dark souls de palito

Goated Game
As others have mentioned, the combat may feel clunky, but that's part of its charm. Many retro games had a similar clunkiness, and that's exactly what enhances the nostalgic feel of this game. Co-op is an absolute blast and takes the experience to another level.

Solo play: 8/10
With someone else: 10/10

Love the idea, needs a lot of work though. The combat is awful. Obviously weak enemies have more poise than Havel, meanwhile if you look at an enemy wrong they parry you into a 3 hit combo that you're stunlocked into. Scaling is garbage for the weakest mob to do all your health in 3 unavoidable hits even at the beginning of the game. Controls feels clunky, and you cant run with a controller, while the keyboard is an even stronger disappointment. Mages suffer from the "fixed number of casts" system. When you OOM you lose. Even basics enemies take 3-4 casts of a the starting spell, even when all points of early grinding is dumped into cast stat. Will revisit if game gets rebalanced or if a legitmate trainer releases. Whichever is first.

It's good if you're craving a short souls-like game. Only a few bosses and areas, so you can beat it over a few weekends, but being linear, if you're stuck on a boss, there aren't other areas to explore for levelling. I like how items and areas changed based on resolution, like restoring a pixelated sword makes it high poly.

That said, it's impossible to attack from above; I don't think I managed to land a single aerial attack, with and without lock-on. Unlocking weapon skills is also really tedious; there's no in-game prompt letting you know when you can remember equipment, so you're constantly checking your inventory to see if anything is reacting and end up relying on other players' messages. Also, a lot of the retro game references went over my head, so I think mostly people born in the 80s will get the references.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fun romp, and I'm still enjoying the pseudo-retro aesthetics and gameplay, but that's the type of game it is: short but sweet.

Really bad combat. By that I mean, frequently, you'll miss your enemy even though it's obvious your weapon should have connected. So many times I've missed while standing face to face while they swing and miss at the same time. Even the computer has trouble with the combat.

Everything just feels slow and off somehow. I wanted to like it, but the game really makes that an uphill battle.

Nice