Recent reviews by Will Ward For Food

Not sure how this got so many positive reviews. The interesting trailers and mostly positive reviews enticed me to purchase this game, and I regret it.

Here are the problems in a nutshell:
1) Game suffers from a 'too large world with too little to do'. You spend most of your time running around empty maps (with no map indicator of your own to know where you are) with little to no guidance. You move so slow it makes you want to sprint around, however stamina will burn over time making the player unable to run everywhere. Who plays an RPG and walks around?

2) Combat had a lot of potential. i really want to like the combat. I don't. Even ignoring the difficulty factor, the game registers that you are hit (and staggers you) about right when the enemy BEGINS an attack that will hit you. This isnt 'souls-like', this is just bad combat.

3) Too many systems. I get that this is a survival game, and it does survival better than a lot of other games out there, but there is nothing fun to this survival.

What I would have liked to see:
1) Combat needs to be more fluid. If you want a souls-like game make it more responsive. Learn combat from games like Dragons Dogma where they did it right--combat was rich, rewarding, and very deep.

2) Ambiance. Game felt empty, even in towns. Merchants were static, had little dialogue. Environments, while very pretty in some spots, were completely bland. Hunting was nonexistant. Maybe it was the lack of trees, maybe it was the lack of a map, but i never got excited about exploring a dungeon or an area. Think the developers would have been better off spending the sum total of the time they spent building the game world and built 1-2 towns and a wilderness. Dragon's Dogma is great example of how to build an admittedly empty game world pretty well and still keep things interesting and interactive.

3) Survival mechanics. The developers did a pretty good job of this, but still felt short of making survival mechanics enjoyable or interactive. Many other games do this better, even Kingdom Come Deliverance was more graceful implementing hunger and sleep requirements. Would have liked to see something closer to an RPG version of The Long Dark, instead of a token "carry 10lbs of survival equipment in your 15lb pack so you can build a fire and sleep. Don't carry too much otherwise you wont be able to pick anything up. Ever". Would have been nice to see bonuses if the character stays healthy, maybe the consumables used to prepare for fights could be replenished--kinda weird when you use a 5 silver potion to kill a tough enemy or pair of enemies and collect 2 silver worth of loot.