What is "Rotwood"?

[HondorDrache]

I decided to duplicate my review of the game from Steam to the forum, this review reflects the advantages and disadvantages that rotwood has at the moment

 

What is "Rotwood"? I've played 80 hours of the game's demo version and 78 hours of the early access version and still can't answer this question.

At the beginning of the game, you need to press the buttons correctly and build your character correctly during the run. There are perks that synergize/antagonize with each other. Each weapon has several combinations that you will use depending on the situation, and each weapon has two unique variations and several common ones. Enemies have different attack patterns: one dodges your attack and counterattacks, another tries to blow you onto spikes with gusts of wind, a beetle that applies shields to allies, a frog that steals the player's currency and grows into a stronger enemy by eating it, and so on. Armor and weapons have different weights, which affects your evasion. Each piece of armor has its unique bonus. Armor in "Rotwood" can be compared to the amulets in "Hollow Knight". As there, you don't have any class division like in RPGs. Initially, you have a "naked" character without any features, but with the help of armor and weapons in "Rotwood" (amulets in "Hollow Knight"), you can make your character a heavy warrior with a shotgun or a rogue with a very long spear and dash. Just as in "Hollow Knight", you can become some kind of summoning mage instead of using regular attacks with nail.

It's very cool to try different equipment builds that can play differently due to the random drop of perks during the run.

This all makes the fights in "Rotwood" challenging and very interesting... until you completely nullify everything said above with metaprogression. Upgrading equipment makes build planning useless because the weapon will deal huge damage from the very beginning of the run. Such perks as "deals damage to all enemies in the room on the first heavy attack" become absolutely useless.

It doesn't matter what the enemy does if they don't even have time to attack because after metaprogression you become a furry one-punch man. Even if the enemy manages to attack you, they will deal you +- 50 damage out of your 900-1300 health. Having fully upgraded equipment, I passed all locations on the highest difficulty level on the first try, without taking a single perk for all runs. I didn't experience any difficulty in passing and didn't even try to dodge enemy attacks. I tried this with different sets of armor, and the result was the same.

The metaprogression itself is made as poorly as possible. During the run, you are forced to choose between resources for metaprogression or improvements for the current run. To upgrade equipment from the first zone to the level of the last, you need to grind ingots from all locations a lot. While equipment from the last zone requires only one upgrade for ingots from the same location.

The health and damage of enemies vary greatly from the first to the last location, which is why equipment from the last location without upgrades will turn the passage of the first location into a clicker, and with the initial equipment, you have to guess how much you need to upgrade it so that the last location does not become a clicker, but also does not become too difficult. Why should I adjust the difficulty of the game instead of the developers?

In terms of co-op, playing four-player is constant fireworks on the screen, which makes it unclear what is happening, and the strong sides of the game become worse when playing four-player. The game will be a casual walk from the very beginning, and there will also be a mess on the screen from the effects. And it's not possible to play properly with the ball. It's best to play solo or duo.

Will the developers solve the problem with metaprogression? I don't know, because on top of what we already have, there will be another layer of meta in the form of cooking and tonics for potions.
Recently, the developers released a beta update with new perks with the words: "The starting pool of Powers is a little thin right now which can result in a lot of runs feeling the same, especially before you've started to discover new Powers from the Spring Ports."
No, add even a hundred new perks, while metaprogression nullifies build planning, the game will still feel monotonous.
In the end, to play properly, you either have to constantly start a new save file or sit with a calculator and hope that the game doesn't fall apart after upgrading equipment...

At the beginning of the passage, "Rotwood" in terms of its complexity is similar to "Curse of the Dead Gods" or "Dead Cells" (in its early versions), but because of metaprogression, the game very quickly turns into a casual clicker like "Hades". And I don't understand what Klei wants to make of "Rotwood". A one-time cooperative attraction that you will pass and forget, or a roguelike with many builds for hundreds of hours?

Oh yes, you can build decorations in the hub location. 

Rotwood is Animal Crossing 2.