izigame.me

I would love to give this game a whole-hearted recommendation as a tough as nails rpg roguelike but there are currently too many QoL issues and hangups in the core system at the moment. The main one is a question of what the goal of the game is. Is it trying to be a difficult rpg with a brutal combat system or a punishing roguelike with an addicting gameplay loop.
RNG environments and encounters are perfectly fine, but not so much with a heavily rng combat system. There's no reason to have so many percentage based mechanics in a system that asks the player to be cautious and deliberate. An encounter with a singular common brigand for instance could result in either a flawless kill or a complete comedy of errors death based solely on accuracy chance alone. Damage could be reduced by that success percentage with a cap at 100% instead of a binary success or fail roll and the end result wouldn't change and that's hardly the only way to reduce the rng factor. There are dozens of other effects like block/stagger/confuse etc. that also work similarly and it makes combat feel less like strategy and more like flavored gambling, we can't still be stuck using the same janky systems from the days of Betrayal at Krondor If the goal is to learn from my deaths then the lesson I'm taking away 90% of the time shouldn't be "Have better luck"

Nothing about the rest of the game makes dying feel like the end of a run and beginning of a new one because there are so many of the classic dialogue heavy quests, massive openworld, and xp grind elements of a traditional rpg. There is so much that feels like backtracking on death because of the huge open areas and dense dialogue boxes.
Rather than keep rambling I'm just going to list out the things I would want to see implemented before early access ends.
-Less rng in the combat system, meters/thresholds/additional resource bars, w/e it is that changes a 12% block chance to guaranteed damage reduction of an equivalent amount.
-Streamline the save system, it can still be restrictive but even just being a town only menu would be a huge step up from renting a room to use a bed to sleep to save.
- Smooth the out of combat movement, just because it's still turn based doesn't mean it can't feel smooth to move around. maybe faster and more consistent animation hops. If I click a large distance with mouse there's a chance I get turbo F'd and that does not make moving feel good when the other options are wasd or spam click
-less quests but more interesting quests. Instead of "Gather these herbs and swords" maybe a multi-part mayoral election thing for example. I might have talked to the wrong people but I don't know anyone who likes the mmo style quest system of having a dozen "gather a couple things and come back" no matter the background flavor.
-The map is somewhat empty, there doesn't need to be a thing on every tile but I shouldn't be able to spend 20 minutes following the road and have the most interesting thing be another pack of wolves. Maybe add a bunch of interesting events that randomly spawn when you zone, whatever makes the map feel like empty.
I'm writing this review at 2am because I was busy playing the game so I'd say I don't dislike the game it just has a couple things that drag me out of the experience and makes it less fun in a way I can't recommend.