this game has some cool ideas but it feels like it took the worst aspects of every fromsoft game and threw it in here.

there's so many cool weapons and weapon combinations you can get here but this game has that same fromsoft upgrade system thats been terrible since 2009 so you wont be able to actually use them

not crazy about the bosses here there's like 3 or 4 i would say i really liked but thats it

i dont even know what they were thinking with the parry system. in order to stagger the enemy not only do you have to parry them a bunch of times but you also have this super small window where you have to hit them with a charged attack that depending on your weapon takes forever to charge. if a boss decides to attack you during that window you're basically fucked. and there's no posture bar so you have no way of knowing when that stagger window is coming. you mix that with the most annoying delayed boss attacks that take forever to wind up and then hit you faster than you can react and it ruined the combat for me

sometimes this game will add some nice quality of life changes to the genre and then just have some baffling decisions. your souls are always outside the boss arena when you die in it, when you get an item related to a quest the game will tell you exactly which checkpoint you need to warp to in order to progress the quest, when you interact with a locked door it tells you exactly what key you need. and then there's also doors that only open when you kill a specific big enemy and the door looks the same as the other doors in the game and you cant interact with it at all + when you kill the enemy theres no warning that the door opened it just opens without you even noticing.

there are so many different systems and materials for upgrading stuff and so many tutorials that it gets so confusing and overwhelming. there's a material for your skill tree, there's like 10 different materials for weapon upgrades, one for crafting arms, one for upgrading arms, one for altering your weapon handle, one for altering your grindstone, one for summoning and there's a gold coin that just shows up halfway through the game and is on a real timer to grow back for some reason.

there's also the cube system which just didn't work for me. i actually have no idea if its a glitch or i missed something. it's supposed to be like the physick flasks from elden ring where its a consumable you use to get a certain buff and then it resets when you die/rest but for me it just didnt happen. i would use it once and then the wishstone dissapears and i would have to buy it back with the gold coins.

this game also has all the other soulslike problems. enemies stunlocking you, enemies making you get stuck in a corner, annoying status effects, poison swamp, bosses/enemies with too much HP, bosses where multiple enemies attack you at once (there have been some good ones in other games but its very rare)

i didnt mention the story because i barely remember anything about it but i hated gemini constantly talking. i dont think every soulslike needs to be cryptic about its story and have everything in item descriptions but i also dont think i need an npc saying "wow look at all these corpses! what happened here?"

all of the cool weapons and the weapon combination system and enemy designs feel like they would have fit so well in a character action game but the soulslike elements of this game ruined it for me.