izigame.me

TL;DR - Unlike most other roguelikes, this game currently punishes players for playing higher difficulties. Issues of rng / poor run-seeds are large enough to kill a lot of the joy from engaging in an otherwise somewhat challenging game. Playing solo is significantly worse (also more difficult, but mostly worse) than playing with friends. Melee characters are playing dark souls except with way too many melee attacks to dash away from, and every character is equally handicapped by long attack animations that can (mostly) only be cancelled by your (baseline) one dash.
Problems with Ravenswatch;
For a person experienced in roguelikes, you can beat the first two difficulties in less than 5 runs. That in and of itself is fine, but it means that you quickly get introduced to grating issues in higher difficulties that you might not otherwise have seen.
(1) Whenever you start a run, you get a choice of 4 talents (same 4 talents each time). Once you’re past the first initial ~5 hours of gameplay you are heavily incentivised to reroll your seed continuously until you get your preferred talent in a higher rarity.
Why? Because each talent can be of epic quality, which is typically ~50% better than common quality. If that’s an offensive talent, it becomes such a big timesave that you have to get it. Why? Because every second counts as each chapter (out of 3 total in current EA) has a time limit of ~15-20 minutes. The issue of rerolling could be greatly alleviated by simply locking the rarity of each starting talent to be the same rarity each run.
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(2) One of the three possible “quests” in the first chapter is vastly more difficult than the other two due to how the objective is designed. In each quest, you have to defend a building. The straw hut is circular (unlike the rest), and hence mobs spawn around it. You can only defend one side at once. A solo player cannot consistently complete the quest on their own in higher difficulties. If you get the straw hut quest, there’s no point in attempting it. So you lose out on vast amounts of XP and a (high chance of a) legendary item. So you restart the run.
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(3) The time limit heavily incentivises solo players to not even attempt quests in chapter 2 or 3. Because they are so time consuming that you would stand to gain more from simply scouring the rest of the map within the given time of 15-20 minutes. So in higher difficulties you never interact with two out of five bosses in each run.
If you ever fail any event (i.e. arenas with a less than 60 seconds time limit), you don’t gain anything extra besides the small amount of xp from killing mobs. Not lower rewards, no pity price. Nothing. So you are also incentivised to not do time-based events, unless the rest of the map has been cleared.
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(4) Higher difficulties have an XP gathering penalty (-10% / -20% / -30%). Meaning that your character is strictly WEAKER in higher difficulties. On nightmare (-20%), you can just barely get the max amount of talents before the 3rd chapter boss if you play perfectly. In the full version of the game, this might not matter as much. But currently you’re doing the “final” boss of the game with less and less synergies as you progress through the difficulties.
Personally, I prefer when roguelikes increase the challenge of the enemies I face rather than just weaken my character. A similar issue is found in another game by the developers (Curse of the Dead Gods), but in this game you don’t even get a bonus of any kind in return for losing 20% xp. There is no “kiss” in this “kiss/curse” mechanic. This could, however, be a strong bias from my side because I did not especially enjoy similar systems in other, critically acclaimed roguelikes (such as most of the "heat" system in Hades, at least the parts that strictly weaken the player character).
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(5) The mechanic of the ravens for fast travel is immensely more powerful when you play with friends. In practice you can gather more resources within the time limit, as you split people up across the map and can guarantee that you don’t miss any events. The game becomes exponentially easier the more players there are, mostly because you straight up get more resources offered.
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(6) With the exception of Geppetto (the minion/dummy character), melee characters are significantly worse than ranged characters.
When completing the lowest difficulty, during which all players had very powerful builds, I as a ranged player (Melusine) dealt ~50% more damage in total than my friend that played melee (Beowulf). In later chapters, they simply could not damage the enemies as often because everything in melee range of the mobs was constantly a damage zone. A melee character has to use their one (baseline) dash off-cooldown to deal decent damage without immediately getting punished. Half of his animations, even in later stages, were spent just on dashes.
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(7) Nearly every ability leaves the player stuck in a (relative for roguelikes) long animation. Most of them can only be cancelled through your (one baseline) dash.
It is common to start an animation only for one mob in a pack (sometimes 10+ mobs in later chapters) to jab at you while you can’t do anything to hinder it. Because very few of your abilities will stagger all mobs simultaneously.
In practice, that means you have to constantly bait attacks while finding small windows to get one cast off. In higher difficulties / later chapters, you cannot realistically land two abilities in a row without getting hit.
Ranged characters are often also subject to this, as they can’t endlessly kite with long range poke. Why? Because…
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(8) Any extra packs you pull around an event have to be killed in order to access that event. Want to open a chest? You can’t open it in combat, so you better kill everything you currently have aggro on. Therefore, kiting mobs outside of the given event area is strictly detrimental for your time limit.
It rarely becomes a serious problem, but each run has at least one occasion where you ass-pull an extra pack, wasting significant time. That together with the clunky animations leaves the player with less agency than in a typical roguelike.
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Positive aspects
(1) The soundtrack was occasionally a great addition to the atmosphere of the areas you explore.
(2) Most characters have at least two fairly viable builds, so there is some variation to each run (assuming that you don't reset the run due to previously mentioned issues).
(3) There is clear character identity. They have tried to make some characters more "unique", such as the mermaid that can't physically move while attacking but can gather upgrades throughout the run to play into that aspect. Or the werewolf that has different abilities depending on the day and night cycle. Or the final character in current EA that has two stances to swap between for high risk / high reward.
The groundwork for a roguelike with replayability value is here. I just find multiple, very tunable gameplay design choices to be frustrating enough to not put more hours into this.