Recent reviews by CelVR

DINOSAURS AND SWORDS!! GENUINELY AN AWESOME IDEA! The idea of the mechanics were very fun, but the execution could have been handled better. For a soulslike game, the progression felt okay. Let's start with some of the larger complaints I had about the experience and then I can get into the small nit picky things I have to say.

Firstly, I believe that a better tutorial explaining each move in detail would help alleviate some confusion I had about certain things related to the moves themselves. Most of my confusion in the playtime that I had came from status effects like stunned, what even sp and boss sp were used for until I checked every menu, map direction and where to go next, and how effective certain tactics were when fighting bosses. Honestly, I never used the block or parry because I saw no need to effectively put myself in harms way when the dodge was extremely forgiving with the invulnerability frames and I was not rewarded in any meaningful way for doing so. Would recommend either nerfing the dodge/making it cost more stamina or buffing blocking/parrying by maybe increasing poise damage to the enemy? The lock on mechanic could use some tweaking as well when handling multiple targets, being surrounded feels very jarring when trying to swap targets and for handling a single target could probably swivel a bit more vertically during certain attacks by bosses?


Secondly, a small gripe I had with the menus was that I could not back out of the tab menu with escape and when I did press escape to actually pause the game, it was a bit weird that it didn't even dim the gameplay or add a vignette of sorts while the game was paused. I don't think that adding a fast teleport to the previous checkpoint key binding was necessary as well if the menu effectively has the same button/function.

Thirdly, when it comes to the aesthetics of the game, it appears very dull at first. Yes, the particle effects on weapons are nice and all, but I feel like the dinosaurs blend so well into the terrain that the effects almost seem clashing with the rest of the elements in the world. Perhaps more vibrant terrain or skin tones on the dinosaurs themselves could help with making it feel not as clashing, but I'm unsure.

Finally, there were several instances of me being softlocked in the air while doing certain attacks on the final boss of the demo (I believe it was either during the slash skill or the 6th attack of the light attack chain that makes you jump into a slam) as well as a phase skip that made the boss never swap weapons if they took enough damage to trigger the phase cutscene while charging towards me. There was another bug where the final boss also just decided to attack during the cutscene and just killed me while I waited for the QTE which also only triggered like half the time.

Overall a very fun demo and I genuinely do think the game has potential and a solid skeleton to work upon, but the gameplay, progression, and difficulty could feel better.

GAME DESIGN

Over-reliance on iron as a resource to unlock newer islands without any fast way to speed up resource production which was often what I was waiting on for island unlocks

Gold ore, production into gold bars, and then into coins was, what I found to be, one of the worst ways to farm for coins given as gold ore is a resource needed to unlock islands; and the exchange rate from ore to coin was so low that it was essentially throwing away the potential resource that was needed to unlock several islands.

The tutorial is a wall of text which often loosely describes what the intention of the developer wanted to tell the player, but the mechanics of several things are either extremely under-powered or very overpowered.
Take for example the elemental types of monsters in the tutorial itself: It states that there are 4 types of monster. However, it does not even state which type is weaker to another (recommended to add a type diagram where icons are shown to be stronger against other icons or even a type strength/weakness spreadsheet for that matter)*

There is a harsh difficulty spike after obtaining first few island unlocks:
the levels of each island in the order that I unlocked them are as follows:
First island with forest: Lvs 1-5
Second island with cave: Lvs 1-15
Third island with ice cave: Lvs 1-44
Fourth island with fire cave: Lvs 20-30
Fifth island with Ghostland: Lvs 70-100
Sixth island with Sacred Waterfall, Volcano, Deep Forest, and Sacred cave: Lvs 50-60
Seventh island with Ancient Cave: Lvs 120-150
Eighth island with Underworld Cave: Lvs 160-190
Ninth island with Skyworld Cave: Lvs 200-350
Tenth island with Elite Arena: Lvs 400-600

MONSTERS

This of course, would be a huge issue if it wasn't for the fact that monsters are very easily obtained by spamming heals/lotuses on a very under-leveled monster and then after obtaining the higher leveled monster could be used to obtain even higher level monsters. (I was able to use a Lv 100 to beat several Lv 300+s)

There is no need to level up lower level monsters or evolve monsters when newer monsters are commonly encountered at much higher levels/compounded issue when monster typings are irrelevant other than which lotus heals which monster type

From what I've found, disabling/enabling elemental rune use has no visible bearing on the outcome of a battle other than the small section in the wall of tutorial text that suggests that it helps beat monsters of a type weaker to it (would recommend adding a modifier next to each stat such as Atk or Speed that would be buffed by active elemental rune usage to show the player exactly what returns they are getting by consuming runes for damage)

No easy way to determine which monsters evolve in game (for achievements)*

The way to catch monsters feels cheap in a sense. Obtaining even 10k coins for a legendary catch box is very quick by selling resources and with the aforementioned issue where even a Lv 100 can beat several Lv 300s, it is very easy to obtain extremely powerful monsters. (Honestly, I would choose to either make it an item that the player would have to manually choose to use during battle with a higher chance to fail at higher Life values OR I would make it so that with every successful capture of a tier of monster that the price for that specific tier of catch box would increase)

BUGS

The automatic production of resources is not dependent on the manually crafted item's requirements. Take for example, one of the fire runes: Normally you would need both a rune essence and a fire essence dropped from fire type monsters needed to manually craft the fire rune. However, once upgrading the fire rune master upgrade, it produces the fire rune irregardless of if you have any fire essence in your inventory.

I have noticed this pattern with many automatic craftable items, including each of the lotus plant upgrades. I would recommend each automatic upgrade to both require and consume the previous materials needed to craft the item in order to avoid resource selling being the absolute best way to gain coins.

I noticed that crafting the super lotus manually does also require some coins, but the overlay only says that it requires regular lotuses.

I also noticed several bugs with selling resources in bulk, when spamming the sell button, the item description for what you are selling will become "stuck" on the inventory screen until you manage to sell the item again without spamming the sell button.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Achievement for Get a Super Fire Lotus Plant was not achievable by manually crafting said item and was only granted to me after purchasing the automatic upgrade for production of the item.

Achievements for Evolve a water monster and Evolve a fire monster do not actually require the evolution of a water or a fire type monster as capturing one of the water or fire monsters available in combat triggers the allocation of the achievement. (unsure if the evolution of a plant monster is the same way as I had evolved my starter Leafstricke at level 20 before encountering any advanced plant monsters)

Achievement for "Buy you first island" should be titled "Buy your first island" unless it is an intentional misspelling

Achievement for Catch all monsters does not require monsters that are attainable only through evolution, but I am unsure if this is an intentional design choice

NOTES

After browsing the developers previous patch notes/posts about the game, I've noticed that a current type chart is available as well as an image with all of the potential evolutions possible in the game as of now.

OPINIONS

Honestly, even with all of the above issues, it didn't take me long to 100% the game by selling easily farmable resources and I'm sure that it wouldn't be as bad if the progression of island unlocking wasn't extremely fast for the first 3 islands and then each following island a long grind. But, for the casual enjoyer of idle games who doesn't wish to grind their way to the end as fast as possible, I'm sure it would be a decent game for them to come back to time and time again. The developer, based on their patch notes, seems to care for the game's future development and I am excited to see how it progresses further.

Absolutely fantastic game! I personally played as a stealth archer, speccing into endurance for speed. 10/10 Would play again!