Recent reviews by The Lad

This game has been getting a bit of flak and while some of it is deserved a lot of it is not, so I will go into the good, the bad and the ugly.


The Platforming - 8/10
The Platforming is a direct upgrade to Salt1, while sometimes challenging and sometimes frustrating, but ultimately fair in the end. The walljumps and inquisitor tools you pick up over time not only allow the game to more effectively build in verticality, it also rewards players for returning to older maps and explore them for additional goodies and loot. In the end a friend and I went through a trial area that tested your ability with the games platforming.

The Coop - 10/10
The Cooperative play in the game is absolutely seamless, Attacks that enemies do as well as everything else that you can hit are all performed clientside, allowing you to play without issues with friends in cooperative play. I've played with a friend on another continent without any observable lag on my end.

The Performance - 10/10
The fact that a modern game has the capabilities to be played with the minimum requirements being essentially "a graphics card" without issues is honestly great. A friend of mine from brazil plays with the computer equivalent of a rusty toaster that dies when having discord and chrome open at the same time, and his computer ran the game without issue. The fact that it runes on hardware that's practically 20 years old is impressive to say the least.

The Combat - 7/10
The combat is done well, it is reactive and it neither feels too strong nor too weak. Poise works for smaller enemies and allows you to tank a hit or two, but heavier opponents require either dodging, blocking or perfect blocking (the game's equivalent of a parry). I have to deduct some points for how some of the boss attacks seem a bit spammy and they ALL have the ability to ragdoll you, and it can get a bit jarring sometimes (looking at you aeromancer ). Though ultimately the game has been extremely enjoyable for me.

The Map Design - 7/10
The map design is honestly as always excellent. The hand-drawn art really brings forth the place you're in and it is clear when you know you can get to a place or not. The Doors that open up after certain bosses are clear in when they are accessible. But it is also confusing and often by the time new passages open up you will forget where they are. This leads to a lot of backtracking and getting lost, but I feel this was intended with how many secrets are strewn about.




The Multiplayer - 5/10
Note: With this I do not mean coop. I mean multiplayer through the used of multiplayer items in-game.
The multiplayer while not dead is somewhat slow, sadly. It can take a while before you are being summoned for cooperative boss hunting, or invading someone. However I believe they do a decent job at multiplayer balance. Seeing as you can be summoned at any range of multiplayer, but get scaled down to the level of the player.

Armor Balance - 3/10
Armor feels like it is improperly balanced, namely heavy armor. It feels like the defenses do not give you enough to make up for the loss of evasiveness that light dodges give you. With some of the bosses light armor with light rolls makes it much easier to defeat them than medium or slow rolls do. I've finished the game with heavy armor and a medium roll, and especially in the DLC for some of the bosses light armor was a necessity.




The game ending 0/10
Note: With this I do not mean the final boss
During the final boss after defeating him, you have no choice but to go into NG+, losing all key items. While this was likely predictable, it was still in a bit of a sour taste, as I wanted to do a few more nameless mages. This means that by defeating the final boss, I was locked out of some end-game content, which was a tad jarring for me.


All in all, I believe this to be a good game. While not as good as Salt & Sanctuary in terms of boss fights and lore, it is still a greatly enjoyable experience. I will give the game a solid 8/10 up until the end after the final boss.

Great game, if you love hunting secrets and like some tough gameplay. Not super hard, but definitely challenging at higher difficulty.

9/10, might become 10/10 if the DLC's any good

Great game for those who like dungeon crawls, or those who like designing nefarious dungeon crawls.

They do need to make it that you have to complete your own outpost before publishing it though.

owl

Friends gave me armor, a helmet and a heavy shield, and told me to go out there. Ended up beating someone to death with a shield

10/10

You can play as a caveman with a shotgun.

Alright, I would like to say a few things ahead of time: The game is currently under a very small playerbase, and due to mismanagement the developers have had quite a rough time. That said the game despite a rather small amount of content is still enjoyable both Solo or with friends. With that out of the way I will now go forward with the good and the bad.

1. The Gameplay - The controls especially for controller feel very polished and reactive, and while the control scheme is simple it very much complements the system they have in place for bossfights and learning them.
   
   
2. The Bossfights - This is a game that is focused on bossfights made by players. These are made through obtaining loot from bosses you defeat. A boss generally consists of a circuit (which is the movement scheme the boss uses) which can be filled up with a variety of abilities you can loot. Some of these abilities have several levels of intensity you can loot with expanding effects. With this in combination there is a rather large amount of bossfight patterns that can occur which you will have to learn during the fight to beat them. This is where the simple control scheme comes into play well.
   
   
3. The Artstyle - Simply put the artstyle is semi-simplistic and outright adorable. The characters consist of dogs and crows for playercharacter and NPCs and as of currently the bosses consist of mainly knights. The rather simplistic arenas you fight the bosses in help a lot to push the focus towards the effects coming from the abilities the bosses throw at you, so it becomes easier to identify what sort of attack is going on and how to avoid it.
   
   
4. The Boss Creation - This is actually a pretty fun mechanic that can really pull players together to create player boss events or even to challenge a friend to defeat your boss. You can also test your bosses out personally before deploying them. In the Discord players also share their boss codes so other players can fight your boss and they often give hints or comments on your boss. Once/If the community grows big enough I reckon this is the sort of mechanic that brings the playerbase together more so than the co-op feature.

1. The Community is practically empty - Mainly due to the game not being advertised well at all, and the mismanagement that occurred among the Devs the game went WAY under the radar. This is a shame as it practically means that the play with stranger function is essentially useless in the game. You can ask people in the discord to play with, but the game would HEAVILY benefit from community growth due to its approach in both bossfights and co-op.
   
   
2. Lack of Updates - As the studio had to lay off a lot of their employees it is safe to say that updates will be few and far between IF they even appear at all. This paired with the lack of content at the moment makes the game as of currently rather shallow in depth. However if the game would get a sudden surge of players who knows what will happen?

The game is very much enjoyable, responsive and well-made. But the lack of content and playerbase really hurt it. I would like to see it grow in playerbase so that the developers can use that money to expand the game with new mechanics, items and boss abilities. Currently it is worth to buy in my opinion, but only if you invest yourself in the currently small community on Discord.

While the game is still in its early stages, this game has an immense amount of potential. With the developer regularly cranking out updates once again I would recommend trying the game out, it's free after all.

If you do intend to play the game I highly recommend joining the discord, as the community is very friendly.

Gertrude Fremont demands this.