I decided to go play Haven on Game Pass after how much fun I had with Furi. Unfortunately, it looks like The Game Bakers completely forgot how to make a fun game and did practically everything that was the opposite of their previous work.
The controls are kind of bad. The main characters walk at basically a crawl, but when you accelerate/dash, you actually go so fast that it's super hard to turn and at times control your distance. This leads to a classic case of "I want to travel to this place in my immediate vicinity, but if I dash, then I'll probably overshoot, and if I walk, it'll take an eternity and a half". They do have drifting (and make sure to really shove it in your face in case you try and play the game like old school Superman 64) but even the drifting felt imprecise at times to me, and this did lead to quite a few cases of falling off cliffs or off of strings that I needed to trace to get to higher locations. And speaking of which, did I mention it's super easy to fall out cliffs and strings, and if you do, you have to backtrack all the way back up to the location of the strings to get back up those higher ledges that are only accessible via strings because they decided not to include a simple jump function for smaller ledges?
Now the part that actually ruined Haven for me was the combat. For first half of the game, the combat was inoffensive. Nothing special, but it wasn't so blatantly bad as to aggravate me. Around the end stretch of the game however, the combat's flaws start really exposing themselves. Firstly, you can't manually target enemies; it's all auto-aim. During the early game, this isn't an issue since the enemies will melt quickly enough, but near the end, when you have to deal with multiple enemies that can block certain types of attacks (or are only vulnerable after their attacks, requiring timing), autoaim will invalidate so many of your attacks. Also, near the end of the game, there are quite a few enemies that focus on healing themselves/others or summoning infinite other enemies for you to deal with. Sure would be nice to single those enemies out so I don't have to deal with their effects but nope, auto-aim makes sure I deal with the cronies first.
Combat essentially devolves into a battle of attrition; you have to kill the enemy before it kills you. This happens because:
1. There is no way to prevent damage altogether via dodging and most fights (even many fights where you start with an advantage) will last long enough to where you have to take damage regardless. You can only mitigate damage, and mitigation of damage usually takes away from offense that could be used to finish the fight faster.
2. You can't manually aim as mentioned above, so enemies that infinitely spawn other enemies or heal turn fights into absolute slogs.
Now, this actually wouldn't have been such a big deal if healing were easier. But the best healing items (food and dedicated medicine) can't be used in the field or in battle. Nope, you can only use heal capsules that heal 80 HP in the field and in battle. So as a result, since almost every successful battle will require you to take some form of damage, you will need to heal. A lot. And since the most efficient way of healing is via campsites and going back to the nest, you will be backtracking and/or using up tons of food (for fast travel) to make this happen. A lot. Or you could just try and use the 80 HP capsules, but those have a max held cap of 5 and also require rust that could be used for repairs and offensive capsules, not to mention you can only build those at the Nest, so you will be wasting resources and backtracking anyways. A lot. Oh, and did I mention that every section in the overworld has its own loading zone? You'll often have to go back several zones just to get to a camping site or a fast travel site, so get used to seeing that loading screen. A lot.
Other things I want to nitpick that really annoyed me:
1. You can easily exploit the XP/leveling/relationship system for boosts by eating something, going to sleep, and then eating something as soon as you wake up at the Nest to level up really quickly. So in my case, I was maxed out 2/3rds of the way into the game. Eating food and viewing events gives way, way, more XP than any amount of combat in the same span of time. And once you cap out your level, you obviously don't gain any more XP, so there's even less incentive to engage in combat; the only incentives you get are Rust (which are very easy to obtain in the overworld) and making sure the aggressive enemy isn't present on the overworld. Except...
2. You're often encouraged to use your field burst to knock down enemies in range, and this stops them from aggroing on you and engaging you in combat. The only problem is, this stops them from engaging you in combat altogether; you can't walk up to the knocked up enemy and start the battle with an advantage, like how every other RPG does it. So you either have to move on and deal with the enemy again when traversing that part of the overworld, or you have to wait for the enemy to get up and then approach it from behind to gain an advantage state just so you can wipe it from the map. How did the game developers mess this up?
