izigame.me

Do (tentatively) recommend! Only if it's on sale, though. The current gameplay experience isn't bad, but given its... quirks... I don't think it's worth full price.
- Maps aren't interconnected anymore, it's all accessed via a main hub a la Demon's Souls. That being said, I don't like how every time you go back to the hub, you're placed so far away from the main portal. You also cannot warp between areas without returning to the main hub.
- There is no Bell of Return equivalent; if you need to get back to the hub quickly, your best bet is to just exit to main menu and reload. Otherwise, have fun running around the map!
- Enemies are obscenely aggressive, and any enemy that blocks does not take chip damage. Even knights in the first area that only block with a sword don't take chip damage from a vertical bolt of lightning. The only "chip damage" that I've seen that makes it through is status damage, like from the ice stave's icicle missiles. And that sucks, because the player does take chip damage, in addition to status damage from enemies while blocking. That disparity isn't good.
- Knockback is crazy. If you thought being constantly command-grabbed by Spindlebeasts in Sanctuary was bad, wait until you see two or three enemies (or a mage) posted up on a ledge that you have to get up onto in order to progress, and each of them are likely to chain attack you with staggered animations so the only thing you can do is roll, or knock you right back off the ledge, often killing you. May the gods have mercy upon you if you have no ranged options.
- Mages, the main big bad type in the game, roam the map. Which is fine. What's not fine is their endlessly summoned fodder having crazy amounts of health, damage, and knockback, particularly when multiple mages can inhabit the same space. There is friendly fire, which helps, but it's still an absolute fustercluck.
- The NPC quests are actually pretty nice! I love the idea of following an NPC around the different maps and it culminating in a unique boss fight that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. I do wish you actually got more than just armor from the NPCs that turn into bosses. It also feels like armor and weapons from enemy drops aren't nearly as varied as they were in Sanctuary? Nearly everything of substance is crafted from mages, which tracks, because they're the big bad and it feeds the Monster Hunter style gameplay loop, but given how exploration heavy the game is, I'd have loved more non-mage weapon and armor options.
- Weapons have built-in, unchangeable skills/spells. Gone are the days of having incantations on your toolbelt like in Sanctuary. Your only method of mix-and-matching is by equipping two different weapons, and that doesn't go too far. In addition, you need to invest points into skills to use the weapon type and the skill type that the weapon uses (either Forbidden Glyphs or Divine Glyphs). So you have to grind and invest in an absolute minimum of three different skill trees up to Class 5 in order to be the most effective with your chosen weapon type and your chosen armor type. Woe betide you if you decide you want to use a specific weapon's divine glyphs if you didn't spec for it.
- Speaking of weapons, the disparity in weapon scaling is so... awful. There are absolute tons of weapons with E, D, or C in scaling and extremely few with S in most weapon types. Some weapon info for you, from the wiki.
1) Staves - 13 weapons, none of them have S scaling.
2) Bludgeons - 12 weapons, and SIX of them have S scaling in strength
3) Glaives - 9 weapons; one of them has S scaling in dexterity, and another has S scaling in both dexterity and strength.
4) Greatblade - 13 weapons, and only one of them has S scaling at all, in both strength and conviction.
5) Greathammer - 10 weapons; none of them have S scaling, and only one has A scaling.
6) Halfspear - 13 weapons and only one of them has an A scaling in dexterity, no S scaling in sight.
7) Highblades (katanas) - 9 weapons, and only one of them has A scaling in dexterity. And that one has no special abilities.
8) Rapiers - 9 weapons, and not one of them even has A in dexterity scaling.
9) Scythes - 9 weapons, and all of them have worse than B scaling.
10) Twindagger - 9; 3 of them have S scaling, and two of those have no runic art abilities. The third's runic art just increases attack damage.
11) Two-hander - 13 weapons and none of them have A scaling. The highest is B on a weapon that has no runic arts.
12) Whips - 9 weapons, there's FIVE with S scaling.
13) Ranged weapons (which vary in form but they all go in the same slot) - roughly 36 weapons, only two have S scaling in a stat, one in strength and one in luck.
This game absolutely NEEDS an intensive, lovingly crafted balance patch, like the one Sanctuary got. I like the game! It's fun, unique enough, and the lore is interesting with a couple of nice twists... But the final boss (and many others) should not be able to be stunlocked to death with one of the first weapons you get in the game. Early game weapons shouldn't be nearly that powerful compared to later game weapons.
But on the other side of that coin, the bosses shouldn't need to be stunlocked for the player to feel like they have a chance, given some of the questionable hitboxes and obscenely aggressive enemy behavior that allows for some frustrating experiences.
Is the game good? Yeah, I think so. But it doesn't feel done. It needs rebalancing to a high degree.