Loved playing it so here's a pretty long review! It's a potentially great game with a lot of little issues in design and optimizations holding it back at the moment. TL;DR: At its current state, Necrofugitive's demo feels like it struggles to decide for itself what kind of game it wants to be - torn between a hardcore tactical beat em' up or a grimdark stealthy parasitic killer. More consistent combat/stealth rules, animations, ledge detection, hitreg. better UX and a fix to the AP costs would really help. The graphics are gorgeous and the biggest standout of this game.
COMBAT
Your character has a lot of resources to juggle between both Stamina and AP (I feel like calling this Blood would make more sense tbh). You need Stamina to dodge and guard for better openings for better combos which leads to regaining AP which leads to cool moments when you chain in a Special Ability.
For Special Abilities, you get: Tendril Yank (for pulling in far enemies), Tendril Lash (hitting far enemies), Dash (a half-screen wide sweep attack). Impale is a heavy hitter but more used for stealth play.
On paper, it looks like a solid combat loop. That's until you realize your abilities aren't that worth it (for now). Tendril Yank and Lash only hit the *furthest* enemies on the stage. They don't do well in a crowd and work best against a faraway enemy like an archer or melee guy running away. Dash is the best ability if you want to hit a crowd of enemies and clear room. But it seems to only register hits here and there in the sweep which means you end up vulnerable in recovery animation when those two guys out of six not caught in the sweep immediately turn around to get you.
You also need to keep in mind your AP recovery which only comes in chunks rather than a gauge filling up so you can easily get into situations where you have no get out buttons. In those cases, the dodge and guard which use stamina come into play but can fall short since their i-frames are pretty short. Archers and Polearms will tear you apart before you can dive out completely so your better choice is to guard and hope you can get some hits in without being staggered.
Combine this with combos only staggering enemies half the time (it feels sort of hit-and-miss even with shieldless enemies) and all enemy attacks able to interrupt you, the game sort of discourages you from crowd fights with more than two enemies. Staggering can also feel moot because they only last as long as it takes for you to end your Heavy attack animation which means either you dodge out of a combo and give up pressure or risk another Heavy hoping they don't attack you too quickly out of stagger.
You also can't hit downed enemies sometimes even with heavy attacks which means knockdowns should be used to let you prioritize other enemies not down yet while the initial enemies take time to get up. This happens with all your moves, you either have hit-or-miss registrations or enemies will sometimes 'glide' past your animations or inconsistently stumble outside of them leading to a missed attack and a counterattack.
Slaughter Demon is only unlocked if you kill a ton of enemies and it feels GREAT. You get to summon enemies as fodder so you don't get hit anymore + Hellfire, Clobber and Stampede are great for clearing out a wave of enemies. The only issue there is you can't Assimilate anymore so you can't recover health unless you morph back into your weaker form.
I'm assuming here that these shortfalls could be due to the lack of 'upgrades' that the full game says it has. So maybe your attacks get more worth it over time?
STEALTH
In stealth, I had little inconsistencies ruining the Prison run like:
- Enemy vision cones being sort of unclear. Sometimes I got spotted at the edge of a screen even with the detection eye saying there wasn't any light to make me more spottable. The vision also sometimes seemed to 'pierce' through ground and spot me even where there weren't grates. It'd be great if there was a way to visualize the enemy vision.
- Noise feels weird. Stalking makes everything silent but jumping sometimes alerts enemies. This means platforming out of an incoming enemy's vision isn't a great move. Better to run away - into another enemy's vision. I've had moments where landing out of a jump alerted the enemy below me.
- Jump detection against platforms is weird as well. In the beginning of the prison, a running jump will get you on the first platform. But immediately doing another running jump has consistently made me hit the wall and not let me climb up. I notice when this happens, it's usually because my top half is higher than the wall edge so it seems like you only get the climb up when the top of your head meets the bottom of the edge, not when you meet it from the side?
- The ledges that jut out are way harder to jump into because if your head hits the corner where the bottom of the brick meets the wall, you just bounce off of it instead of grabbing on. This doesn't happen when the ledge is just a clean sharp corner.
- Sometimes when stealth turns to combat, some enemies will straight up break a stagger and just glide past your attack towards the alarm.
- I notice once I alert one enemy and they didn't find me, they would for some reason get 'stuck' in either two positions where they jitter a lot over a grate or just keep walking into the edge of a far wall.
