Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] No Rest for the Wicked - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Video Games Hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh are here with one of our more anticipated video game releases in a while - No Rest for the Wicked. This action RPG by the makers of Ori and the Blind Forest is their first foray into one of the more popular video game genres. It may be Early Access, but we couldn’t wait to dive in. We break down the gameplay, story, combat and our thoughts (which are NOT the same) in this awesome gaming episode.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Disratory, Ole Jake and JigglePuff Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Riders, ready, set, ride! Riding a bike in the Ride to Conquer Cancer is like being part of humanity's greatest. The money you raise, the time you spend, the energy that you give is helping people live. It's giving people hope and that's just so beautiful. Carry the fire for cancer research. Join the ride at ridetoconquer.ca. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for total fun savings adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Hello fellow gamers! Welcome to the Video Gamers podcast hosted by three lifelong gamer dads

we have all been able to put some time into no rest for the wicked and we are going to be breaking down what the game is like we're going to provide some of our thoughts we're going to let all of you know out there whether or not it is worth your time picking up i am your host paul and joining me he's gonna keep rolling rolling rolling rolling rolling, rolling. It's Josh. Jokes on you guys. I learned how to parry. Oh, did you? Yeah.

I thought you were gonna say jokes on you. I love Limp Bizkit. Keep rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. I mean, that song was pretty banging at the time. You can't lie. All right.

And joining Josh and me, you can find his corpse on the ground below after yeeting himself off ledges with bad camera angles. It's Ryan. All right. I'm just going to climb over this wall here. Oh! Ah! here. I know we're going to talk about this a little bit later, but Ryan and I may have had some issues with the fact that jump sprint and dodge are all the same button in this game. So we'll, we'll have some thoughts here in a little bit. All right. Before we start our actual deep

dive, Josh, I think you've got a review or two to read yeah i got some reviews i got some i'm so ready for this i can tell people right now buckle it this is gonna be this episode's gonna be a doozy because i have a very strong feeling that we disagree big time on this game so if you uh ryan ryan's been a little more mom. I have been extraordinarily vocal on my thoughts of this game. So it'll be interesting hearing more from you guys, but we'll get into it all. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a good one. So, but we are going to start off with some reviews. Listen, we ask you all all the time.

We said, listen, if you love the podcast and you've been listening for a little while, please leave us a review. It helps the show immensely. It lets other people know when they're looking for a podcast that, hey, they should give this one a try. And when you leave a review, there's a very good chance we're going to read it on the show. I've got two great ones for you today. This first one comes in from Polazi and it's titled, What's Up, Brother? And it says, just started started listening it's pretty good honestly I love the host Paul Josh has a spooky voice Ryan has a deep voice keep going with the best podcast love y'all I've never heard anyone say Josh's voice is spooky but nasally excited

girly squeaky you know I mean any of those I think are okay. I'll take it. We love you, Palasi. Thanks so much for the review. Ryan does have the deep voice. He misspelled Manly. Yeah. Actually, also, I don't know if this was,

I think it wasn't intentional, but he did say the host Owal instead of Paul. But P&O being next to each other, I'm just assuming that was a typo. All right. This next one is titled Best Podcast Ever. And it comes in from our good friend Shumagora7212 from Great Britain. And it says, this podcast is amazing. I have been searching for a good family-friendly gaming podcast for ages until I found this podcast in amazing. I have been searching for a good family friendly gaming podcast for ages until I found this podcast in October last year. My first

episode was the Hogwarts Legacy Deep Dive because I just pre-ordered it on the Switch. I love this podcast so much. I even joined their Discord server, Breath of the Wild Fan 7212. My favorite episodes are all of the bonus rounds. I am 12 years old and my favorite games are

zelda breath of the wild tears of the kingdom obviously zelda link to the past and star wars battlefront 2 i have also just started playing fortnight i don't think it's a great game but i enjoy playing battle royale trios with my two brothers i have one question for all of you. What is your favorite movie? Thank you for reading. Ooh, I love that question. I'm a huge movie buff. My favorite movie of all time. I feel like I have like a top four. That's a lot easier than one.

But if I have to say one, I always say Seven by David Fincher or Heat by Michael Mann. Those are my top two for sure. Heat is so good. Heat is great, man. I love it. Yeah. Mine's very easy, Hellboy 2, which is not. I've always loved it.

I joke with Paul about that. I like popcorn movies. It kind of rotates. If I had to truly say what I think the greatest, like my favorite movie, I would just have to say the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Oh, yeah. So good. So Dan, I think if you just said, what movie, I would just have to say the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Oh, yeah. So good.

So, Dan, I think if you just said, what's the absolute tip of the pyramid for me, that's what I would say. What about you, Ryan? That's up there for me too, but probably one that's just been the one that I've watched more than anything is The Matrix. Oh, that makes sense.

I could probably quote that whole thing. I know your your wife i was banned from watching it there because i would just quote along for the whole movie and nobody would want to watch it with me so i feel like growing up with you ryan you always had pool hall junkies on oh yeah that was so or the matrix or uh boondock oh i guess boondock saints was more your other cousin but yeah i feel like you had pool hall junkies on a lot also great great movie well thank you so much breath of the wild fan i was gonna say i didn't recognize the first name shumagora or whatever but oh yeah we love having you in discord breath of the wild fan thanks so much for that review too yeah yeah i wonder if

they talk smack to good britain like, oh yeah, we're great. And mediocre Britain. All right. Ryan, why don't you tell the people a little bit about Patreon support? Absolutely. So I guess coming up, we're recording right now. This episode is going to release Monday. So I do want to say, not to get too deep into everything, but it will be my one year coming up here shortly. And I've just been blown away by this whole community, all the support we've received,

everybody on the Discord. It's just been super cool over the last year to see how it's grown. And if you want to be part of that, MultiplayerSquad.com, you can come in and just give us some support. If you feel like we're offering something that you enjoy and you love to listen to on your way to work or while you're working or at home, really helps us out. Again, MultiplayerSquad.com. Just hop on there.

We have a bunch of different tiers. You get a lot of cool perks, especially on the Discord. And again, hop in that Discord. I love seeing all these lurkers come out of the woodworks um it's my new favorite thing i love that hey i've been lurking for a year but i finally decided to talk everybody welcomes them so uh just hop on in there be just just join the community it's fantastic and one of the perks you get is a shout out on the show yep and we do owe a new shout out

we have a new epic supporter which is always incredibly fun. We want to say thank you to Rom and Vilo, or maybe it's Rom and Vio, if it's more of the Spanish flair. Not too sure, but we want to say thank you for signing up with Epic Status. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, I got to say I'm with Ryan. Seeing the lurkers just coming out. Here's the thing. This community is awesome. We understand like how gamers in general can be. And a lot of times they're super toxic. People are judgmental. They diss you for your gaming takes.

Like legitimately there is zero, zero of that in our community. I mean, these are the most awesome, supportive people that just love games and want to talk about games. They don't want to argue. They don't want to fight. They don't want to be toxic. It is honestly like an oasis in the gaming world. So, you know, again, just check it out. Just join it.

You're more than welcome to lurk. But I love seeing that people are feeling comfortable enough to kind of participate, you know, and that sort of thing, too. So it's free to join. Cost you nothing. The link is in the episode description. Give it a click. Come check it out. I think you're really going to enjoy it. Absolutely. All right, guys, let's start our deep dive. No rest for the wicked. All right. Every time we do a deep dive, we kick things off with a description of the game. And here is the description according to Steam. From Moon Studios, the award-winning developers of Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, comes No Rest for the Wicked, a visceral precision action RPG set to reinvent

the genre. All right. That's quite a description. When even they themselves say they are trying to reinvent an entire genre, I think a lot of people's ears perk up at that whole idea. You know, action RPGs, I think we're all huge fans. We all love the Diablo series. We've also dabbled in things like Path of Exile and other similar games like this. And so No Rest for the Wicked, I think, was really high up on all of our most anticipated games of the year list. We all love the idea of a harder action RPG. A lot of these other action RPGs are just, you kind of like button mash and face roll everything in front of you. No Rest for the Wicked promised more of like Souls-like combat. So when you start saying things like, let's combine the DNA of

Diablo and Souls, that's something that we're going to be really interested in checking out. It's got an isometric view like Diablo, but the combat's much more similar to Souls than Diablo. They also throw in a very unique art style. It's also very vertical. It also has aspects of exploration, which you don't normally get in your average action RPG. Does that all sound about right? Is that what we were all looking for and expecting in this game is hand painted. It's got an incredible art style to it. That is, I know what, when we saw the initial trailer, what one of the things that really blew us away was just how beautiful this game was. If you've ever seen footage of Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, it's beautiful, man. And so to see that art style kind of translated into this action RPG was pretty incredible. And, you know, then they start touching on, like you said, Paul, hey, we always wanted to make an action RPG. We want the

RPG elements. So there's gear, there's, you know, skills and abilities and different weapons and things like that. A beautiful world to explore. So yeah, I mean, I'd say that description is spot on ryan's just nodding just just nodding it's good audio ryan how long you been on the show i just i'm like i'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself on what i want to say about all this i'm like yeah they pretty much covered it so yeah and and the art style is very cool they they said they wanted the whole game to look like a painting yeah and they they definitely accomplished that the game looks like a painting they didn't want it to look too realistic they felt like that art style fit best for action rpg which makes a lot of sense uh i should also mention that when we did our auction draft of

most anticipated games of the year we all had a 200 budget and my strategy in that draft was more holding back and i had the most money toward the end of the draft and my goal was to try to grab games like no rest for the wicked at a discount i think at the time we all felt like i got this game at really good value. I drafted this at $17. Yeah. And I think in reality, we all probably thought it was worth more in like the $40 range. At least that's kind of the sense I had at the time.

