[b]this is more like a neutral rating, but i am currently leaning towards no. i'm willing to change it to a positive yes down the line.[/b] commenters: behave. be able to have a discussion, or go away.
few things: this is a significant improvement from the previous game. the visuals are striking and they've nailed the atmosphere with their own identity. the combat and worldbuilding has sauce, and is what got me to buy the game after how much fun i had with the open beta.
this is the kind of game that's made for me, and i do enjoy it for what it is, but if i have to be objective, i'm going to say that the full release isn't quite there... yet. last straw on the camel's back stuff. mind that these are all fixable problems, and so long as the devs are willing to, i'd be more than happy to push this on every soulslike enjoyer i know.
i actually don't personally mind the runbacks, because stamina doesn't exist, so you could theoretically just sprint all the way back to where you left off. (also, i literally played dark souls 2 before this, a game that has frigid outskirts, which is an area of all time.)
what does annoy me a bit however, is how much the enemy's attacks will 'stick' to you. on the way back i feel like i'm bound to get nicked here and there, because a lot of the attacks have a long lunge range, with how high the incoming damage is, and the healing stretched thin - i think my pulse is at +5? (why don't the game show how much i've upgraded it?) but it heals maybe a quarter of my health - it can get quite dicey and rough. i feel like i should be able to take a few more hits, especially playing as my goat eredrim. one of his shell ability is literally called tank lol i just want to feel like one you know?
they overcorrected after some people have said the open beta was quite easy. it kinda was, but i'll gladly take a hit to difficulty if it means it's Fun. i like my soulslikes difficult too, but this is where i think the devs just simply couldn't help themselves, going by how some decisions were made in both the games they made. i think i would've been fine with the high incoming damage, but it's like they've made the parry window smaller and now parrying combos specifically just doesn't feel like it works most of the time. harden doesn't break combos too when it's kind of the point of using it, coming from the first game.
another high incoming damage soulslike i've played is lies of p. in that game though, there is grey health healing, where attacking right after getting hit will heal some lost health (edit: sariel has this passive, i don't think it's as important as being able to charge a heal though). you'll always have healing so long as you keep fighting and charging a pulse - gragu has this as one of his passives, but i think it could be made global to help ease the lack of healing feeling, also to offset the stress of exploration because the beacons are very sparse. often times i actually hold off of resting at beacons because i want to explore and find secrets while the areas nicely cleared out, which honestly shouldn't be the case imo. resting at beacons should be, 'aight, i'm ready to keep going' and not, 'man i have to fight all those enemies again smdh'.
i also don't like how they've stuck to their mentality for ng+, because this time, glimpses are actually a limited resource per cycle, which is insane because this is straight up a downgrade from the previous game, where you could farm for glimpses in the mist. what this scarcity means in practice is that most people would either have to invest into tiel or proxima to combat the early game difficulty, or hold off for quite a decent while as they get their hands on the other shells. in fact i'm pretty sure tarcores are limited per run too! so there are only so many tarstones you could max out per cycle, and some of the rank 3 upgrades are extremely significant, like having permanent status infusions on your weapons. for a game that seemingly wants you to experiment with shells and builds, you can't, because of the resource scarcity.
ng+ should be an optional thing, for the people that wanted more from the game. for the rest, a full playthrough of a cycle is a complete experience, but the shell stories are locked behind shell bonding too, so now not even the lore nerds get to have their fill in one cycle. this is such a weird decision they made because in my head it's a problem long solved. even in ps3 demon's souls, back in 2009, you were allowed to play around with weapons because enemies can drop the resources, painful as the farm was. yes, colorless demon soul existed, but that game made up for it by having a way shorter game cycle.
gloom income is also quite tight, and not every level you earn is meaningful. i remember seeing myself spending 15k gloom to go from lv26 to 27 only to gain a whopping +2 to health. and that feels terrible, i mean not even a shell point, really? :(
one more thing is that the enemy variety is kind of dire. there are exclusive enemies in night mode, but if you've played the open beta you've actually seen almost all the enemies. the outskirts of mammon side of the world simply has the same enemies... but more armored and/or differently colored. i guess it's better than the previous game but i do expect more with the expansion of the world.
i'm willing to see what changes they come up with down the line. i think it's right for them to wait for the full release before making any drastic changes to their game, but for now this is the kind of game only a soulslike maniac glutton like me could stomach.