Stuff that seemed weak in combat are strong in stealth. Yank and Lash are great for last hits and enemies escaping to the alarm. Their utility feels redundant sometimes though because the enemies outside your vision can sometimes detect the fight and enter alert which seems to also send others into alert, reducing chances of stopping the alarm. The same registration issues also happen so sometimes your Yank/Lash fails even when they seem like they touch the enemy. You're also screwed if they happen to run up a few steps on stairs because it seems your attacks will completely miss hitreg outside of the torso-to-bottom-half-of-head range?
You get to instant kill enemies in stealth with Impale but it takes half your AP bar so you can do two kills with some time apart. On the prison map where enemy patrols are very overlapped, you're better off Shapeshifting after Assimilating an enemy, run off to a corner then wait for your AP bar to rise while suspicion drops to Shapeshift and find another corner to hide in again. The current loop and mechanics as a result makes stealthing a very make-or-break. You either go into full combat mode or take the long route. Alarms don't seem to reset either so problem-solving feels less possible.
Also, a small thing that makes stealth frustrating at the moment is that the stalk button (ALT or LT) clashes with using Impale (TAB + A or L2 + X). This means if you want to stealth kill, you'll need to extend three fingers on the same side on the keyboard (ALT + TAB + A) and the controller (LT + L2 + Joystick for moving to the enemy). It feels like a oversight and I had to cramp my fingers a lot to avoid accidentally running and alerting the enemy right next to me.
SUGGESTIONS
- More consistent combat rules. Do light attacks stagger enemies? Do they still stagger when enemies enter an attack animation (I notice they sometimes don't stagger during this)? Do 'heavier' enemies (Polearms and Crossbows) have different rules? Do my light attacks knockback enemies and I have to adjust my movement to keep them in stagger? Do my enemies also have i-frames like me?
- More consistent stealth rules. If I'm engaging an enemy, do they prioritize fighting back or will they straight up run past me for the alarm? I've had both happen. Can I stealth kill all characters? I found out the hard way that you can't impale Crossbowmen lol.
- Some moves from Slaughter Demon feel like they'd have more utility in default form. A lesser form of Summon Demons would really help in stealth and combat to distract enemies. Likewise, Yank feels like it would have a place as an upgraded version in Demon form.
- AP recovery might feel better if it was a constantly filling gauge rather than the chunk-over-time style currently. This would let you do more snappy moves in stealth and combat rather than waiting the extra second and fumbling. There might be concern of spamming Shapeshift to cheese levels but with how enemies go alert the moment they see you, I don't think there will be issues?
- Assimilation feels super not worth it in stealth. In combat, the cost of AP in exchange for health makes sense. In stealth, I'll be Impaling after Shapeshifting then Assimilating and Shapeshifting again. Each step has an AP cost which means it's very hard to pull this off consistently unless I have the perfect amount of AP (which means having to wait outside of enemy vision doing nothing while recovering AP). Maybe in stealth, Impaling/Assimilating could award AP instead or cost nothing if you succeed?
- A better way to visualize enemy vision and alert would be great. Maybe a slowly opening eye above an enemy? At the moment, stealth feels very do-or-die.
- I notice bodies make enemies go for the alarm which in turn makes everyone swarm on you. It feels a bit like a break in logic. Maybe it'd be better for enemies to enter into a 'search' stage first instead of immediately homing in on me since they don't know where I am? The same 'homing' logic might also explain the strange stuck enemies who run into walls and jitter in one spot. I noticed when this happens, they're locked-on to the spot right below me but they can't see me because I'm on another platform out of their reach.
- Better explain how stealth states work. There seems to be four: question mark, exclamation, yellow sparks and red sparks. No idea what these really indicate so far outside of ? = searching, ! = fully spotted and going for alarm.
- An indicator that an alerted enemy is running outside of screen to an alarm like a red arrow that tells you the direction relative to you would help avoid unfair alarms when you think you've finished off the alerted enemies only to realize a random one outside your view was alerted by one of your initial enemies.
- Some enemies currently have way too much health to match their appearances. Regular guards take LLLH+LLL to kill or LLLH+H which seem more suitable for a mid-level enemy. Crossbowmen take more than 3 or 4 combos it seems? It might be nice to have a HP meter/Stagger meter or visual feedback (gore/blood) of some kind to understand how quick these guys can go down.