I played mostly as lightning sorc and here is my feedback so far:
The good:
Atmosphere, sound, physics - splendid.
I really liked affixes like lucky hit, +x to some skill/skill group, or some legendary affixes like you can summon 2 hydras but for shorter duration.
Resources gathering and Crafting is a good start, I hope iit will be deep and incentivizing in the end game.
I liked enchantment system for sorc and I would really like it to have some kind of synergy so you can increase chances of these skills to proc with some affixes like lucky hit.
I didnt encounter many bosses so far but those that I fought were really cool. Especially I enjoyed encounter with Butcher, he left me absolutely no chances to survive with my build but I REALLY liked this battle.
The bad:
Skill tree is really oversimplified: you can’t really invest into skills you like or customize them since you only have 7 skill points to put into each skill and leveling up the skill feels insignificant - it doesn’t really change the mechanic of the skill or damage output. For example - difference between 1 point meteor and max levelled meteor is slight damage increase and some minor effect like immobilize. Compare this to what you can do with meteor in Last Epoch.
The variety of skills is also a bit underwhelming, playing as lightning sorc I have only 7-8 skills, 6 of them are assigned to hotkeys, so not much choice here. Also basically all lighning skills are projectiles that look kinda the same. Imho fire skills are done way better since they have projectiles, wall, channel, summon hydras etc.
World scaling with character level feels bad, you don’t have a feeling that one place is still dangerous and the other is already not, it just feels the same wherever you go. And leveling up the characted(excluding itemization) doesn’t make you stronger relative to the mobs, since skill tree has almost no impact on character power.
I dont find interesting affixes like +x% damage on stunned mobs, +x% damage vs elites, +x% damage vs vulnerable etc. Game has really heavy focus on these affixes with specific conditions but we will see how paragon will affect this.
Hey! I got a barb up to lvl 25, couldn’t try out the other ones because of lack of time. I agree with all of your statements, except one.
" I dont find interesting affixes like +x% damage on stunned mobs, +x% damage vs elites, +x% damage vs vulnerable etc. Game has really heavy focus on these affixes with specific conditions but we will see how paragon will affect this."
Maybe you were just really unlucky, but I definitely found a lot of items with all of those affixes! Not all in one, of course, but separately. With the exception of “+x% damage on stunned mobs” being actually "+x% damage on crowd-controlled enemies.
That’s it! I do hope, however, that they delve deeper into the skill tree stuff. I really liked some of the passives that were clearly to be taken as we leveled up to 90 or whatever, but I’d like to see the skill tree checked out. And, as you mentioned. to have different final versions of the skill to be visually different, like in lost ark. For example, on the barb, the last whirlwind skill option was either +x% dmg increase after whirlwinding for more than 2 seconds or +x% of base dmg was done as bleeding over time. I would like the bleeding one to be a more reddish style of the ability, and the other one, idk, but I would like them to be different.
100% agree. Far too few choices for buttons to press. 6 is not enough and it leads to a really boring build experience and my build ultimately feels incomplete and nerfed.
When I said “I don’t find interesting affixes like …” - I meant that I don’t think they are interesting enough. Sorry for ambiguous statement)