Nightingale Legacy Portal
First off, I like the game and I think it has real potential. There is a lot of cool stuff in the game, for sure. I like the idea of traditional faery magick in a Victorian/steampunk/early industrial timeline. I don't mind the implementation of gear improvement as an upgrade progression. The game looks great. I hope it gets story and game loop improvements so that I can pick it up in the future.
But, after 50 hours of game play, trying to experience each level as much as possible (without being a completionist), I can say with some assurance that the game does not have enough variety in major game play elements, and it can be quite the grind.
Some examples off the top of my head:
The different shrines do not have enough variety. The intellect and the infested shrines look and act alike, pretty much. I'd think faery magick would be a bit more varied, especially between the biomes and realms. There are the agility statues that are just closed to you as a rank beginner, but then when you can finally climb them, they are pretty much all the same. At least the fae towers have some varied second levels.
The rewards are not scaled to the difficulty (or to the time needed to solve). When battling an automaton knight that kills you and your NPC several times at the bottom of a dungeon, I think that getting some additional cool stuff would be in order. And - I will never help some druids finish their building again - not only have I wasted over 2 hours helping to find materials and build for them, but as a reward I'd expect more than a few bits of essence or yet another wall sconce. (That is when I *can* finish them help build: one of my bugs lists an unfinishable structure... )
While each biome is different, they are pretty much the same between the other major realms with a color remap and some tree and rock model swap-outs. There's no mountains. There's no big rivers. How about fae bridges or towns? Victorian fortifications?
Faery literature abounds in the Western canon, but there's not much to be seen of it in game in the first 50 hours. The mushroom patches could turn into the little folk at night. Following a deer could lead you to an interesting place you can't find on the map. Even when Puck insinuates that Mogh is singular and you just killed him - there's no inscrutable faery justice to navigate... but the level generates another Mogh later on. So he isn't unique.
Generally, I don't feel like I am discovering much, yet the game has the air of discovery. Kind of a disappointment.
