13.1 hours played
Written 11 days ago
Fantastic Metroidvania souls-like. This has become one of my favorite games of all time, I have beaten the game more times that I would like to admit (I had the Epic Games version, but got it here for the dlc, and save files do work from version to version)
It has fantastic artwork and music, the story is simple but easy to follow. The gameplay is fun and the controls are super responsive (I played it on keyboard and mouse) I never felt like Sorum ignored my inputs. The game is not that long but not that short either which encourages replayability to try the other classes and play styles. The Bosses are all really good, specially the end game ones (except for Heroic Eldritch Council, that one sucked) and I love that you can re-fight them whenever you like without having to go into ng+.
That being said there are some things that could have been better:
- Most npcs feel irrelevant, specially Nymeria and Grimguad, they are just trainers for the most part. I also don't like that you can just kill them with them posing no resistance when npcs like Vrael actually fight you back if you try to kill him. Although I understand that it's mostly because unique sprites and combat mechanic for them would have been tons of extra work.
- You can never have a run where you killed all the bosses, depending on your choice you are going to miss on some unless you do the boss rush mode from the dlc, and even then it will not registered as you defeated them.
- Crafting the immortalite stones and meteor scraps is just tedious, if you want to fully upgrade your gear to +10 get ready to farm the heroic version of the Bulwark, and then go to the shop to get armor scraps and then to Alistar to turn them into the upgrade material... I believe that instead of armor scraps the material required to craft immortalite stones should have been just 10 soul stones, because they literally become useless very fast, most of my playthroughs ended up with me holding 800+ soul stones, and while you can consume them for currency, you have to do it one at a time... ONE AT A TIME.
- Despite the Afterlife update, some areas still feel unfinished or that something is missing.
- Heroic Eldritch Council... the only boss I dread to fight every single time, I rather fight the true final boss on heroic 10 times before that one.
The DLC was a bit of a letdown, only get it if you really want to Fight ASH or a boss rush mode. It basically adds a new challenge zone, 1 new boss, an arena and some challenge modes. I feel that there was a huge missed opportunity here as the devs could have combine all of the content to make a new big level instead, Imagine if you start the dlc, you get the first Vados area with the mages, but when you enter the castle, surprise, it has been corrupted into that challenge leve "Halls of Cruelty" so you have to traverse it until half way through you are challenged by a "mini boss" being that Arena where you fight waves of enemies, then you continue into the second half of Halls of Cruelty and when you reach the top you face against the final boss of the dlc. But instead all that content has been split into other parts of the map.
Halls of Cruelty:
It's only challenging if you don't know about specific tricks you can use to basically negate all challenge from it, like equipping a dark weapon for the beetles, using the wings of exile on the final + gaian blood to infinitely fly up, and respec into the noble class to abuse the "Treasure Hunter" glitch that allows you to infinite heal. The only rewards for completing the area are 2 tomes for the final boss, an upgrade which I'm not sure it carries to NG+ and some seeds of knowledge.
Arena of Blood:
Good, but the boss rush skips some bosses, maybe for story reasons. And some of the waves of enemies are simply frustrating instead of fun (the slimes that poison you).
The challenge modes:
fun but not what I expected. The randomizer just gives you the same items over and over, aside from leaves of gaia and some unique named items there's not that many drops that are worth it, I was expecting boss weapons, auras, maybe unique weapon variants or at least the ocational fully upgraded weapon. The forced Heroics still require you to fight the regular versions of the bosses, I was under the impression you would have to fight the heroic ones from the get go. Also it seems that it doesn't work on some bosses at all, like the Wraith King. The fink mode is hilarious at first but that's about it. The challenge that breaks your gear upon dead is fun if you combine it with the randomizer. I wish there was other challenge modes though.
Vados and the Final Boss of the DLC:
The Vados area is just 1 screen with nothing going on aside from an annoying mage enemy. I feel that they could have reused assets to make a more interesting level. I was expecting something longer like the "???" level. The boss himself is good, his reward for defeating him is insanely good, funny enough the Heroic version of the fight is actually easier than the regular one, only because you have breaks between the phases, he's also super easy once you learn the timings for deflecting his attacks.
That's about it, despite its flaws it is still a fantastic game and you absolutely should give it a try.
