10 hours in: Feedback from a Backer

[Cyber Akuma]

Wasn't sure if I should post this on the Steam forums that people are reporting feedback, or on the official forums, so I just posted it on both.

I had played the alpha and reported some bugs back then, but this game had fallen off my radar a bit after, I wish I had played the beta so I could have given this feedback earlier. I was going to wait to post this until I beat the game, but as my progress has slowed down, I figured it might be best to collect my thoughts for now and list my current feedback before I forget, so far I have played it for around 10 hours (not counting the alphas) with 8 hours on my main save, and have gotten through most of the Keep:

- First thing that stuck out to me was the same issue that many had with one of the Ur-Examples of this series: Symphony of the Night, and it’s an issue that most of the other Metroidvania-style Castlevania games didn't fix either. The way Game Over works. The biggest issue people had with getting a game over in SOTN was how slow it was to get back into the game. You had to wait for the screen to slowly do the melting effect, show you the Game Over image, have THAT go away, reload the title screen, reload your save, and let the game load again.... while needless to say a modern PC/Console loads much faster than a PS1 did, the issue is still the same: You need to watch the "Game Over" message (Which you can't seem to skip or speed up), let the game go back to the title screen, select your save, and then reload it. Chances are when most people die, they will want to do exactly that, reload their save. Why is there no quick "Reload last save?" option when you die? This really should have been an obvious one, which is why I listed it first.

- The fast-travel system seems to need some better prediction. There have been times where it would place all of the world's warp points close together, and then have a large swath of area with no warp points within it. I have attached a screenshot of this. Notice the entire top-half of the Gardens which has a small vertical "choke point" to access it has no warp points, all of them are clustered on the bottom half (It would also be nice if you could tell in advance where a fast-travel point would also take you on the map):
https://i.imgur.com/BQezKfO.jpg

- Speaking of fast travel, going between worlds is incredibly clunky. It would make a lot more sense to just choose the world the warp-gate sends you to instead of having to cycle across them.

- Far too much of the jumping/platforming is of the "just barely made it" type. This is nothing but frustrating to the player. The game was filled with rooms and ledges where you will just BARELY make the jump if you jump at the last possible moment at max jump height. This felt counter-intuitive to being able to actually move around and explore, and made repeating many of the rooms due to the backtracking nature of such games a chore. I groaned every time I had to re-do one of those vertical rooms where you basically slowly ascend by going back and forth and just barely making jumps.... essentially resetting the room if you make a mistake and fall. This is a NIGHTMARE when the jump is over any kind of pit with a damaging liquid that sucks you into it. This is also badly implemented when you need to jump up a vertical wall. There were areas where I assumed that I was supposed to cross them in some other way, due to the character sliding down the wall for about half a second then dropping off, but if I JUST barely manage to jump JUST right, he can grab the wall for a second longer allowing me to then keep jumping up. I hated crossing any of these areas, as they take multiple attempts to finally grab the wall in the right way to actually cross up.

- In addition to the above, it felt like far too many of the larger rooms were just that, a large rectangular area where you have to get from the bottom to the top... but the only way to do that is to cross it horizontally, then at the end manage to get slightly higher, cross it horizontally in the other direction, ascent slightly higher... etc etc until you reach the top. This got old FAST, especially due to the above.

- Weapons feel like they just barely have a millisecond too much delay than they should. None of them felt fluid to use, and while it goes without saying that smaller and lighter-damage weapons like daggers should be able to be used faster than slow and high-damage weapons like hammers, all of them felt like they had their delay set just barely too long in time with enemy attacks. Enemies kept getting hits in JUST before I could react/dodge because the weapon delay was just barely too long by a hair to let me, it just made all of combat feel off and the back-dash useless since I could rarely use it before the enemy could hit me.

- Some of the hitboxes felt like they extended slightly larger than they should, the biggest one that comes to mind is the fire the Titan boss spits out, they seemed to always hit me when I should have been between them.

- I was surprised at first when I was no longer able to buy any more of a certain item from one of the shops. There was no mention or indication what shops have limited inventory, and that their stock doesn't refresh ever either. Some kind of indicator somewhere of how much the shops have left of an item would have helped me not waste my money on trying to acquire more of an item I needed than the shops had stock of.

