Lichenvale

[h1]UE 4 jank.[/h1] It is with great sadness that I do not recommend this game. Clunky combat, wonky hitboxes, horrible animations for the enemies, they just rush non stop brain dead to the player. The melee and spells don't feel satisfying, clearly lacking punch, also weird physics and movements here. Lichenvale level design is also very linear and the maps are poorly made IMHO. Game balance is all over the place, bosses and enemies hit like trucks and some attacks are almost impossible to dodge. For some reasons the game also don't refill health/mana bars or give lives back when starting a new level. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2990191900 It's not terrible but I expected better, bought on release to support the developer but let's be honest it's not a good game. Hard to recommend this when other games like Amid Evil, Arthurian Legends or Graven exist. [h1]Rating 3.5/10.[/h1]

i am not really into old school doom style shooter games, but this one was an exception, i really loved the experience and strongly recommend it both for people who like this genre and for those who enjoy dark games with a gloomy medieval fantasy atmosphere. besides the maps being gothic and amazing, you also face many gothic creatures with different attack styles and bosses, including werewolves, skeletons, dark mages, ghosts and vampires!!

take your boomer shooter, remove guns, add a wonderful melee and magic system. its beautiful I suck at it, but that doesnt make it any less of a great game. Vanquish the darkness my friends

Nice world, but empty, boring and hit detection is terrible...

Idk if it is just me or not, but I feel like I can't NOT get hit a lot. To melee anything you have to get close, duh. But the enemies can kinda clip through your body and just hit you in the back and even if they don't they almost always hit you at least once before you kill them. As for the ranged enemies, they're easy enough to dodge at a distance, but to get close enough to kill them you can't do much. They don't really telegraph their attacks long enough for you to know one is coming. And there is a mage who apparently casts like 2-3 attacks at once. Dodged their attacks once and by the time I closed the distance I ate all the next attacks and lost like 25% of my health.

Very good game!

I had given a negative rating but after the last update the game changed in a positive direction.

Although I have most negative critiques, I am giving a positive because I had some fun playing it (also I got it by 80% of the price). The game has potential, it is fun in general, but there are things unbalanced and the game feels unfair a lot of times. I stop playing it at the big werewolf boss because I had no way to refill my health bar to survive. \[b] Collectibles \[/b] What are coins and crystals used for?? \[b] Graphics \[/b] I found the graphics nice, but I wanted to turn off some post processing effects like motion blur and there is no option on settings to turn that off. \[b] Level / Environment \[/b] The levels are very beautiful but the world feel a bit stiff, there’s no interaction with the level at all. In the first part when you get the fireball, you have to light some torches. I tried to use the fireball to do it, would be a cool interaction, but nothing happens, instead you have to approach the torch and click a button. It would be cool to break or just push some things, maybe search for treasure chests with gold (instead of coins just floating on the level) \[b] Spells \[/b] At the moment I stop playing it I had four spells, fire, ice, projectile deflection, and slow time. The deflection one it’s just to protect yourself, I though the enemies projectiles would damage themselves, but no. The slow time one was the one I like the most, but I didn’t understand why it has a higher mana “price” if it doesn’t use all this mana, also a very annoying thing is that it’s difficult to avoid the enemies attacks even with slow time. \[b] Hit detection \[/b] The hit detection is very strange and frustrating. A lot of times seems like you should have hit the enemy but nothing happens, and other times looks like the dash doesn’t have any use, you dash to escape from danger and get hit anyway, its like you didn’t move at all. I am not sure but looks like the enemy kind of follows you even if the attack animation already started, instead of attacking the direction it was facing when the animation started, so basically its impossible to use the dash to avoid enemy attacks if you are close. Also sometimes looks like the enemy is going at your direction and stays at the same position as you, or going behind you, making very difficult for you to see it. \[b] Blocking \[/b] The blocking feature for me is very hard to use, the enemies attacks are very fast and there’s no clear anticipation animation or similar thing that indicates the next attack, basically I played without using it. \[b] Current Goal \[/b] There is no orientation of what to do, this was confusing for me at start, but after some time I understood that every area has a number of enemies to kill, and the path clears once you kill all of them. Some kind of text message would help, like a “goal” or “quest” box in the corner of the screen. Something in the style of MMORPG quests could also be interesting to know how many enemies remain. \[b] Health, mana, and no farming \[/b] You do not regen health, and you just regen mana by hitting enemies (which is an impossible thing to do without loosing some health). There are health potions on the levels, but they are limited and do not re-spawn. The magic spells are very hard to use because the mana is so hard to get. You want to use you magic skills to kill the enemies, but you need to kill the enemies with the sword to regen some mana, and thats the only way to do it. If you are stuck in a part because of low health or mana, you have to go back to a previous save state because there is no way to farm anything. So you will have to make your way again killing all the enemies trying to not loose a lot of mana and health. \[b] Save/Load \[/b] On a certain point of the game I reach this boss I cannot kill because I have very low health, So I try to go back to an older save state where I had more life, or where there was still potions in the level. I clicked on the save states on the list thinking it was going to load them, a confirmation box with message “Are you sure?” appeared, and when I clicked OK the menu closes and goes back to my current session instead of loading the older one I wanted. It took me a few tries to realize I've override my save states trying to load them, and I had to go back to an even older state. This felt very confusing and made me loose some progress. There is a SAVE and a LOAD button on the left side, and there is a NEW SAVE button on the right. Why would you want to override your own save states? They are not limited, you can always create new saves using the NEW SAVE button (or maybe override a existing one clicking on SAVE??) Most people will use load functionality a lot more than save, it would make more sense to load when clicking it. Even if you have a good reason to make it override the save when clicking, why is the message not clear about it? It’s just “Are you sure?” instead of something like “Are you sure you want to override this state?” \[b] Conclusion \[/b] I got it by 80% discount and before the point it became impossible for me to continue, I had some fun with it. (I have 10 hours of playing because I left the game open for a few hours by mistake ) If these things are not a problem for you, go for it. Its a fun game and I think the dev/team who made this has a lot of potential to make great games.

Pretty cool game.

Fun and simple combat! Light attack, heavy attack, dodge, parry! Requires reflexes though (which I have not). Plenty of different enemies to fight. They are not just different skins, they each have their own patterns of attack to learn. Mixing several different varieties provides an additional challenge. All in all great experience!