Shards of the Banished

Not bad at all, honestly. We can all tell it's souls-like, and that's a plus. The game has very poor optimization and there are missing textures, however it does have great potential. Advice I would give to the people here is simple in my opinion: Continue with how you've been making the game so far, you've clearly put effort which is noticeable. If I were you, I'd change the combat. From the short time I played I can tell combat has no real "rewarding" feeling towards it. First off, I would say instead of forcing the player to spawn with just a sword, the player should have a broken sword and fight enemies at the beginning, all of which drop a different starter weapon. As for the combat itself, you should redirect your focus from making it just like dark souls and add some uniqueness to it. The basic mobs have little pattern diversity and you can kill simply by spam clicking, making heavies only useful if the opponent is caught off guard. Additionally, because of this repeated pattern we don't have to worry about any of the mobs. Archers shoot arrows at weird intervals, like the first one was just staring at me for a while. I believe Archers, when the player gets within a mid-range(and on the same elevation) should either retreat like in outward, or switch to a new weapon. Archers should also be in less noticeable spots instead of just being on highly elevated platforms where the player cannot reach without killing the current mob wave. I would also say maybe load the map in chunks(like allocate the map details depending on where the player is) to reduce lag. I noticed that when I killed the Archers their arrows stayed for the entirety of the 10 minutes I was in the game afterward. Skill upgrades should also be weapon dependent(if you add more weapons), and as previously mentioned players should have a selection of weapons to pick from early on, so they can get the feel for what feels nice. The basic mobs should have pattern changes. If they're being attacked too quickly they should stop attacking slowly and switch, or if that's too much make them back up(like do a backstep). When ganging up on the player, basic mobs that have had aggro but are not currently being attacked could possibly encircle the player and do a lung attack that has increased speed and damage. Also, I did get infinitely stunned once, so that's a plus. You should add more narrow spaces or areas where the player is forced to defend themselves from a surplus amount of enemies with unique attack patterns. Parrying also shouldn't be the end all be all, and targeting a new enemy should have a setting that allows for mouse/controller movement to change it instead of just two buttons. But this game has potential and I hope to play when it's updated some more before the closing.