Recent reviews by CrapHatch

I'm here for it though! I told myself I had to play this one if I want to get KCD2.

There's definitely some jank, and the save mod feels like a necessity as gamer-dad. But it's a good ride!

After completing all the story quests that have been released, I'm on the edge of my seat and I’m hungry for more!

The art style, cinematics, and environments are top notch originality. The characters are memorable and I felt pulled into the narrative pretty quickly.

I love the exploration in the game! The level design is fantastic - there are shortcuts to open everywhere and a wonderful sense of verticality. Chests and resources kind of have spawn points once you find them, which I feel kind of kills the feeling of novelty after you clear a zone. But it can be argued that you build familiarity with the locations this way - especially in the hub town. One wish I have is to be able to open a whisper in your home/base.

I did a heavy weapons and armor build, but I’m excited to try other specializations in future plays. The combat is awesome - hits feel impactful and visceral, and requires attention. I think the “souls” aspect is underscored by common mobs that can kill you if you’re not careful. But the death cycle is much more forgiving. No souls or runes drop, only your equipment takes durability damage and you can run back to where you were slain and pick exploration right back up. I felt like I could die about 6 or 7 times before I needed to repair my gear.

Boss battles were super exciting and challenging! I liked that there was usually a whisper nearby too. I generally don’t enjoy run-backs.

Rough spots:

Inventory management was a bit of a pain. I always go for backpack upgrades first in games where the loot rains heavy, but I eventually maxed out my regular gear slots and I never felt like it was enough. It did create a rhythm of needing to go back to town to sell and there is a utility rune that lets you TP from anywhere that I found very helpful. You get a resource that can transfer affixes, so I always felt the need to look at everything I picked up and keep most things “just in case.”

I would say character builds are a little too rigid right now. It’s not easy to unlock respec so you better not goof your stat allocation, you’re kind of locked in once you get in deep enough.

The resource gathering, especially for low tier materials feels unnecessarily padded. Example: You can chop a pine tree down in one perfect hit with the iron axe, but you’re only going to get 2 pine wood max so you basically have to chop down every tree in the forest still. Just doubling this when you have better tools would be a smoother experience. The ability to break down / recycle unwanted gear to yield mats would be nice in this regard as well.

I felt a little bit of friction with the bounty and challenge board being on a daily/weekly timer. I wish that they would just refresh after clearing a set rather than imposing a sort of artificial buffer on my play time. I guess to encourage my binge style of gaming because I didn’t want to put this one down.

Otherwise I love it! Can’t wait for the full release!

* I did get the 0x11CD error suddenly around 35 hours in. It was a little scary to disable SAC, but I really only install games and it was worth it to me to keep playing.

I've had my eye on this game since the Nintendo Direct. There’s something here that kept me playing for as long as I did. It might be on the easier side of rogue games and so it feels good when mastery comes easily, but also not good that you hit the ceiling so quickly. Some people seemed put off by the initial difficulty, but maybe they don’t understand some of the elements of roguelites or metroidvanias.

SL has a lot of potential and you can tell people put their heart into making it. But a lot of the game components feel undercooked and there’s actually not a whole lot of depth/content to sustain the roguelike promise of hours of attempted runs and experimentation. Even the pause screen feels like there is supposed to be more living there. Here are my specific suggestions to give this game some longevity:

• Map variety - maybe some levels change after you finish a run or two, or diverging paths open up. But the levels are EXACTLY the same with the chests. This is even more apparent in Sanctuary where it feels like the devs literally copied and pasted one portion of map several consecutive times. Maybe it’s intentional to make the gameplay formula lean on “same thing but do it faster” with the speed run achievements, but I feel like I’d seen everything the game’s gonna throw at me by the time I played 5 hours.
  
• Boss variety - None of these guys' attack patterns change significantly or adapt to me. Shake it up. Maybe variants can appear, different elemental strengths/weaknesses. They aren’t very smart either. Once Goliath teleports to a corner, he’ll stay there doing the smash attack several times while I can just hit him. The final boss was disappointingly simple, and he didn’t even have a second phase! His death animation was also about 5 seconds too long.
  
• Not enough storm bindings! Some are objectively better than others, and there’s only like 2 options for each slot. Several times I’ve gotten offered the exact binding I had equipped - same rank and everything.
  
• I’d love to see a DPS indicator on weapons - I’ve picked up a polearm several ranks higher than an axe I was using, only to wish I would’ve stuck with the axe because it’s so much faster.
  
• Toxic and flame inflicted on enemies ticks so slowly it isn’t even helpful. When it’s on me it seems to hit at faster intervals. Shouldn’t they be the same timing?
  
• I wish there was a recycle function to unlock. I hate blowing 30k on a chest, and have no use for the contents and I can’t even get a portion of that currency back.
  
