izigame.me

The gameplay it self is pretty fun and fluid. I spent almost 5 hours in the EA release of the game running around, but nothing really stood out as trendsetting or groundbreaking in any way. It felt like it lacked it's own thing to set it apart from other games in the same genre, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. Sure, it's not great, but it's not terrible. I'd say this a very middle of the road experience, but hopefully the full release will actually show us something good, but onto my review:
The game does have a dark fantasy vibe, but I wish we'd stop seeing the trend of "Dark fantasy = plagues, cultists, a decaying city full of body piles, and rats." Come up with something original for a change. Dark fantasy is such a broad and large genre, and honestly we don't see enough games where they actually put a spin on it and come up with something cool other than plagues and cultists. Sure, that's a large part of the genre, but it's not the whole thing. If anything, since the dark fantasy genre isn't explored as much as others, you can come up with some really cool stuff and set a whole new trend.
I mentioned that I spent about 5 hours running around in the EA build. That's because I kept getting lost. Most people would probably be able to put this entire game to an end after about 2.5 hours max in it's current state. I talk about it a little later in my review, but this game gives you very little sense of direction. That's not a bad thing, but when everything is cryptic and you're in a world where you have to find every single little key item to progress the game, it becomes heavily repetitive and areas start to bleed together. I spent about 2 hours today in swamps, for instance, looking for 2 gears and 2 keys. I backtracked through the swamp about 6 times looking in each building again and again and, you guessed it, again. I couldn't find anything. Then I went into a building I had searched a million times because I kept hearing noises and knew something had to be there, only to find a very small lever tucked away in the corner of the room. The catch? The lever blended in with the wall, and I have no doubt that everyone who played through never saw it until they went through a million different times.
The weapons were fun, but felt like they lacked punch, and there wasn't a huge variety of them either. I made it through the game with just the barb launcher and wrist crossbow. I think I used the sword once and felt that the melee combat was a weak point of the game since the enemies can just attack through your attack and in a game like this, trading like that is just a waste. It's all about keeping your distance when at any time an enemy can just one shot you.
You also get a few spells, though I rarely used them because, again, they lack punch. I used the fire spell and the lightening spell and thought to myself "If I were a mage and my magic was this weak, I'd look for another profession." I'm pretty sure I saw 2 other spells for sale that I didn't use, so maybe they had some more effect, but honestly, the ballistic weapons were so much better that I didn't even think twice about using the spells.
The stamina system is spot on for what I expected in this kind of game, but it doesn't entirely work in the game's favor. Especially when jumping costs so much stamina in a game with platforming. It also comes back pretty slowly, so you'll be standing there for about 15 seconds just twiddling your thumbs, waiting to be able to take the next few jumps.
Enemy variety was lacking. I kept encountering the same enemies all throughout the areas, which are vastly different, so you'd think you'd have some new enemies. The roadmap says there are 13 types of enemies, but they all feel like they are re-skins of each other. You have your basic enemies that you only encounter in groups like zombies and skeletons, then you have your spell casters/ranged and your brutes. And don't forget your dog-type enemies.
The areas, especially the castle/manor, are very beautiful despite the art design. Cruxfirth is a bit lacking, as there's really on two reasons to even be there and those are the blacksmith and the arcane shop. It feels like they shoehorned in side quests to make some of the citizens have more worth, but honestly, I could have done without a small, dead city and instead just would have just liked to seen a crafting/upgrade system you could do yourself from your inventory. Especially since it's easy to get lost and the map feels very counter-intuitive at times. You'll have to slog through swamps just to figure out you went the wrong way and have to slog all the way back through just so you can go to the city to upgrade your weapon just to have to head back out into the swamp and suffer all over again.
The boss fights felt broken and were probably the weakest point of the game in my opinion. They felt like they were a last ditch effort to actually include a bit of challenge to the game. If you can call lobbing a ton of barbs at the bosses a challenge. They aren't explained very well, and if I'm remembering correctly, as it has been quite some time since I fought the Archivist, utterly annoying with how they work. I just beat the final boss of the EA build of the game, and it was broken as hell. I kept getting frozen in place and the boss would lose interest and walk across the map, leaving me with no choice but to restart it. It took about 5 tries to actually beat it, and it isn't because I died to anything. It's because the game kept breaking.
Because of games like this though, I'll have to pass on any game that has an EA phase anymore, as I'm noticing I'm paying premium prices for boring, lackluster slogs that feel like they're never actually going to come to fruition. For instance, this game has been in EA for almost 3 years now and if it isn't the best game that I've played in the past 5 years after the full release on the 23rd, I'll be sorely disappointed. It also doesn't help that the game got the most attention and updates in 2022 and they left us hanging all of 2023 with no updates,leaving the vast majority of us who played this in the dark.
In it's current state, I couldn't really recommend it unless you're a hardcore fan of games like these. I'm sure with a bit of looking, you could find something better for the price. Of course, with the full release coming in just 2 weeks, I'm sure I'll revise this and have a better insight to guide people into buying or passing on this game.