improvement for the sections where there is a long walkway between areas (e.g., start of game, campfire to first boss) - Meh Magic. Might just because its early access, but I felt a bit underwhelmed with the magic. I always love going pew-pew in any game that has magic, but this one kinda made me never use it. There are maybe two or 3 areas where you need to use the telekinesis spell, but outside of that and perhaps the first 10 min, I didn't really use the magic unless the game required it. I see that the magic skill tree is pretty fleshed out and looks like it could do quite a bit of damage, the only issue is that you need significant investment (15ish points?) where it starts to be effective. I don't see why I would do that when the starting mana pool is low, you can't exactly kill an enemy with your starting magic and the only way to get mana is either through mana potions (which seems excessive at the start) or killing enemies...which makes just using the melee weapon more effective.