GUILT: The Deathless

first things first, the early access of guilt the deathless is very short, so keep that in mind. i have barely over two hours played and finished the given content in my second run. the first run was over pretty quickly due to learning the game and over committing without having any knowledge about what's going on, so most of my playtime went into the second run. overall it was a pretty enjoyable experience with some minor caveats! in my opinion the game is way too easy and because of the lack of difficulty, i was able to finish it quite (maybe too?) quickly. i'll definitely do some more runs to check out missed content and i'm looking forward for more content updates in the future. edit - 03.07.2023: after some time and several updates the game improved by a lot and the developers managed to fix most of my gripes with the game already. glad to see and definitely a reason to re-write the review. [b]what i liked:[/b] + the atmosphere is pretty dense and i instantly fell in love with the unique style of guilt. exploring the vast, forsaken lands full of horror and abominations was an immersive experience. + the combat was a tad bit bare bones, but still quite fun after all. everything's responsive and works well so far. no major complaints. the camera could use some work tho, + interesting and somewhat unique boss fights with a touch of bullet hell. + gorgeous retro graphics. i'm always looking for these retro styled games with old school 3D/2D graphics and outer brain studios did a decent job on this one. they definitely nailed the art style and art direction of their game. it's dark and weird, love it. + different biomes with unique enemies. + interesting npcs at frist glance - let's see how they evolve over the course of this early access. + calm and melodic soundtrack, which serves the immersion quite well. + i haven't had a single bug so far, even tho this version is still very early access. [b]what felt debatable to me:[/b] ~ the game does require much more diversity with loot. more different weapons, more different armor, more spells, basically more of everything. ~ the enemy variety is rather lackluster at the moment. ~ would've loved to see some more collectibles and/or flavor texts for lore and world building. ~ can't say much about the story, since the game isn't finished yet. the potential is there, i have to admit. [b]what i didn't like:[/b] - making the enemies fighting each other was a questionable design choice. it is simply making the already pretty easy combat even more trivial. this has to be removed or changed asap. 8.5/10 decent core of a game, definitely recommend. i'll update this review after some majors updates and the 1.0 release.

I was skeptical at first. I Saw the reviews and went. Oh it must be a game i wont get much time out of. I then noticed the reviews being displayed were from around the games launch point, 2022. My next thought was, okay so its probably dead then. It Isn't actually, after peering into the update logs it seems its been getting pretty loving updates since 2022 up until this date even. I haven't played a whole lot as of yet but from what I can tell it seems pretty well fleshed out, there is room for improvement on some of the systems as there always will be with this title and all others. The combat feels pretty fluid, parries seems responsive. The art style is of a spooky and creepy nature and i really enjoy it. I love that tiles and buildables you can place will influence other players maps as well. With that same aspect you can find players death points too and loot items they would have never seen again to your advantage. (No your not taking from a player who would have access to that item otherwise) The ebb and flow of balancing the "Guilt" system is fine, nothing too crazy and nothing boring overall. Now for what "I" personally feel would benefit the title. Meta progression - This is something that i didn't think of at first but after my first run my immediate thought was oh, time to do it again. But with no sense of I had accomplished anything even though the game play was super fun in my opinion. (This is of course listed a "Rouge like" so i know metaprogression is usually a Rouge-Lite Feature. So this opinion is mostly personal having enjoyed the game and wanting to have a reason to keep going over and over. The map - After that first run was finished i said okay lets do this again, and loaded back in. I noticed to my slight disappointment the map had the same tiles as the first map i encountered on my first run. I do wish it was a bit more randomized overall. Other than a listed bug ill mention below these are my own qualms with it. Bug - When you use M&K it seems at least for me, windowed, full screen, border less no matter the window type i would make sure to have the mouse option toggled to keep it in the game and it just would refuse to stay on my screen and would constantly bleed over to my other monitor. For this reason i HIGHLY recommend a controller which is fully re-mappable and amazing feeling. OVERALL this game is super fun and worth the price its listed for fully. You can definitely get anywhere from a few to even quite a few more hours of entertainment out of this title depending on your resilience. (100s+ if meta progression existed at some point) I quite enjoy this game and look forward to more active updates from the developer. Thank you.

Really fun souls-ey diablo-ey hack n' slash roguelike with a *really* good aesthetic. I had an issue with the game, complained on the forums, and the dev fixed it 2 days later.

Simply said, it feels too repetitive, I mostly just dodge and spam the strongest weapon I can find.

Why is it so hard? I can't beat the first boss without being super lucky with item drops or finds. The second boss wasn't much better. And sent me all the way back to the beginning of the game? Jesus Christ EDIT: Nevermind. Came back a day later and beat the "entire" game on my first try. Game is easy peasy once you start to understand what is actually worth incurring Guilt. Blood Altars are more important than I originally thought, something should be done to make them look more like a utility location rather than a potential combat encounter, during my first day's playthroughs I never touched Blood Altars because I thought I'd be in an unnecessary combat. Really enjoyed it, lots of potential. Hope there's more content soon.

A sweet action roguelike game with a unique art style, a work of art that is full of potential.

To be honest I enjoyed a lot my playthrough. I liked the "random skill tree" the combat and the atmosphere. The only laking aspect in my opinion was the low variety in items especially weapons. There are only one lower tier of each weapon, and one superior tier of the same weapon. For example you can use a whip, but once you find the good one, and you upgrade it, you can't improve it more, that's your final weapon for the rest of the game. You can find another one with a diferent upgrade, but in essence the same attack power and overal utility, it only changes the afix it has. So at some point you only kill everything fast ignoring weapons as your only way to get more attack is just leveling up for pasives in the skill tree. I'd greatly apreciate if there were more variety and more way to keep improving them (maybe more steps to improve with less status changing, so you have something to do in that aspect of the game) and also adding more weapons in general and some rare legendary or special tier weapons only obtainable behind hard challenges. The game is not complete now, after killing the last boss for now it states it clearly, so I expect it to improve. But for the moment I liked what I saw and I enjoyed it. I will play more when we get more updates.

Such an interesting little game with a really unique art style and surprisingly decent combat. But sadly, I think the devs abandoned it. edit - I guess its not abandoned. Will happily change to positive if the game ever comes out.

The second strand-type game

we need chinese