I really, really wanted to give this game a thumbs up - it's beautiful, combat feels amazing, and the story is interesting and immersive. If I had to pick the game's "best" attribute, it's definitely the art: cinematics are breathtaking, characters look amazing, and the environment is just... stunning. I've rarely seen such an impressive mix of the right ingredients put into one project. The game does an excellent job of creating an atmosphere where the player feels surrounded by darkness and grief, compelling them to fight their way out of it towards the light at the end of the tunnel. I love this setting and think that it fits the game's premise incredibly well.

Combat feels great and intuitive, at least to me. Fights are actually quite hard, and I found myself having to really think myself through most fights carefully even before engaging the enemy. Where to position myself, how to dodge certain attacks, etc. This makes beating enemies satisfying and rewarding, even to the point where I was, at one point, just looking for fights with random NPCs. The loot feels rewarding as well.

The one big critique that I do have is that the boss fights are incredibly easy, compared to the majority of the normal mob fights in the world. I think I only needed 2 tries for the bosses I took down (I killed Warrick, Darak, and the Riven Twins), as their mechanics are quite easy to learn and navigate through. Also, being a caster doesn't make much sense, since you have to trade a ton of HP for mana, and the normal hits don't do even do a lot of damage. I tried multiple ways to play a mage but it just feels wrong. Melee or ranged builds are just better in every way, which really sucks because there is a ton of potential for casters. This all being said though, I think that the combat of the game is a net-positive, and the more constructive feedback that I've shared above is something that can be tweaked, and it likely won't be that hard either.

Lastly, I want to say a few words about the world. While it's beautiful and full of exciting challenges, at times it is hard to navigate your way through it. In a true souls-like fashion, the world is open for exploration, but in this case it comes at the cost of not knowing where to go next. Throughout my playtime, there were multiple times where I felt frustrated for not knowing where to go next, and there was no intuitive way to find out, either. I would like to see some sort of a tweak here, to make it easier for the player to understand where they're heading next. Maybe some NPCs in the town that will help you find your way through dialogues, like in BG3? Outside of the occasional issue with the navigation, I think that the world is beautifully crafted.

What takes this game from a positive into a negative review, however, is the obvious mobile-themed monetization scheme that the developers are preparing the game for, seen already in the early stages of the game:

- Timers. This is by far the most popular topic in the community now. To quote another review in Steam; "waiting is not a mechanic". The timers that I've seen stretch to 4 hours, and this just feels so bizarre in a single-player ARPG. It feels incredibly out of place and doesn't contribute to a positive experience - if anything, it it makes me not even want to play these features, since it's basically just all standing around until the timer runs out.
- Resource gathering. Out of my ~20 hours playing this game, I've probably used 5-6 just gathering resources for crafting. At first, using ~25% of my play time for this might sound like an okay deal, but think about it. I'm not even that far in the game, yet I've spent hours and hours just running around in circles, looking for different resources for food and town expansions. You can't really skip this either, since food is the main way to heal yourself in fights.

Dude. I don't want to spend an hour gathering resources for an update, just to find that I have to wait another hour for the actual upgrade to finish, with no way to speed it up. I don't want to spend hours grinding stuff for essential items like food, just to run out of it soon again and having to do it all over again by running through the same dull routes. Essentially, I don't want to break the immersion. And that is exactly what is happening now with this game. What ended up driving me away from the game, was the idea that I'm using all of this time grinding for progression, which can be later just bought with real money.

The CEO and co-founder of Moon Studios, Thomas Mahler, actually said in an interview that they would not do micro-transactions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCNxr1O-4qk (around the 34:40 mark). However, it is not clear whether they're speaking strictly about early access or the game as a whole. I strongly think that it is the first, because otherwise, the timers would make just absolutely no sense at all. I hope I'm wrong.

I want to see this game succeed. I want to see this game make it big. And I want to recommend it to my friends, especially now that it's going to be playable with them. Please address the issues brought up by the community, and let's make this the best ARPG our there.