I finally passed Tenet Chapel, which is where I had gotten in the previous CBT. Experienced some grinding along the way, as I was much too weak for most of the monsters. I finally reached Psychokino, as well. Quite fun, but I’m still seeing errors in the gamepad support – my preferred way to play. Any sitting actions such as placing bonfires and crafting gems are inoperable in Gamepad mode.
The linear map and EXP progression is still really apparent, but I hope to see that change now – it seems after that first fight with Gesti, the game is finally beginning to open up.
My evidence for this is that… the very first quest in Veja Ravine had me explore an area, and kill some monsters – but I went to Veidma Uphill, and found some soiled ground which I could purify. Upon attempting to purify one, I immediately got a quest, to purify two spots. Upon doing so, I got some EXP items, as if I had spoken to a questgiver and turned it in.
Although this example is a bit basic, this is the kind of rewarding exploration the game needs. I walked off the beaten path, and found a cool little quest not tied to any NPCs. Good job! I hope to see a lot more quests, events, and treasure you can go find and do for yourself, so that exploring isn’t just finding more of the same enemies in grinding spots.
Wizard is, as ever, a chore to use compared to the other classes. There is far too much downtime in how often you run out of SP, and have every skill on cooldown. I like how Ice Bolt and Energy Bolt are usually off cooldown, and have several uses, but every other damaging skill takes forever to come back online.
I’d rather the cooldowns, SP costs, and if necessary, the damage reduced so that I’m always doing SOMETHING. Bunny hopping and attacking is terribly boring, and the basic attack does negligible damage on everything. It’s a waste of time to use it.
I’m also shocked that there’s still no use for Stamina for any class but Swordsman… Couldn’t each class have its own movement skill?
I think Tree Root Crystals should give back a good 10%-15% of your SP and HP when broken on top of the Stamina, just to make the downtimes between grinding less frustrating, or the grinding sessions themselves last longer.