Great 2D souls like but the map gets a bit confusing at times.

Originally posted on Dragon Quill.[www.dragon-quill.net] Comments are enabled there.

This is 2D Dark Souls. The core mechanics are almost identical: Point-build level up system, the same currency is used for both levels and items, there’s stamina and dodge rolling and estus flasks. It makes a few simplifications I appreciated: There is a corpse run mechanic, but you only lose an estus flask and not all your money, and you can skip it by recalling your lost flasks for some currency. There is less equipment and stats are simpler to understand — in particular, armor simply boosts your stats directly instead of providing needlessly-convoluted defensive stats. Additionally, if you lose to a boss, you get a portion of its money drop based on how close you got to beating it, which is a nice way to throw a bone to struggling players. However, it does not simplify nearly enough to fix all the problems with Dark Souls. There are still way too many mechanics to keep track of during pitched battles, and I frequently forgot to use my abilities and items. The upgrade system is really awkward when there are multiple weapons of each type, one of which is objectively worse than the others; there really should have just been one of each as in Unworthy. And as in Dark Souls, fast travel is withheld until far too late in the game.

Many parts of the game also felt half-baked or like they were pulling in different directions. The classes are wildly unbalanced because strength is used for both shields and weapons while the other offensive stats are only used for weapons, and there are way fewer finesse weapons than strength weapons on top of that. The final segment of the game features a segment where you’re supposedly trapped in an area, but you can still teleport out to faff about with sidequests whenever you want, which kills the pacing. The text is also riddled with grammatical errors that have no business being in a commercial game.

Story is “What if Dark Souls, but more grimdark,” complete with the nonsense death cultism but justified with even stupider cliches. “Immortality is bad because it attracts an evil god” is a non-sequitor. What does that have to do with real life? What are you trying to say with this? Why was this worth telling a story about? I may have hated the death cultism in Dark Souls but at least it was engaging with real religious philosophy. This is just nothing.

Its a Souls-like metroidvania. Near the end it really starts to ♥♥♥♥ with you. Even the parts I thought were corny still got a rise out of me.