izigame.me

If you thought that Dark Souls was cryptic with its mechanics then you should definitely check out this game. It doesn't explain anything to you besides basic controls like how to attack and harden (this game's equivalent of blocking). Then you are thrown into the world without any guidance. You are somewhat guided towards the hub but it still might not be clear where the entrance is. And when you find the hub, you get one remark to get the "gland" from the "temple". And that's it.
You pick up a seal but the game doesn't tell you what it's for. Turns out it's for parrying. But to effectively parry you need one bar of "resolve" (what is resolve? Turns out it's the meter above your health). After that you can riposte an enemy to get some health. But the game does nothing to explain ANY of this to you. That's just one example. (You can also parry when you have no resolve but you can't riposte.)

But if you can get past all of that and figure it out, you can actually appreciate some aspects of the game. The combat is quite weighty and slow-paced - you can't just wail on enemies since your stamina is quite limited, so you can only deal a couple of hits before you have to back off.
The main mechanic of the game is inhabiting different characters (shells). Each character has different stats (HP, stamina, resolve) and different abilities you can unlock. To unlock them you need two currencies - tar and glimpses. Tar is regular (like souls in Dark Souls) and is dropped upon death. And glimpses are bound to the shell (so when you switch shells, you need to collect new glimpses, which the game obviously did not explain, which in turn caused a short panic and confusion for me).

When you start exploring the first area, the swamp, you quickly realize that it's hard to navigate - there are no landmarks or anything to show you where you are currently. So you either roam around until you figure out which paths lead where, or you look up a guide online (and even then it might be hard to understand where you need to go). You also notice that there are crawlspaces that you can get into to get either to another area (like a shortcut) or to a small cave. And those crawlspaces have two transition screens for some reason... Also, you can't go backwards while you are crawling.
As you explore, you will find items that you can use. But to know what those items do you need first to use them at least once. That's another mechanic of the game - item familiarity. You use an item - you fill the familiarity bar, and when it's filled, you get an extra effect from using this item. Sounds interesting on paper, but in reality there are no interesting uses of this mechanic. The only one I can think of is a mushroom that first poisons you, but when you fill the familiarity bar, it grants you immunity to poison. But you only need to eat this mushroom two times to fill the bar...
You will also find other areas while exploring. These are the "temples" from which you have to get the "gland". At the start of those areas you can get a new weapon, but you have to defeat a tutorial boss that wields this weapon. This is also not explained by the game, so you could be confused about why you were transported to another arena and have to fight the tutorial boss again...
Those other areas (temples) are much more linear than the swamp. You have to get to the end, fight a boss, after which you can finally get a gland. But it's not all, because as soon as you get the gland, the temple becomes dark and stronger enemies spawn. And now you have to backtrack all the way to the entrance. And that's not the end, because the swamp also changed - it's covered in fog now, and all the enemies are replaced with one type - jumping monsters. And you have to go to the hub, and give the gland to the prisoner there. After that the swamp turns back to normal. As far as I know, once you pick up the gland, there is no turning back, and of course, the game doesn't warn you about this. So if you run out of healing items, then tough luck...
Although one area stands out - the fortress with obsidian-looking stones (there are names of the areas but the game doesn't really tell them to you). It's huge and very open at the start, you can run around freely while looking for switches that you need to progress. It also looks nice since it's not a cave unlike two other areas, the light reflects from the stones which looks nice and atmospheric. It seems like most of the team's effort went into this place.

Some other issues that I noticed:
1. Enemies can sometimes materialize in front of you out of thin air. They just spawn in front of you and start attacking. It's probably because the game despawns enemies to save resources but doesn't catch up to you when spawning them back in.
2. Status effects apply to you immediately instead of having a build-up. So you can get poisoned or set on fire instantly.
3. The game loves putting enemies around corners to ambush you. It would be fine if used sparingly. But it happens too often and quickly becomes annoying.

But even with all these quirks I still enjoyed the game. The process of figuring out the game mechanics by yourself reminded me of when I played Dark Souls 1 for the very first time. It's not as refined as it was here, but still very similar. And there was also a moment where everything you learned just "clicks" together and you start enjoying it, also like in Dark Souls.

The game is very rough, but even then it's worth picking up on sale if you are REALLY prepared to learn everything by yourself.