Edit: Updating review after Buried Below update

Again I wish I could say I liked this update but there's not much here. I think that this update is however miles better than the original state of the game. This game doesn't feel extremely difficult to the point of being unplayable but now it suffers from the issue of just having no fun gameplay and a few minor annoyances. Fighting mobs feels kind of cool but it doesn't take long for you to realize that there really isn't any point to fighting any mobs besides the ones that hold the prisms. Farming mobs for blood would take way too long and the game incentivizes you to play fast because the difficulty ramps up the longer you stay in the game. So the current loop looks like: fight some mobs to get a few prisms, level up at a shrine and then extract, go back in fight a few more mobs to get some prisms, kill two bosses on the way and eventually kill the final boss. I know that seems reductive but you really don't get miss out on anything reading that instead of playing the game.

The bosses as they currently stand have zero complexity and are genuinely just HP bars that you have to whittle away over the span of 10-15 minutes. There is probably some part of me not being very level but I finished all the bosses with extra HP boosts so it wasn't something that I was eking by with these boss fights. I think the first two bosses aren't as terrible as the last. The big dragon which should be the highlight of the game has the same 3 moves (1 extra which it only does at the start) and spawns a few mobs which die in one hit but it has an extremely large health bar. I don't think I have played a more boring boss fight as you spend most of the time just waiting to break the shield so you can do some damage and then the shield fully regens again and you have to do the whole thing over and over.

I think even with this bad boss fight it wouldn't be a terrible game but all the small things in the rest of the game make it really really annoying to just play. There is a hoverboard which controls terribly and you'll spend the most time using it just to go from place to place in a map that is way too large for the POI on it. The bulk of your climbing or traversal in this game also feels like you're breaking the game. There is no climbing mechanic so most of the time you dash up a side of a mountain to get up until you realize that one cliff is just out of your dash range so you have to then go all the way around or find another cliff that you can just get up or if you're lucky there might be a jump pad that gets you one cliff higher. The hoverboard mechanic on water also feels so tedious as if you stop hoverboarding you drown in the water and it just brings you back to the last land you were on with no consequence, you don't lose health, you don't lose currency, nothing happens besides you having to hoverboard across again. The only thing you lose is time.

The weapons feels very similar and there's not really much interesting going on that made me want to try them all. There are 5 or 6 currencies in the game that all do different things that feel completely useless and anytime I collected one I had no idea what it would allow me to unlock.

This game still really feels like they wanted to make Hyper Light Drifting 3D but had no clue what the actual enjoyable part of the game was after they made it.
P.S. Parrying is still useless and dodging has zero downside
P.P.S 90% of the stuff from my previous review also stands barring the insane difficulty

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This game remains completely unfun. When it first came out I gave it a chance and played 6 hours but it feels like it's in a pre-alpha state. So much of this game is really rough around the edges. None of the gameplay feels fluid and all the inputs feel extremely delayed. This game really has to be the worst controlling game I've played when being very tight is extremely important as parrying and dashing at the exact right time is very crucial. Parrying itself is the most unfun experience. You can parry to recover 5-10 health at most and if you mess up the parry you stand to lose 25-60 health. There is also a cap on what you can actually recover when you parry making parrying useful for only a small window of time and then dashing is vastly superior. This game feels like they wanted to see if they could make it before figuring out what exactly makes the game fun because it's everything but that

Edit: Updating review after Buried Below update Again I wish I could say I liked this update but there's not much here. I think that this update is however miles better than the original state of the game. This game doesn't feel extremely difficult to the point of being unplayable but now it suffers from the issue of just having no fun gameplay and a few minor annoyances. Fighting mobs feels kind of cool but it doesn't take long for you to realize that there really isn't any point to fighting any mobs besides the ones that hold the prisms. Farming mobs for blood would take way too long and the game incentivizes you to play fast because the difficulty ramps up the longer you stay in the game. So the current loop looks like: fight some mobs to get a few prisms, level up at a shrine and then extract, go back in fight a few more mobs to get some prisms, kill two bosses on the way and eventually kill the final boss. I know that seems reductive but you really don't get miss out on anything reading that instead of playing the game. The bosses as they currently stand have zero complexity and are genuinely just HP bars that you have to whittle away over the span of 10-15 minutes. There is probably some part of me not being very level but I finished all the bosses with extra HP boosts so it wasn't something that I was eking by with these boss fights. I think the first two bosses aren't as terrible as the last. The big dragon which should be the highlight of the game has the same 3 moves (1 extra which it only does at the start) and spawns a few mobs which die in one hit but it has an extremely large health bar. I don't think I have played a more boring boss fight as you spend most of the time just waiting to break the shield so you can do some damage and then the shield fully regens again and you have to do the whole thing over and over. I think even with this bad boss fight it wouldn't be a terrible game but all the small things in the rest of the game make it really really annoying to just play. There is a hoverboard which controls terribly and you'll spend the most time using it just to go from place to place in a map that is way too large for the POI on it. The bulk of your climbing or traversal in this game also feels like you're breaking the game. There is no climbing mechanic so most of the time you dash up a side of a mountain to get up until you realize that one cliff is just out of your dash range so you have to then go all the way around or find another cliff that you can just get up or if you're lucky there might be a jump pad that gets you one cliff higher. The hoverboard mechanic on water also feels so tedious as if you stop hoverboarding you drown in the water and it just brings you back to the last land you were on with no consequence, you don't lose health, you don't lose currency, nothing happens besides you having to hoverboard across again. The only thing you lose is time. The weapons feels very similar and there's not really much interesting going on that made me want to try them all. There are 5 or 6 currencies in the game that all do different things that feel completely useless and anytime I collected one I had no idea what it would allow me to unlock. This game still really feels like they wanted to make Hyper Light Drifting 3D but had no clue what the actual enjoyable part of the game was after they made it. P.S. Parrying is still useless and dodging has zero downside P.P.S 90% of the stuff from my previous review also stands barring the insane difficulty ------------------------------------------------------------ This game remains completely unfun. When it first came out I gave it a chance and played 6 hours but it feels like it's in a pre-alpha state. So much of this game is really rough around the edges. None of the gameplay feels fluid and all the inputs feel extremely delayed. This game really has to be the worst controlling game I've played when being very tight is extremely important as parrying and dashing at the exact right time is very crucial. Parrying itself is the most unfun experience. You can parry to recover 5-10 health at most and if you mess up the parry you stand to lose 25-60 health. There is also a cap on what you can actually recover when you parry making parrying useful for only a small window of time and then dashing is vastly superior. This game feels like they wanted to see if they could make it before figuring out what exactly makes the game fun because it's everything but that