izigame.me

Before I start, I want to say I'm playing this on Master difficulty (highest difficulty) and have beaten the game on Master difficulty. Some collectibles are locked behind challenge trials. That'd be fine if the game didn't also forced me to complete the trials with multiple bonus conditions like clear within a certain time limit, no heal, or don't get hit. I get it rewards you with something somewhat useful, but why does it feel forced towards 100% collectible compared to other games? I personally don't like it and think the trials with bonus conditions are just extra stuff like for achievements hunters/completionists, not forced to get 100% collectibles. Even though, thankfully, they aren't required for full achievements. But for my own personal completion, it is tedious and feel like a grind. I like challenging games and beaten many difficult and challenging games but these trials are more like frustration than challenging. Like fighting the bosses wasn't already challenging enough. And I thought I can just turn down the difficulty for these collectible trials. But you can't turn down the difficulty from Master to Story Mode because you can't change it back to Master once confirmed. It is a one way difficulty change. The trials aren't the only challenge in the game. There are challenge chests that have only one main conditions like defeat all enemies while within the time limit or don't get hit. This kind of difficulty challenges also feel like it forced you have specific charms to even make it possible to clear, specifically any charms that increases your damage output, usually from your staff since you'll be bonking enemies a lot throughout the game. Also you'll be spamming bomb + bow/arrow just to boost your staff damage once you get the skill that increase staff damage on enemies who took damage from the bomb. And Rot Infused Arrow because it easily hit more than one enemies more reliably when you line up the shot. I suck at parrying in nearly any games with this mechanic and am more of a hit and dodge kind of player. But the challenges and trials feel like it makes parrying mandatory and forced. There are many ways to get heavily reward for parrying from charms and skill tree, but there are none for dodging and iframing through attacks. Dodge feels like 50/50 at times, some times it works sometimes I'm sure I dodged the moment an enemy attack but I still get hit anyways. Sometimes the parry don't even work at all and when it does is because I just got lucky. Oh, and you're punished for failing too many parry. I'm not talking about just taking damage but when you try to parry, and you fail to parry you'll just block the attack instead and you can't block or parry anymore because the parry is tied to the block gauge. When your block gauge is depleted, you have to wait a bit to parry again. Also Spirit Dash is tied to your block gauge as well so that's fkin fun /s. There are some enemies/boss that are REALLY not fun to fight. I'm talking about the bosses like Stone Guardian, Shrine Guardian, Mage, and any fight that endlessly spawn minor enemies. Not only do you now have to worry about fighting the boss but you have to worry about 2+ other enemies on the battle field that keeps on respawning. It is ANNOYING and FRUSTRATING. This is why Souls-like games rarely ever have a boss fight with endless adds spawning that damage you for 50% or more of your HP. There is no traditional way to heal in this game like with a potion. There are these flowers that you need at least 1 Courage charge to use. Usually they'll just give you only two, not sure because it is part of the difficulty. Lock-on sucks in this game because every time you go aim mode and move to aim, it will unlock-on and you can't lock-on or unlock-on during any actions beside strafing moving around (not sprinting). When I got far enough in the game, for the whole game I just equip the charm (Reckless Strength) that increase the staff damage but you also take more damage. A bit or a extra challenge but only because I felt like my damage is that of a wet noodle. The Spirit Dash is kind of OP. It'll usually stagger anything it hits and cancel any animation whoever you hit is doing. The game is actually fairly short for a 40 USD game if you're not playing on Master difficulty and not bothered to go for Meditation, charm, and Rot collecting. Explore around the game to go fight enemies and feed the Rots so you can gain points and use them to unlock new abilities. Those are the only way to get stronger. There is no raw stats and numbers. Also controlling the Rot Cloud with mouse feels really bad because of how slow they move and how you'll have to reset the mouse position very often. Lastly, this game have performance issues and it isn't because of my PC. Usually I wouldn't recognize a few frames delay or w/e tf here and there. But during combat and even outside combat, there are very noticeable performance issues
Besides that, the music, pixar style, and story are really good. Also thank god there is no 2nd HP bar phase two for any of the bosses in this game. There are some bosses I actually do enjoy like Warrior Over all, I give it a 7/10. 6/10 in terms of my own personal enjoyment and 8/10 everything else non-combat related. Since Steam only give a recommend or not recommend... I'm just leaning towards not recommend. I'm not saying the game is bad all together because of the trials BS and other flaws. I recommend it if you don't care about the challenge or collecting everything aspect of the game. The combat is just too simplistic and frustratingly bad but everything else non-combat and challenge related did the heavy lifting.