All this feedback is purely aimed at arcade mode, 2 player co-op since the Italy release. Have roughly 60 hours played (maybe 55~ all afk time included)
Furthest floor is 11, didn't make it to boss.
We've been experimenting with a lot of different skills to keep things fresh. Our original perception was 2-handers being overpowered (because of their high burst with titans throw and heroic slam), but as time has gone on we've come to realize that one handers, magic, and 2 handers are all strong.
That being said, some of the skills still feel rather bad in arcade mode.
First, Piercing Dash -
This skill has been tried a couple times to no avail. Canceling into silver charge of another skill is nice, but it’s unnecessary for most melee skills, and for spells you would be much better just picking up the passive "Wit" which may not give you an instant charge, but fast enough that it's all you need. Especially useful because you can buffer the wit proc before going into the next room, then get the fast charge still having full EP.
I don't really have any thoughts on making this skill better. One minor thought would be to make it so you can cancel for free from piercing dash into any skill, which would add some utility. Then again, I couldn't judge how this would affect story mode.
Another thing that I'll note here even though a bit off topic -
The "Stinger" sword cost 1500, and can be gotten as early as floors 5 and 6. The "Steel sword" cost 2000, and can be gotten starting on floors 7 and 8. They both have the same damage and attack speed, but stinger has a small added special effect. This just seems to need a consistency update of some sort.
Titans throw –
Titans throw is a very strong skill but has problems on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 10th, floors. You can throw your weapon into the trees, and after which it will be unobtainable and you will have to wait for it to come back to you. In a similar manner you can throw it into certain bosses (the Christmas factory boss and the 8th floor robot boss come to mind) and you will not be able to retrieve them.
A small buff that I think would be relatively fair for titans throw would be the ability to cancel the throwing animation with a block, allowing you to defend yourself while your weapon swings through the air. As it currently stands, I couldn’t imagine using it outside of multiplayer, because if the focus is on you all the time, you would never have any openings to use it.
Now onto magic.
General magic –
The largest problem with magic is by far that you need to get lucky and get the right gear drops (and in some cases card drops) to make it viable. We have yet to even find a red gemmed or better staff past floor 6. That means if you didn’t get that staff by then, you’re going to have a massive deficit in damage the rest of the run.
Personally, I would like to see trading come into arcade mode, as that would help combat this in multiplayer by allowing players to trade their magic gear to the other player for melee gear and vice versa.
Meteor & Earth Spike –
Both are very underwhelming in arcade mode. You can’t move while casting either, so that already puts you at a disadvantage. Their AoE isn’t so large as to make it easy to hit many mobs at the same time (unless they happen to be grouped). Their damage just pales in comparison to something like fireball, which while it lacks the ability to be aimed anywhere, having more damage and mobility makes it significantly better. The stun effect on earth spike just isn’t good enough for how open it leaves you to getting destroyed by anything. I honestly think that meteor should have damage comparable to something like titans throw or heroic slam, and earth spike should have less than that but still a fair amount, because leaving yourself open for so long like that is such a massive risk.
Cloud Strike –
Horrendously inaccurate, sticks too close to the player. He tries to go after an enemy and gets pulled back to the player and will repeat that, wasting a ton of time. Frankly, he just needs to go after mobs independently. It may seem like this would nullify the use of frosty friend who has a much more aggressive A.I., but in my experience frosty friend is actually really good purely for the fact that he distract a bunch of enemies and lets you take out some of the things that can cause bigger problems while he holds the attention of random smaller things.
Next is talents.
Brutality –
This talent is awful. If you crit 100% of the time, it will give you a 15% damage boost. It seems very unlikely that you’d get above 30 crit in a single arcade run, which means you’ll never get more than a 4.5% overall damage boost (if you picked up the crit passive and good crit items). That makes it worse than adaptable for a single type of damage.