So maybe at the end of the episode, we'll kind of talk about, you know, how did that $17 purchase compare? You know, was it good, bad, or fair value? Bet you want that money back. What? $17 might be fair.? Bet you want that money back. What? 17 might be fair. We'll see.

We'll see. Taking jabs, huh? All right. Now, it should also be mentioned that it is not a full release. It is in early access. Josh, why don't you tell the people a little bit about what's currently available in the game? Remember, it is early access, Ryan and paul oh man we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna wind up tussling a little bit on this one some things can't get fixed but go

ahead oh man um okay so you know this was the big thing we were all insanely hyped for this game i remember as soon as we found out about it, we were all just like, oh man, this is, this has moved right to the top of our hype meter. Uh, we didn't really have a lot of details. We didn't know how long the game was going to be. So the game is the first chapter. Um, I have 19 hours in this game and I have made it to the end of the early access content. So the developers came out, they said, Hey, you know, there are some repeatable things you can do. There's like an arena mode and stuff like that. You can test out different builds and stuff. Um, but the game itself is probably in about the 15 hour range.

Um, and so, you know, it is not complete. We will talk about that. Some, there are things that just aren't quite right yet. There were things missing at launch, like the ability to rebind keys that Paul kind of hinted at with, you know, a lot of the actions all being on the same button and stuff like that. Um, but yeah, I mean, for an early access game,

I got, you know, darn near 20 hours out of this game. So for me, that is a good amount of content for early access. And what's the price of this game i don't i should have had that before starting it was 40 right i forget exactly is it 20 oh no it's 40 yeah so 39.99 it should be said that we were sent game keys for no rest for the wicked however

they came in i think a day or two after release, and all of us had already picked up the game and played over two hours. So we all paid our real life money for this game. We don't owe anything to the developers. Of course, we would always be honest about our thoughts on these games anyway. But I know Ryan and I especially found it a little bit funny getting those keys just a little bit late didn't do us a whole lot of good this time all right so let's kind of go back in time you fire up no rest for the wicked for the first time what did you guys think about the character creation options i thought i was accidentally uh playing arc yes yes that's exactly

what i thought man these are the why is that the the design style on these characters is just it the shapes which you know oh once you actually get into the game it kind of makes a little more sense and at the look and once you're playing you know your character but and that little design menu the character creation it's it's like what you would make trying to be funny you know just ridiculous weird shoulders and arms and torso with this kind of crazy looking little head and uh so yeah very skinny head yeah skinny and long it's like a horse head on a human body but your forearms are five times wider than they should be longer don't forget they hang down to your calves man yeah yeah and you got chicken legs too yeah you got chicken should be. And longer, don't forget. They hang down to your calves, man. Yeah. Yeah. And you got chicken legs, too. Yeah, you got chicken legs. That's

all right. You don't need, you know, nobody likes leg day, man. Never skip leg day. Nobody likes leg day. Never skip leg day. Oh, whatever. Yeah, I remember thinking, Ryan hit the nail on the head on this. I was like, this is like Ark, where, I mean, my daughter does it, you guys both do it, where you just make the most malproportioned character you can imagine and then just go, yep, looks good. Play game. Except in this game, you have to look that goofy because we're coming off some of the best character creations that have ever been around, like Dragon's Dogma 2. People went crazy over character creation. And even going back like 15 years to Spore and like how much people loved creating characters. And then just every once in a while,

a game comes out with character creation where I just start to question whether or not it should have even been in the game. Because in this one here, it is incredibly limited. It's super weird. You have six preset faces. You've got a couple options for hair. And then outside of that, all you can do is reposition or make large or small your eyes, nose, mouth, and jawbone. So it's like, you do not choose how tall your character is. There's no choices about voice or tattoos or your weight. I mean, you look like a Neanderthal in this game. And I don't think you always have to be a smoke show in all of these video games, but I felt like my character looked demented and it kind of bothered me. My character would just slowly Hulk around and he looks like he's got an IQ of about 14. So I don't know.

I kind of felt like they probably could have spruced up character creation or just get rid of it entirely. I'm not, I'm not too sure why it's there. That's the key for me is like, why have a character creator if it's so simple that it doesn't matter. And then the other thing is just like, you know,

every game should be whenever you get a piece of gear, it covers up your character. So like, why, why does it matter? of gear it covers up your character so like why why does it matter just say this is your character here you go click play i don't understand like that if you want to go the dragon's dogma route fine like i've never really gotten into that and i spent three hours in that character creator you know but like i don't i guess that's a good question man do people care like why have this at all in this game? It just, to me, it seemed like wasted development

because number one, it's an isometric view for the most part. You're not seeing your character. The armor style in this game is really wonky anyway. So the second you get a helm, you know, like you're not seeing your character like anytime during the game, not even really in cut scenes and stuff.

So I just don't get the point of it did you guys get that big mushroom hat thing oh yeah it's just fly yeah it's just flop around and all you can really see is just your big arms just kind of as you're running you know i'm like yeah it's at one point when i was doing the character creation i'm looking for these other features how to just mess with stuff just to get kind of a feel for it and they just weren't there i kept looking and so same thing like i at some point you know you don't want to overload it to have 10 million options but just why even put it in if you know if they're not gonna it's gonna be so limited especially since in this game they were very protective over not having randomized stats on

loot and like hand crafting so many things, you think that they would care about the aesthetic a little bit more or give you the tools to create. I just, I thought it was a little bit goofy. It's still better than Sea of Thieves. I mean, Sea of Thieves still has the most random, stupid character creation ever, but I don't know. This game's like maybe one step above that. All right. So you create your character. Actually, you know what? Let's go ahead and take a short break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about the opening combat in this game. Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments. Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa visa card the credit card that rewards your good financial

habits earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month level up from bill payer to reward slayer terms and conditions apply all right so no rest for the wicked is an r RPG that starts out with a tutorial on a ship. Spoiler alert. It comes under attack and you get shipwrecked. Is that the opening to every RPG? Why does every game do this now? This is Baldur's Gate 3.

Even they copied themselves. They had already done this in DOS 2. I don't know what it is. All of these RPGs start out on boats. They teach you how to run around. You break about 200 barrels that are pretty much all empty, and then you get your first taste of combat. And when you're talking about a Souls-like game, I feel like a lot hinges on combat. The game can look pretty, but if the combat's bad, it's going to kind of sink the whole game. So the combat's going to be really important for a Souls-like RPG like this.

And I don't recall what your earliest weapons are, but there's several types that change up your strategy. We're going to break that down in just a little bit here. But despite No Rest for the Wicked being a different perspective, being more know bird's eye isometric like diablo i would say the combat still essentially plays exactly like a souls game right i mean you have to dodge parry or block you've got a stamina meter you strike when the enemy has a disadvantage and if you just try button mashing you're gonna die pretty much immediately like is that all fair to say yeah Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, for anybody that's never played a Souls-like game, all this really means is it's active combat. You decide when you attack, you decide when you dodge, you decide, you know, when you try to parry, you have stamina, so you can't just swing away

all willy-nilly. This is, like Paul said, it's not a button masher. You have to pay attention to the timing and when you attack and when you dodge and things like that. That's really all it boils down to in a simplistic nature. I have to assume that you guys didn't like the combat in this game, just from some of the vibes that I got, but it is slower. Like, you know, anybody that's played Dark Souls and Elden Ring, you know, it feels responsive. You can just spam roll dodge until you run out of stamina. When you attack, they're fairly quick. No Rest for the Wicked, I feel like takes that and slows it down by like 25, maybe even 50%. And it doesn't mean that there's lag when you push the button, your guy attacks, but it just means all the animations

are just a little bit slower, a little bit more methodical. I noticed like even in the boss fights, like the telegraphs are a little bit easier to see and that sort of thing. I will say I struggled with the combat in this game initially because I felt like it was too slow. I was trying to do things too quickly and that was throwing me off. And I found that I was actually dying a good bit because of the pacing. It was not what I was used to. It took a solid three to four hours before it really started to click with me. And I kind of went, I have to slow down. This is not Elden Ring. This is not Dark Souls. I got to slow down. I have to be much more intentional with my button presses and watching for these animations and things like that.

