Ember Knights Review (Dominik)
Ember Knights is a stellar rogue-like experience. Just like Hades, progression between runs feels rewarding and fun. Though the story has much to be desired, Ember Knights has an array of choices based on your play style.
The weapons and their modifiers exemplify player choice and replayability. Each weapon feels unique, and even more so with the modifiers. This comes from a single-player experience, and one can only imagine the possibilities of a full squad.
The soul's system feels a little grindy, but with up to 30 perks to choose from, each player can choose the bonuses that best fit their play style. From greedy to safe, from proactive to reactive, there is genuinely a lot of variety. However, there is little reason to change from your usual choices.
When you finish the ember tree using the soul system, there is a safety net for using up your excess souls: Arlan's shop. It allows players to start off with a relic for a run. It makes the soul system worthwhile; compared to Hades, this system is superior.
Relics and skills consistently increase in option the more you play, each new unlock giving you the sense of "Oh, I wonder how I can use this". And with so many relics, you always feel like there's some new feature around the corner. The elephant in the room: The Skill Tablets. Where weapon modifiers succeed, the skill tablets fail. It feels pointless to upgrade them as you're never guaranteed to get a skill. They cost the same currency as weapon modifiers, so they're just left behind, and unlike the weapon modifiers, the upgrades are linear and do not impact the skills in any major way.
Cosmetic customisation is excellent.
Daily Runs. WOHOOO! They hit the nail on the head with this one. Competing with others over the best time on the daily with worthwhile soul rewards and cosmetics keeps early-game players engaged and provides a mix-up with the typical dungeon run.
The difficulty modifiers give a great way to spice up gameplay when you and your team are breezing through the game. However, there needs to be more incentive to go past 15 energy. I would have liked to have seen more currencies affected by the difficulty modifier without a max energy cap, so there's always a reason to go for more challenging runs.
Doom Turtle made something absolutely amazing, and I am truly thankful to have experienced such a fantastic game.