- Random money drops feel like the only real way to earn money in this game, while they are generally pocket change in most Metroidvanias. There didn't seem to be any real way to make money, unlike many others where selling drops is usually the primary source of income. Nearly every item has a use and many of them don't sell for much. I at first thought for sure the precious gemstones I was getting were going to be for this purpose... but nope, they are actually consumables for upgrading your magic, and they sell for next to nothing to the jeweler. Lucky duplicate drops of weapons were the only way I found to make some profit, but even that is a rare occurrence, especially of getting an item that sells for a decent amount.

- White treasure chests feel worthless. Their rewards are not only far too random, but also far too low quality for the effort nearly all of them need to reach in the first place. I have had some just spawn a few pieces of food... that immediately fell into a poison lake since most of these chests tend to be on a high ledge, or just two bags of gold that I could have farmed in about 5 minutes. The reward really doesn't fit the effort to get them, especially since many of them typically need you to come back much later when you have the item to reach them, and then tend to drop their rewards off the ledge they are on.

- The Bestiary is honestly a chore to use. There is only one way to scroll through it (left or right), no way to scroll through multiple pages at a time (such as pressing LB/RB or their keyboard equivalents to go 10 pages at a time or so), no way to search, you can't just display multiple pages on a grid so then you can select one, can't in any way sort it.... it's just plain annoying to try to find an entry for anything that's not at the very beginning or very end of the book.

- The Shovel item is counter-intuitive to use. You have to equip it like a weapon when it really should act like the way artifacts do and just be a button or direction/button combination to use. Having to equip it slows the game down considerably (especially later in the game when you have many weapons) because you have to go to the equip menu, find the shovel (this game could REALLY benefit with having more grid-like menus instead of just a single-column vertical list), equip it, dig for a few seconds, then when you are done since the shovel literally can't be used for anything else you then have to go back to the equip menu, find the weapon you were using, and re-equip that. All that, just so you can dig for about 5 seconds.

- Surfacing from the water is slow, very slow, and it seems to have issues if you are pressing any direction other than straight up, such as if you are pressing diagonally up and left or right.

- Input from one source is cut off if another is used. E.G. If any keyboard button is pressed input from a gamepad is cut off, such as while you are gliding, causing you to drop down immediately. It also won't switch back to the gamepad from analog stick input, it has to be a button or d-pad. This is annoying for those who take screenshots, especially if they use the analog sticks instead of a d-pad.

- The little red Imp enemies can essentially hover "inside" you, making them impossible to hit and make you keep taking damage if you are on a platform where you can't move enough to get them "out" of you. This was very apparent in the vertical room with the platforms full of rotating spike-balls that was full of these things. There is not enough room on the platforms without just giving up and jumping off to get them "out" of you.

- It’s a little annoying that familiars essentially “steal” your kills. You not only don’t get any EXP if they kill an enemy but it doesn’t even count as a kill in your pause-menu stats. This can be aggravating when you are fighting a tough enemy and the familiar that has been barely moving swoops down and gets the last hit in.

- The spider's web-attack is easily abused. When there are two of them they can essentially stun-luck you by keeping you webbed, tossing one so it hits you just as you break out of the previous one. And I don't know if this was intentional or just a mess-up of the RNG system, but there is one that is placed right in front of a (tar?) pit, if it webs you, which is very likely to happen if you aren't specifically watching out for this, it drops you in the tar, making you take an IMMENNSE amount of damage since you are constantly taking damage from the tar as you attempt to break out, and then still take a lot more damage as you attempt to jump out of the tar that you have now sunk to the bottom to. It's practically a one-hit kill if you are not at about 80% or higher health, especially since those hazards do damage based on your current HP, not a set amount. This thing could essentially kill you in one hit even at level 99 due to that if you are not close to full health.


- Possible Bug: The puppet enemy seems to remember aggro from across screens. If I aggro a puppet, then leave, when I re-enter the room it makes a mad-dash towards me even if it was at the other end of the room. Furthermore, this seems to be shared across all puppet enemies. If I aggro a puppet, and leave, then eventually reach another room with a puppet, THAT one will immediately go after me. Killing any puppet seems to reset this. Is this some kind of intended special behavior for the puppet, or a bug?


- Possible Bug: Enemy A.I. simply does not react at all, not even to getting hit, unless you are within visual aggro range, this happened even in the arena when I was able to stay far enough from enemies before they spawned, so they didn't attack or react to me using ranged/projectile attacks on them. Here is a video of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4fWSmQbxIQ


- The overall sense of progress feels very slow. It felt like forever until I got my first movement upgrade to grab ledges, it wasn't even until the second world where this happened, the entire mines had no movement upgrade. Likewise, by the time I got the slide move it felt like it was massively over-due by the time I finally got it. They didn't even feel like they were helping much (especially with how limited-use the slide was) so they barely felt like upgrades that helped me explore more, which is somewhat the point of a Metroidvania.

