Codex Lost Steam Charts & Stats

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The lack of a map and online community make the game unplayable. I even sourced a 'sort' of map from Reddit. This thing is literally a work of art, but the diagram just proves how ridiculous the level design is. I have been playing for hours and encountered 1 boss. The game could have been very good, but you simply end up walking around in circles. I am gutted, because I thought this game would be brilliant - it is ruined by the lack of basic fundamentals for game of this genre. If I could get a refund I would, but sadly, I do not qualify. This is coming from someone who has completed, and pumped hours into, all the 'proper' souls-likes out there.

I really wish I could give this game a positive rating, because it's got a lot of things going for it (the level design and enemy design is on par with FROM's) but there's fundamental issues with both the gameplay and interface that completely ruins the game feel and makes it hard to enjoy the good bits. If you thought DS1 was janky, turns out the rabbit hole can go even deeper. - Most importantly, lack of hit feedback. If something hits your shield, the animation simply plays out without particle effects, pushback, any sense of physicality. You can never tell if you blocked an attack or it whiffed while you coincidentally had your guard up, and this makes it almost impossible to learn timings and hitboxes. And importantly, this also means you can't tell if a block/whiff cost you any stamina, because... - the health/stamina/mana bars fading off into transparancy makes it hard to tell how much you have! And on top of this baffling design decision, they're also pretty small which excurberates the problem. - And just to top it all off, hit feedback is just as bad when you get hit when NOT blocking, and several times I died from being stunlocked by an enemy combo without even realizing I was taking damage before it was too late. (Not that realizing it would've helped, since there's no way out of a stunlock - being able to dodge while mid-stun as long as you had stamina left would fix a lot of unfair-feeling deaths) - Many other UI elements also have inconsistent sizes, often with a combination of too large visual graphics (e.g. equipment icons) matched with too small text that additionally is hard to read thanks to the stylish font. I think this could work for the Spellcrafting menu but the lack of consistency really hurts basic menu navigation. - Speaking of spellcrafting, the UX here is an utter pain because of the formatting of the ingredient list making it unclear which quantity is your held vs the required quantity, and I really wish things you are missing would be red so you can tell at a glance whether making a spell is possible. - It took me way too long to realize I had a bunch of consumables, because the inventory menu was so annoying to navigate (thanks, absolutely tiny text!) I just stopped checking new items assuming everything I found was a spelllcrafting ingredient. Having little icons or text color differences to differentiate ingredients from equipment and consumables would've been nice considering the sheer amount of random junk you stumble over each time you turn a corner. - Speaking of missing information, tooltips that tells you what the spells you choose during character creation DOES would be nice because even with the explanation for the magical schools, I'd still want to know if there's any quirks differentiating "arcane AOE" vs "electric AOE" instead of just going on what's my favorite icons. - The spellbook menu also has some issues: the hitbox for selecting a spell slot should be the entire scroll icon, not just the text below it. Locked slots should be grayed out so it's more clear which ones you can actually assign spells to. Clicking the tiny spell names is also a pain with a gamepad. - Speaking of spells, I held down spellcasting buttons to charge spells out of habit for a while before realizing it's not an option. It would be cool if it was, because standing still is super dangerous in this game and the long casting animations makes it hard to time ranged attacks properly, so being able to delay a bit to let enemies catch up and being rewarded with a little bit of extra damage would add a little more depth to the combat. - And an actual gripe again, there's a hotkey to cast your 4 first spells with the face buttons, but it doesn't show you WHICH spells are assigned to those buttons, only the button icons. How did this slip through...? - Blood and Water mushrooms dotted around the world to reduce your estus usage is nice in theory, but even at Lv.1 they restore such a pitiful amount it felt pointless to even bother picking them up (especially since the fading gauges issue made it hard to tell if I was full and would just waste them). You could probably triple the healing from these things with no effect on game balance, since anything that kills the player tends to take them out from full health in a couple seconds anyway. - Speaking of death, there being no easy way to return to the library and spending your hard-earned souls once you enter the first open world section really got on my nerves. At the start you'd merely have the hassle of going through a loading screen to get to the end of the village and then waiting for the elevator, but if you press on you'll die in a boss room and have your bloodstain stuck in there until you give up or beat the boss... and then right after that boss there's a point of no return drop (so if you drop down there thinking you'll at least get a bonfire, congratulations, now you're locked into the next major area until you mess up or clear THAT). Every checkpoint I found before giving up was just a Memory Font, or basically a Stake of Marika, and not having a single "real" checkpoint after getting four areas deep into the game felt downright excessive. And considering how easy it is to die without even realizing you're in danger, this turns the game incredibly frustrating with most of my time spent on runbacks trying to save that pile of 7 levels' worth of souls. - Enemy projectiles don't emit sound when they whizz by you, only when they impact the terrain, which draws your attention in the exact opposite direction of the threat... etc etc I could keep listing more issues I've got with the game, but these are the big ones. For every cool idea or surprisingly high-production-value setpiece there's a kineasthetics or menu flaw that actively makes the game harder to enjoy. And believe me, I really tried to enjoy it.

Amazing game, sure there are things that can be improved and other things that I would argue against improving. In many aspects this game does not hold your hand, and it gave me what I was looking for, the feeling of playing Darksouls 1 for the first time, and for that I am very grateful <3 Bosses are interesting and engaging Exploration is fun and the world feels populated, I have played games where it felt like the world was empty many times, but this was a lot of fun to explore. My first run took me 40 hours, and I looted pretty much everything. The story is good, I think maybe using the lore tablets more around the world to reveal more details about the story would have added to the already great exploration. The enemy variety is good too. Combat is interesting, although I feel the dodge is awkward to execute and I would often get clipped anyway so I ended up resorting to a kind of tank build using the earth spell Barrier to reduce stamina usage when blocking with the magic shield. I didn't enjoy the leveling system as much, felt too barebones and simplistic, and I feel there is a lot of wasted potential there, such as making intelligence impact casting speed to make combat more dynamic and fast paced. The idea to make enemies have different resistances was amazing as it forces you to try out many different spells in order to have a toolkit that can tackle most situations. NG+ halving your damage output was a bad decision IMO, making enemies have more HP, like 25% and increasing their resistances to make playing around immunities more relevant would have been a nice way to keep things fresh. I understand this was developed by one person, which is completely insane considering the resulting product. Amazing work brother!