Last Stand –
Defense is really nice to have, but I guess this is more of a mechanic understanding problem. We aren’t explicitly told how defense works, and it’s pretty hard to figure out (due to damage ranges and what not). It leaves the burning question, if I have 500 health, and I’m at 100/500, will 60% more defense actually keep me alive an extra hit? If it does, is it even worth it? It becomes so hard to get health back, wouldn’t it be better to invest that point in something you can consistently rely upon?
Second Wind –
Does this even work? I haven’t personally tested it, but my friend who I’ve been playing with said that he is pretty sure that it is not actually restoring 5 EP per hit when maxed. Otherwise, would be a really nice talent.
That’s all for skills – onto some general arcade mode grievances.
Although these all may seem like minor rare occurrences, because arcade mode is so punishing, every small random unlucky occurrence really adds up.
Enemy spawning zones –
Enemies seem to spawn literally at the entrance of rooms. A small grace zone at the entrance of rooms where enemies can’t spawn would be greatly appreciated. Most notable on floors 5 and 6, sometimes we won’t even have time to react before we get hit when entering a room.
Floor 6 ghosts –
When entering a room, you have no idea how many there are. This can be solved by making it so when entering a room, they do their disappearing animation, which will give an idea of where they are and how many to expect before trying clear all the other stuff in the room.
Floor 5/6 plant boss –
Can’t remember its name. It spawns bramble all over the place, which isn’t such a big deal, but if it spawns under you when you try and charge a skill, you might not have time to cancel (e.g. titans throw) and it will hit you twice before it even stops your skill allowing you to escape. It’s a lot of damage to take just due to bad luck.
Floor 5/6 kill in order ghosts challenge room –
This room feels like it’s impossible to do without whirlslash. It’s disheartening to get this room, because it’s a tough choice whether you want to actually try and do it and risk taking some damage and still not completing it because of bad spawn luck, or if you would rather just sit in a corner and block until it’s over, keeping your health.
That’s pretty much everything I can think of for right now. Overall, the game is really great, and please don’t take my criticisms to harshly. I only want to offer another a point of view.
Edit - I forgot to mention, both fights with Vilya (on the 1st or 2nd floor and the 3rd or 4th floor) give 0 exp. Not sure if this is a bug or intentional, but seems like it should be changed.
Furthest floor is 11, didn't make it to boss.
We've been experimenting with a lot of different skills to keep things fresh. Our original perception was 2-handers being overpowered (because of their high burst with titans throw and heroic slam), but as time has gone on we've come to realize that one handers, magic, and 2 handers are all strong.
That being said, some of the skills still feel rather bad in arcade mode.
First, Piercing Dash -
This skill has been tried a couple times to no avail. Canceling into silver charge of another skill is nice, but it’s unnecessary for most melee skills, and for spells you would be much better just picking up the passive "Wit" which may not give you an instant charge, but fast enough that it's all you need. Especially useful because you can buffer the wit proc before going into the next room, then get the fast charge still having full EP.
I don't really have any thoughts on making this skill better. One minor thought would be to make it so you can cancel for free from piercing dash into any skill, which would add some utility. Then again, I couldn't judge how this would affect story mode.
Another thing that I'll note here even though a bit off topic -
The "Stinger" sword cost 1500, and can be gotten as early as floors 5 and 6. The "Steel sword" cost 2000, and can be gotten starting on floors 7 and 8. They both have the same damage and attack speed, but stinger has a small added special effect. This just seems to need a consistency update of some sort.
Titans throw –
Titans throw is a very strong skill but has problems on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 10th, floors. You can throw your weapon into the trees, and after which it will be unobtainable and you will have to wait for it to come back to you. In a similar manner you can throw it into certain bosses (the Christmas factory boss and the 8th floor robot boss come to mind) and you will not be able to retrieve them.
A small buff that I think would be relatively fair for titans throw would be the ability to cancel the throwing animation with a block, allowing you to defend yourself while your weapon swings through the air. As it currently stands, I couldn’t imagine using it outside of multiplayer, because if the focus is on you all the time, you would never have any openings to use it.
Now onto magic.