And I think they kind of said that in the like preview for the game where they said, we want combat to be meaningful. We want you to have to pay attention and things like that. So there is zero spamming anything in this game. Oh, definitely like it. And,

and those, even in the beginning, like just random mobs and little care i mean a lot of it's a lot of solo combat it's not those big whores that you can just go and walk through um you're on you know battling head to head with like one guy and he can just be kind of a random and he could take you out pretty easily like they got some weight to them you know even the regular characters and it took me a while, too, to kind of get the flow of the combat. Because the same thing, I would do my little dodge roll and then want to, boom, just pop in and attack.

But it would be a little bit slower. I'd mistime it, and then I'd just get demolished. And it'd be a big axe guy, and I'd take three-quarters of my life from one swing. So it's definitely, there's a little bit of a learning curve on how the actually flow is with the combat. Especially if you're coming off a game like Diablo 4, where you are essentially button mashing and face rolling everything. This is much more calculated, much closer to a Souls-like game, which I know has traditionally always struck more of a chord with Josh than me and Ryan. Ryan and I, I feel like it's a hard, healthy mix where you want it to be challenging, but you also don't want it to be so calculated that all of it just comes down to technical timing.

And I think that's where sometimes the Souls-like games just become a little bit too calculated for my taste, and it loses out a little bit of the fun. I like it to become a little bit too calculated for my taste and it loses out a little bit of the fun i like it to be a little little more balanced all right so let's talk a little bit about weapon types and armor and this is going to sound very familiar to souls veterans depending on what you have equipped everything has a certain weight and what is equipped can change your weight class if you have very little equipped you can have can change your weight class. If you have very little equipped, you can have fast as your weight class. If you are in the middle, it's called normal. And if you equip a bunch of heavy gear, it's labeled heavy.

Now, fast builds have a very unique benefit in that it lets you do a side quick step as a dodge. You don't actually roll. You stay on your feet. And so it lets you counter attack much quicker. If you are normal, then it lets you do a standard roll dodge. And if you are heavy build, you move even slower. However, it does give you access to a shoulder attack, which can stagger enemies if they hit. So I was kind of curious for you guys, you know, did you get to tinker with all of it a little bit like what weight class jived with you and did you have a favorite weapon type um i i was mostly heavy um just kind of it helped me slow down a little bit with my timing so uh i would use the

big broad sword and just kind of try to work on how to get those dodge rolls timed right to where you can come in with an attack and then get out of there. That was probably my favorite weapon. I like the little daggers going rogue style like Josh likes to do. But again, I just could not get the hang of it. I know, like we talked about, these just aren't my type of game. I know a lot of people love Souls games. But just the way this plays out with these weapons styles,

it's just, you know, it's just not my favorite. I'm kind of surprised you went heavy. I would say heavy is probably the hardest of the weight classes because there's such a small margin of error. Yeah. Oh yeah.

It's like those swings are like a good three seconds sometimes just for like a regular swing. It was the only one I could get like the timing, right? Cause everything else I just, I, every interaction I i would it was like beating my head against the wall i would just do the same thing mistime it and then just get bashed because i'd get so excited i'm gonna get you you know and shank shank and then i just get destroyed so it was it was intentional to slow me down yeah what about you josh i went heavy as well which i think is kind of funny um it was more

so the weapons so one of the things with this game that i actually really enjoy is that depending on the type of weapon that you use your attacks and your uh like kind of like leap attacks and special attacks vary pretty significantly so the weapons actually really change the flavor of the combat in this game. I started off with, what do you start off with in the beginning? Like a dagger, I think? I think it's like a one-hand dagger. Yeah, you're killing crabs.

You know, I mean, it starts you off very simple like most games do. Before too long, I think I had a sword and then I finally got an axe. And I remember thinking like, oh, this axe is cool because then I could equip a shield in my offhand. And that's why in the beginning of the episode, I joked around because I learned how to parry and parrying in this game is super helpful because you stagger enemies, you know, and then you get, you know, a window to just kind of wail on them at that point. You also get a kind of like overhead leaping forward attack, which I felt was super helpful for closing the distance on guys. And so that axe, because I liked that, I tried the two-handed sword that Ryan was talking about and it's weighty. It feels good, but it really leaves

you open to getting hit because it's slow and it's hard to pair. You almost do like a smash with the hilt of the sword and it's so hard to time it because the animation's real small. But then I got a gigantic two-handed axe and I stayed with this weapon the whole rest of the game because I could do this overhead leaping smash where my guy would leap forward and close the distance and this thing hit like a truck.

And there is stagger in this game. So this ax was so heavy and it hits so hard that I would wind up staggering most of the enemies. And then because they were staggered, now they're not attacking me. And then, you know, I could just kill them off before they could even attack me at that point. I actually really like this kind of system.'s funny is like you mentioned Paul if you're heavy you get this shoulder charge ability which again lets you kind of stagger enemies which I thought hey this is really cool because usually you just get punished for being overweight and so I thought it was actually a neat little touch that it's like oh hey I kind of get an ability because I'm fat

and heavy now you know I will say this too there too. Like any RPG, you can put stats into strength and dexterity and things like that. But one of the things that you can beef up is your weight load. And as I was playing the game, I went, you know what? I don't like feeling clunky, but I like my weapons and I like that I hit really hard and I like that I have all this armor. So I started just beefing up my weight limit and I got it to where I had all this heavy armor and this big giant ax, but I got my weight back down into the normal range. And that's when it started letting me dodge roll a lot more effectively. And once I did that, combat to me took a completely different turn and it really became a lot of fun for me because I'm

assuming you guys got a little frustrated with the pacing and some of the difficulty because it's not easy, man. This combat was hard. You assume correctly. Yeah. And so I was feeling a little bit of that frustration until I kind of locked my build in a little bit. And then it became a lot of fun because did you find like the trash mobs were actually like really deadly like i can't tell you guys how many times i died to just a little guy wandering around oh i mean they hit hard you get hit you lose half your health in one hit and they're aggressive too yeah i cannot tell you how many times i was fighting an enemy that would keep backing up yep and i would keep closing the distance. And now

you accidentally aggro a second mob. And like, that's where you can very easily die quickly. You want to try to only fight one at a time, if at all possible. And a lot of times that's where I'd end up dying. Yep. Yeah. I, two guys was death. I mean, fighting two guys simultaneously was almost guaranteed certain oblivion in this game. And I was getting frustrated with that, too, because, you know, it was like, dude, I really I can't fight more than one guy at a time. But I think that's just the pacing of the combat in this game. And you do learn how to deal with it. Once I had my build kind of done, I'd take on two guys. No problem, because I was able to kind of stagger them at the same time. It's just different. I think it's a different pacing of combat. I think it's a different style of combat than what a lot of people are used to. I'm with you guys that really didn't like it at first, but once my guys started to get a little bit stronger, once I kind of figured out the weapon that worked for me and the style that worked for me, it really opened up the game, in my opinion. See, for me me i really hated the heavyweight class that

drove me wild the dodges i mean it you for me i had to be at least normal if not fast and it's kind of hard because when you're looking at your weapon options maybe you have like early on double daggers that do four damage and then you've got this great axe that does like 25 or something. And you look at that and you think, well, I got to use the axe. But when you realize, oh, actually, I'm going to get like six shanks in with my double daggers for every one hit with the axe. They're actually a little closer than you might think. I definitely preferred the fast weight class by far.

I have to be nimble on my feet in games like this. I want to be able to sidestep, hit once or twice, and be able to sidestep again or jump backward. That's how I have to play. That's how I've played Elden Ring and the Souls games. I did not find the blocking to work well for me. I just have to be able to sidestep and fight that way. So I stuck almost exclusively to fast after tinkering with all of them a little bit. Did either of you use the staff, like the fire staff? Yeah. I got it early on, but I never stuck with it. I went into two mobs and I, and I died both times.

I was like, nope, nevermind. Forget it. Yeah, forget it. And it should be said, there are a lot of weapons in this game.

