An incredibly soulful game which I have only three problems with:
1) The sorcerer boss can camp beyond your reach for however long he likes
2) The audio cue for his laserbeam is nigh inaudible at 100% bgm volume
3) Stacking stability upgrades is way overpowered
The issue with stability upgrades is that they flatly stack a percentage, and that this percentage corresponds to a reduction which approaches 100%. With 100% stability, your shield would cease to take stamina damage, and this would be achievable with a finite number of upgrades too if not for the arbitrary cap at 80%. Even around 75% though, you have enough to never need to dodge in bossfights. You'll still have to lower your shield often enough to get your stamina back, and for that you'll probably want a stamina recovery charm too, but this is only three or four upgrades on a character which can go from holding four to sixteen of them by the end of the game. They should have had a curve more like stmndmg=stmndmg×0.95^upgradelevel, so that each level removes only 5% of what the last level left remaining, not 5% of the maximum damage. Although I'd say it's fine that poison immunity stacks to 100%.
Also, one other thing:
4) Short enemy respawn tethers
Enemies respawn at full health whenever you or they get too far away from their spawn points. Some enemies can outright push you far enough away they get a full heal in the process of doing so. And by some enemies, I mean a select few of the green clothed, hat-wearing point-downers with the sword and board: if like me you didn't have poison immunity by the part where two ambush you in a poison pool (fun!) your first instinct would be to get out of the pool, but if you travel too far back the way you came the guys chasing you just vanish and respawn at full hp. Earlier on I also remember one chasing me along a tightrope and bouncing me around enough to disappear. The one ironpinapple first quit on, I think. The upside is that the game doesn't seem to check horizontal distance, so luring them off cliffs still works, even if the fall's not fatal.
I got here from the ironpinapple review where he asked "Do you ever play a game where you feel like the developer hates you?" and I have to say, I disagree. Yes, it's a hard game, unfair at times, but never beyond the point of humor. More than that, it's actually courteous. In what I'll call the carwash/sen's fortress section where you're running across little beams with giant weapons swinging like pendulums across them, the unsafe places to stand are actually colored darker than normal tiles. This is the videogame equivalent of throwing your coat on a puddle for somebody. You also don't drop your currency on death like in dark souls, and healing is greatly simplified. You can sip your healing mug (flask) one percent at a time, so even at 99% health you won't waste anything by healing. It's only as difficult as it needs to be to justify that sort of thing. Aside from "buy it" my only advice would be to turn your bgm down to 75%, to ban yourself from using more than 50% stability, and to stack at least enough damage to kill hounds and red turrets in two hits. Great game for a weekend.
