I wish more Early Access titles would manage to reiterate and expand upon their content and mechanics as much as Necesse did. The graphics overhaul is the cherry on top for me. :D

Happy 1.0!

Played D4 for over 1.500 hours and never touched it again after seeing the Endgame Reveal shortly before the Early Access Release. And it didn't disappoint! The infinite Atlas still needs a proper justification beyond looking neat and everyone wants a tower rework, however:
There is nothing I have ever done in any ARPG that compares the absolute state of complete insanity that set in when I took inspiration from someone elses build and started optimizing for attack speed instead. At the end my Ice Strike Invoker was zooming across the screen with 20+ aps and I had to stare at the overlay to be able to navigate through maps. The movement pattern is seared into my brain forever. ;D I'm looking forward to having more characters like that to think back to. :)

The monetization is something to point out, specifically the supporter packs. Because instead of buying 90 bucks worth of premium currency to buy tabs or whatever, you can buy the 90 (or 60, or 30) buck supporter pack and get the same amount of currency with whatever happens to be in said pack on top. For someone who intends to spend some money each league anyways, this is a neat deal imho.

In the last 30 years I've played way too many games and spent more time gaming than any sane person should, lol.
No matter which title really stood out to me in any category, it would always come with more or less severe baggage in other departments.
Like Cyberpunk completely failing with the believable, living world promise. Or Horizon Zero Dawn absolutely drawing me in with its story and lead character, but the gameplay feeling more of a means to an end than anything else - very much like The Witcher 3. Or Final Fantasy XV - despite its horrible story I can remember 0 of and combat that just didn't know what it really wanted to be and a befuddling game structure, this whole road-trip with the bros theme just really did something for me.

What I did not expect by any stretch of the imagination is someone taking a good, hard look at Final Fantasy VII & X and saying "Lets do that with some influence from modern games!" and knock it out of the park this hard.

It's like absolutely everything just clicks for me in this game. The atmosphere when exploring the beautifully designed locations with no minimap - because the design isn't so off I'd need one to begin with. The extensive soundtrack (154 tracks @8hrs on yt music) of a quality that is, for me, equivalent to "that one song" from any particular game soundtrack seared into my brain. That in conjunction with the audio design and the consistently awesome locations with lots of optional or side-paths made exploration feel great from start to finish.

I could go on and write equally gushing paragraphs about the characters and world building, the dialogue and resulting voiceover, the plot and backstory itself, the visuals and cutscenes or the character progression, combat and loot. In a rare alignment of the stars, even the UI does not drive me insane! I would however, highly recommend playing with a controller so you can have those smooth rp walks and camera pans. ;)

And while I could certainly find games that manage to be just as incredible if not a touch better in any of those categories (except for the music, because omfg!) - none ever managed to do so in absolutely all of them at the same time, while so perfectly aligning with what I'm looking for.

As such my conclusion is:

Thank you for making the very best video game I ever had the pleasure of playing, Sandfall Interactive. :3

With no Soulslike experience besides one Elden Ring playthrough as overpowered mage, this is certainly a change of pace. Doubly so with the controller I don't use particularly often. And yet, I just liked how melee combat felt from the very first moment on. I never felt unable to comprehend why I just got my ass kicked by something and in general, I certainly felt overwhelmed a lot but never like things became unfair. The satisfaction from chaining combos and perfect dodges is also off the charts for some reason, every boss I've beaten so far was a fist-pumping victory, no matter if it's the first or twenty-first try.

The art direction I saw in the trailer is what drew me in and thankfully I find the gameplay to be just as enjoyable.

Greatly enjoyed watching someone play it so I figured I'd pick it up myself to see everything. Well worth it! I really enjoyed the character interactions & their dialogue as well as the overall story flow. Looking forward to more!

Day 1 Server connection problems, which was to be expected.

As far as performance is concerned, the complaints are wildly overblown imho. Playing on a R7 5800X3D & 3090 @ 4K, everything set to High except textures to Epic with DLSS set to Quality I'm getting 70ish fps. With the upper limit set to 60 it never dips below that and since this isn't exactly an ultra fast arena shooter, that's perfectly fine.
The initial stutters are indeed annoying, but that only happens once during shader compilation - which in all fairness should just happen beforehand.
I'm enjoying the Global Illumination and dense foliage without the usual horrendous LoD issues way too much to be complaining about not hitting triple digit fps with an almost 4 year old GPU in UE5.

/shrug

I bought this as part of a custom bundle and paid 1.66€ for it - boy did I get my moneys worth.. The one thing that really stood out to me is that the game constantly manages to make me feel like I just hit a massive wall in my progression, only to suddenly find myself being able to casually walk right past it with a little more playtime. This constant chase for the next power spike really made for an incredibly satisfying experience. I'm a big fan of the monthly season + patch schedule and can't wait to see how things will evolve from here!

Excellent! First session lasted almost 14 hours to get all available achievements and I'm looking forward to coming back to keep it at 100%. :)