Recent reviews by Demonfoxkiller

I have already clocked 21 hours in the demo for this game in the last week. With the release, there will always be bugs, but that should be expected for any ER game. My standpoints will be from playing with my kids and wife on the demo and what we have seen, both good and bad.

ART STYLE:
I feel like the art style is gorgeous, the game is beautiful and stunning at moments while maintaining a cute feeling. The level of detail makes the world feel alive without the constant reuse of assets. However, some of the forced clipping makes me worry about performance with rendering on lower end PCs. I have only seen the first island so I hope they don’t default to reusing the same assets for all play areas
GAMEPLAY:
The core loop of the game feels rewarding and engaging. Explore > Fight > Loot > Level > Return home to upgrade and improve > Repeat. It feels like there is always something to fight or explore with little downtime between engagement (no traveling across an empty world to get to the next point). That said, the puzzles so far have been super straight forward and require little thinking. That’s not to say they are bad, just that the starting ones will feel super simple.

COMBAT:
Combat feels good and engaging, my wife loves that she can button mash and still feel like she is helping and engaged in the fight while my son and I are planning combos, keeping the heals up and tag teaming enemies. It doesn’t feel like we can steam roll everything while it is forgiving enough that if mistakes are made it is not instant death. I will say that sometimes the movement in combat can feel off if you are trying to focus one person in a group, or trying to combo one person in the air, but overall I feel like it is fun.

PROGRESSION:
Progression feels good and the ability to control the speed of leveling by slider makes it easy to adjust for playstyle and time. I will say the games does not do a good job of teaching you how level progression works, so I spent close to 5 hours only using the same weapon to find out I need to change them out to progress my class. I think the system is fine and does a great job of making you try new things, but clearer directions are needed.

MULTIPLAYER:
Multiplayer in this game works well, with shared inventory and progression it doesn’t feel like someone opening a chest is taking something from you but rather working as a team to get to the goal. Even in the “downtime” back at base, someone can be fishing, someone gathering, someone crafting, and someone running the shop, it doesn’t feel like I am sitting around waiting for someone to finish something. My family is used to playing games that only have one save file with progress locked to that save file, so that fact this game is the same doesn’t bother us as much as it seems to bother some others. I would love to see dedicated servers for those people who want it.

OVERALL:
I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a hack and slash, arcade feel, with depth of story and progression. The game feels good on launch (with some bugs) and I am personally excited to see where this game goes.