Recent reviews by Freed

Unequal game. For 10 minutes you are put in a fight with epic music, stakes, and huge monsters fighting each other. And then for the next 3 hours you're delivering food to homeless people or cultivating herbs with all of it being an excuse for combat but combat is honestly not that fun. Combat has an interesting concept but is so easy that there is almost no reason to upgrade your skills by using skill points which is a damn shame for such a combat-focused game.

Amazing 3D platformer. Great design, great soundtrack, just a wonderful time for an extremely affordable price.

I keep playing this game but I wouldn't recommend it for most people. As long as the gameplay is challenging and engaging, I stick to what I bought, especially because this game is in the AA price range so I want my money's worth.

Overall this game makes me think of an openworld Hand of Fate. Not grandiose, not terrible, just okay, and that's also because I don't think I am very demanding.

Misses:
- lack of polish (no voice acting, missing vfx)
- tutorial is present, but omits a terrible amount of information (like what's the precise difference between "orange" and "red" camps? You have some armors that protect you against specific enemy types, but you only unlock the lore entry for this enemy type once you've beaten it, so until then you don't even know against whom your armor is strong against. What do the symbols mean under each card's mana cost? All of that information you'll have to figure out because the game can't bother explaining these to you, which is sad because it would probably give people the desire to actually build their vessel in a specific way.
- performance (game crashed twice for me)

Design points:
- weapon types actually don't matter at all, they have barely different movesets but that's it. It would have been nice to for instance say that greataxes generate more stagger whereas twin axes make people bleed. Attach an existing status effect to each weapon type would actually have people think about the synergies of the vessel's trait with what weapon type they're starting with, instead of just different moveset, basically just aesthetics.

- the grappling hook is useless and could have easily benefited the game with some simple additions: what if you could get a relic that doubles your next damage after you've hooked to someone? another relic that brings people to you instead of you to them? etc.

- boss camps: Some "red" camps are actually bosses not elites. The game doesn't say or give any reason as to why you should beat a red boss rather than a red elite since it would result in the same treasure chest. I just did a "red" troll camp with two trolls and steamrolled them, I then moved to another "red" troll camp right after, same run, and I ended up in the arena with the bigass troll wielding a sword and I just got one-shot. Why should I beat this guy if the chest is of same rarity?

- In terms of traversal the hook is useless, period. Almost any need of the hook got overwritten by the distance covered by jump sprinting. I would keep the jump because it doesn't break the flow of movement instead of the hook that keeps you in the air for one second doing nothing while it's looking for a point to latch onto that most likely you would be able to get to without the hook anyway. There are some towers in the open world, what if the "Hatred" was so strong around these towers that you wouldn't be able to go in raven mode, and would need to do some grappling hook up the tower to free up the corruption on this tower, which would have a camp at the base and give you a free chest just like the towers of hatred?

- the "alternate attack" for weapons doesn't change anything at all. The only quality to that attack is the guard breaking ability when you hold it, which applies to all weapon types, again nullifying the potential differences weapon types could have. What if twin axes alternate attack (pressed, not held) would build up a bleeding gauge, while the great axe's whirlwind looking one could build up staggering easier?

- it feels like the team spent a tremendous amount of time on the open world performance, graphics and traversal in raven mode, which are all great. Moving around as a raven is pretty satisfying and you can feel the speed spikes greatly (especially when gliding after nose diving). For the benefit of the game I think more time should have been spent polishing combat and cards/traits than the open world.