- In addition to the above, some of the upgrades felt like a hindrance to me. The notable ones (so far) are the wall-kick and swimming upgrades, and to a lesser extent the parachute as well. When I got the wall-jump move, it caused more damage/deaths due to it accidently going off than I can count. This is related to what I said earlier about the game being very picky about doing everything JUST right. If I was a millimeter too low to hang onto a ledge, it instead makes me grab and slide down the wall... and since with a ledge-grab you can jump straight up while a wall-kick sends you careening in the opposite direction, this led to many instances where I was expecting to jump over a ledge... but instead jumped straight OFF of it and into a hazard or straight back to the bottom of the room. I actually had a harder time getting past rooms I had gone through a dozen times before due to this thing now being picky about if I was grabbing the wall or ledge and making me jump off in the opposite direction instead of up. Swimming was now an annoyance too after I got the Diving Gear, since now I immediately sink like a stone, crossing water areas that I used to cross has become much more annoying, especially with the issue I mentioned previously about how surfacing is slow and annoying to input properly.

Basically.... I don't trust the game. I have played many Metroidvanias, and while there have been some that utterly frustrated me with their difficulty (Order of Eccelsia comes to mind) I have practically never felt like the game would just plain not do what I asked it to do. With those previous games, I never tried to jump up a wall thinking "Please let my character actually grab it the right way" or "Please don't just barely fail to hold onto that grip and fall into a hazard". Control and fluidity, being able to react and platform, those are key to many Metroidvania games, the controls need to be right and responsive, do exactly what you are telling them to do. Chasm... felt the opposite, it felt like I was always fighting with the game itself to make it do what I wanted it to do, and the more artifacts I got, the more I had to fight the game to actually make it do what I want due to how picky it is. When I fight, it always feels like the game is asleep when I am telling it to GET. OUT. OF. THE. WAY. OF. THAT. ATTACK. and wakes up a second too late. Everything is stiff and does not respond how it should respond. I just don't trust this game, I don't trust it's controls, I can not trust it to do what I tell it to do. The game can’t be trusted.

[Lailoken]

Most of these are fairly subjective but there are some points I agree with, some I don't, so I'll share a few of those opinions. Please note that I don't think you are wrong, just sharing my own point of view.

Why is there no quick "Reload last save?" option when you die?

I have not encountered this because I only play in mortal mode but this sort of thing drives my crazy in other games so I definitely agree.

The fast-travel system seems to need some better prediction. There have been times where it would place all of the world's warp points close together, and then have a large swath of area with no warp points within it. I have attached a screenshot of this.

That is actually the standard layout for gardens. If anything my complaint (after dying many times in mortal I have a seen a few layouts) is that the layouts of each level do not change much at all from seed to seed. I can basically predict where everything is now on a blind playthrough.

And to address your main point (that of fast travel points being too far apart) I don't entirely disagree. It's rare that a fast travel point actually gets me anywhere reasonable close to where I am trying to backtrack to. I don't hate this as much as you do because I see it as part of the challenge in trying to casual speedrun in mortal mode and so it adds to the fun in terms of trying to maximize trips and not die to endurance type challenges. My own real personal want here is a save point in every fast travel room because walking from a save point (in town) to a fast travel room is danger-free but just feels like waste of time.

Speaking of fast travel, going between worlds is incredibly clunky. It would make a lot more sense to just choose the world the warp-gate sends you to instead of having to cycle across them

The warp gates in Iconoclasts do just this and feel no less clunky so I'm not sure there is an easy answer here.

Far too much of the jumping/platforming is of the "just barely made it" type. This is nothing but frustrating to the player.

I actually enjoy this quite a bit and was worried they would take too much of it out after the alpha. To each their own I guess. Except...

This is also badly implemented when you need to jump up a vertical wall. There were areas where I assumed that I was supposed to cross them in some other way, due to the character sliding down the wall for about half a second then dropping off, but if I JUST barely manage to jump JUST right, he can grab the wall for a second longer allowing me to then keep jumping up.

I actually finally managed to do these reliably with a single failed attempt here and there but I agree they are bad. They add nothing besides I suppose challenge for speedrunners and are really quite unintuitive. They feel like something that exists only to allow people to sequence break a little before getting the flip, but they are required long before that.

