It just came out a couple days ago so still pretty early but maybe some people have played it enough to give informed opinions. Reviews are positive but most are pretty barebones in terms of details. Also I guess this kind of a first impressions review but can't give more than that.
I got it tonight and played just over an hour, but deliberately stopped because this might be a refund... which sucks to say because the premise and foundation is so cool. Love Risk of Rain, adding procedurally generated levels and a simple world map to that should be an easy recipe for something amazing. But the vibes are off and while it's only $8 the growing pile of other "it's only $8" games that didn't break 10 hours is telling me to bail lol.
Negatives so far:
- Very little map variety. The levels generate as linear rows of premade houses, which is fine and actually works really well with the pace of the game since it doesn't have that "where the fuck is the portal?!" aspect that was annoying in RoR. The houses themselves are also really nicely detailed and have interesting layouts.
The problem is that there don't seem to be very many of them. In the 5-6ish short runs I've done I seem to have seen every structure in the first biome... actually I might have seen them all on the first run, there are only a handful. And you seem to always start in the same biome, so you basically keep looting the exact same few houses over and over. Serviceable but if it's already growing stale that's a bad sign.
- Very little loot variety. To be fair the guns might be decently varied, there are a lot of different shotguns, rifles and such with unique stats so this might be a situation where a lot of the depth isn't immediately apparent. But right out of the gate they are all pretty straightforward "point at zombies and click mouse" dealies, the different guns I've found haven't meaningfully changed combat yet.
More importantly though, they use the same passive ability stacking system as RoR except so far most of them aren't very interesting. Lots of ways to improve reloading, marginal increases to jump height or other stats, buffs to debuffs you might not even have (like I got an increase to my freeze durations on a run without any items that freeze enemies), just very dull all around.
There have been a few cool ones, like a chance to drop toys (which I assume work like caltrops, was hard to tell) when you dodge or instantly reloading bullets that miss, so I'm hoping this is just a low playtime issue but again it's a red flag. It also applies to the melee weapons and secondary items, which have all been duplicates of 3-4 items each which seems unlikely if the pool is much larger than that.
- Unfair balance, as though the lack of initial variety weren't bad enough I've also been hardstuck at the first survival event (basically a level where you clear a few waves of enemies storming a small shack). Specifically the third wave where a pack of these tiny fast zombies spawn alongside a bunch of normal ones. I can't shoot them early because others are in the way, so they almost always zoom directly on top of me... and then sometimes I can't hit them because apparently there are also issues hitting something too close to you lol. They also kill you in like 2-3 hits, so there's very little room for error.
Abrupt and brutal deaths are fine with me, that can be a cool part of roguelikes that gives the permadeath more tension. But a guaranteed encounter like this on every run with no clear way to get through it other than just grinding out the metaprogression and maxing things like HP and melee damage reduction makes it significantly less cool.
Could be a skill issue though, hence asking for other opinions on the game. But since I'm right up against the refund window I'm disinclined to try to puzzle out what the "correct strat" might be in the handful of frantic seconds you get before dying and heading back to loot the same house three times in a row for the same items you got last time.
TLDR: Grown man complains that new toy is too hard to play with and not as fun as expected, considers refunding to buy two tacos instead. Still curious to hear if other people think the toy eventually develops value greater than two tacos though.