So, as someone who has only dabbled in Souls-like games, this has been my experience so far:
The Good:
- I like the Points of Interest on the maps, giving me rewards for fully exploring and taking down the Elites and Minibosses on maps is fun, plus it makes me want to go into all the side zones as well just to see whats there.
- Aesthetically, it hits thats desperate early Dialbo feel where you are just struggling to push forward. Gear is rare which is both good and bad since it makes you value anything decent you find, but you also struggle if you just dont get any drops, and currency is spare enough that you are relucant to use any.
- For rolling, the fact there is no stamina is nice since that means you can keep rolling if you to. That being said...
The Bad:
- I started out as a Ranger and it was brutal trying to get any uptime on bosses, since the main combo they push you towards if you go Bow is Lightning Trap + Lightning Arrow, but that only works if you can keep the target near the Traps and can fire shots before the trap dissipate.
- Boss damage is just brutal at low levels such that you have no choice but to dodge every attack ,since even basic hits take 30% or more of you health in a hit, much less the wind up or heavy attacks that hit for 50-75%. So rather than bosses being a strategic dance, its just a mess of rolling around like Blart the Mall Cop and only getting 1 attack against the boss every 5 - 10 seconds.
Granted, this is Early Access so theres alot that will likely change over time as they get feedback. I don't mind the dodge mechanic and really, if you were to tone the boss basic attacks down while leaving the wind-up and heavy attacks as being the stuff to dodge, I could see that being a reasonable step up from POE1 to POE2. But as it is, if this is how combat will be for the whole game I can't see myself playing long term.
Worst case, I imagine people getting to endgame maps and running into bosses that have high resists, high hp, and high ES. At that point, you wont even be able to whittle the boss down since your uptime will be to low to keep the ES down and at that point even Souls vets will want to tap out.
But, I'm going to try Sorceress this time and see how that goes, try out a heavy Ice build and see if the soft CC helps with survivability.