I mean, we're talking axes, clubs, hammers, swords, daggers, halberds, katanas,

maces, spears, staves, bows, and wands. And even within those, a lot of them have both one and two hand varieties, like one or two hand axes. And so like the one handers, you can combine with a shield if you

so choose. Here's the problem. I will say one of the negatives, and I hope that they tweak this in early access is the weapon requirements tie into your stats. So at one point I found, I don't even know what it was. It was a cool looking weapon. I think it was a scimitar, right? And I was like, I'd been using the axe for a while. I was kind of tired of the axe,

you know, and I was like, ooh, I found a scimitar. Like, heck yeah. Don't have enough faith. I don't have enough faith. Exactly right. You know, oh, to use the scimitar, you have to have 10 dexterity and 10 faith.

You don't level up that fast in this game and there's no way to reset your stats that i found so the problem is is that because i chose to go down the strength route i am locked out of all these other weapons forever i mean it's not like i'm just oh i can redistribute my stat points or, you know what? I level up fast enough that I'll just put a few points in dexterity here and there. And before you know it, I'll be able to use this weapon. Like to me, that was extremely limiting to the game. It was honestly, one of the more disappointing things to me was that you're giving me this awesome looking playground with all these toys and equipment. And then you're saying, you don't qualify for any of that. Sorry. You went strength, buddy. Enjoy your giant axe.

Enjoy your giant sword. You don't get to play with any of the other toys. And I kind of went, I don't like that, man. And it's not like you can equip it and use it at a disadvantage or something. You just simply can't equip it. It's a bummer. Yeah, because it's like, I found this really cool weapon. And then it's like, I am so far from being able to use this weapon that I might as well not even have found it. It's just vendor trash at that point. Well, yeah, that's the thing.

You think, okay, cool, no classes. I can try everything, see what really works for me, what I like. But after you start putting those points in with no respect, you're locked in. They do something so good and then counteract it with something so bad. Yeah.

Because like I said, the weapons give you so much variety in the gameplay on this, but then they take that variety away and they say no. And it's like, do you want, and I know, and again, I think part of it is that they want you to replay the game, right? Because they said, oh, well, if you, if you want to try these different builds in these different weapons, just replay the game.

And I kind of go like, no, I don't, I don't even finish games. You want me to replay it four times to try out different weapons. Like, come on, man,

create a second character, play them in the same world. Like, I think that's kind of what they envisioned, but in reality, especially us where we have to move on to the next game for the pod we're never gonna do that yeah there's there's nothing sadder to me than seeing that gear and it's like highlighted in red and you you can't equip it right and i i did see on reddit that one of the big tips was always hang on to at least two of your points

that way if you do get a piece of gear maybe you have the flexibility to be able to equip it. But then that sucks too, because now you're not leveling the damage that your current weapons do. So it was a little bit disappointing. Yeah. I really hope they fix that because I just don't understand the thinking there. You created all this content and then you lock me out of being able to use that content. Maybe they plan on having a respect vendor or something like that. If that was a case fine but it's not in the game right now yeah so just let me use the weapon is that what you're saying just let me use the weapons i heard no man i killed that guy fair and square oh man so in talking about combat we also have to mention the fact that the game uses focus. So, and this is true, even if you're using

something like a staff that can generate spells, what happens is as you do melee attacks, it builds up your focus meter, and then you can spend your focus to do different abilities. So different weapons will have different abilities, even as far as using a staff and now you're casting fireballs or something like that and i feel like um the the focus the whole idea of building focus through damage and then being able to unleash new abilities is a very cool idea i i don't have any beef with that however i will say that i felt like the focus sometimes took too long. It took too long. Absolutely. Yes. So, and now instead of having like where maybe in another game, I'm constantly mashing a certain ability every time it's on cool down. This is a case where you're almost exclusively parrying or dodging and doing

melee. And then a little treat every once in a while is here's a secondary ability. And I felt like it just wasn't enough. You got to be able to build focus a little bit quicker, I think, to make the combat more fun. And I think maybe this is like a nice time to just kind of like give our evaluation. Like, what did you really think about the combat here? Because I felt like with focus building so slowly, the combat got a little bit too monotonous. And I felt like too many of the enemy types are too passive because a lot of times you're facing a guy with a shield and all he does is back away from you. And I would roll to try to get closer and then they

would jump back. And now I'm sprinting to get up to the guy. Well, now I'm out of stamina, so I can't even swing. And now I'm grabbing new mobs. I felt like too often in this is I'm just standing, waiting 10 seconds until they do an attack. Then I hit him with my dagger twice, and now I'm just waiting another 10 seconds. I just felt like it sapped too much of the fun, and I feel like it just slowed things down way, way too much. have i have zero beef with the challenging level of difficulty to me it's that it just lost too much of the fun in the combat see now what did you guys think i i think maybe it was because of your build or something because i felt like they were super aggressive to me maybe it's because i was fat

and slow but maybe i feel like every area every corner i would turn i'd have this dude charging i mean i'm like oh crap you know roll roll and then i'd roll off the side of a cliff and then you know we'll get into that later but uh yeah i think i think parts of it were good i think uh parts of it need a lot of work um parts of it i enjoyed parts of it i didn't so it's kind of all over the place for me with that um i just it's just not something that that sat well to where i enjoyed the combat i have this beautiful amazing world that i want to explore and i felt like these characters were just in my way like all these enemies were just in the way of me like kind of trying to go through this masterpiece of like a painting you know and so every time i'd see one i'm like oh so i'd either try to kite them and then get around them to go

look at some other stuff or i'd fight them die a few times and then and then you know take care of them and go to the next stage yeah this game is definitely feels different i mean i would say it's very combat forward i mean the world is beautiful and there is a storyline and there's a city and vendors and there's side things that you can do. But I mean, you're fighting a lot. You know, it's an action RPG. That's kind of what you're supposed to do. In my opinion, the combat's very methodical because of the slower pacing, everything that

you're doing, like, you know, Paul kind of said, you are waiting a little bit. Yes, there's guys that charge at you. You're waiting a lot. You have crossbows that are shooting at you and you better run and go get that guy because you know it's oh yeah those are the worst yeah and i mean so you you do kind of have to prioritize what you're going to deal with and stuff i will say the armored enemies and the dudes with the shields are super annoying because there's no like you hit them three times and then they're staggered i mean yeah it was damage the shield over time or something like yeah i mean so shield guys were really annoying you know i love melee combat and i like dark souls like combat and stuff like that so for me

initially the combat felt too slow and then it felt a little too just methodical to a certain degree but then then I kind of found my build, and then I started kind of burning through the trash guys. You know, you do get the tougher normal mobs that you really kind of have to focus on, you know, a la Elden Ring or Dark Souls and things like that. And I found that I really kind of started to get into the groove of combat at that point. But then I came up against the wall that I cannot vary it at all because I don't have the stat points to do that either. So I think it just feels different than what a lot of people are used to. I didn't like it at first, but once I got into the pacing of it, I thought it was pretty good. It kind of started to click with me. There was a boss that I could not beat for a long time. I was kind of smashing my head up against them. And then I kind of went, let me just slow down. Let me pay attention to his tells and his telegraphs and stuff like that. And it was a really enjoyable fight at that point. I hate the fact that you can't fight

multiple guys. That's death at that point but and they have a knack for staggering their attacks yes yes so you kind of get screwed whenever you're facing two at the same time right because the thing is like a couple things with the combat right stamina you don't have enough i pumped so many points into stamina it was ridiculous and even then i felt like my guy was always tired i was always at a stamina and how many times have you said, Paul, don't add stamina. Don't make your game artificially difficult with a stamina meter. That takes some of the fun out of it. In this game, it definitely stood out that I'd never had enough stamina.

The enemies hit hard. If you, I mean, a trash mob can hit you two. The third time he hits you, you're dead. Healing in this game is another issue because that's part of combat. The only way you can heal is to make food. But the problem is, is that to make food, it takes ingredients. There's no save points in this game, where when you die, you just go back to the save point. Yes, you respawn, but everything you used in combat has been consumed at this point.

