Making a game in the style of Dark Souls is a steep challenge. Lot F certainly tried, experimented, and even got a few things right but it ultimately all falls apart.
The game does understand how to open up shortcuts, I'll give it that. The problem is that the areas often look very samey and with no map or means of fast-travel, it's incredibly easy to go around in circles once you start going into underground areas.
The combat is also too sluggish even for its own intended style. Magic regenerates at a ludicrously slow rate, and against stronger enemies you have to either cheese them or just do whatever strategy the game wants you to.
The sluggishness applies to the camera too. Changing targets when you've locked on is an inexact science, and during backstab animations the camera spins and repositions to try to make the drawn out animation cooler than it really is. Your strategies aren't really going to be mixed up that much either. Honestly combat's pretty monotonous outside of a few interesting enemies like the mages and Tyrants.
At times glitches can also make you miss important items (like one particular and unintentionally invisible Soldier Tattoo) or be sent on a wild goose chase because the secrets-detecting Compass trinket is activating for a secret you've already gotten. It's not bad at first, but as the game goes on it's not hard to see that the developers didn't have the time to thoroughly test everything. My own run of the game ended when Harkyn fell off a short cliff and suddenly locked up. Had to quit and lose more than half an hour's progress because of no autosave, and I had a bad feeling things would only get worse from there anyways.
Lastly, nearly everything in the game is overdesigned. The armor, the weapons, the animations, the bossess, there's details within details but that just makes everything feel like a samey mess in the end. There's a few cool ideas present and I like everything about the Tyrants, but most everything is forgettable. Just like this game.
I would only recommend this to someone unfamiliar with the Souls franchise that wanted to start from the most basic, easiest incarnation of the genre. And only when it's on sale. At $60+ USD for everything, including a DLC area that's a joke compared to any of the Souls areas, it's downright piracy.
Painfully mediocre
Making a game in the style of Dark Souls is a steep challenge. Lot F certainly tried, experimented, and even got a few things right but it ultimately all falls apart.
The game does understand how to open up shortcuts, I'll give it that. The problem is that the areas often look very samey and with no map or means of fast-travel, it's incredibly easy to go around in circles once you start going into underground areas.
The combat is also too sluggish even for its own intended style. Magic regenerates at a ludicrously slow rate, and against stronger enemies you have to either cheese them or just do whatever strategy the game wants you to.
The sluggishness applies to the camera too. Changing targets when you've locked on is an inexact science, and during backstab animations the camera spins and repositions to try to make the drawn out animation cooler than it really is. Your strategies aren't really going to be mixed up that much either. Honestly combat's pretty monotonous outside of a few interesting enemies like the mages and Tyrants.
At times glitches can also make you miss important items (like one particular and unintentionally invisible Soldier Tattoo) or be sent on a wild goose chase because the secrets-detecting Compass trinket is activating for a secret you've already gotten. It's not bad at first, but as the game goes on it's not hard to see that the developers didn't have the time to thoroughly test everything. My own run of the game ended when Harkyn fell off a short cliff and suddenly locked up. Had to quit and lose more than half an hour's progress because of no autosave, and I had a bad feeling things would only get worse from there anyways.
Lastly, nearly everything in the game is overdesigned. The armor, the weapons, the animations, the bossess, there's details within details but that just makes everything feel like a samey mess in the end. There's a few cool ideas present and I like everything about the Tyrants, but most everything is forgettable. Just like this game.
I would only recommend this to someone unfamiliar with the Souls franchise that wanted to start from the most basic, easiest incarnation of the genre. And only when it's on sale. At $60+ USD for everything, including a DLC area that's a joke compared to any of the Souls areas, it's downright piracy.