Precursor: I received this game from a Humble Bundle, and I only played Singleplayer.

-----

Positives first; why this game is good:

> Abilities that reflect skill based gameplay
> Variance in playthroughs by random generation to prolong replayability
> Ramping difficulty as you play
> Lots to unlock

Interesting game concept, probably more fun with multiplayer (never tried it)

-----

Now the reason why I will never play this game ever again; the negatives:

> The pure number of enemies this game expects you to fight regularly is in direct contradiction with the way the character abilities work; you cannot be expect to dodge over 50 enemies with a dodge ability on a 4 second cooldown.
> The random variance would be cooler if it was more than just the exact same levels with the objects placed in different locations.
> The ramping difficulty does scale well with player skill expectations, but difficulty is artificial. Rather than sending the same number of more clever enemies, it just sends exponentially more of them. This is lazy design, and as mentioned already, directly conflicts with ability design.
> There may be lots to unlock but it takes an extremely long time to unlock anything, making it feel like every time you do unlock something it's a feeling of "finally" rather than excitement to continue playing.
> Due to the way that abilities are generally useless due to the nature of how enemies are sent to you, the strength of your character is ultimately determined by the quality of items found, meaning that player agency means next to nothing when what matters ultimately is the quality and quantity of items the game makes it easy for you to collect. It may feel great when you get everything, but it also means it's not up to you how well your game plays out. You just have to run through a bunch of playthroughs until you get lucky.

Basically, good concept, very bad execution. I will not play this again.


#####

Addendum: An argument can be made that the more you rely on player skill, the less of an impact that items are allowed to have. Numerically this is true. Functionally this is not. If an item provided a unique type of function, rather than a magnitude of a function, then it would be less impactful in making player skill irrelevant. It would actually--in this case--simply influence the way that a player performs but not necessarily how well.

In order for this game to be even remotely up to the standard people like to claim--roughly "platformer Dark Souls" or similar--then it requires that all quantities must be scaled down, because it distracts from the finer performance of player vs AI, and exacerbates the necessity for reliance on "snowballing" from good drops, and getting lucky with a high quantity of them.

Lesson in future game design I suppose.

Precursor: I received this game from a Humble Bundle, and I only played Singleplayer. ----- Positives first; why this game is good: > Abilities that reflect skill based gameplay > Variance in playthroughs by random generation to prolong replayability > Ramping difficulty as you play > Lots to unlock Interesting game concept, probably more fun with multiplayer (never tried it) ----- Now the reason why I will never play this game ever again; the negatives: > The pure number of enemies this game expects you to fight regularly is in direct contradiction with the way the character abilities work; you cannot be expect to dodge over 50 enemies with a dodge ability on a 4 second cooldown. > The random variance would be cooler if it was more than just the exact same levels with the objects placed in different locations. > The ramping difficulty does scale well with player skill expectations, but difficulty is artificial. Rather than sending the same number of more clever enemies, it just sends exponentially more of them. This is lazy design, and as mentioned already, directly conflicts with ability design. > There may be lots to unlock but it takes an extremely long time to unlock anything, making it feel like every time you do unlock something it's a feeling of "finally" rather than excitement to continue playing. > Due to the way that abilities are generally useless due to the nature of how enemies are sent to you, the strength of your character is ultimately determined by the quality of items found, meaning that player agency means next to nothing when what matters ultimately is the quality and quantity of items the game makes it easy for you to collect. It may feel great when you get everything, but it also means it's not up to you how well your game plays out. You just have to run through a bunch of playthroughs until you get lucky. Basically, good concept, very bad execution. I will not play this again. ##### Addendum: An argument can be made that the more you rely on player skill, the less of an impact that items are allowed to have. Numerically this is true. Functionally this is not. If an item provided a unique type of function, rather than a magnitude of a function, then it would be less impactful in making player skill irrelevant. It would actually--in this case--simply influence the way that a player performs but not necessarily how well. In order for this game to be even remotely up to the standard people like to claim--roughly "platformer Dark Souls" or similar--then it requires that all quantities must be scaled down, because it distracts from the finer performance of player vs AI, and exacerbates the necessity for reliance on "snowballing" from good drops, and getting lucky with a high quantity of them. Lesson in future game design I suppose.