FOUNTAINS

Okay, now that I was finally able to finish this game, I want to flesh out my review a little more. I feel bad not recommending this game, because clearly the Dev put in a lot of love and crafted a really cool world that is a lot of fun to explore and search for secrets. My biggest (and really my only, but it's a huge only) is that the end game bosses are just so damn hard. They require so much practice and repeated attempts that you pretty much have to memorize their every move and tell just to have a chance to survive. Before I got to the last 4 bosses, I was having a ton of fun and this would have been an easy recommend. The prior bosses were difficult, but you had some wiggle room... the end group I felt asked you to be way too perfect. When end game bosses are able to kill you in as few as 3 hits and they take closer 30x as many to kill it leads to way too much frustration. Add in tough to read heal windows and it's just not a recipe for enjoyment. Endgame boiled down to a feeling of having to finish... almost out of spite. I wasn't particularly having fun anymore, I had just invested so much time and effort, that the last group of bosses was not going to keep me from winning. Again, I feel like the dev was so close to making a fantastic game. It looks a lot like Hyper Light Drifter, it plays smoothly, the world is interesting, the mechanics are fun... it's just gonna be too hard/frustrating for most people. Maybe the same could be said for the Dark Souls series (which this is clearly inspired by), but at least there you have the option to grind souls and level your character. Sure you can find rings and gear that somewhat buff your character, but it never seems to make enough of a difference to ease the frustration.

This game has many positive aspects, but in the end it feels like it took all the wrong lessons from Dark Souls, instead of the right ones. The boss designs timing, hitboxes, tells, bloat of health, consumables being lost on death, etc, all lead to a frustrating experience. Any time I beat a hard boss there is zero feeling of victory or satisfaction, just a sense that I either got lucky or learned some cheese, never that I actually engaged in the mechanics of the game properly or succeeded by my own merit.

This game is too hard. Looks like about 6% of players have finished the game. By percentage, fewer people have beaten the first boss in FOUNTAINS than have gotten the true ending in Silksong. I put about 7 hours in and had a bunch of fun. The exploration and secret finding is satisfying. The map is sprawling and completely interconnected, which is really cool. It's great to beat bosses and get new skill rings that expand both combat and traversal. But I've hit a point where, despite having tons of health and armor, bosses are killing me in 3 hits without giving me time to heal, and I'm so burnt out by wandering around, trying to keep everything in my head. There are modes of fast travel, but even they are confusing and exhausting to keep track of. I wish the bosses dealt less damage or had less health. I wish my health and armor upgrades made more of a difference. I wish the map would automatically tag NPCs and name important places, or at least that the pins I can put down made more sense and were more distinct from each other. It's a really cool game and the dev should be proud. It looks great, the combat works well, and the structure is compelling. I bet I would love it if I had more time and fewer other games to play.

After spending some time on the game, I have a couple things to say, both positive and negative. For a game this size, the amount of content is honestly rather impressive, there's not too much but enough to keep you busy for a bit. The pixel arts, although simple in some places like the designs of the protagonist and some enemies, look stunning, which shines mostly through the looks of the world. The metroidvania aspects makes the progression and exploration somewhat enjoyable and rewarding too. But game overall still has a couple problems, main one being difficulty. Now yes, the game is SUPPOSED to be difficult, but it's genuinely nuts once you get closer to the final bosses of the game. You have little to no room for error and you have to basically memorize the bosses' patterns and master the game's combat to even have a chance of fighting them. Your equipment also doesn't match the difficulty, your sword and/or armor not matching the sudden spike of difficulty towards the end, as you're stuck with a weapon doing 36-37 damage for example. Finally, and this mostly a personal thing, I found the minimap somewhat difficult to read, as it doesn't really make it obvious where you're going or the path you should be following, so I often ended up running in circles or getting completely lost because I was unable to properly read the map. Overall the game's solid and rather fun, and I recommend it, but I was unable to personally finish it.

Fun little Zelda/Metroidvania game with elements of a Soulslike with good replay value despite its simplicity. Graphics are charming, music is nice, scenery is well thought out, dialogue leans toward the comedic, which is refreshing. The gameplay loop is pretty simple; attack guys, dodge their attacks, get coins and water (this game's magic source) in order to sustain the loop. Enemies are far too punishing, as most can cause wounds deeper than you can recover with one healing spell. Rings and boss items add magical spells to your arsenal but, beyond that, weapons are limited to swords which feel oddly spaced out and underwhelming to get. There are often elements within the game world that will pique your curiosity but cannot be accessed until later, leading to that satisfying sense of accomplishment when you finally get past the barrier. The bosses are by far the worst part of the game; they lean heavily into the Souls style of being punishing and memorizing the moveset, which is problematic because the graphics are too simple to reliably recognize what move the boss is performing next. Combat is limited to having one button to dodge and another button to strike, both of which drain stamina rapidly. Healing has a charge up animation that gets cancelled upon taking damage and costs the water you need for your other spells and the most common way to get more is to land melee hits. Combine the demanding resource management with boss attacks that often happen faster than you can recover or AoE attacks being larger than your dodge roll, and you get stuck in an infinite loop of being punished faster than you can recover. All in all, a great break from the more ambitious games, and at a fraction of the price. If you're looking for a fun weekend game, this is it. The creator said that his original game had RuneScape style trop-down 3D graphics. I would like to see him return to that idea for a future game.

It needs better navigation map/system/fast travel whatever. I only played 3 hours and fought 5 bosses, but then I was frustrated enough I looked up to see if any fast travel is on the menu. It seems like some form is there but isn't good enough for end game for some players so I refunded. There's a fine line with getting players to experience the world and making it a chore disrespecting player's time. This feels like the latter. I also agree with the other reviewer that suggested faster healing. Combat is super fast and fun but then you stop forever to heal, sucking the joy a bit.

Love this game! Good complex combat while being just difficult enough to have to somewhat learn move patterns. found it really satisfying to have to use items you received while playing through the game. Wouldn't find any of the bosses extremely hard at least compared to Elden ring, both having similar combat and item usage. Would be interested in coming back if any dlc was to be released. 10/10 would do again

awesome game, soulslike combat, nice artstyle and motivating progression. highly recommend for steam-deck

你做得好啊，正因为如此你做得好啊

Overall, the game looks good and plays well. However, I do have some problems : - It's easy for some bosses to go off screen during boss fights due to the arena being too large - Some of the endgame bases (two of them in particular) do too much damage in single attacks. - The final boss in particular has one attack which has an extremely short telegraph and can follow on from other attacks