That's not a good system either, because now you create this weird artificial scarcity where I'm scared to use healing potions in a fight. So what I would do, and I don't know if this is what you guys did, but whenever I knew I had a hard fight, I would just throw myself against them. I would never heal until I learned the pattern. And then I would go, okay, I think I'm actually ready to take this fight on for real this time. I'd fight, I'd heal, I'd heal, I'd fight, and then I would go, okay, I think I'm actually ready to take this fight on for real this time. I'd fight, I'd heal, I'd heal, I'd fight, and then I'd die. And now I'm like, well,

I just wasted three mushroom soups. Great. And so there's just some aggravation built into the combat in this game, which I'm guessing is what kind of overtook you guys. For me, I didn't mind it because in my weird brain i like trying to figure out how to overcome those difficulties and those challenges but i get it in that sense you know where it's like don't forget your your helmet's broken now and your pants are broken and i'm okay with that i mean they could have done you have to do a corpse run or something and i mean it they were really slow to break yeah so it's like it's fine but it's also like the damage from you your your stuff takes you know your your

equipment takes damage just on damage you receive not from a full death not when you get wiped on a boss or anything like that so you can fall on the way there and then you you know you take a lot of damage to your equipment i don't you know i think you only take equipment damage if you die are you sure i'm pretty sure i'm i i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure that the only penalty for death is your gear gets like damaged okay i know your weapons take damage as you use them because everyone says roll into barrels don't hit them with your weapon because you'll save on costs. I don't know. I mean, my gear never really.

I mean, it was cheap to fix. If I was doing a boss, especially in the beginning, there's always a fast load point or like a fast travel point near the boss. And I mean, I get it, but like I didn't find the gear damage system to be overly like overbearing, I guess. No, but put a pin in the healing mechanics because i'm going to want to go into some more detail there i found that to be one of the more frustrating parts of the game for sure i think the combat would be so greatly improved if they boosted focus build by like five times and let me tinker with more abilities and be able to to just do more in combat like 99 of combat is just a and x on your controller it is so rare that you get to hit the

bumper and you get to do one of those focused abilities i should be able to do a focused ability every couple seconds honestly in my opinion it needs to focus a little more on the action of action RPG. But in any case, let's go ahead and take another break and then we'll come back and we'll highlight some things in regards to story and exploration. All right, so we have not talked about story at all up to this point. Just to be very honest, I found the story to be very hard to follow in this game, not necessarily because of how it's written, but because of the fact that there is no pausing in this game at all. You cannot pause in the open world. You cannot pause

cut scenes. One time I had to go to the bathroom so bad and I beat a boss and I was like, I don't just want to walk away. My character, I don't know, maybe there's like a bad and I beat a boss and I was like, I don't just want to walk away. My character, I don't know, maybe there's like a patrol and I'm going to die. Let me just run up. Certainly there's a new serum whisper, which is like your respawn points. Nope. I ran around a corner. It started a cut scene and I said, forget it. I ran to the bathroom. I ran back cut scenes over. There's new people standing around me. I have no idea what's going on. That's obviously a little bit more my fault than the game's, but the lack of pause I did find to be a little bit frustrating.

Can either of you guys feel like you can explain the story of this game? Oh. The church is going to save the island, dude. No, dude. The church is going to destroy the island. No, that's not what they said. No. See, you got to have faith faith that's why you didn't

have enough faith oh is that it so yeah i mean okay super simple you're a weird guy called a serum people don't like you but they do like you you're some kind of weird spiritual savior thing that only comes around when the plague emerges there's a you save everyone and they hate you for no reason yeah yeah that's normal right sure i mean no dude the story in this game doesn't really make any sense there's the you know pestilence yeah there's some plague that's coming through uh there's a mean church lady that says well i'll take care of it but you get the vibe that she's really evil or not or trying to take over the kingdom uh there's a couple guys in a city that talk to you and seem okay and then you know you're trying to break down some door that the church lady wants you to do but i feel like that's bad because

that's just gonna let everything in and that's it yeah right pretty pretty i think that's about right that's about right that sums it up yeah so to. Pretty, pretty. I think that's about right. That's about right. That sums it up. Yeah. To be honest, they kind of lifted the plot straight out of dragon age origins, where in dragon age, every so often you get the blight and then the dark spawn are the monsters that appear and the gray wardens have to come in and take care of it.

This is exactly the same, except instead of gray wardens, it's the serum. And instead of the blight, it's pestilence, but it's still kind exactly the same, except instead of Grey Wardens, it's the Serum, and instead of the Blight, it's Pestilence. But it's still kind of the same general idea. All right, we got to talk about my absolute favorite thing in this game, exploration. All right? Now, when you play action RPGs, exploration is usually not a heavy part of the game outside of maybe like Diablo being procedurally generated.

You got to like run around and maybe find a portal or something like that. They handle things very different with exploration and no rest for the wicked. They have made this game so incredibly vertical for an isometric view. It's rather impressive. Now, part of my complaint is that you can't always tell what you can scale or what you can climb or explore. And part of the fun is just trying to figure that stuff out. But in this game, you are climbing vines up walls. There are ladders everywhere in this game. And sometimes they're out of reach and you got to figure out

a way to get up on top and then you can kick the ladder down and now you have like a shortcut there are bridges to lower there are planks of wood to run on and then jump onto other surfaces and various jump puzzles i found the actual exploration stuff of this to be the best part of the game and they almost constantly reward you anytime you can go somewhere weird you're gonna find a chest maybe it's not the best loot in the world but you at least get something i found this to be the the truly like genre changing thing to me is found in the exploration dude a hundred percent one hundred percent Like you said, you do get rewarded every time and you'll be going. And, and once you really get a sense and a feel of how like vertical these worlds do get, you know, you, cause you'll see areas and you're like, how the heck am I supposed to get over there? And you go off and then you circle back around later on. And, and then you get down, you're like, oh, I'm back at that one area. Okay, cool. And then, like you said, you kick down a a ladder so you can you can get back there later more easily but there's so many spots where you're like huh i wonder and you hop up and you walk this wall and you go across this board and then you find a chest and so to me i

was that's one thing is those uh you know a lot of the action rpg like that or the um diablo you know it's just so kind of horizontal you you run through these areas, maybe you can get on another level and stuff. But this one had so much more depth, like even in the town, where you just have all of this different kind of districts throughout it. So that was by far my favorite part too. I just kind of got lost in exploring. And then like I said earlier, then I'd run into a guy I'm like, Oh, now I gotta fight to fight somebody. But definitely, it was beautiful. It was deep. It was dense. There was always stuff everywhere. So I love the exploration. Yeah, this is where the game really shines, in my opinion, too. I was reading a little bit because

it's a certain technology that they developed for this game in particular with how, when you get to the edge of a ledge, the camera kind of like will pan over. And for a top-down perspective game, there is a ridiculous amount of like 3D-ness to like the background or what might be under you. It really creates that sense of being vertical. I mean, you don't get that in other isometric type games. You know, I will say, I think Baldur's gate probably does it pretty well but the way that the camera will move itself around to give you that sense of scale and height and things like that is intentional and this game actually developed some tech to be able to do that on top of the fact that this is all a hand-painted world it is absolutely gorgeous it is fun to to explore. Like you said, you are

rewarded for seeking out the little nooks and crannies, or you can swim in this game. So you'd come to a shoreline, and I'd start swimming. And obviously- The stamina starts going down, but you can do it. But then you're like, oh, there's a little land over there. And I found little mini optional bosses that were hidden away in a corner of the map, and if you kill that boss, there's a treasure chest behind them, and guess what?

You should, in an action RPG, you get loot. What was the game that we just played where you never got loot? Oh, Dragon's Dogma, where it's like, dude, you open up all these treasure chests, and it's just freaking coins or something. Star Wars Jedi Survivor was really bad with that too.

Another one, exactly. And so, you know what? If you're going to give me a treasure chest in an RPG, give me some gear, man. Listen, 80% of it, vendor trash. I get it. But at least I got that like dopamine hit of like, oh, cool, I just found a piece of gear.

Especially if it was like rare or epic or something like that. Really well done aspect of the game. And the fact that you can climb and teeter totter on ledges and limbs and things like that, or shimmy around the backside of like a little castle turret that you didn't think you could in this kind of game. And then there's a little hidden ledge behind it with a treasure chest on it

or something like that was fantastic. So here's the only thing though though as good as the exploration is there are still some major issues i have with it first of all fall damage is more extreme than you would think there are times when i'm like i can clearly drop from here and then i'd lose like two-thirds of my health meter i'm like dang and because like your healing items don't refresh when you rest, like in a souls game. Now you're burning through your limited resources to reheal. Falling off ledges is way too easy in part because of what I consider to be maybe the biggest sin of this game.

