izigame.me

TL:DR - I strongly advise avoiding this game unless there are major redesigns, or you can pick it up for ~5-10$ on a sale.
This game has gotten a lot of flack about being "too difficult", so I decided to finally play through it since it's close to full release now.
I can tell you now after playing through the whole game, it is not simply difficulty that is the problem here. Among many issues, difficulty scaling is one of the bigger ones, however. There are really only two difficulties in this game; hard for the first 30 minutes, and mind numbingly easy for the remainder. (Other than perhaps the black dragon, which has I think the only unique mechanic in any fight).
Here are a few things I liked about the game, followed by things I did not like.
The good -
- The freedom to roam around and discover random things is pretty satisfying.
- There are lots of weapons, items & gear that have unique models and effects. I was pretty impressed with that for a smaller game.
- The world is pretty well fleshed out. Nothing groundbreaking, but there is a lot going on.
- The feel of the game is pretty great, other than combat. It really has a nostalgic 90's/early 2000's style that I am a fan of.
- The city design and all of the game art is great.

The Meh -
- Combat is not great, but it is fine for the most part.
- companions. They exist, I guess? there is no real dialogue or relationship growth, so they're more like mindless summons than actual characters. Yes, I did each of the four companion quests for the "Good" companions.
The bad-
- the night/day cycle is novel, but does not work in actual gameplay. In reality, all it does is force the player to visit a location, do their rounds and grab all the quests, then leave that location, circle it a few times until night time, then re-enter and repeat the exact same thing. FOR EVERY SINGLE POI! There are even several quests that have you talk to a "day" NPC, then leave the town, wait til night, return and talk to a "night" NPC, then leave the town AGAIN and wait until day, then return and talk to the SAME DAY NPC again. Bizarre quest design.
- The difficulty scaling (Or lack thereof) is a huge problem. Those little goblins, zombies and bugs you fight at the very beginning of the game will still be the same things you are fighting at the end, they just throw a few more at you in each fighting area. Once you level up and/or get a companion, fighting areas are pretty trivial.
- Item levels and balance. This part of the game feels very very early access. There were several items I found about halfway through my playthrough that made me virtually invincible for the rest of the game, and nothing else came close.
- Bounties are absolutely worthless. They just clutter up your quest log for practically no reward. We're talking like 5-10% of what you can get for selling like a necklace or shield you can loot from a random roaming enemy.
- skill points are entirely linear. There is no variation in character growth. You cannot build anything other than a basic fighter. You can move his stats around slightly with gear, but it's fairly generic.
- abilities are mostly trash. Either the abilities themselves are worthless, or they don't scale correctly throughout the game. By the time I was really using them, they were doing maybe a quarter of a light attack's worth of damage. The only good ones were heals and maybe summons, but the summons are too slow to keep up with you, so they become worthless after about the first use.
- Abilities cannot be rebound to different keys without a full respec. Either i totally missed how to do this, or having to respec is just an annoying mechanic.
- A lot of the quests have very poor instructions and/or were missing quest markers.
- A lot of the quest design involved clearing a "fighting area" many many times over and over again, only to pick up another quest a moment later that made me go back to that same area and repeat it again multiple times.
- The drop rate on certain quest items is too low. Looking at you, Ratkin Entrails.
- You're unable to check your quest log or items/character sheet in fighting areas. this is irritating because I would like to check progress.
- What is the point of your stronghold? I upgraded everything and never ended up finding a use for it at all.
- Cooking is basically pointless as you won't need any buffs or healing outside of abilities by the time you have any recipes.
- Crafting is, again, mostly useless other than maaaaybe one thing you can make at the dragonbone forge.
- Alchemy. Never needed it at all. After the I picked up the first healing ability, I never used a healing potion in combat again.
- There is no variation in play style, really. You can't be an archer or a mage due to abilities scaling so badly.
- Repairing/Item condition. This is another case of something being hard to keep up with at the beginning, then trivial after you level up a few times
- the game is entirely linear. There are no choices or branching paths to speak of. If the game wasn't being sold for 35$, I probably would let this one slide.
I could write a lot more here, but no one's gonna read this far anyway. Overall, I DO NOT RECOMMEND this game without some serious re-balancing and redesign of some core features in the game. unless you can pick this up for like 5-10$, stay away.
Edit in response to Dev comment: The game is linear for any average player. What I do in a single game is what I will experience, and my actions did not have any intentional, known effect on that. I did not CHOOSE what course things would take. I just did quests as they were given to me. There were no apparent branching paths to see, so for all intents and purposes to a player, it is linear in my opinion. I would say the ONLY real choice is at character creation when you select your alignment.
As for item scaling. I disagree here as well. In playing through the game and looking at older comments on the wiki and steam threads, I saw people from 2 years back saying the same items I found overpowered now were overpowered then. If it's been two years of that, I doubt that will be resolved before full release in a month.
I'm not trying to be harsh, but it is a 35$ game and think potential buyers should be aware of the current issues. I very much respect devs who create unique games and try different routes, but this one just doesn't click for that price.