22 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 12.6 hrs on record (5.3 hrs at review time)
Posted: 31 Aug, 2022 @ 8:29pm
Updated: 5 Sep, 2022 @ 11:24am

It's a fun retro horde shooter that forces you to dodge a lot. It certainly has lots of obvious areas for improvement, but most of the negative reviews are from people getting stomped or have no clue how the game works. So, if you can't progress through the game instead of ragequitting I advice you to reduce the difficulty, it's not a shame.

After playing for a few hours (on normal & hard) and reaching up to the first boss of the west wing I noticed the game is pretty challenging and you can't just face rush everything, you gotta dodge/hide and in some occasions aim decently well to survive against enemies that abuse verticallity. The game runs excellent for me with no issues and I haven't encountered any bugs as of yet (I didn't try coop at all though where people seem to encounter issues).

As for the gameplay itself the gunplay and shooting is kinda bare-bones and basic, it works. But it gets pretty tiring when your starting gun (although being good) is pretty much all you are using. There needs to be some short of balance patch regarding weapons and ammo management - there are literally ammo boxes everywhere that you can't use because you don't even have any new weapons and even if you manage to find a new one their ammo is so limited compared to the infinite ammo of the starting rifle.

The base movement of the character is pretty high and it has a small element of air control when you are jumping, not exactly that good as in Doom Eternal or Quake games, which makes it not that usable. But having fast base walking speed at least makes up for it. Also, there is the usual dash-dodge that can also be used to wreck enemies.

Generally the resource system of the game is kinda bad, the shards that drop from enemies I have no idea what they are used for (scoring sytem?), also your character has multiple lives which I also don't get it, why not just have 1 life and make it count with more HP. In addition to the above, you are seriously dependant on finding health pick ups that are scattered around the map and you have no clue where they could be, but with practice you learn to find them somehow and survive the levels and ofc as I mentioned before the ammo boxes that are 90% of the time useless for you.

Another thing that bothered me was the map navigation system. Since, most of the levels in each wing look familiar you don't really have a clue where you are supposed to go and you can get lost especially if you are a new player. That thing they call a map is too abstract along with the symbols. But you learn to adjust as I did and navigation will be improved the more you play.

Some other annoying elements, are the environmental damage that 1 shots you, the fodder that just do nothing and the reskined enemies, the face screen clean (at least you can disable it), some bosses locked behind tons of runes (but I guess that's how the game is meant to be played, to gather runes) and the kinda annoying bloom which can tire your eyes. Gun sounds and animations could use some work as well.

As a conclusion don't expect this being Doom Eternal but with coop. It's a super basic maze style retro shooter but with a solid base to enjoy yourself for some hours.
I wouldn't have recommended this game if it was made from a bigger studio, but since it's a small indie one you could give this a try. The game is quite affordable with decent fundamentals and devs that seem to be hearing the early feedback.

Edit: Finished the game, here is a vid containing all boss fights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=439tvD8Ftnw
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
Developer response:
Maddie @ Kwalee  [developer] Posted: 1 Sep, 2022 @ 1:36am
Thank you so much for taking the time to review Scathe and for providing such detailed feedback 🖤

Based on community feedback, we're working on a patch at the moment related to the ammo pick-ups and the weapons. We're also brainstorming ways we can make the map more accessible and make finding weapons a bit easier.

We really appreciate people giving their thoughts on what we can improve, because it'll help us to make changes with further patches 🔥