You cannot move the camera. And so when you are running on the backside of a building, they will like make the wall disappear, except you see like a black base of where it is. And they do that so that way you can see your character. But there are so many times when that fixed camera angle makes it to where you can't see where you're supposed to go, or you think you can go straight left, but then your character character because you're always holding sprint in this game they'll jump off of this rooftop that you couldn't even see because of the fixed camera angle it felt to me like trying to go back and play old nintendo 64 games when you couldn't move the camera like

trying to play like ocarina of time oh yeah is like that now and it's so infuriating i don't understand why they don't let you move the camera i found that to be so infuriating here that's so weird man because i i didn't feel that at all like not once and i know you guys are you guys keep talking about the sprint dodge and roll off the ledges things the same button paul i remember because you were very vocal about this from the beginning and usually we kind of save what we think about it but i remember you you rolled off a ledge and you were so mad the fact that you rolled off that ledge by accident and you were posted in our server just being like this is the dumbest thing ever and then i was like oh no i never rolled off

a ledge once what like i i am sprinting yes i'm not everywhere but when i get to a ledge i i stop running i don't want to run off the ledge there are times you literally can't see your character behind a building like it's not often but there are times when you're literally moving and you cannot see where you are and that's weird like that shouldn't exist in gaming if you got super lucky and never fell off any ledges josh all the power to you not accidentally i like not not by running i mean there were definitely times where i'm like oh i wonder if i can drop down to that little ledge down there where there's a treasure chest or something. And then I kind of lift it and fell to my death. I mean, I definitely fell to my death a few times, but I was never like running around the world exploring or even in a fight and then just oopsed my way off the

side of a cliff to my own death kind of thing. Dude, I was yeeting off the side of every cliff. I heard both of you guys talking about that. And then in my mind, I'm just like, what are they doing? It's in the Steam reviews. It's on Reddit. A lot of people have this issue. I also suffered from the fact that I jumped off a ledge and landed in the water in the opening castle area. And there's really like no way back. And so my guy ended up just kind of getting stuck.

And then later they hot fixed it in the game. They didn't realize you could accidentally bypass that first castle. And I was stuck on the other side of that for such a long time. Eventually I just restarted a brand new game because I was only like an hour in. I was like, all right, well, I'm just going to start over entirely. All right, we got to move on. There's still so much that we could talk about i gotta poke fun at one thing here like early in the game a big part of the game is reaching this town of sacrament and the city it changes over time they let you complete side objectives you can you can buy and decorate your own house you can spend time doing all that if you want. My issue is that the city is built so poorly

that it's so hard to get from one area of sacrament to another. You get these goofy staircases, hard areas to approach, and then they let you meet Danos, who is this dude that will do projects around the city for you. And this was for me the breaking point. All right. I struggled with the combat. I'm still going to bring up healing in a minute here. And then I start talking to Thanos and I'm just going to read this verbatim because I took screenshots. I sent them to you guys because I was a little further ahead in the game than you. And I said that this was unforgivable. They give you projects like this. Danos will finish building a scaffolding and staircase which will connect the gallows above

the town square with the northern part of the city. Another one says Danos will repair the old elevator which once carried passengers from near the town square all the way up to the rookery. And another one says the lodging staircase inside the rookery will be repaired, allowing easy access to the marketplace. So they intentionally gave you a broken city and then give you side hustles where you're just off collecting wood and ore and all this garbage just to make the city decent enough to navigate.

Why are we doing this? This is so frustrating. I, this is... Defend it. Defend it, Josh. I am going to defend it because this is where I knew... It's busy work. This is where I knew we lost Paul.

Paul was playing. He starts talking about how this is intentionally bad design. And, you know, why would you make this frustrating just to make it less frustrating and stuff like that? And then I got there and I was like, oh no. And I mean, you're exploring the city for the first time. It's a decent sized city. You're wandering around, you're talking to everybody.

I mean, you're exploring, that's what you're doing. And you have to find the rookery to talk to the next guy that's in part of the quest or whatever. And it's a decent hike. But you're finding little corners of the city and vendors in different areas. Oh, that's a place I can buy a house because it's got a little sign out in front of it and stuff like that. And then it's like you talk to Thanos and he's got this list of town improvements that he can do. But I mean, the town's been attacked.

It's been under siege. The castle hasn't been helping them. improvements that he can do but i mean the town's been attacked it's been under siege the the castle hasn't been helping them i mean it kind of makes sense from a story perspective that it's not in the best of shape but like i already had this stuff to repair the staircase in inside the rookery so i'm like oh okay well just give them that stuff it wasn't like hard materials to come across but then they're on durations you have to wait wait time-wise. But he's got to build it, man. It's like, you don't just snap your fingers and the city's perfect again. And then you just go play the game. So I will say this. The one thing I did instantly was, what's the most important part of the city? The marketplace, right?

So I built the staircase that connected the rookery to the marketplace. And I don't know. I didn't see any problem with this whatsoever. And I know it really aggravated Paul, but I don't really know why. But it's inflating fake play time to go collect mats. But every game does that. But they also, not every game, they also give you daily and weekly quests. Like they're trying to give you MMO busy work in this single player game. I found that to be infuriating.

They're literally giving you these stupid random daily quests of, okay, go back to this part of the map. You can't even collect multiple ones and like do a bunch at once. You grab one, you got to go all the way back to this area of the map which is a hassle take care of something and then go back i i found all everything outside of the main campaign to be so abysmally made that it made zero sense the weekly quests and stuff i will admit are kind of lame i did a few of them it's's like, go kill five rats. I mean, hysterically, it's literally go kill five rats. They're taking over. And I spent 45 minutes trying to do the crab one, and I couldn't find the last crab. And I was like, well, I just wasted 45 minutes because

I don't even think this last crab is alive anywhere. And then I went to go hand the quest in or select a different quest. And if you accidentally hit A, it's abandoned quest. And there's no like, are you sure you want to abandon this quest? So I just freaking abandoned the quest even after I had done like 45 minutes of this thing. And I was like, okay, this is a little broken.

I don't understand the point of this either, but it's optional. This is like, that's for people that just want to play more of the game at that point like it's i mean it's not have to run in more circles around this you don't have to it's optional content at that point i mean how many games have optional content that we never touch because it's like dude i just wanted to play the main campaign a few side quests and call it done you know i don't

need all this little optional side stuff to go did you find all the core ox seeds in breath of the wild no of course okay but that's the same premise that's different no no no no no sacrament is your main hub that you're constantly running around and if you don't go do those side missions you're wasting time running these long convoluted paths i think oh i was talking about the weekly quest like the optional quest like where you can go fulfill bounties and stuff like that. If we're talking about... That's purely optional. The build projects really grinded my gears. You only have

to build the one staircase, man. That's it. And it's like two screens to run up to the rookery at that point. Everybody knows the legendary warrior that's there to kill the plague and save the island wants to go chop down a tree and mine ore. That's the most important thing for sure. Dude, that's cath to kill the plague and save the island wants to go chop down a tree and mine ore you know that's that's the most important thing for sure dude that's cathartic man all right at this point here uh let's just open things up is there anything else worth

mentioning that we have not yet talked about go ahead and rag on the healing paul because i'm with you okay the healing i'm with you on this one dude the healing in this game is so counterproductive to what the game is supposed to be. If you play a Souls-like, what's the one thing you're guaranteed to do a thousand times? Die. Die, right? That is the whole point.

It's challenging combat. You're going to die. You have to learn the fights, right? That's the whole appeal of a Souls-like game. When you play Elden Ring or one of the Souls games, you have your healing flasks, right? You have a certain max. Maybe you beat certain bosses or get certain gear that give you more flasks. And then you go, you rest at a campfire. It refreshes all your heals. You can go fight. You can heal as much as you want until you run out of heals. And then if you die, you respawn, you have all your heals back. In this game,

there are multiple problems with healing. Josh, you mentioned you have to cook food in order to heal. I'm totally cool with that. I love cooking in games. I'm going to go collect a whole bunch of crab meat and apples and all these things. And they're going to let me cook different mushrooms. They're going to let me cook different foods. That's fine. The problem is you can only hot key one kind of food to your D-pad. Now for me, I'm looking at my inventory. Okay. I've cooked eight different dishes, but I have the most of my mushroom soup or whatever. So let me go ahead and key that. I've only got three of them, but I've also got like two of seven other kinds of food. The problem is I'm

in the middle of a boss fight. I heal. I'm doing pretty good. I heal. I'm doing pretty good. I heal. Well, now that I ran out of that type of healing food, it put my plain apples into the quick slot and i die on like it's the first main boss that you fight i had him down literally to a millimeter like on my third attempt and the the healing screwed me over now this should be where you can either pause and re-equip a different kind of food or just let me heal from inventory or just let me hold the button and bring up like a radius wheel where i can select which food you can actually hold the button and it pops up a straight bar of all the food that you have in your inventory and then you can you can tab out that's the key yeah that's the key right there it's too hard you can

actually say hey pull up my whole bar of food that i have in my inventory over over over and then now you're dead because the game does not pause it doesn't slow down like what they really should have done on this one is done the like the slow motion health well some games do it where you know hey we don't want to pause because that's kind of weird in the middle of a boss fight but it will slow down time like 80%. Like Final Fantasy. Exactly. Like that would have been the perfect mechanism to do that.

