There's a lot of promise here, but in its current state the enemy scaling absolutely ruins the entire experience. No area is scaled for starting level characters, and even the earliest bosses have complex and difficult movesets.
The Angelic Siege Golem (pictured on the cover here on Backloggd) is a great example, and the first boss I found in the game. The basic moveset of the boss is that of the Iron Golem boss from Dark Souls, but with the knockdown gimmick of the Tower Knight from Demon's Souls. That sounds fine for a first boss, right? Well, once you've worked your way about 30% into its gargantuan health bar, he gains magic spam that follows some of his basic attacks, and around 50% health, he starts teleporting across the arena and doing the Valiant Gargoyle's vacuum slice attack from Elden Ring, which oneshot me the only time I got hit by it. The bosses are maddeningly overtuned. I was level 15 and had a +3 fire longsword when I managed to beat the Golem, and it was gruelingly hard.
The second boss is far worse. An obvious reskin of the Cleric Beast from Bloodborne, but it's styled as a Pus of Man type monster now. This boss is in the same area as the Golem, but has even more health and does even more damage. I was still using the +3 fire longsword, which I expected to be a very strong choice against this boss; both Bloodborne beast bosses and Pus of Man monsters in Dark Souls III are extremely weak to fire. My sword did 102 damage on an r1 attack, barely scratching the massive healthbar of this extremely aggressive, very lethal, difficult to dodge boss. Oh, and I had gone out of my way to acquire the Soul Fog spell, which seems to poison the target and does good damage, but this boss seemed nearly immune to it (took 12 damage over the course of about 2 seconds, then nothing). I gave up on this boss after a couple attempts and haven't touched the mod since.
I ran around the starting areas of every Archthrone, but all of them were scaled so aggressively that I couldn't hope to fight through them. I barely found any new weapons or spells, and upgrade materials were incredibly sparse.
If the developers scale the enemies down to a reasonable level or let the player gain levels much quicker in the early game, this mod definitely has the potential to be something special. As is, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a challenge runner of some kind. It just isn't fun.
I will update this review or make a follow-up if I end up playing more of the demo.
Edit: apparently there was a balance patch, so I will be revisiting the demo.
The Angelic Siege Golem (pictured on the cover here on Backloggd) is a great example, and the first boss I found in the game. The basic moveset of the boss is that of the Iron Golem boss from Dark Souls, but with the knockdown gimmick of the Tower Knight from Demon's Souls. That sounds fine for a first boss, right? Well, once you've worked your way about 30% into its gargantuan health bar, he gains magic spam that follows some of his basic attacks, and around 50% health, he starts teleporting across the arena and doing the Valiant Gargoyle's vacuum slice attack from Elden Ring, which oneshot me the only time I got hit by it. The bosses are maddeningly overtuned. I was level 15 and had a +3 fire longsword when I managed to beat the Golem, and it was gruelingly hard.
The second boss is far worse. An obvious reskin of the Cleric Beast from Bloodborne, but it's styled as a Pus of Man type monster now. This boss is in the same area as the Golem, but has even more health and does even more damage. I was still using the +3 fire longsword, which I expected to be a very strong choice against this boss; both Bloodborne beast bosses and Pus of Man monsters in Dark Souls III are extremely weak to fire. My sword did 102 damage on an r1 attack, barely scratching the massive healthbar of this extremely aggressive, very lethal, difficult to dodge boss. Oh, and I had gone out of my way to acquire the Soul Fog spell, which seems to poison the target and does good damage, but this boss seemed nearly immune to it (took 12 damage over the course of about 2 seconds, then nothing). I gave up on this boss after a couple attempts and haven't touched the mod since.
I ran around the starting areas of every Archthrone, but all of them were scaled so aggressively that I couldn't hope to fight through them. I barely found any new weapons or spells, and upgrade materials were incredibly sparse.
If the developers scale the enemies down to a reasonable level or let the player gain levels much quicker in the early game, this mod definitely has the potential to be something special. As is, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a challenge runner of some kind. It just isn't fun.
I will update this review or make a follow-up if I end up playing more of the demo.
Edit: apparently there was a balance patch, so I will be revisiting the demo.