Finished my first playthrough at about 13 hours and can say I'm very satisfied with the overall experience. Atmosphere and horror elements aside, It's very clear the game takes inspiration from Dark Souls 1/2 for its combat, which can both be a very good or very bad thing depending on how you felt about those games. Animations are stiff and hitboxes are extremely reminiscent of DS2 hitboxes in that you can very much be hit by the back end of an attack animation even if you're behind an enemy. Regardless of what action you take, your character will hard commit to it and can leave you in very unfavorable situations. Much like DS, you can also queue up actions, which, if you're a bit of a button masher can often lead to taking unwanted actions such as double rolling, accidentally hiding or opening/closing doors, and other such mishaps. This, however, is the very essence of what made Dark Souls 2 in particular my favorite iteration of the combat formula. Enemies are ruthless and you really need to think carefully about when you want to attack and whether you will commit to continue attacking or retreat. And often times, especially in the early game, it's generally better to simply hide and not fight in the first place.
That said, the game is shockingly generous in the amount of safety nets it provides you. Despite being classified as a "Rogue-lite", outside of the early game, it doesn't feel like it at all. You'll likely die a couple of times in the beginning from the initial learning curve, but once you get into the groove and find a combat style that works for you, it's honestly quite difficult to actually die and reset the map. Items are littered all over the place and merchants are plenty so you'll often never be short of supplies or crafting materials for healing items or spells. Over the course of the game, you'll be able to save items to keep upon a reset so if you have a proper build going (rings, artifacts, etc), you won't lose it upon death so long as you save those items. Armor specifically is permanent so you'll never lose that. Even after suffering a disastrous death after being alive for long and amassing quite the item stash (much like I did), the game provides a method for you to recover those items fairly easily.
I mentioned the curse mechanic before which I really like. Apart from being tied to spellcasting and the curse rot aliment, curse will allow you to perceive things you normally wouldn't be able to and also physically alter the environment around you. This includes spawning chests that you normally wouldn't see otherwise, chests which include items that you may have lost upon dying. A death is honestly a minor setback at most. Even at bosses, who can be quite rough at times, you'll be given the opportunity to save before the fight and ensure you don't reset the map if you happen to lose. I really mean it when I say it's quite hard to actually "die". Another interesting thing is that while the levels you invest in will often dictate your main build, the game lets you save loadouts and switch to them on the spot. A particular enemy is really pesky or annoying as melee? Simply switch to your magic or gun loadout. While they won't be as strong if you've invested heavily in melee, rings and armor will often provide enough stats to still make those loadouts do considerable damage. While part of me thinks all this makes the game TOO forgiving, the alternative would be an actual traditional rogue-lite which, as some might know already on how I feel about rogue-lites, I would really hate.
I had a blast with this game. And while I didn't really talk about it, the horror elements, atmosphere, sound, and music are all quite good. Areas, sound design, and some enemy designs can be quite unsettling. There seems to be a bit of new content in NG+ so while I won't do so immediately, I'll probably do another playthrough in the near future. As of now, I'm quite content with the experience.
