Some feedback
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2012 11:21 am
I'm writing this now after playing for about ten hours straight. I have plenty to say about this game, but I have these thoughts buzzing around my head and I wanted to get them out while they're fresh.
I'm loving this game. A very solid title. To come from four guys as a debut title that wouldn't take any of our money until a week or so before launch is amazing. Anybody that will sit still for a minute will here my glowing recommendation. This game is better than a fair number of big budget titles I've had the misfortune of playing.
Everything I mention here in the con section is intended as constructive criticism as opposed to simple ranting, and I hope it comes across that way.
Pros
-I love a game that challenges me. I hate having my hand held. I think I've died more times in this game than all the shooters released in the last five years combined. Combat takes some skill to win coming through mostly unscathed. A single enemy is no problem if you have room to maneuver. If you are stuck in a small area or there are multiple enemies things get tough fast. The puzzles are complex enough to make you think but not so hard you can never figure them out if you stick with it. Plenty of secrets. I doubt I've found them all so far and a few I have found were pretty well hidden.
-I'm rather impressed with the visuals. Textures and lightning are very nice. Even without native AA the game looks incredible for a $15. It fits the atmosphere wonderfully.
Cons
-The save/load system is unfinished. I know this is being worked on. Even so it's terrible not to have it. I mention this because it really should have been there at launch. No quicksave/quickload. I've had to redo a good hour or two of content because something bad happened and a save hadn't happened in a while. A quicksave button is easy to hit every so often without even thinking about it. The only time I'm aware of an autosave happening is when you activate a Life Crystal. That's not an autosave. There needs to be an autosave every so often. Options in the menu for 10/20/30 minutes would be nice. Also at every floor transition. Have it save in two or three slots instead of overwriting a single autosave location.
-At character creation when you hover over skills to see what they do you can't see the entire skill tree. I was rather confused for a while as to what each skill contained.
-Attribute increases through skills and items are not retroactive. This is making items that increase Vitality or Wisdom useless because the only thing those effect are your starting health and energy and level up bonuses respectively. Doing tests at a level show that they don't even count towards the bonus at level of having higher attribute scores. Or if they do it's so small as to be negligible. I don't know if attribute increases through skills help at level up or not. That is much harder to test. This really should be retroactive. If you wanted to be more complicated with it make skill increases not retroactive but help during level up and items retroactive while worn but not help during level up. That way skill increases are an investment in the future and items give you an immediate boost. Doing this though will make the higher tier skill increase less valuable since you'll be doing much less levelling with that bonus.
-Mages should start with some basic spell that is independent of any spell school. It is really easy to accidentally render your mage useless for the first few levels during character creation. Have the rune simply the "All" rune in the center and have it do half the damage of any of the starting elemental spells. This way a starting mage can contribute in some way to early fights. I got by this problem by giving him a spear, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a mage.
I'm loving this game. A very solid title. To come from four guys as a debut title that wouldn't take any of our money until a week or so before launch is amazing. Anybody that will sit still for a minute will here my glowing recommendation. This game is better than a fair number of big budget titles I've had the misfortune of playing.
Everything I mention here in the con section is intended as constructive criticism as opposed to simple ranting, and I hope it comes across that way.
Pros
-I love a game that challenges me. I hate having my hand held. I think I've died more times in this game than all the shooters released in the last five years combined. Combat takes some skill to win coming through mostly unscathed. A single enemy is no problem if you have room to maneuver. If you are stuck in a small area or there are multiple enemies things get tough fast. The puzzles are complex enough to make you think but not so hard you can never figure them out if you stick with it. Plenty of secrets. I doubt I've found them all so far and a few I have found were pretty well hidden.
-I'm rather impressed with the visuals. Textures and lightning are very nice. Even without native AA the game looks incredible for a $15. It fits the atmosphere wonderfully.
Cons
-The save/load system is unfinished. I know this is being worked on. Even so it's terrible not to have it. I mention this because it really should have been there at launch. No quicksave/quickload. I've had to redo a good hour or two of content because something bad happened and a save hadn't happened in a while. A quicksave button is easy to hit every so often without even thinking about it. The only time I'm aware of an autosave happening is when you activate a Life Crystal. That's not an autosave. There needs to be an autosave every so often. Options in the menu for 10/20/30 minutes would be nice. Also at every floor transition. Have it save in two or three slots instead of overwriting a single autosave location.
-At character creation when you hover over skills to see what they do you can't see the entire skill tree. I was rather confused for a while as to what each skill contained.
-Attribute increases through skills and items are not retroactive. This is making items that increase Vitality or Wisdom useless because the only thing those effect are your starting health and energy and level up bonuses respectively. Doing tests at a level show that they don't even count towards the bonus at level of having higher attribute scores. Or if they do it's so small as to be negligible. I don't know if attribute increases through skills help at level up or not. That is much harder to test. This really should be retroactive. If you wanted to be more complicated with it make skill increases not retroactive but help during level up and items retroactive while worn but not help during level up. That way skill increases are an investment in the future and items give you an immediate boost. Doing this though will make the higher tier skill increase less valuable since you'll be doing much less levelling with that bonus.
-Mages should start with some basic spell that is independent of any spell school. It is really easy to accidentally render your mage useless for the first few levels during character creation. Have the rune simply the "All" rune in the center and have it do half the damage of any of the starting elemental spells. This way a starting mage can contribute in some way to early fights. I got by this problem by giving him a spear, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a mage.