izigame.me

TLDR: Game is a 6/10, it feels like a prototype of dark souls games.
Honestly, this game feels like training for dark souls.
There are a lot of mechanics that feel similar to dark souls, but the game feels like it's being lenient on purpose. The parry is extremely blatant as to when you should time the parry to counter the enemy attack because the indicator for the parry flashes. When you dodge, it shows you near every frame you are invincible because when you dodge, you turn to stone for a small period of time and you are essentially invulnerable for the duration of it.
Every part of combat tells you when you are invincible, or countering, or when you are safe. This isn't a bad thing, you should just know what you are capable of pulling off in combat. There's no reason you shouldn't.
The problem is that near every enemy is easy to read. All enemies have a very limited moveset and there isn't a lot of enemy variety. At the starting area, you fight 4 enemies, and that is a stretch because I'm including frogs that poison you, and they are only there to remind you to harden. You fight weak foot soldiers that give huge telegraphs for every attack, slightly more durable crossbow users, and harder large enemies that can advance and hit you for large damage at the same time, but after that you know exactly what they are gonna do.
When you complete the first objective, fog rolls in and you get these weird human-like monster enemies replacing all base enemies. However, there is literally only one enemy type that replaces them. These monsters are all literally identical. If you learn how they work, you are essentially invincible to them because of your invincible dodge and invincible harden ability. The only time it gets slightly difficult is when you fight these large hammer enemies cuz they can one shot you if you aren't careful, and bosses which have a lot of health. That's it.
On top of that, it takes the bloodborne approach to healing, where you need to farm healing items, rather than giving you your healing through a consistent healing device you regenerate at a base of sorts, that scales in strength to match the progressing game difficulty. THIS SUCKS ACTUALLY. It encourages you to kill enemies that you already know how to fight just for the sake of running through areas to collect healing mushrooms, or collect tar (in game currency) to sell for rat meat you can eat to heal.
The biggest failing of this game is the enemy combat. If you never get impatient, you will stomp every non-boss enemy. They can't withstand you hitting LT to harden and you are actually invulnerable the entire time you hold LT. This game will only punish your mistakes if you attack and dodge, never if you harden, because it's literally free damage avoidance. There is only one constraint for hardening, which is the 5 seconds after hardening where you can't harden. Very few enemies will aggressively follow up a combo to punish you for flagrant harden abuse, so you can rip them to shreds by just backing up, waiting for harden to cooldown, and just use it again. And by very few enemies, I mean exactly 2 normal enemies and bosses. I'm serious, I can only think of 2 enemy types that punishes you for hardening flagrantly.
If you don't care about abusing game mechanics, you will crush this game.
The starting area past the tutorial is a maze. It all looks the same, it's just a big forest with some fog with only 4 enemies in it. You only see a difference in variety when you go to one of only 3 "temples" or whatever, or after you beat one and have to fight the same enemy 20+ times with no variety. It feels like a Zelda game, where you enter these somewhat closed off areas with limited enemy variety. Zelda has something like 8 dungeons, though, and a lot of thought went into the map layout to provide additional challenge. There are no difficult areas based on the layout in this game, except for falling behind a rock and having to use Tainted Nektar and then the Tarnished Mask, all to make sure you don't lose anything for the game literally trapping you because of shit layout. Leading a player into a situation where they need to rely on consumable items to teleport you back to the Sester isn't hard, it's an arbitrary bullshit requirement that is an actual noob trap. IT ISN'T FUN.
And beyond the layout and the normal enemies, bosses have limited movepools. This includes the final boss. You will study these bosses for 2 minutes and understand them immediately, they are not complex. They all have phases somewhat, but the movepools are ALWAYS limited, so you will dissect them in no time at all.
Overall, it is a game with a lot of promise that needs to improve on a few major elements for a souls-like. You have the skeleton of a dark souls game, you do not have an actual dark souls game. It's just missing too much.
Also, learning about items through using them is very interesting. You learn more about the lore through doing this and you get a large boost for using the same item repeatedly, and that's cool, but I didn't even use most items because hardening, dodging, and attacking was all I ever needed to beat this game.
I will say, this game tells you everything you absolutely need to know. It tells you how to dodge, attack, parry, strong attack, fall attack, all abilities are explained decently, even if they don't give exact numbers. In this regard, the game is easy to get into. You will probably lose the first boss fight in the game, but it isn't required to beat. Again, the game is VERY lenient and will make sure you have ample time to understand the mechanics before you fight any bosses.
I would suggest this game as kind of a 6/10. It has some polish here and there, and some fun moments (like the instruments), but it's confusing, non-explanational, and doesn't justify that completely with good gameplay. Get this game on sale if you intend to get into additional souls-likes in the future.