Its kinda charming and filled with potential.
[b]Just a little headsup:[/b] You probably wont be building your own house here. You will be able to place anything else like chests, fences and loads of crafting-devices. You can however just take a generated house, if you dont mind NPCs running around in there.
Combat here is the main focus of this game from what I can say.
A lot is missing that will make your life easier. For example, if you die in a cave, you wont have a marker until you are inside the cave to get your loot back.
That its rough will be already shown when you start the game and go into Settings, as theres no Button to go back, you have to press ESC. Then during Character creation as you will probably struggle finding a good color on a slider with maybe over a hundred colors inside the slider. You also cant hold the arrow keys to go through them quickly; you have to press it for each. Little rough things like that may show up during your time with Hallowlands' Early Access.
Also, I dont know if selecting a class has any effect on your character. You always spawn with a sword and there seems to be no abilities etc. All equipment and weapons are behind your Skill-Level within that weapon category and your Attributes that you select when leveling up.
You level up a lot and it can be kinda annoying as the Level-Up pop up is taking up all of your sceen (it fades quicker if you click, which is also your attack) so if you level up mid-fight and you happen to be a ranged player, you may need to shoot into the dark.
You can then choose what Stats (HP, Attack, Defense, Stamina, Energy/Mana) and Attributes (Strength etc., its just a requirement for armor/weapons) to increase. As far as I figured, the Stats have a random roll when you bring up the level-up menu after leveling up (if you close and re-open it wont roll again). So once you may have like +21 HP to pick but +26 Stamina etc. and the next time you level up and bring it up you maybe see +28 HP etc. Its kinda interesting as you can choose to keep on leveling and then gamble on your favorite stat to have high rolls and then pump it in there.
Leveling up probably is my favorite part of this game, but its definitely too fast as of now.
[h1]So what about Combat?[/h1]
If you played (or havent, i recommend those too) Terraria-like games or both Necesse and Keplerth, this is goes more into Bullet-hell-ish territory. I've only defeated the 2nd Boss so far which was kind of the same like the 1st boss (also to this point I was so high level and pumped a lot into Attack/def that everything is dead in like 2 blinks of an eye). But the 2nd dungeon made up for it any-how as it introduced something so simple but powerful that it was fun to go around. It also reminds me of Zelda games where you have to find Keys to progress.
So yeah, you will be dodging projectiles a lot otherwise you can pump into Defense and Health to get real tanky and just eat them for breakfast.
Some enemies also have some mini-mechanics going on which seems its intended to trap you. Like a ring of Fire with some gaps to get through or a whole U-shape-deadend. However this can be frustrating at times as this happens so quick while you run, that you often just get hit by it without being able to react. This kinda can also happen with enemies using offensive magic at you. You may learn how to deal with it. Definitely recommend investing into Health early on.
[h1]The Survival and Crafting[/h1]
You will get to eat rather a lot and you dont know why really. Its because your Hunger is only displayed as either "Full", "Normal", "Hungry" or "Starving". Whereas if you are Full, you regenerate HP and Energy/Mana. If you are Starving you lose health periodically.
All Regeneration is % based, meaning the more maximum Health, Stamina or Energy you have, the more you regenerate (this makes investing into Stamina early on immensely easier as you essentially have infinite Stamina, which in turn only really helps with harvesting as most enemies may die after a few hits before you run out of Stamina).
Crafting is rather whack. You will be shown what you can craft when you have the materials ready and will also need to be at the correct crafting station or menu. So expect experimenting and looking around from time to time.
[h1]Questing[/h1]
This one was very infuriating to me early on as its really annoying. I also dont know if it was required, but I would say so as you will be sent to your first dungeon once you are powerful enough (dunno if it was just me being level 20, since I was about level 18 when i completed the "tutorial"). So the beginning will ask you to do the foundations of crafting and also shows what you need to make what. The only issue I have here is that I must gather the raw materials within the quest, refine them and then craft the parts to assemble the final product. This made me run back and forth into a cave and the questgiver multiple times as getting multiple ores, then refine them to be ready for all tasks was the wrong move.
You will also be able to help random NPCs around towns or within the world with generated tasks (think of Skyrims generated quests, but Early Access). You will usually craft or kill something and get money in return. Which you can use to buy things from Shops (which usually is nice to skip crafting entirely imo)
[hr][/hr]
Obviously the game just got released 2 months ago, the game can be janky at times (like if you scroll through crafting list, you will also scroll within your hotbar and if you click, you will "use" the selected items, this is how i usually ate all of my food). You will also often get hit, slowed and mangled on sometimes by enemies slightly off-screen with no way of dodging it, which usually results in quick "WTF?" deaths in the early stages of the game until you invest into some HP.
