izigame.me

I had Graven on my wishlist for years now. I thought the game looked cool. And tried to be optimistic about mixed reviews because most of them were just complaining about long early access and low content updates frequency. I was waiting for a full release to give this game a shot myself.
Unfortunately, it didn't live up to any expectations. Even the lowest ones.
Yes, it does look cool - the art style is awesome, the atmosphere is great and it's interesting to explore around.
Everything's good in the sound and music department as well. No complaints there.
Where the game does fall short is the gameplay.
It is a prime example of "where the f*ck do I go?" And I'm not usually the one to complain about that sort of things. I'm fairly good at orienting in 3d spaces and game environments. However, Graven doesn't even tell you which way is the progress.
There's no map, no indicators. Nothing in the dialogues or a diary/quest log. The level design doesn't lead the player either. I spent almost an hour just running around trying to find a door that opened somewhere randomly after I lit the lighthouse. I came back to the main hub, checked all the other exits - everything's closed. I went to the quest giver - he wasn't there. After a bit I found him at a completely different location. He gave me an item... that didn't make any diference and doesn't help with progression in any way, and didn't tell me where I should go next.
After some more running around, I resorted to stacking barrels to make a pyramid so I could try and get over some wall to see if maybe I can progress somehow that way. Nope.
In the end, after I returned to the hub once more... one of the exits, that was previously closed when I checked the last time, and was waaaaaaaaaaaaay outside of the view and in the furthest possible direction from the quest giver - was now open.
What made it worse is that the game re-spawned all the enemies and barricades and other stuff that I cleared the day before. So I had to do it all over again just to find one random door that opened somewhere on the map.
The combat is alright. However... for some reason there's a stamina "system". And by "system" I mean that it doesn't do anything except getting in the way of player playing the game. It has no bearing on gameplay whatsoever. It just prevents you from sprinting and jumping "too much" for no reason. And it takes 20 seconds to regenerate!
The game itself is unpolished and sometimes buggy. It has an identity crysis and doesn't know what it wants to be. Why is there an inventory? Why can I only have couple weapons bound on my hotbar if I can just pause the game whenever I please and swap weapons anyway? Why is there an aforementioned stamina?
There is a cool title screen where the main character is about to strike monsters with lightning from his staff and magic book. But in the game spells are all but useless in combat. And I really REALLY tried to make them work. Yes, I can sometimes explode gas clouds with fire spell... But that's pretty much the only useful thing I could get from spells during the fight. They barely do any damage and chew through mana quickly.
Every single encounter is just "strafe and hit with stick" or "backpedal and shoot". The "mighty foot" doesn't do anything. The damage sucks and it doesn't even push enemies away properly. Just shoves them back a little. Even less than a default attack with a staff.
Graven also doesn't respect player's time. There's no manual saves. There are scummy "gotcha!" death traps that punish you by respawning on checkpoint and taking away your gold. And no, you can't get it back like in dark souls. Sometimes I was wondering "can I jump there?" But I wasn't goint to check becuse I can't just save and see if there's a secret or an instant death.
The game repeats multiple times - when starting a new game and in the guide/journal - that "this is a DIFFICULT game!" That's not an excuse. I've played a lot of difficult games and rarely felt the way as I did here.
In short, Graven is a very cool looking game with an identity crysis and boring gameplay. Disappointing.