I'm with you, Paul. I mean, eating good food to heal and then all of a sudden having an apple be the one thing that you can utilize that heals you for like five hit points in a boss fight was really dumb. I don't understand the thinking behind the, and this is exactly why you hit the nail on the head. Elden Ring just replenishes your flasks whenever you rest, right? Like imagine an Elden Ring,

if you had 10 flasks and you use three of them and you die to the boss and now you respond and you still only have your three flasks, right? And you have the only way to replenish those is to go and craft more of them and you die to the boss and now you respond and you still only have your three flasks right and you have the only way to replenish those is to go and craft more of them at that point right while running around fighting stuff which requires you to heal exactly it's just because there's also no resting you find the fire pits

there is no option to just heal by resting at the fire so it's like the game is so punitive to force you to constantly eat all your food. But the whole point of a Souls game is to die a lot while learning the fight. And in the very beginning, when I was fighting that first boss, I figured, okay, it's going to be a tough fight. I've died a couple times in this game, but I'll get through it. No problem. Well, after like four attempts, I was just completely out of food.

And I'm like, so what do I do now? Yeah, that's how I just have to run around. Yeah. And wait for food to respawn on the ground. So then I can cook like to me that didn't make any sense. It doesn't make sense to make a game challenging, but then make it so that the healing is so punitive that you're off doing busy work to get your mats while you're doing busy work for the build projects, while you're doing busy work for the weekly quests. You add all this together. I just found it to be so frustrating. And I think one of the reasons why it made me so mad is that there's

a lot of good bones to this game but they just made some of the weirdest choices and the healing to me is number one the healing makes zero sense for a souls like game yeah there's just no save points that's the problem is like you yes you can save the game but there's none of that like let me reset you know i mean i was just playing remnant earlier today because they have the dlc and it's like you know i fought this boss 15 freaking times but you know what when you die and you respond you're right there back at your crystal and you don't you don't lose anything because you failed like you gain a little bit because it's like oh okay i gotta watch out for that attack now you know or the second phase like all right better pay attention to that one

and this game is not a cakewalk so to you permanently, even if it's just a few ingredients, is weird to me. I'm with you on the healing portion where it just didn't make sense. Running out of food completely, which I could very well see. I never ran out of food, but it's like I could see that happening to where you're like, exactly. Like, now what do I do? I'm just going to quit this stupid game because i'm stuck on this hard boss i have no way to heal during this boss fight i don't want to go just run around the world and farm freaking mushrooms and apples for 30 minutes just so i can attempt to fight again

which i'm gonna die on and burn up all the food that i just collected like that's just a that's just a frustration. It doesn't add to the world. It doesn't add to the lore. It doesn't add to the feeling of the game itself. No, it's just one of those things. It just adds to the frustration, you know? Because then, like you said, you go out,

and like we said earlier, those trash mobs are still tough. So you're going out. You already have no food. You're already kind of dinged up, damaged. You're just trying to get stuff so that you can go back and try this dumb boss again, which if you use your food too much or you make a misstep, then you could die. Then you're out that food that you just had to go farm.

It just puts so many kind of blockades into the enjoyment of the boss fight to where I struggled with it too. It was just aggravating. I just finally learned, okay, there's a boss. I'm not going to heal. I'm just going to fight. I'm going to die 15 times. But then once I would get the boss down,

maybe to the halfway point, maybe I'll start to heal. But a lot of times the bosses then go into a new phase then you have to learn the new moves anyway they already copied so much from souls just copy the flasks that like i just that's what already works i get not wanting to copy the flask part but figure out a way you know something figure out a way to not make it punitive impermanent when you're a resp. Yeah. You know, just make that a little save point. Just remember how much food I had in my inventory and just reload me to

that spot. And even with, and even with the auto where, you know, you run out of your, your soup, you know, go to the next highest food concoction that you have,

not just whatever, just the next highest one. That'd be so simple to do. Having good food in my inventory and having the game auto assign apples yeah i got so mad that you can't pause and switch you can't get out of it you can you can try to do it real quick but you're gonna get hit and then anything you would have uh had you know eaten to heal you just lost because you just got bashed when you were trying to switch yeah and this apple is Apple is going to heal me 10 HP over 10 seconds.

I'm going to, I'm going to die. And it's on a cool down. It's on a cool down. That's the other thing. It's like, once you eat some food, they have another bite.

Yeah, exactly. Roll, roll, roll. Oh, I'm out of stamina now. Oh,

wait. Oh, oh, dead. Yeah. So yeah, other than the healing, anything else good or bad that we haven't yet covered?

Um, the atmosphere in this game is fantastic, dude. Honestly, the than the healing, anything else good or bad that we haven't yet covered? The atmosphere in this game is fantastic, dude. Honestly, the rains, they've got weather, they've got day and night. I mean, how gorgeous this game is, is a little bit of an understatement. And there are times where I was just playing it and the rain is bouncing off my character. There's a sunrise, so the ground starts getting a little foggy and hazy and the lighting is streaming through. And I was just like, dude, kudos to the developers and the artists on this game because the art style and how gorgeous this game is is second to none, like gameplay and frustrations and early access issues and things like that aside they have crafted a beautiful world man and i like the weirdness

of some of the armors like you said ryan the giant mushroom hat i had another one where i look like some weird like vendor almost i had this giant cornucopia backpack on. And I mean, you look at this and you're like, this is weird, but I'm kind of here for it. Weird. You know, like it's not like any other game, man. So I have to give them credit there. I, you know, and I think we all agreed exploration was one of the best parts of the game. It was very rewarding to see just all the different biomes and the, the, like I said, the weather, the time of day i mean

it's just gorgeous dude love it yeah totally agree yeah not much more to say from me uh josh pretty much covered everything that i would have said like just it's it's beautiful you're running through and you see kind of a little uh wisp of sand running you know across the ground and just weird little effects that add so much depth to the world are parts that I just love, which did help with all the other frustration and aggravation we had with the combat and things like that.

So definitely made it somewhat playable for what I got into with the game. Yeah. All right. Well, we got to go to our leaderboard. So listeners out there who aren't aware, you go to video gamers pod.com we have a tab for our leaderboards and this is where anytime we do a deep dive we rate the game against everything else we've done a deep dive on for example you know we got like on josh's list for example up at the top we got stuff like god

of war red dead redemption 2 rocket league down at the top, we got stuff like God of War, Red Dead Redemption to Rocket League down toward the middle. We got some stuff like Weird West, Broforce and Ark, and then down near the bottom, some stuff like Battlefield 2042, Forspoken and Elite Dangerous. So each of us get to individually place this game. I just got a shiver when you mentioned those three games in a row.

My body had some weird reaction. Josh is going to have nightmares now thinking about them. So Josh, I think since you're the highest on this game, I'm very curious to hear from you. Where are you going to put no rest for the wicked? I really like this game.

Is it a masterpiece? No. Does it have some frustrations? Yes. Is it an early access? Yes. I had a lot of fun playing it. I can see ways that they could really skyrocket this game forward, man. Fix some of the frustrations, fix the gear, allow me to respec. I mean, you created these weapons, allow me to use them. You know, I mean, like you, you, you even said, Paul, the game has some really good bones to it. I think I was able to overlook some of the frustrating parts of the game because I just, I'm more of that. Like I want to tackle

this challenge, even if the challenge is artificially frustrating type mentality. So I really enjoyed my time with this. I don't think this is like a game of the year by any means, but depending on where they go with the development, and they have been very, very active with fixing issues that people said, like Paul, with you getting stuck, they fixed that like day one, you know, the key bindings thing. They were like, listen, you know, that's our bad. We're working on it. That kind of thing. So it seems like they're really pouring their heart and souls into this. For me right now, I'm putting it at 37. I love the beauty of this world.