General magic –
The largest problem with magic is by far that you need to get lucky and get the right gear drops (and in some cases card drops) to make it viable. We have yet to even find a red gemmed or better staff past floor 6. That means if you didn’t get that staff by then, you’re going to have a massive deficit in damage the rest of the run.
Personally, I would like to see trading come into arcade mode, as that would help combat this in multiplayer by allowing players to trade their magic gear to the other player for melee gear and vice versa.
Meteor & Earth Spike –
Both are very underwhelming in arcade mode. You can’t move while casting either, so that already puts you at a disadvantage. Their AoE isn’t so large as to make it easy to hit many mobs at the same time (unless they happen to be grouped). Their damage just pales in comparison to something like fireball, which while it lacks the ability to be aimed anywhere, having more damage and mobility makes it significantly better. The stun effect on earth spike just isn’t good enough for how open it leaves you to getting destroyed by anything. I honestly think that meteor should have damage comparable to something like titans throw or heroic slam, and earth spike should have less than that but still a fair amount, because leaving yourself open for so long like that is such a massive risk.
Cloud Strike –
Horrendously inaccurate, sticks too close to the player. He tries to go after an enemy and gets pulled back to the player and will repeat that, wasting a ton of time. Frankly, he just needs to go after mobs independently. It may seem like this would nullify the use of frosty friend who has a much more aggressive A.I., but in my experience frosty friend is actually really good purely for the fact that he distract a bunch of enemies and lets you take out some of the things that can cause bigger problems while he holds the attention of random smaller things.
Next is talents.
Brutality –
This talent is awful. If you crit 100% of the time, it will give you a 15% damage boost. It seems very unlikely that you’d get above 30 crit in a single arcade run, which means you’ll never get more than a 4.5% overall damage boost (if you picked up the crit passive and good crit items). That makes it worse than adaptable for a single type of damage.
Last Stand –
Defense is really nice to have, but I guess this is more of a mechanic understanding problem. We aren’t explicitly told how defense works, and it’s pretty hard to figure out (due to damage ranges and what not). It leaves the burning question, if I have 500 health, and I’m at 100/500, will 60% more defense actually keep me alive an extra hit? If it does, is it even worth it? It becomes so hard to get health back, wouldn’t it be better to invest that point in something you can consistently rely upon?
Second Wind –
Does this even work? I haven’t personally tested it, but my friend who I’ve been playing with said that he is pretty sure that it is not actually restoring 5 EP per hit when maxed. Otherwise, would be a really nice talent.
That’s all for skills – onto some general arcade mode grievances.
Although these all may seem like minor rare occurrences, because arcade mode is so punishing, every small random unlucky occurrence really adds up.
Enemy spawning zones –
Enemies seem to spawn literally at the entrance of rooms. A small grace zone at the entrance of rooms where enemies can’t spawn would be greatly appreciated. Most notable on floors 5 and 6, sometimes we won’t even have time to react before we get hit when entering a room.
Floor 6 ghosts –
When entering a room, you have no idea how many there are. This can be solved by making it so when entering a room, they do their disappearing animation, which will give an idea of where they are and how many to expect before trying clear all the other stuff in the room.
Floor 5/6 plant boss –
Can’t remember its name. It spawns bramble all over the place, which isn’t such a big deal, but if it spawns under you when you try and charge a skill, you might not have time to cancel (e.g. titans throw) and it will hit you twice before it even stops your skill allowing you to escape. It’s a lot of damage to take just due to bad luck.
Floor 5/6 kill in order ghosts challenge room –
This room feels like it’s impossible to do without whirlslash. It’s disheartening to get this room, because it’s a tough choice whether you want to actually try and do it and risk taking some damage and still not completing it because of bad spawn luck, or if you would rather just sit in a corner and block until it’s over, keeping your health.
That’s pretty much everything I can think of for right now. Overall, the game is really great, and please don’t take my criticisms to harshly. I only want to offer another a point of view.
Edit - I forgot to mention, both fights with Vilya (on the 1st or 2nd floor and the 3rd or 4th floor) give 0 exp. Not sure if this is a bug or intentional, but seems like it should be changed.