ELDERBORN

Yes, the game is hard. So if you buy it, you should know, what you get. Also, this is an indie game, so comparing it to a AAA game is not really fair. It has a bit of story (don't want to spoil much), but nothing like Dark Messiah. You are the choosen hero by the elders, who give you the task to look for treasures and secrets inside a sealed city. This one doesn't have real 3D animated cutscenes, however it has a 2D comic-style, hand-drawn pictures (with some effects, transitions, zoom ins etc.) and some audio voiceover. Nothing special but it is ok for what it is. The gameplay seems solid, I did play it only 3 hours and died maaaany times. The weapons seems, to have weight and the sounds is really punchy. You can feel, when your melee wepons jits bones, flash, stone, metal etc. About the speed: The game is made on Unity Engine. I played some games in the past on the Windows/MacOS, that were made with it (Colin Mcrae Rally Remastered 2013, Garfield Kart, Loria demo - available on GOG) and I never had really problems with that, as some other users said/wrote, that they had. It works at least for now relatively fluid, I disabled some effects (ambient occlusion, motion blur, no antialiasing and disabled vertical sync). I got about 40-50 fps all the time at 1920x1080 resolution. Computer configuration I played on: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 3 GHz (8 code/16 threads), 32 GB RAM 2666 MHz, 512 SSD, GeForce 1030 GT. Aha, mentioning Unity... dear developers, will there be a Mac/Linux version in the future too? :)

I got a hold of this from the developers to try out. At first I was scared It would have performance issues, but after playing it for a few hours, my rig stayed at a comfortable 78 max temp(mind you I own a R9 290, the brick oven of GPUs out there hah!) The game starts off claustrophobic at first. You have tight rooms and semi aggressive enemies. Kings Field, Demon Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne fans will feel comfortable with the game. Learning patterns of enemies almost instantly. The game promotes aggression. Rewarding attacks with replenished HP. Or every weapon offers a play style that keeps you on your toes. Each weapon feels like a sort of tool for certain enemies. Hammer is slower in the bag of toys to play with, but does great blunt damage. Cleaning house to certain enemies. Etc Etc. I am still playing it grinding out enemies and having a overall blast. The parkour nature the game deeper in offers a sense of charming platforming. I hear a bit of Dark Messiah references of inspiration towards the game, I can agree with the melee aspects. But this game is just about a Melee only game. Unless you pick one of the 6 or so perks like Rip n' Tear, where you take off enemies heads and toss them for good damage. Do not expect to blast through the game. It will take you a bit. Its fast, fun, and has a great dev team passionate about it. Plus its affordable!

Just finished my playthrough on the default difficulty (3 out of 4) and it took me just over 5 hours. A little on the short side but the price corresponds with that so all good. Might replay it once on the hardest difficulty to try the other gender (you can choose at the start of the game) and to hear the other voice actor. As for the game itself, the combat is pretty good and satisfying. Difficult if you do stupid stuff but if you exploit the enemy weaknesses properly, you should be able to overcome anything with good strategy. I almost never used blocking, it's all about the parries and dodging unparryable stuff There are also a lot more weapons than I expected. A good selection with different moves, damage values, damage types and special parameters. You should be able to quickly find your favorites, there are enough to fit most play styles I think (no ranged weapons). The enemies also have various resistances and vulnerabilities to the 3 damage types present in the game. Choose the right tool for the job. You collect essence from enemies and chests and spend it to upgrade (with the usual Souls mechanic of "You die, you have to go pick it up where you died, enemies respawn etc."). The leveling mechanic seems a bit lacking though. There is just increases to damage, speed and HP. Every main category has 3 perks which you can unlock once the base value of the attribute reaches 5,12 and 20 respectively. The problem is that the game is so short that if you do a somewhat balanced build, you will never reach the 20 perks in a playthrough. I ended at 8, 12, 15 so 35 points. If you go for one of the 20 perks, your other attributes will be pretty lacking. Story is basic, don't buy this game if you want an engaging story. It's more of a background flavor than an actual story. It's all about the combat and that is where it excels. It rewards being good at it by making you feel pretty badass. Al in all, $11 dollars well spent and I can recommend it. 7.5/10

Discalimer: though there are multiple difficulties, they essentially range from "hard" to "really hard." I expected one thing from this game going in and I got it in spades. First off its under 3GB, so if you're expecting something that couldnt fit in 3GB, why? My first playthough took me about 9 hours, I didnt die much but also had a tendency to respawn hordes that were fun to kill so that's probably a pretty typical time. The storyline is edgy nonsense, but you really dont need a reason to smash things in this game other than the catharsis you get from doing so. My first playthough on difficulty 2/4 took about 9 hours which I bet is typical. With all that out of the way though, I have to say, the combat system is fantastic. There are a lot more weapons I expected there would be, you'll start out with strong preferences but eventually apreciate that everything is balanced pretty well. The combat is really fluid and tight, but its easy to miss that its also very open-ended. about half way through I realized you can dodge forward WHILE charging up your power attack and thought "oh.. thats why I've been sucking so hard at using the hammer." Much to my surprize the game seems to essentially be balanced around stuff like that, which I think is grand. light weapons have cool parry attacks, heavy ones can slam enemies off ledges, and you can throw the heads of your dead enemies at your alive enemies. Killing stuff in this game is such a joy. You'll probably be back to slash again so just slap a few more 9 hour run throughs on there and you got yourself your money's worth