I recently played through the 0.8.1 campaign and wanted to offer my feedback as a lot has changed since my play through last year. Instead of rolling another necromancer I decided to try out a Forge Guard for a chance to try a more melee focused summoner. Overall I am still very impressed with the development the game has undergone and feel it has gotten better than ever. That being said I’d like to go more in depth with my overall play session which included the full campaign, a 60 wave arena run, and a string of monolith quests which lead me to take down the first monolith boss.
Campaign
The campaign has been a very solid experience. I am still thrilled with the pacing, environment variety, monster variety and overall level design the game offers. Difficulty was adequate with some spikes during the Heoborean chapters boss wise and Divine Era onward mob wise. Outside of some surprise one shots there were no real pain points. The boss fights in general were very fun and I am glad they have been given some actual teeth.
General leveling felt well spaced out as I never felt I was to over or under leveled for an area I was in. Skills came at a good pace and I never felt starved for passive points or skill points. The minimum skill point system was an eloquent way of solving the issue of swapping skills to often without being overly punishing. The current passive respec cost also let me retool my character quite a few times without going completely broke which was nice.
Gearing also went pretty well. I always had enough gear to hit about 50% all resist with a few offensive stats at about chapter 4+. I never felt starved for an item I needed or unable to tweak one with shards I found. I will admit I had several thousand shards and 100k gold when i started, but used both resources very conservatively. I am confident a new player would have just enough shards to patch there gear up to an average level needed as they progress through the campaign.
End Game
After the campaign I went right into monoliths and burned through some until I hit the first boss. It was a pleasing game play loop and the unique reward at the end was nice. I look forward to pushing further into the other time lines and trying the other bosses.
The arena was much better than it was before when it comes to difficulty ramp up. I felt a tangible shift from wave to wave all the way up to 60 where my health began to spike before I called it quits.
Forge Guard
Forge Guard definitely gives a different experience when compared to necromancer as far as summoners go. In my opinion its biggest strength was that it had the survivability to be a front line fighter right out of the box, while its biggest weakness was that its skills needed quite a few skill points to get rolling.
Forge strike is a big meaty hit that sets up a fun builder / spender loop where I dump all my mana on forge strike and refill using mana on hit / regen. It feels especially good when mapping while it falls short on bosses. . The 40% chance to summon a sword is great when hitting tons of mobs allowing me to sustain 20-30 swords, but on bosses I barely maintain 1-5. There needs to be some way to get more swords on a single target so the skill doesn’t feel so flat. Maybe just a skill modifier to guarantee a sword when forge strike hits a single target.
Mana regen has been terrible. When I started I had the idea to use rebuke as a way to restore my mana after I dumped my mana. Sitting in a bubble while my swords wailed on things really appealed to me. The 100% mana regen wasn’t even close to sustaining the amount of mana I dumped. Later I got the mana on hit passive for vengeance and that helped a bit, but the builder spender play loop still feels a bit strained. Towards the end of the campaign I’ve combined using the rebuke mana regen + mana from being hit + mana on hit passive with vengeance and still feel that mana regen is in a rough spot. Rebuke and vengeance could both use some tuning up to help with mana regen as their current numbers don’t do enough. Its not off by much but it is just enough to disrupt the flow between building and spending mana.
Conclusion
Well that’s about it. The overall game continues to offer a great gameplay experience. Skills, repseccing, bossing, and end game all have seen major improvements. Forge guard is fun, but mana regen is a real pain point and sword spawning on single target feels bad. I look forward for more to come.