Once I got used to the combat, and I'm going to tell anybody out there that is used to Dark Souls combat and games like that, you are going to get frustrated in the beginning. You are going to be like, yo, I don't like this combat. But once you start to learn the pacing and kind of figure it out, it became a lot more fun for me at that point. I love the RPG elements. I like the progression elements, even building staircases and elevators in town, even chopping a couple of trees. I did actually go and farm for some elements and stuff like that because I wanted to just progress the town. I could see this game being like a true, like 60 to 80 hour epic RPG. If they, I don't know what their plans are for

like the, like the amount of content, but I mean, I got 20 hours in chapter one. So let's just say that they have three chapters. I could see like an end game to this, you know? And so as it stands right now, there are definitely some dumb decisions. If they weren't for that, I'd actually rank it higher, you know? So it just, it hit a lot of the things that I liked. And I think I was a little bit more willing

to overlook some of the frustration than you guys. So for me, I'll put it at 37, man. It landed well for me. Above the Forgotten City and Splitgate. I know, which is, that part was tough for me. I love both those games. I do too, man. But part of this is, and I'll be completely honest,

is that I'm hopeful for where they're going to go with this game. I don't know that we'll ever come back and play it again when it's fully released, but I can see where they're going to go with this game. You know, I don't know that we'll ever come back and play it again when it's fully released, but I can see where they're going and they're, they're good developers, man. So I can see them fixing some of this stuff. And so I think I'm a little bit more like optimistic in the long run as

well. So you're, you're, you're reminding me of Renee Zellweger in Jerry Maguire when she says, I love him, not for the man he is, but the man he could be. Yeah. And I mean, You're reminding me of Renee Zellweger in Jerry Maguire when she says, I love him not for the man he is, but the man he could be. Yeah, and I mean, I'm trying to temper that some. I'm trying to rate the game kind of how it is right now, but that's why I say I think it'd be higher if this was like a complete game and they fix some of these issues too.

So, Josh, you've got a total of 111 deep dive games. So you've got it up here, like in your top third. It's a good RPG with good combat. Beautiful. Lots of gear and vendors. You can upgrade the vendors and then they get all kinds of new gear. You know, I didn't even get to play around with building my own house and decorating it and stuff like that. But I mean, it's got progression.

It's got RPG. It's got combat. It's got a beautiful world. You know, the story. OK, whatever. But, whatever. But the characters are at least memorable. It's got fun boss fights. I mean, it's got a lot going for it, man. I guess it's got some frustrating parts that help bring it down a little bit, but it's got a lot going on. He's on the payroll. He's on the take. Yeah. Ryan, bring some sense to this where are you putting it on your leaderboard which is a lot shorter because you joined us a year ago

you've got 38 games currently where are you putting no rest for the wicked okay so i think we're gonna be a lot more in line paul with this um there is some good stuff there the exploration the world it's absolutely breathtaking. I think they put a lot of their heart and soul into this. I think they just made some bad choices, made some bad decisions on how to scale the difficulty and the effects in the game to try to make it unique. Sometimes, if it's not broke don't fix it some some mechanics

in some ways games uh play are there for a reason because as consumers it's enjoyable you know you don't have that frustration so um having said that i am also gonna be in the 30s but my 30s is a little bit different don't put it below. Don't put it below humanity. Don't put it below humanity. There's no way. There's no way, Ryan. Okay. I was actually laughing at that looking at it. I'm like, I should do it just because.

But it's not going to go below humanity. But it's going to be close. It's going to be at a 33. I'm going to bump down. 33 out of 39. Yeah. So I'm going to bump down Cold War. Pretty low. Really? Yeah. 33 out of 39. Yeah. So I'm going to bump down Cold War. Pretty low. Really?

Yeah. It just wasn't. I mean, there's parts that I loved. It's not your kind of game either necessarily. Yeah. I get that. Yeah. It was not my kind of game.

And then there was just a lot of stuff that was frustrating for no reason. Like, I love spicy food. I love it. I love things that are hot. I don't like things that are hot without flavor. Like, there's no point in just making something scalding hot off the charts if it doesn't have flavor to it. I don't like things that are hot without flavor. Like there's no point in just make something scolding hot off the chart. So if it doesn't have flavor to, I don't mind hot,

but make it have flavor. And I just felt like this was lacking a lot that would make me enjoy it. Yeah, I totally see what you're saying. Yeah. For me, this one's going pretty low guys. For me,

there's no story to hold on to the combat is cool in theory it's like uh uh great taste or what's the bad taste but great execution there's like a whole subreddit for that to me that was this game is it's like cool ideas really bad execution all around. The combat I found to be completely joyless. If you took out all the combat in this game and just made it exploration-based, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more. Most of this game I spent rolling through barrels and waiting on enemies. That to me was like 50% of my time in this game. I wish I could get all of it back. I played so much less than you did, Josh, and I'm not even ashamed to say it. Usually when we do deep dives, my goal is a minimum of 20 hours. This one, I played for like

three days and I said, I've seen enough. I'm done. I'm out. I can talk about it. I hate this game. When I'm looking at my leaderboard, my initial gutshot reaction was I'm going to put it somewhere around 70. And then I was like, hold on a second. Why would I put it around 70? Like there are far more redeeming things I can say about Deathloop or about Edge of Nowhere or the cave. And I'm like, no, it's going lower than that. And then I'm like, Atomic Heart? Atomic Heart has some of the coolest boss fights I've ever seen. High on Life, look, I get it. Justin Roiland's canceled.

I'd rather play High on Life. At least that game had comedy and humor. It's going below Outer Wilds. It's going below The Quarry. At least The Quarry had somewhat of an interesting story. You're putting it below the quarry hundred percent thousand percent i played all of i played all of the quarry that was i don't know like a 25 hour game or something i played all of it uh probably wasn't that long actually probably

a little less i'm putting it at 85 it is going below tiny tina'slands, which had fun combat, but it was just not as good as borderlands and reused. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll put it above steel rising, steel rising. And this game, I had very similar experiences where I felt like I've played better versions of this game.

I've seen better story. I've had better combat. This is kind of like a poor version of it, but I'll put no rest for the wicked above steel rising because of the exploration to me that just wasn't enough to beat out the lack of fun in the combat for me wow so it'll be number 85 out of 107 josh looks so disappointed right now. It's just crazy to me because... It was not fun. I did not find it fun for me at all.

All I can picture in my head is Paul just seeing barrels, rolling through these barrels, and just being like, stupid barrels, man. Like he's just got this vendetta against barrels. You've got an enemy on your tail. Use the barrel roll. Enemy barrel roll.

Analyze. Do a barrel roll analyze do a barrel roll do a barrel roll do a barrel roll do a barrel roll do a barrel roll so he just says all this time just smashing barrels instead of like running around this beautiful world and like visiting the vendors and finding new gear and better armor vendors this is the best the game has part of an rpg man like what role-playing game do you not like get to a new town you're like oh sweet let me see what new weapons i can get you know so yeah we all had different different thoughts i will say the 17 i spent i i'd say this game's probably worth about 15 i think i think i paid about the right price

josh you're probably gonna say it's worth a lot more ryan do you feel like it's worth about 15 to 17 or or would you say less no i think i think you're spot on with that price. Whatever you paid or we thought about. Wait, isn't it a $40 game? No, no, for our auction. Sorry, for our auction. I was like, wait a minute. How'd you guys get such a cheap deal on this? Why didn't you tell me? I'm sorry. No, no, no. For

our most anticipated games of the year, out of my $200 budget, 17 went to No Rest for the Wicked. That's a fair price, dude. That's a fair. I want to just say the game is still early access. And when they say that, they're saying like, we have a long way to go on this game. You know, this isn't like, hey, this is the full game

because I played it to the end. The story cuts off like before it even really gets going, which is why I say I think it's going to be like a 50-hour game when all is said and done. So, you know, I'm hopeful in that regard. Like I said, they are really good developers as well. I think that's worthwhile. I will say, in all fairness, we all were super hyped for this game.

Oh, yeah. It's not as good as I was thinking it was going to be or like hoping it was going to be, but it was still a very enjoyable game for me. This and Pacific Drive are currently neck and neck for most disappointing of the year for me. Dude, I was so excited for Pacific Drive. I don't know that I'm disappointed in this game because I still had a lot of fun, but I think we all had hopes that we were talking like game of the year type thing. You know? And it's not there.

It's not there. Maybe it will be in like two more years, maybe. If they overhaul the whole game. I mean, like I said, for me, the $40 I spent was well worth the 20 hours, in my opinion. That's why I'm not a fan of the early access. I just want a full game. Give me the full game when it's done.

And that could be, our take could be completely different if it was a complete game and they fix some of the headaches and the healing and the frustrations that obviously really resonated with you guys. I think this could be completely different at that point. Yeah, possibly. All right. So, you know, somewhat different opinions.

I would say mixed reviews from the Video Gamers podcast is probably fair. That basically wraps everything up here for this deep dive. I will not be revisiting it at the 1.0 release. I can tell you that now. We would like to ask our listeners, you know, please make sure to check out Patreon support options. That's at MultiplayerSquad.com. That gets you all the bonus episodes perks on discord all kinds of

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gaming lurkers come and say hi see ya all right see everybody