izigame.me

I kinda lost interest in this game way back during it's early access cycle. I was worried it was going to be a grindy, microtransaction filled mess. I only learned recently that it's been completely reworked and overhauled into a co-op action RPG. All the trailers and information I had seen on it made it look like a completely different and much more interesting game, but I was still apprehensive because I thought there were only 8 characters and that they'd only be able to use those same weapons shown off in the trailer(s) and that I'd get bored relatively quickly if I didn't want to use specific weapons and their associated characters.

Turns out, any character can use any weapon. Wanna play as that sword and shield guy with a gun? You can-wanna play the dark elf dual dagger character with a two handed axe instead? Do it. The weapons have their own abilities you can use after doing enough damage in combat and building up the charge on the ability. Different kinds of daggers have different abilities from each other and similarly with the different guns, sword and shield combos, and all other weapons.

Each character has 4 abilities you can unlock in pretty much any order you want and then begin upgrading them to define their core build and abilities used in battle, but then you can also equip weapons and accessories to further customize your build for each character. Maybe you wanna wield toxic daggers with Venomess to pair with her Venom based passive and use accessories to build her more for weapon damage.

The stats for each character are broken down into Max HP, Resilience, Weapon and Ability Power, Crit Rating and Power, Break Power, and Phys and Magic Defense. Different characters seem to have their stats weighted more towards what they're known for-the sword and shield guy, Wingrave having more Phys Defense than dual daggers dark elf Niss who has higher Crit Rating. That said, you can use Accessories and Echoes and other things to build those characters in various ways so that they likely don't play the same way as someone else's. Accessories can often come as part of a set of 3 and offer bonus effects if you have 2 or 3 of the set equipped-I'm using a set that boosts my HP with one of the pieces and 5% more by having 2/3 equipped for example. Then, I can also equip Echoes to those accessories and my weapon and my character to all further customize it.

The Echoes I don't fully understand still, but it seems like there are different types of slots and kinds of Echoes that can be inserted into those slots plus a cost associated with them and each piece of gear plus your character has their own Echo capacity that can be increased in various ways. So it's a juggle of making sure your stuff can equip the various Echoes you have and not upgrading them to the point where they can no longer be equipped cause they exceed the capacity of whatever gear or character they're equipped to. The Echoes are equipped to that accessory or character and will show that in your inventory when looking to adjust your loadouts so you can see who or what is using which Echo. There's also a cool Echo I got from Night's Maw, a side boss my buddy and I beat that unlocked Venomess as a playable character. With a cooldown of 30 seconds, when I take damage, an echo of the giant wurm that we beat will supposedly appear and damage enemies that hit me. I wonder what other cool abilities you can get from Echoes you can find and how in depth the Echo system is.

Speaking of depth, I didn't even mention the 3 pronged Talent tree every character has. You gain Talent points to spend in it by increasing your Wayfinder Rank, which itself is increased by leveling up your characters. (You can also increase your Echo capacity this way.) Depending on how you build your way down the Talent tree, you can get some pretty interesting things unlocked for some of your abilities. Down Venomess's "Tactics" side of the tree, you can make it so your Expose Weakness passive ability also causes the target to heal attackers for a small amount. Expose Weakness is a passive for Venomess that triggers off a critical hit and lasts for 6 seconds, making the enemy take 10% more damage from all sources for those 6 seconds and can be augmented thru that Talent tree to provide healing as well.

Then there's also an Affinity section for each character with 3 Affinities (Instinct, Discipline, and Focus) that you can level up in and not only unlock passive abilities related to each Affinity upon reaching certain levels, but it improves your stats and the stats provided by related Accessories.

Between the weapons, Talent tree, Accessories, and Affinities, there are a lot of ways to build your character and different things to be working towards beyond unlocking new characters and progressing thru the game or finding new decorations for your apartment in game.

It's also a pretty fun combat system and dungeon system. You can chain together light and heavy attacks along with your abilities in what becomes progressively more engaging and varied combat. I've been playing Venomess and learning to try and time my reloads during combat to keep attacking because I don't need to actually reload, I can just attack again if I press the button at the right time during the active reload-otherwise there's a slight delay before I can attack again or I just wait until the icon fully goes thru the reload bar. During that time, I usually have to dodge an enemy's attack, or I use her movement ability to get a better position and leave a cloud of poison clouds in my wake. Poison clouds that heal me if I stand in them. I also recently respecced my Talent tree for free to remove the grenade dropped on a dodge every 10 seconds to making enemies under the effect of Expose Weakness heal their attackers (me and my allies) a small amount and invested enough into her Discipline Affinity tree to unlock the 2nd perk in it that makes a poison eruption from her Master of Venoms passive spawn 3 tendrils that heal a neary ally at random. It currently all combines to me trying to build for increased crits to trigger Expose Weakness and trying to get 5 stacks of Venom on enemies to trigger a poison cloud and the Master of Venoms passive and keep healing myself and allies while my main healing ability for her is on cooldown.

The dungeons are available at the big purple breach in the main hub town or any of the breaches in the open world areas and you unlock more as you progress thru the story. There are a mix of traditional exploration dungeons, and shorter ones that are just a boss fight you can rerun for their drops that are used for various crafting items and/or upgrades on top of the regular xp and other rewards. They also can have at least one modifier applied with craftable (or dropped from enemies/chests) items called Imbuements. They add an extra layer of challenge to the dungeon, such as spawning gold piles in the dungeon, but increasing the damage you take based on how many piles you grab, but they also provide an xp boost on top of making the dungeon a bit harder overall and providing an effect based on the kind of Imbuement. Overall, they make it as easy and quick as possible to just hop into and repeat dungeons if you want and it's pretty quick to progress thru the main story to the point where you unlock the 2nd boss/dungeon and the playable Grendel character. I think Lora, the playable character with a transformation ability, came right after that with a dungeon of her own. The different dungeons can offer different resources, too-it's not just the boss fights that can come with rewards needed for crafting accessories and/or upgrading weapons/characters.