Perish Review (unmagical)
I've never played a game that's such a mixed bag as Perish. There's a lot the devs got right, but just about as much that they got wrong.
The Good:
Perish is beautiful. The world is polished and complete, the character models make sense and are crafted well, the variety of weapons all look good. The sound design is fine.
Perish has a decent pace and good progression. Unlocks are easy to come by and reasonable spaced, encouraging you to play the game to get them all.
There is a great variety of weapons, rings, crowns, consumables to unlock and enjoy.
The card system for leveling up your character each run works well, is easy to understand, and helps make each run unique.
Vast numbers of secrets strewn about the world from weapons, upgrades, and lore.
The Bad:
There are so many great unlocks that are fun to use and the game encourages you to find them all and try them all out, but you cannot win the game if you do. You have to play the entire game in one run using only the basic fire grenade and the initial broken sword (though you can find fragments in the world to repair it and make it an actually reasonable weapon). This isn't fun. Even though there are hints that you need to do this in the world and it becomes more obvious the later in the game you play, there's no greater disappointment then finishing the game the first time the "wrong" way. So then you begin a grind to do it right, and with each attempt taking around an hour and no way to skip ahead you are forced to drudge your self through the same chambers over and over again in the hope that you succeed.
Though this is a "rouge-lite" the order of the maps are the same every run. The actual goals on the maps differ, but not by much and many of the events take place in the same areas on the map. That means that though there is some slight variants the overall path you will run is going to be the same every attempt. This gets old pretty fast, and limits the overall replayability.
While I like the card mechanic to level up your character mid-run, there are relatively few cards worth taking.
BS deaths. Very few of the deaths I've suffered have been from obvious and preventable causes. It's routine that some enemy will spawn behind an object, you run past them, and get hit from behind by a projectile. The "Fire Boss" has a stage where your character is pulled forward into a pit and you lose control of your characters movement. This is health gated and does not interrupt the enemies attack during the phase change, so if he happens to be using his conical attack when the change happens you can lose all your health in a moment you have absolutely no control of. The enemies attacking hitboxes are not clear and don't always match the visual objects in the game. This problem seems to get worse later in the game (the Crab Boss's claws, the Crab Man's lunge, and the Belfry's scythe all extend physically more than they appear to).
Some of the challenges will replace your currently held weapon with a much more basic item (would you like to replace your god-killing sword for a single stick? You don't have a choice). This is particularly egregious in the sewers where not only do you lose your primary weapon you are plunged into almost complete blackness, only being able to see about 2 feet around you. When you lose your primary weapon you also lose any accompanying buffs it might provide.
Some of the secrets are required to beat the game.
You have to drm through Epic.
Occasional crashes. We've had a couple of runs where either the host or the client crashes and I have experienced crashes in single player as well (sometimes while fighting the final boss too). The game has no real pause, and leaving the game running in a safe room while stepping away for a snack or whatever can cause the game to soft lock.
The Weird:
This game had a demo. It was polished and well put together letting you run through 3 rooms and a boss fight. My friend and I replayed the demo multiple times, unlocking everything in it and generally having a good time. I bought this game day 1 release for both of us because of the demo. And then? Well, then the game was not as smooth. Movements where a little more choppy, there was slightly more lag, and the network connection was more fragile. I don't know how they managed to make the game worse than the initial demo, but they did.
I wanted to like this game. I really tried to like this game. I bought it day 1 because I liked the demo, but the game turned out to perform worse than the demo and did not expand on the rogue-lite aspects the demo provided. It's a beautiful, well put together linear game, and I believe the devs successfully built what they set out to build, but what they were envisioning was an incomplete, and ultimately poor vision. I work a full a time job, I can play for about an hour at time, the length of a single run. Perish, however, lies to you. It lies to you about it's goals, and it lies to you about how to accomplish them. When you find out it lies to you, you think about all the time you've wasted playing it up to that point, and if you choose to see it through to completion (as I did) you do so with the full knowledge that you are wasting your time.
If you wanna see the ending, look it up on YT. If you wanna 100% the game, go for it, but expect to spend around 30-40 hours. I would not bother with this game at full price.
Notes for the devs:
Please consider adding some other ways to orchestrate an Orphic run. Maybe permitting the weapons from the trials, by stashing some items in the world itself that can be found and used throughout that single run, or by adding cards that grant one of the items.
Consider adding different maps or layouts of maps in each "tier." I liked the visually different changes of each map, and I think it can be kept that tier2 is always dark and blood themed, tier3 is always fire themed and expansive, etc. But having a randomly allocated map per tier will drastically improve the replayabilty.
I would love the ability to drop a held item (like a stick or a hammer) and clear a room with the weapon I chose to enter the game with. This can also add some more strategy in things like the sewer level as you leave your light source in single spot, but can fight with your sword instead of a blunt piece of wood.
You can't use weapons in the spawn room. But if you go back and play the tutorial then return to the spawn room you can use weapons. This is a great bug, but really I should just be able to use the weapon in the spawn room always so I can try out new weapons before entering a run.