In addition to the above, it felt like far too many of the larger rooms were just that, a large rectangular area where you have to get from the bottom to the top... but the only way to do that is to cross it horizontally, then at the end manage to get slightly higher, cross it horizontally in the other direction, ascent slightly higher... etc etc until you reach the top. This got old FAST, especially due to the above.

I think there are only two of these that aren't dead-ends and one of them allows you to get a switch that bypasses it. I don't personally mind them but we have already established you and I feel differently about platforming. Traversing these kinds of things without hesitating makes me feel like a ninja and I enjoy that feeling.

Weapons feel like they just barely have a millisecond too much delay than they should. None of them felt fluid to use, and while it goes without saying that smaller and lighter-damage weapons like daggers should be able to be used faster than slow and high-damage weapons like hammers, all of them felt like they had their delay set just barely too long in time with enemy attacks. Enemies kept getting hits in JUST before I could react/dodge because the weapon delay was just barely too long by a hair to let me, it just made all of combat feel off and the back-dash useless since I could rarely use it before the enemy could hit me.

I would actually have gotten bored of this game a long time ago without this mechanic. It makes combat difficult instead of grindy. It punishes you for over-committing. There are techniques for getting around this but you can still mess up of course. Namely pressing attack immediately after a backdash, pressing attack immediately after a jump, or pressing attack just before you land (the timing can be tricky) to reset the animation. What felt to be too stiff at first now feels just right. In my opinion, the lack here is expecting the player to discover all these things on their own. I think any gamers today who have not played the right games to know these things already expect to be told how to do them.

Some of the hitboxes felt like they extended slightly larger than they should, the biggest one that comes to mind is the fire the Titan boss spits out, they seemed to always hit me when I should have been between them

I did have an issue with the Titan boss in trying to get a no-hit victory, but it is not so much with the hitbox, it's that he can fly by and drop a flame on the third or second pass in such a way as to be impossible to avoid as far as I can tell and this is annoying.

I was surprised at first when I was no longer able to buy any more of a certain item from one of the shops. There was no mention or indication what shops have limited inventory, and that their stock doesn't refresh ever either. Some kind of indicator somewhere of how much the shops have left of an item would have helped me not waste my money on trying to acquire more of an item I needed than the shops had stock of.

I totally agree with this and also think money should be the limiting factor instead of inventory. Or at least have some way to have said inventory be replenished (time, quests, spending more money)

Random money drops feel like the only real way to earn money in this game, while they are generally pocket change in most Metroidvanias.

While I try to shy away from arguments that "everyone else does it this way so you should too" I have to admit being spoiled in this department since I have the backer sword that makes money drops more frequent. That said, I don;t actually have much use for my money. I buy the best ring and two spells from the witch, and then everything else just goes to potions that I never use all of. I like games that force me to pick and choose what to spend my money on.

White treasure chests feel worthless. Their rewards are not only far too random, but also far too low quality for the effort nearly all of them need to reach in the first place.

I mostly agree. The first few chests I find often have food and gems which are invaluable to me until I get my knife spell upgraded fully. And food is really helpful in mortal games until I get a nice stockpile of potions. besides that though, any of the chests that you can only get with better artifacts (namely flip) are worthless and I only get for the 100%

The Bestiary is honestly a chore to use.

Can't disagree with this. I also want to add that it would help immensely to include the area a locked entry can be found in. At least if you have been to that area before.

The Shovel item is counter-intuitive to use.

Very much so. Maybe just assign it to down+jump (when you are not on a platform) and put in the description of the item? (and make it not a weapon). And I would add that where it is to be used is counter-intuitive. I had to find the answer in the forums. The layers just don't look like dirt, but rather slabs of rock. Maybe solid brown with debris scattered throughout would work better?

Surfacing from the water is slow, very slow, and it seems to have issues if you are pressing any direction other than straight up, such as if you are pressing diagonally up and left or right.

Ya, given that swimming offers literally no challenge whatsoever I see no reason to make movement in the water so sluggish.

Input from one source is cut off if another is used. E.G. If any keyboard button is pressed input from a gamepad is cut off, such as while you are gliding, causing you to drop down immediately. It also won't switch back to the gamepad from analog stick input, it has to be a button or d-pad. This is annoying for those who take screenshots, especially if they use the analog sticks instead of a d-pad.

that sounds annoying

The little red Imp enemies can essentially hover "inside" you

this seems fine to me.

It’s a little annoying that familiars essentially “steal” your kills.

This bothered me at first but now I intentionally feed kills to my familiar (not the bird, I don't like him) so any "stealing" feels like a free gift. I do think your kill total should increment though...