3. Oh yeah, did I mention you can't run away from battles? So not only is there very little incentive to engage in combat (since it uses up precious resources that require backtracking to replenish, you gain little XP anyways and even that is invalidated once you hit max level, and you only gain Rust for most general fights), you can't even run away from fights if you accidentally get involved. You might be here for a while.
4. Some of the fights include fighting against robots that can bind one of your guys so they can't do anything, and then you have to spend your time with your other guy unbinding your friend and taking more damage. This is especially annoying because the robots can only be permanently disabled when you have a duo overload... which can get suddenly interrupted by asshole AI that choose to bind one of your guys, and then the robot gets up and proceeds to heal. Oh, and during one of the fights, the robots have attacks that can knock one of your guys out of the screen, so you have to waste time waiting for your guy to return to the screen while your combo attack/disable was interrupted. Yeah, it's not a good time.
5. This could have just been a bug with the specific version I played, but there were a ton of instances where after my action was fully loaded from holding down the button, the action would fail to materialize. So not only did I fail the action, I wasted time trying to materialize the action. It speaks volumes that somehow the bug wasn't even the part that annoyed me the most.
A lot of people have written about how the dialogue was extremely stilted and strange, but honestly, I thought most of it was fine. Not incredible, moving dialogue like I've encountered in other games, but for the most part, it held up just fine. I especially resonated with some of the daily life interactions and events I got at the Nest as part of the experience and bonding gain. Don't get me wrong, I can see why people could be turned off by the dialogue since a ton of the dialogue focuses on their love for one another and tends to touch upon very little else found in relationships, but the dialogue was definitely not the weakest part of the game. The narrative was just okay though, I didn't experience much of an emotional reaction from the ending or from most of the characters' struggles.
At least the game is aesthetically pleasing and has a pleasant soundtrack from Danger. The main characters are fine too, I didn't really mind them much. Unfortunately, everything else is so much worse than Furi, especially the combat. I really hope The Game Bakers take the feedback from Haven seriously, because I could definitely see the potential from the game's ideas. But the execution was extremely sloppy and in fact very anti-fun, and at times I felt that there was a significant lack of focus from what they were trying to create. All in all, one of the most disappointing experiences I've had after one of the most pleasantly surprising experiences I've had.
The controls are kind of bad. The main characters walk at basically a crawl, but when you accelerate/dash, you actually go so fast that it's super hard to turn and at times control your distance. This leads to a classic case of "I want to travel to this place in my immediate vicinity, but if I dash, then I'll probably overshoot, and if I walk, it'll take an eternity and a half". They do have drifting (and make sure to really shove it in your face in case you try and play the game like old school Superman 64) but even the drifting felt imprecise at times to me, and this did lead to quite a few cases of falling off cliffs or off of strings that I needed to trace to get to higher locations. And speaking of which, did I mention it's super easy to fall out cliffs and strings, and if you do, you have to backtrack all the way back up to the location of the strings to get back up those higher ledges that are only accessible via strings because they decided not to include a simple jump function for smaller ledges?
Now the part that actually ruined Haven for me was the combat. For first half of the game, the combat was inoffensive. Nothing special, but it wasn't so blatantly bad as to aggravate me. Around the end stretch of the game however, the combat's flaws start really exposing themselves. Firstly, you can't manually target enemies; it's all auto-aim. During the early game, this isn't an issue since the enemies will melt quickly enough, but near the end, when you have to deal with multiple enemies that can block certain types of attacks (or are only vulnerable after their attacks, requiring timing), autoaim will invalidate so many of your attacks. Also, near the end of the game, there are quite a few enemies that focus on healing themselves/others or summoning infinite other enemies for you to deal with. Sure would be nice to single those enemies out so I don't have to deal with their effects but nope, auto-aim makes sure I deal with the cronies first.
Combat essentially devolves into a battle of attrition; you have to kill the enemy before it kills you. This happens because:
1. There is no way to prevent damage altogether via dodging and most fights (even many fights where you start with an advantage) will last long enough to where you have to take damage regardless. You can only mitigate damage, and mitigation of damage usually takes away from offense that could be used to finish the fight faster.
2. You can't manually aim as mentioned above, so enemies that infinitely spawn other enemies or heal turn fights into absolute slogs.
