The Legend of Grinda
This game had all the right parts; the heart is there too but IMO, it requires a lot more polish. Every quest, even the mainline progression is basically just a series of back and forth fetch jobs strewn together. Nothing you do impacts the world as well, making it ultimately lifeless in spite of the how beautiful the environ appears overall. Nutshelling it, here are its pros and cons:
PROS
- Combat is decent. It's a Zelda clone and it shows greatly here with its obvious BOTW/Ocarina of time flairs.
- The dungeons are fine, especially the ones involved for the main quest. There are smaller 'meh' ones that were a chip off the classic Zelda block and bigger ones that hold most of the puzzle mechanics to them.
- Your equipment are all visible: weapons, armors, and relics galore. You see and feel your character's progression.
- The open world take is serviceable, albeit small. You'll run out of things to do quickly since there are no mini games to distract.
CONS
- Really grindy. Some advanced materials are hard to come by so you farm them in rather terrible spots.
- Every quest is either a fetch or slay-a-dozen type. It all feels like a depressing MMO because of this. You also talk to the same unmoving quest-giver designated per area.
- The towns are of the dead, cardboard variety. There are no memorable NPCs or events.
- It's ridiculously short with no NG+ feature except for that speed-run mode added reminiscent of Castlevania's bonus character mode.
- The story is just one giant exposition dump. It's also not that interesting IMO. The world does not feel as oppressed as it should be.
Credit where credit is due, this was created by a group of four or five. I got it during a sale because I thought it looked interesting.