Meh, after trying the demo and waiting for the full release, the game has more polish but still lacks sauce. Once you beat it for the first time, you kinda already saw everything the game has to offer.
Similar to the demo, combat is too plain and uninspired. There are facsimiles of a stereotypical MMO raid boss encounter, such as red circles on the ground and flying projectiles, but you sort of engage with them in the same way. Would have loved to see more interesting boss mechanics for sure.
Same idea with upgrades. Incremental stats by themselves are really boring, which makes the upgrades all feel like dump stats. It's also very linear, like there's no one passive point that really juices your character. It makes it so that you feel like there was no upgrade in the first place, as you are just playing catch up with the boss scaling.
I usually never end up talking about pricing, because value is subjective. However, I feel like 13 aussie dollars is asking way too much for what I'm getting compared to other indie darlings, and it's such a hard price point to recommend to friends. At the end of the day, the game just needs more variety and content to be worth it.
EDIT regarding developer response:
Brother, I understand. I went back to my previous review of demo. I did asked for those suggestions, hoping it would make the game interesting and give it depth. But with this release, even adding all of what I asked for, you didn't make the game interesting for me.
Regarding the skill tree, brother it is a sad little sapling. Early on, the damage from monsters are really high, so you are forced to pick a unique branch to even try and keep up. Afterwards, because you have already taken your choice of that unique path, you are permanently locked out of other paths and end up just putting points into meager stats. That's why I'm telling you it's really not that interesting.
One more issue issue that is immediately apparent, is just how garbage all the paths are. For example, there is constantly baiting towards upgrading static skills that sets an area on the field for healing or damage, and those are so bad. I counted, and there are 4 bosses out of 10 in the game that is stationary, so it is only effective against exactly 40% of the game, while the rest of cast either run or teleport around, completely nullifying that static skill. Instead of wasting a point for that, you could just amplify your healing output for ALL skills, which you should do every single time.
Also, can we talk about the trashy healing to damage convert points? You realistically do not push the kill timer any much faster, it further traps you into putting points into spell damage instead of just simply raising the party's stats, and overall just feels underwhelming to use.
Then it's a matter of picking the correct skill to upgrade and spam the hell out of it. While bosses sometimes throw you something different, like how you need to run around and disarm traps or press a shrine to cleanse some stacked up debuffs, the gameplay always reduces to you spamming your left click, followed by pressing your secondary buttons off cooldown. From the first boss fight, you basically already are playing the final version of the class, and so the rest of the difficulty is just not falling asleep and maybe doing the boss gimmick (sometimes you just overheal through it and can safely ignore).
It's a shame, but it's just how the game is designed I feel. The game mechanics, while thematically should feel different, all act in the same manner. Shields are a good example why: In games like league, you have your Janna or Lulu shields that is only up for a small amount of time, so as a support you have to consider when your team is going to take damage in order to mitigate it effectively. However, in this game, shields are just an extra health bar, they never go away, and you can preemptively cast them on. Then what's the difference between this and just spamming the heal button? You miss out on what would have made shields so interesting, which is learning the attack patterns and responding to them accordingly.
There's more ramblings about allies, scoring system, etc..., but I genuinely want to like the game and recommend it to my friends, I went back for more hoping to be proven wrong, but it's a tough ask; it's not there yet, and considering the price it's just tough. So brother, death is only the beginning.