• Chest balancing - I’ve routinely gotten better drops from 12k and 15k boxes than 20k and 30k. Makes me feel less incentivized to save up.
  
• A glossary or lore compendium - I’m interested in knowing the actual enemies I’m murdering. And what are the little glowing fox creatures called anyway?
  
• Enemy behavior - every dog-type enemy follows me up and down ledges, and we play tag for a while. I hate it!
  
• The Descent elevator is janky - I don’t know what kind of physics sorcery is controlling the ride, but my jumps feel stunted, and coins from slain enemies are uncollectable because the lift moves away while they stay floating.
  
• I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find the diagram of the traversal abilities you unlock. I wanted to see it because I clicked away accidentally when I unlocked grapple and I didn’t see how to perform it. I actually wiped my save and started over because I thought the grapple was bugged! I wasn’t grappling with any of the buttons I was trying and it isn’t indicated on the controller diagram, bringing me to my next point.
  
• The grapple mechanic doesn’t feel good and isn’t intuitive. When I read the tooltip after unlocking it the second time I finally was able to read that you have to HOLD and AIM R1/RB. Doing this kills all momentum! R1/RB is already assigned to other things, and nothing is assigned to the triggers. Give it its own button, get rid of the “aim” part, let it perform like a grapple shot from any other game! Snap to the closest grapple point, press to fire, release to let go…

I hope the devs are keeping the book open on updating this game. I’d love to see it become successful, but it feels too much like an Early Access launch for me to recommend it in this state.

AWESOME combat platformer

Most stages are mini metroidvania styled maps, very fun to explore. Combat feels excellent, and there's a nice variety of boss fights. The art is dripping with style - from the same team that did Streets of Rage 4. Specials are super flashy and fun to execute.

There are combat and platform challenges that offer a good time. The platforming is tight, but there are definitely at least two non-challenge areas that were hard as hell.

PSA - don't get the digital artbook and soundtrack dlc. It's baked into another .exe file instead of just a folder of assets.

Absolu-tly a good time!

Progression is pretty simple, but there is a lot of room for experimenting with builds. The controls feel GREAT, fine tuned. And it is a gorgeous game world, like playing a Mike Mignola fantasy comic. Co-op is a blast!

Extras need to be launched in an additional .EXE to view!

I was honestly hoping to get a pdf for the artwork and the soundtrack to be included in my soundtrack downloads...but wtf. You have to launch the DLC app to view the "book" or to even play the music. The art is coded into a "level" file and the ost is in .wem files.

SECRETS
Secrets everywhere! While there are a lot of things the game doesn't explain or hold your hand around, it allows for a ton of experimentation. The player has almost endless ways to customize a character and play. You're rewarded for exploring.
Combat - namely gunplay - feels really good. I made a melee class, and though the melee movesets are not very deep, modifiers allow for a variety of effects that are fun to try. However I did keep coming back to the highest direct damage equipment.
Had great multiplayer experiences with both friends and randos. Numerous times I've joined games in biomes I already solo'd, but have been shown secrets and unlocks I hadn't discovered on my own. This cooperative experience sharing is positive and adds a lot of enjoyment!
I don't know if there's a transmog function, but it would be nice to have equipment skins not directly tied to stats or skills.

mob killin, numbers flashin, loot droppin, bars fillin, gold clinkin, power trippin, god blessing good times.
I'm hooked. Dopamine drip of the year.
At the time of writing in early access there are only a couple minor bosses, 2 slime culling rounds, one big boss, and only one locale. The god collection seems a little eclectic to me, but they do interact with each other in dialogue. Many of the dialogue pieces are voiced, and they're done well. The player characters are not voiced, but I like their interactions. It is fairly easy to figure out the more effective ability combos after several runs.
Overall a very addicting game! I'm excited to see more as it is developed.

Colorful, fast paced, violent, responsive, dopamine inducing action.
Exploration. Discovery. Experimentation. Optimization. Satisfying Peak accomplishment or crushing loss runs, addictive compulsion for one more run every time.
Continued dev support and expansion.
Is this the perfect game?

I have about 40 hours on the switch version with all the DLC except Castlevania, but had to get this on steam deck. Deck NVME drive nullifies the unreasonably long load times plaguing switch. Getting stable 60 fps, no issues on deck.

I can't put this game down. I'm legit addicted to the gameplay cycle.
I bought it a couple days ago and I've put almost 20 hours in already - that's a lot given that I have 2 small kids and still keep a job. Guess sleep didn't make the priority list haha.
Cute animal cartoon + sims + hades/binding of isaac + satanic ritual
Dungeon runs are around 10 minutes, making it ridiculously easy to convince yourself you're just going to do one more.
I have my tech trees nearly maxed out already, so I may reach the end of new content soon, but even still - this game is definitely worth a pick up!