Combat is simple but still enjoyable. You have your basic attack, throw attack, and special attack that needs to be recharged by striking enemies or holding down the basic attack button for a few seconds. During combat, stamina keeps you from hopping around and spamming attacks. Luckily, it recovers rather quickly.
The fact that stamina doesn’t decrease when there are no enemies nearby is what I like about it the most. Although it may not seem like much, it will quickly become the most frequently used button after you realize that jumping is faster than regular walking and that you can break barrels and crates more quickly than with a weapon.
You appreciate it even more once you reach areas that involve jumping on platforms. If you're not careful, these can be a pain. Each time you miss and plummet into the abyss below, a sizable portion of your health bar is lost.
As for the combat, I played on hard difficulty and had no problem with enemies as long as they kept coming one at a time. All you have to do is dance around them until they attack, then strike back. Their attack patterns are simple and easy to avoid.
Bosses are a completely different breed. They move fast and hit hard, so you must watch your stamina and only use your weapon when you are confident. One wrong move and you’re dead. Drinking from the water flask will restore your health if you are injured. You don't have to worry about losing your loot because the only consequence of dying is the long trek back from the fountain, which can be sped up by opening shortcuts.
New weapons are rewarded when you beat a boss. Because they come in a form of ordinary items like bell and candelabra, you won’t know what it is until you equip it. I forgot to mention that enemies don’t have a health bar. This means you need to look at icons in the upper left corner that show how much damage different attacks cause.
Defeated enemies drop coins that are easy to miss due to their small size and the fact that you have to walk right over it to collect it. A slight magnetic pull would make this less of a hassle. Coins can be spent at the blacksmith that offers new upgrades. The other stuff you discover isn't all that fascinating or helpful. While it’s possible to collect and equip new gear, you probably won’t bother with it because it’s usually stashed in some corner. Also, the stats boost they provide is meaningless.
The most common thing lying around are various seeds that can restore lost concentration or health, while gems that permanently improve one of your stats are much more useful and rarer item. You are only allowed to carry five of each item, though, due to the extremely limited inventory space. Even if you have room in your backpack, your character will refuse to pick any more. It’s possible to stash extra items in the tavern’s chest, but you’ll have to travel there every time.
The way you interact with the world should be improved. You'll need to move around the area and try to interact with everything because no prompt appears when you approach an object of interest. For obvious items like levers, it's not a big deal, but closets and doors can be a little trickier to spot. But then you find out that they’re always empty and you stop caring. On the other hand, loot is marked with a sparkle, so it’s very strange why this isn’t used for all objects.
Another thing I found problematic is the text. When you finish reading in other games and wish to go on to the next line, you typically have to hit a button. However, no matter which button you hit in this game, the text skips forward. This happens even when you press the directional buttons.