The spider's web-attack is easily abused.

Ya, especially if you don't know tapping jump is how you escape. I think there should be some sort of animation when you press jump to indicate you are struggling. I also think if you hit any environmental hazard while webbed you should just break free immediately (the web already did its "damage")

The puppet enemy seems to remember aggro from across screens

interesting! I always just figured puppets moved around like crazy from the start regardless of the context.

Possible Bug: Enemy A.I. simply does not react at all, not even to getting hit, unless you are within visual aggro range, this happened even in the arena when I was able to stay far enough from enemies before they spawned

Yes this makes the fairly difficult arena fairly trivial and should be looked at.

The overall sense of progress feels very slow. It felt like forever until I got my first movement upgrade to grab ledges, it wasn't even until the second world where this happened, the entire mines had no movement upgrade. Likewise, by the time I got the slide move it felt like it was massively over-due by the time I finally got it. They didn't even feel like they were helping much (especially with how limited-use the slide was) so they barely felt like upgrades that helped me explore more, which is somewhat the point of a Metroidvania.

Ya this has come up in other threads. having played through many times now, the first two areas actually go by really fast, but I think your first couple times through it feels like a slog. Not really sure what an easy fix to this would be though...

In addition to the above, some of the upgrades felt like a hindrance to me. The notable ones (so far) are the wall-kick and swimming upgrades

Don't disagree. I believe they are actively looking into how to make the climbing gear less of a hindrance. I haven't encountered this with the diving gear though. How often do you really need to cross bodies of water (there is only one and it can be accessed from the other side more easily once you are far enough to have diving gear)?

Basically.... I don't trust the game. I have played many Metroidvanias, and while there have been some that utterly frustrated me with their difficulty (Order of Eccelsia comes to mind) I have practically never felt like the game would just plain not do what I asked it to do. With those previous games, I never tried to jump up a wall thinking "Please let my character actually grab it the right way" or "Please don't just barely fail to hold onto that grip and fall into a hazard".

This is valid and sucks given that you backed the game and waited 5 years for it. I am mostly happy with the game and fully trust it to do what I expect. While the controls are clunky in some ways I feel that they are fully predictable and not a single one of my many deaths felt like the game's fault. Maybe give it a bit more time? If you didn't already know those techniques I mentioned above, practice them and see if combat feels less annoying? Frankly classic metroidvanias, while awesome experiences, tend to be way too easy and don't punish you for making mistakes. I see them as exploration games with a thin "game" package around them, and I am very glad that Bit Kid decided to go a slightly different way.

[Cyber Akuma]

Ok, having gotten a bit further in, here are a few new additions and observations so far:

I noticed that pressing B (or the keyboard equivalent for magic attack) to cancel a dialog window (such as the save window) makes you use up your magic. Not really a big issue, but it is a bit of an annoyance that you can't cancel out of a window without attacking and using MP. Also, I have several times cancelled out of the save window by mistake because I didn't realize I was pressing B despite "yes" being highlighted, it's the same as choosing "no"... except I kept thinking I chose "yes" since that was the highlighted option. Again, this is a minor thing.

It has really become a chore now to try to go through my weapons, can there be some way to sort/arrange them in any way? Or even group multiples of the same weapon the way consumable items are grouped, so that way you don't have a beginner's weapon near the top of your weapon list, and again at the end because an enemy dropped one as you was back-tracking much later? Possibly some other ways to sort them on top of the default order acquired like by strength, type, name, etc?

It's hard to tell when the bird familiar is about to attack, there is just a very subtle change to it's animation. The sword familiar glows blue just as it's about to attack, pretty hard to miss. Is there any way to do something like this for the bird? Maybe not give it a glowing outline like the sword since glowing outlines in this game tend to indicate something of a magic nature which the sword clearly is but the bird is apparently not, but perhaps just make the bird just quickly flash twice or something when it’s about to attack?

What I said earlier about the game not doing what you want it to and the wall-jump messing up your ledge-grabbing? Well, I just got the double-jump, and it's honestly much much worse than the ledge-grabbing issue. First of all, due to how late in the game you get the double jump, it honestly just feels awkward to use after being used to a single jump all this time, many games tend to make this an early or one of the first upgrades for this reason, but the other is that it completely messes up using your parachute. The parachute is deployed with the jump button, but now that button double-jumps. I have no way to deploy the parachute anymore without double-jumping first. The parachute really should have been a separate button instead of just the jump button (See the SNES Aladdin game for example, which had a parachute that both looked and functioned VERY similar to the one in this game, the parachute had a dedicated button instead of being jump), or perhaps holding a direction while pressing jump. Right now with the double-jump, on top of it being awkward to be able to double-jump after over 10 hours into the game and going through the vast majority of it without that ability, it messed up my muscle memory from using the parachute and caused a few falls because of this. I know that it's not possible to change when you get the double-jump as it's so integral to the game that you get it last by this point and it would require completely re-designing the game, but something can at least be done about how it disrupts your previous control memory throughout the whole game up to this point, especially from since you got the parachute.

