I seldom review, but seeing mostly negative reviews, I feel the need to add my own, more positive, take on it. I like are the beautiful graphics , the exploration and the thrill of discovery when you discover a tiny island and wonder what it will hold, and the cheese. By cheese, I mean using the overpowered Sea Witch's Staff of Cleansing to attack when standing on rocks. The staff generates three pink orbs. Like short range magic missiles, they attack the creature closest to you, and never miss. Creatures cannot get on top of rocks, so you are safe and can use ranged attacks. Creatures will usually move around though, so rocks and arrows are likely to miss. Not the staff's orbs. Without it, combat in this game is hard. Any attacks against you is brutal. The game expects you to dodge and parry to avoid getting hit. You can cheese fighting creatures with the staff from safety, but not the boss fights. Those are in an arena with no safe spots. To win boss fights, you need to learn to dodge attacks at the right moment. The Night Stalker Cowl helps you there: it is one of the items found with a treasure map, and makes dodging faster and cost less stamina. Make sure you have it and the staff before fighting the level 3 boss. Dodge works against almost every attack, except area of effect attacks. So dodging wins you most fights. Only one boss (the chapter 3 one) has an area of effect attack, but he seems to only use it if you are far away. So stay close, wait for his attack animation to start, then dodge and counter attack. If you use the witch's staff, wait to attack him until you have all three orbs. Because the orbs are more powerful the more you have of them. If you are trying to get Witch's staff from pumpkins and the Beast Stalker hood from treasure maps, but get other items instead, just have some animals kill you and restart. That will respawn the world, with new pumpkins and treasure maps for you discover. You retain any boons you've already found!
