Graven is half combat and half exploration. Both halves are bad.
For starters, combat simply doesn't matter because dying and starting from a checkpoint doesn't respawn enemies or even heal bosses, meaning you can just throw yourself at the obstacle and always get through eventually.
Second, your base movement speed is awfully slow. You can sprint, but there's a stamina meter that some other actions also take away from.
Third, the feedback is weak (due to bad animations) and inconsistent. Enemies get staggered on occasion, but not all enemies (with no clear logic behind which do), and not reliably, ranged weapons have bad accuracy, sound effects are confusing, it's hard to tell whether spells are even hitting the enemy, no weapon is fun to use.
Fourth, switching between items is annoying. Putting them in the item bar is a weirdly inefficient process by itself, but then you have to sit through every single item swap animation to get to what you want, and they're so different in length that it's easy to not even end up at the item you wanted.
It's made worse by the inclusion of two items that are forced into your hotbar at all times, adding to the clutter.
As for exploration, it does have some redeeming qualities. The level design is pretty nice - pretty open ended, with interconnecting paths and times where you're shown parts of an area from different perspectives.
The environmental art is very solid as well.
The issue is that it's never clear what the game wants from you - key items are placed in awkward places, there's no way to tell if you've got everything you need, whether you should explore more or leave the area, and your current objective is just a mystery a lot of the time. Doesn't help that backtracking is a little annoying due to the stamina system.
For starters, combat simply doesn't matter because dying and starting from a checkpoint doesn't respawn enemies or even heal bosses, meaning you can just throw yourself at the obstacle and always get through eventually.
Second, your base movement speed is awfully slow. You can sprint, but there's a stamina meter that some other actions also take away from.
Third, the feedback is weak (due to bad animations) and inconsistent. Enemies get staggered on occasion, but not all enemies (with no clear logic behind which do), and not reliably, ranged weapons have bad accuracy, sound effects are confusing, it's hard to tell whether spells are even hitting the enemy, no weapon is fun to use.
Fourth, switching between items is annoying. Putting them in the item bar is a weirdly inefficient process by itself, but then you have to sit through every single item swap animation to get to what you want, and they're so different in length that it's easy to not even end up at the item you wanted.
It's made worse by the inclusion of two items that are forced into your hotbar at all times, adding to the clutter.
As for exploration, it does have some redeeming qualities. The level design is pretty nice - pretty open ended, with interconnecting paths and times where you're shown parts of an area from different perspectives.
The environmental art is very solid as well.
The issue is that it's never clear what the game wants from you - key items are placed in awkward places, there's no way to tell if you've got everything you need, whether you should explore more or leave the area, and your current objective is just a mystery a lot of the time. Doesn't help that backtracking is a little annoying due to the stamina system.