Edifice of Fiends Reviews

I saw this on sale for 80% off ($1) and decided to pick it up. Can't recommend it. This is a poor RPG maker game and there are better ones out there. Let's take a look at the listings on the store and go one-by-one, shall we? "Every choice matters as you try to fight your way to the top of the Edifice of Fiends" Your choices are... what do I buy, and what skills/attributes do I spec into. There are not any other meaningful choices (well, I guess you could waste your time picking up a pickaxe/felling axe so that you can *possibly* make gear that is basically as good as what you can buy in the store) - Over 20 floors to conquer! Every floor seems basically the same. Merchant with felling axes/pickaxes, a bag of coins, 3 random shops (more on this annoying bit later...), 4 nodes to mine/log, and an enemy. Repeat. And Repeat. And Repeat. - Slay your enemies with more than 15 different skills! Most of which are useless, so you will only grab one or two and spam the crud out of those! Oh, and don't think multi-hit is useless? Enjoy destroying your weapon and then having to fight with your fists! (yes, each strike of a multi-hit uses 1 of your weapon's 25 durability) - Exciting combat with over 40 unique enemies! "Exciting combat" = dodge, dodge, dodge, dodge. Oh, their SP is low I can do something now. Oh wait, they're faster than me and took 2 turns. Nevermind. Dodge, dodge, dodge, dodge.... I guess there are other options, but any time you take a hit you lose some more of your precious armor durability, so dodging (and evasion) seemed the only sane way to play this to me. - 40 unique enemies ... Okay, I'll give 'em that. There are a lot of different enemies. - Customize your loadout with more than 100 different equipable items! I... guess? Your choice here is pretty much "which stats do I want" and "what can I afford?" This isn't as impressive as it sounds. - Randomly generated floors! Ha. Yeah. It is the exact same 3 rooms every time. The only thing that changes is the types of nodes for logging/mining (which there are only 4), and the types of shops. Speaking of shop types, broke your sword and need a new one? Better have a spare because you may randomly roll a potion shop, a chest armor shop, and a boot shop! Or, you could end up like one run I had where I literally couldn't find a weapon for the first 3 floors. - Challenging gameplay! I will agree with it here, but on the caveat that it seems mostly because of frustrating design choices and RNG that screws you over more than it is challenging because you need to master the mechanics. - Endless playstyles and possibilities! I will just excuse this as marketing fluff. No. There aren't.

I will say first and foremost that this game has a lot of potential. I really enjoy the art style and the variety of items that I have come across so far. If minor things were tweaked it would be immediately be a positive review at the very least. I will try to explain to the best of my ability where the game is currently lacking. After playing the game for an hour and a half, there are already 3 major issues and a few minor ones that make progressing debilitating, to a point where its either not possible or at the very least not enjoyable. I understand that there is supposed to be a difficulty level with this game, and i applaud that, but there are things that could be tweaked to make it more enjoyable. First is the lack of healing items available to the character. It seems like maybe 1/5 times you could end up with a trader that actually sells a healing item, and the only one that I have seen available is the large healing elixer. Another small option would be great to have, and I feel like that trader should be available on every floor. Gives you a chance to recover from some bad luck on attacks/blocks in the previous fight. The Second and probably the worst problem is the combat. Not necessarily the system itself, I've always loved turn based combat, and I like that its not action based, gives you time to think of what you want to do, thats a good thing. Whats not a good thing is, even on like the 2nd fight (literally second fight of the game) that you ever do, the enemy has a chance to make 6-8 moves before you can do anything. Stun locking the hero drains HP like crazy, and we've already been over the fact thats extremely hard to get back currently. Now I like how there is a variety of the creatures you can get at the encounters, thats great. But some of them need to be reshuffled perhaps to higher tiers, as even on like floor 5 or 6 there might be something capable of stunlocking you to death from max health. The Third problem is something that might need more reworking, and thats equipment breakage. I don't think this style of game benefits from it, and its already hard enough to save up gold for purchases. I had a fight with a Mantis where I lost 2 pieces of gear 1 turn apart. This is not an acceptable break rate, as it was only like the 2nd or 3rd fight where said items were being used. If this could be removed altogether, I think the game would be much better for it. One of the minor issues is the harvesting system for crafting. once purchased the equipment shouldnt break, just like the rest of the items shouldnt. They could cost a little more to compensate for this but I think it would be a welcome change. Also I had an issue trying to figure out how to change class when I was starting a new run. I think there should be an easily accessible statue or something in that first room where you enter so you can select a class there, took a bit to figure Out I had to try to walk out of the Tower just to change things around. I hope this gives a decent account of the current issues with the game.