Good game. I practiced/repeated all of the fights and ended up with only 20 hours played. Probably not the best value at full price.

ain't not no bad things to be said 'bout this game
i only had to deliberately work for one of the achievements out of them all. for the rest i was just enjoying the content

FPS is much worse than the first one even on low settings. Also no online multiplayer

The game is not worth $11 in its current state, but I think it is well made enough that it deserves a positive review. The game has very little replayability at the moment, but if it were cheaper I probably would have not refunded it and finished the content.

Bad Stuff:
- The passing of time slows down when the player lands a hit on an enemy. It's disruptive and overly hand-holdy.
- The player can instantly halt the game by pausing. To make matters worse, the pause menu is transparent, so enemies can still be observed in their suspended states. The potential for "pause meta" or other exploit metas is a sign of sloppy game design in my opinion.
- There's really no variable attack timing/speed or anything to that effect. I think some enemy types vary their attack animations but not their timing, so defending against a particular enemy type is just a matter of knowing its attack.
- Both parry cooldown and parry window, but especially parry window, seem too forgiving/lenient.
- The game doesn't tell you how much actual damage you'll do with a weapon accounting for modifiers/multipliers/multiple damage types, etc.; this lack of transparency makes comparing weapons frustrating and can lead to confusion about the mechanics behind various boons, status effects, weapon bonuses, and passives.
- The boon selection menu needs to MOVE ALONG for real. It keeps the player waiting ages. Waiting for the animation of the end-of-room upgrade crystals is annoying too.
- Upgrading a weapon is RIDICULOUSLY expensive and doesn't feel rewarding since it will probably be replaced within a few rooms or in the next zone. And that's another thing: It's hard to just keep one weapon type since far better weapons (often of a different type) will commonly drop as you progress through a run, so you can accrue a lot of bonus damage for a particular weapon type only for it to end up being a waste.
- Having to hold the use key for a fraction of a second to pick up treasure is the most annoying thing in the world and serves no discernible purpose. I also think it takes a bit too long to salvage weapons.
- In my opinion, I don't like not being able to parry at all if you don't have enough stamina for it; it feels bad.
- Scouting for treasure does feel a bit tedious. I know it glows, but it's still easy to miss if you don't spend time looking.

Good Stuff:
- There's like a pig or sheep or something and a chicken, and they have their names over their heads and it's great.
- The game is somewhat well optimized for high-ish FPS and doesn't get my CPU too hot.
- I think enemy damage is decently balanced. The enemies in the first zone are kind of weak, but it's okay.
- It has a good atmosphere and nice changes of scenery.
- Enemies dodge when you attack from afar and probably don't have the worst pathing ever so I guess their AI isn't completely one-dimensional.
- I wouldn't call it boring; I think for the time I played it it was fun.

Suggestions:
- Something like a perfect parry mechanic that drains less stamina would be nice, especially in sustained/prolonged fights.
- I would like it to be easier to make choices to deliberately build for a specific playstyle and also easier to keep a certain weapon or weapon type. I think the same thing goes for damage types associated with individual weapons.
- The combat system should be more stimulating and enemy types should be more varied. For example, casters are all pretty much the same, so different types of casters should do different stuff or at least have unique animations. Also, enemies of a specific type should perhaps vary their attack timing/speed. There may be some instances where this already occurs, but, if so, it's not nearly prominent enough. I want to have to spend some actual time becoming familiar with enemies and the mechanics of combat and improve by building muscle memory and acquiring game knowledge, and there really isn't too much of any of that going on currently.
- I think it's possible to get through the whole game without paying much attention to gear/upgrades. This is due in part to the way the scaling of weapon drops across zones works: Everything that drops in a zone is kind of just a perfectly adequate weapon for that zone. I think it would be good if you had to actually upgrade and refine a weapon and build a strong build in order to progress through some of the more difficult zones, and this ties back to some earlier points too.

This game is UGLY. Although the art and animations of Deviator can't hold a torch to those of Hollow Knight, that's not what I mean by "ugly." I mean playing this game on 360 hz at 360 FPS looks and feels BAD. It's like playing at 60 fps. In fact, I think the game does actually update itself roughly or exactly 60 times per second regardless of one's frame rate. And when I set my refresh rate to 60, that somehow made things even worse: with v-sync on, the game was uglier and choppier than it had been on 360 hz; with v-sync off, it was still ugly and choppy but then came with some nice screen tearing to boot.

I know these points won't be a dealbreaker for most people, but for a game that's trying to copy Hollow Knight, it falls abysmally short. I booted up Hollow Knight just to compare, and the difference is STRIKING. Hollow Knight's frame cap (when that option is enabled) is conveniently set to 400, whereas in Deviator you get to choose between a cap of 120 FPS and no cap (or set your own cap in Nvidia control panel, not that it makes any worthwhile difference for Deviator). Furthermore, Hollow Knight actually runs at whatever FPS you're getting unlike Deviator, which feels like it's running at 60 or fewer FPS no matter what. Hollow Knight also performs significantly better overall in terms of raw FPS and, for some reason unbeknownst to me, has no visible screen tearing even when I set my refresh rate to 60 hz and disable v-sync in-game

For me personally, Deviator looks blurry and disgusting and makes my eyes bleed, and I have to conclude these are the result of some inherent flaws within the game itself. It's 2024; I don't want to play games at 60 FPS; that stopped being cool about 15 years ago. If the devs can't handle something like this, the game isn't ready at the time of my writing this and probably never will be, IMO. I'll just wait for Silksong; this game is a poor imitation of the real thing.

The combat in this game was interesting and engaging, albeit a little janky, but I enjoyed it. Then, on April 26th, they did this:

"You are now immune to getting stunned by a kick if you get kicked at the beginning of your block. Stun immunity ends when parry window ends."

In short, this changed the combat meta from a fun rock-paper-scissors mixup into.... rock. Now every fight is just trading heavy attacks and hoping you get luckier with yours than the other guy.

I remember having lots of fun in the arena game mode up until precisely 4 p.m. PST on April 26th, when it booted me from the game for an update. After that, the game was never fun again and remains unfun to this day.

harry u r a wizerd