Fun setting, good and challenging combat, but you can really feel the early access cracks here.

The camera angle and items not fading to block your view happens too often. Textures and environments load extremely slow. The character and stash inventory management is an outright disaster, with not enough space on either end and too much travel time to the initial stash location. Daily challenges are the same every day, as far as I could tell There is no re-speccing so you can't really try different playstyles without playing extra time to level up.

Still reasonably excited for 1.0 when it comes around, but just not good enough now to play with so many other options this year.

Since all the reviews are shelved or negative I thought I'd leave my own XD

First: I finished the story around 13 hours, if you don't do daily/weekly quests or upgrade the city, you'll probably finish it in less time than that

The launch was really buggy and the game has had its performance issues but they've already made 3 patches since its release to fix these issues and incorporate feedback. I haven't had too many issues running the game, just occasional lag in the 12 hours I've played so far. I haven't encountered any bugs.

There is weapon/tool/gear durability in this game but they've incorporated some feedback on that to make them slightly more durable. And there is repair powder for it as well. Personally I dont like weapon durability at all

There is also no way to respec your character yet but I believe they said they are working on that in their discord

There is a teleporting mechanic but you can only travel from one waypoint to the city

There are daily and weekly challenges which I love, but so far there's not a lot of variety - it could be that I need to progress the game more

You can upgrade your city which takes real world time to do, and you can own a house and decorate it if you want to

The world and art is beautiful and I personally love the story. I also found the gameplay fun and challenging but not overly so

And I like how the world state changes over time

Overall it's not a bad game. I really enjoy it. But if you want a perfect game that plays perfectly - this game is not that at this moment. It is in early access with emphasis on early. That being said they are receptive to feedback and have been incorporating it rather quickly

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS THE EARLY ACCESS

So, as you can tell Ori and the Will of the Wisps is one of my favorite games of all time, so I was ECSTATIC when this game was revealed. I was so excited to play it and I finally got around to the Early Access. Unfortunately, the launch was a bit.. rougher than expected, Which I'll get into later, but beneath the Early Access crustiness lies yet another Moon Studios HIT.

In typical Moon studios fashion, this is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, but in a very different way compared to Ori. Ori balances areas of darkness with equally high if not higher areas of serene wilderness, kind of like a Ghibli movie. Here though? This game is dark fantasy to the max, with some great gothic locations and some excellent character and boss designs. The Music also sounds great and the voice acting in the surprisingly well-animated cutscenes sound great as well.

Weirdly enough the sound editing isn't that great, with some attacks not having the weight that the animations make them out to have, and some things like the lock-on sound being a bit hard to discern but most of the rest of it turned out well. I can't comment on the story as we only have the first bit of it, but I am intrigued to see where it goes.

The combat is really heavy and slow, but very satisfying. There's a bit of weapon durability annoyance in there and the balancing of that vs the enemy density and strength is a bit lopsided, but it isn't too bad. It's a little weird how I can spec super hard into defense and yet some enemies can still kill me in one hit so that's a little silly.
Even more silly is the game's inventory management, which, as of now, just straight-up sucks. The UI is extremely crowded, with so much dicking around in these menus, compounded by the fact that there's no auto pickup making it a chore to collect resources which is how you offset the brutal durability system. And if you die too many times, you eventually reach that bloodborne loop where you have no healing items but you need stuff from enemies to get those healing items, which sends you into that familiar downward spiral. It can be a bit too punishing at times.

And that is on top of the multitude of Early Access weirdness in this game. There are a lot of basic QOL options not in the game, like key bind mapping and pausing, the frame rate was pretty bad at launch (though it has been fixed for me) and there are a bunch of minor bugs and features that just aren't here. In my mind, this is definitely an Early Access ass Early Access game.

And that's how I'd describe this game. It is a game that, in all of the areas that count, is spectacular. Great visuals, music, combat, exploration, and an interesting narrative. But the balancing on the game's systems, the QOL, and the polish in terms of bugs and performance could be better. This game is getting patched pretty frequently, so maybe by the next update or two, it can reach that level that the Ori games set out for it. But right now, I'd say to temper your expectations, since it IS early access.

PROS:
- Visual presentation
- Voice acting
- Music & ambience
- UI
- Diverse class and upgrading

CONS:
- Input storing*
- Roll startup frames makes it almost impossible to react to attacks*
- Durability system is too brutal*
- Performance issues*
- No keybind mapping
- No quit to main menu
- Must be facing things to interact with them
- No autopick when foraging for wood, stone, etc.

Wait for this to be waaay further along in development.