Alright so I was sadly mistaken about the quality of the Against the Storm. Long story short, game is way too difficult on anything but Settler, doesn't provide information to fix problems and people eat food way too quickly (6+ farms not enough?!). Game is still in Early Access and I hope this is just growing pains. Right now Pioneer difficulty feels like nightmare modes in other games. There should probably be a difficulty level between Settler and Pioneer. And again, why do people eat so much? There are also many weird design decisions like how the game teaches you that you can win via quests (basically missions from the Queen) but then if you go to Pioneer difficulty the game is actually like: "Lol no, gotta do crates for rep lel" Do not enjoy games lying to me.
As someone who played and finished Hollow Knight (all endings), Dark Souls and many other well-known difficult games, let me tell you a few things about this one. I will start with the good. It looks and sounds amazing. Seriously, the artists and musicians who worked on this have done an incredible job. Music specifically reminds of the Diablo 2 soundtrack, which is amazing. Now sadly, the gameplay. Imagine playing Hollow Knight, but your dash almost 3 second cooldown, the Knight takes a second to swing his nail after you press the button (confirmed design decision by the developers) and most of your defensive methods are situation at best. Game, is a metroidvania, wearing the cloak of Dark Souls. The problem is that you do not really get stronger in this game like you do in DS or HK or basically any good metroidvania. Even three hours in, you still mostly smack enemies with your sword and deal less and less damage as you explore (or enemies get generally more HP). You have two defensive methods. Parrying, which so far only works on certain attacks, and dashing. Your dash SOMETIMES gives you the ability to dash through enemies without taking damage... except when it does not. There is no rhyme or reason to when it works and when it does not. Level design is specifically made in such a way that you will die to encounters a couple of times not cause they are difficult, but cause they are horribly cheap. We are talking Wheel Skeleton area from Dark Souls but in every area of the game so far. Bosses look impressive but the very first boss is a joke and the very second boss is a bullet hell monster which makes your magic worthless, has so much HP that your swing removes about a pixel of his healthbar, makes all of your defensive capabilities null and void... and has undodgeable abilities. Generally, I do not recommend this game. Buy Hollow Knight for a similar price, much better experience and devs that actually care about your opinion and wanna make a good game.