Now, this actually wouldn't have been such a big deal if healing were easier. But the best healing items (food and dedicated medicine) can't be used in the field or in battle. Nope, you can only use heal capsules that heal 80 HP in the field and in battle. So as a result, since almost every successful battle will require you to take some form of damage, you will need to heal. A lot. And since the most efficient way of healing is via campsites and going back to the nest, you will be backtracking and/or using up tons of food (for fast travel) to make this happen. A lot. Or you could just try and use the 80 HP capsules, but those have a max held cap of 5 and also require rust that could be used for repairs and offensive capsules, not to mention you can only build those at the Nest, so you will be wasting resources and backtracking anyways. A lot. Oh, and did I mention that every section in the overworld has its own loading zone? You'll often have to go back several zones just to get to a camping site or a fast travel site, so get used to seeing that loading screen. A lot.
Other things I want to nitpick that really annoyed me:
1. You can easily exploit the XP/leveling/relationship system for boosts by eating something, going to sleep, and then eating something as soon as you wake up at the Nest to level up really quickly. So in my case, I was maxed out 2/3rds of the way into the game. Eating food and viewing events gives way, way, more XP than any amount of combat in the same span of time. And once you cap out your level, you obviously don't gain any more XP, so there's even less incentive to engage in combat; the only incentives you get are Rust (which are very easy to obtain in the overworld) and making sure the aggressive enemy isn't present on the overworld. Except...
2. You're often encouraged to use your field burst to knock down enemies in range, and this stops them from aggroing on you and engaging you in combat. The only problem is, this stops them from engaging you in combat altogether; you can't walk up to the knocked up enemy and start the battle with an advantage, like how every other RPG does it. So you either have to move on and deal with the enemy again when traversing that part of the overworld, or you have to wait for the enemy to get up and then approach it from behind to gain an advantage state just so you can wipe it from the map. How did the game developers mess this up?
3. Oh yeah, did I mention you can't run away from battles? So not only is there very little incentive to engage in combat (since it uses up precious resources that require backtracking to replenish, you gain little XP anyways and even that is invalidated once you hit max level, and you only gain Rust for most general fights), you can't even run away from fights if you accidentally get involved. You might be here for a while.
4. Some of the fights include fighting against robots that can bind one of your guys so they can't do anything, and then you have to spend your time with your other guy unbinding your friend and taking more damage. This is especially annoying because the robots can only be permanently disabled when you have a duo overload... which can get suddenly interrupted by asshole AI that choose to bind one of your guys, and then the robot gets up and proceeds to heal. Oh, and during one of the fights, the robots have attacks that can knock one of your guys out of the screen, so you have to waste time waiting for your guy to return to the screen while your combo attack/disable was interrupted. Yeah, it's not a good time.
5. This could have just been a bug with the specific version I played, but there were a ton of instances where after my action was fully loaded from holding down the button, the action would fail to materialize. So not only did I fail the action, I wasted time trying to materialize the action. It speaks volumes that somehow the bug wasn't even the part that annoyed me the most.
A lot of people have written about how the dialogue was extremely stilted and strange, but honestly, I thought most of it was fine. Not incredible, moving dialogue like I've encountered in other games, but for the most part, it held up just fine. I especially resonated with some of the daily life interactions and events I got at the Nest as part of the experience and bonding gain. Don't get me wrong, I can see why people could be turned off by the dialogue since a ton of the dialogue focuses on their love for one another and tends to touch upon very little else found in relationships, but the dialogue was definitely not the weakest part of the game. The narrative was just okay though, I didn't experience much of an emotional reaction from the ending or from most of the characters' struggles.
At least the game is aesthetically pleasing and has a pleasant soundtrack from Danger. The main characters are fine too, I didn't really mind them much. Unfortunately, everything else is so much worse than Furi, especially the combat. I really hope The Game Bakers take the feedback from Haven seriously, because I could definitely see the potential from the game's ideas. But the execution was extremely sloppy and in fact very anti-fun, and at times I felt that there was a significant lack of focus from what they were trying to create. All in all, one of the most disappointing experiences I've had after one of the most pleasantly surprising experiences I've had.