The 5th area is a complete PAIN to attempt to figure out where to go due to all the teleporters. You can't tell where any of them will take you until you just use it, or you spend hours memorizing them. I recall in the Alpha that every area used to have disconnected parts that you used back-alley caves (similar to the ones in the released version that now take you across different "worlds" instead) to traverse, and the map used to have a dotted line that showed where each pair connected to (Not sure if the Devs would be OK or not with me posting a screenshot of that). Could the map for the 5th area somehow be displayed in such a way so it shows you which teleporter each pair is linked to once you have used one? Especially since due to the nature of the whole disabling the lasers thing, this will require a lot of back-tracking... through the teleporters... to areas you have already been to.

I noticed that whether an enemy's projectile cancels or not on their death is not consistent. Games either have all enemy projectiles cancel on their death, or none of them, but this game seems to vary based on the enemy. For example, the boomerang Skeleton's boomerang disappears mid-flight if they die, but the Temple Guard's glaive does not

Possible Bug: The Executioner's Ax and the Assassin Sword only display their base damage stat, not their boosted damage stat based on their special property. I didn't know if this was intentional or a bug.

Possible Bug: The game thinks it needs to apply the HP penalty for the Executioner Ax's twice if you already have one equipped and highlight another to equip. It doesn't appear to actually apply the penalty however (that or it’s not applying it because it would put me at 0HP, likely below 0HP but it can’t show a negative max HP stat, and that contradiction is preventing it from working). Screenshot attached:
https://i.imgur.com/BxS2Wh8.jpg

While I try to shy away from arguments that "everyone else does it this way so you should too" I have to admit being spoiled in this department since I have the backer sword that makes money drops more frequent. That said, I don;t actually have much use for my money. I buy the best ring and two spells from the witch, and then everything else just goes to potions that I never use all of. I like games that force me to pick and choose what to spend my money on.

True, one shouldn't do something just because "everyone else does it", games would still be stuck in NES-era design if we did that. Thing is though, for many mechanics, the reason nearly all others do it is because it's a working mechanic that has been tried and prevailed against others.

That being said though, the money does got a lot further than it does in most others. I mean, the drops in many other Metroidvanis can be from 1"gold" (or whatever currency they use) to 100 gold max, some might have a 1000 gold drop, but many of the higher end items can be in the 10,000 or even 100,000 range, making it pretty much a necessity to sell valuable item drops whose only purpose is to sell for money.

Needless to say, that's not the case with this game since the most expensive item is 3000, granted though, there are a LOT of items that can only be crafted from drops. While it only sands to reason that some of the best items would be "earned" from drops, not just simply bought, and this is how many others do it too, it feels like there is a disproportionately higher amount of said craft-from-drops only items than there are ones you can buy... and they VERY quickly make the purchasable items useless. The purchasable items max out at the "silver" level basically.... while craft-able go past silver to gold, platinum, and SPACE materials.

... and this is in addition to what I said earlier about shops having limited inventory to buy items.. not like you even can buy the best raw materials even.

The little red Imp enemies can essentially hover "inside" you

this seems fine to me.

The problem I have with it is that it abuses contact-damage, which to me feels very cheap. Unless the enemy has a reason to cause contact damage (such as being made of spikes, on fire, etc) "abusing" it by just making the enemy walk into you... especially when they have an actual attack, seems like a cheap abuse of the game mechanics to get a hit on unfairly on the player. Especially so when they go "IN" the player sprite in this case. I had many humanoid enemies who attack with weapons sometimes bypass my timing of their weapon delay by simply continuing to just walk towards me instead of attack... causing contact damage.

[Lailoken]

Wow I agree with 100% of that. Including that last part about contact damage. I can just add too that this fact makes knives and unarmed entirely worthless past the mines and that when I first saw that teleporters didn't show connections on the map I assumed I was being set up for some sort of is-it-a-different-room-or-not trickery which never happened.

[James]

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to write up all your feedback! We will comb through it and see what we can improve