So before criticizing I'd like to say that I never played Kings Field or Shadow Tower, so I don't really have any element of comparaison.
- The art mostly fits the aesthetic, though some of the enemies are a little too cartoony-looking compared to the realistic inspired environments
- The environment is a little too samey, I get that it's hard to make entirely different looking environments with procgen but some texture swaps or landmark props would help getting around
- Combat is slow and not very interesting or fun. I get the point of the game is to make you feel helpless and weak, but with how slow the weapons swing it feels more like I'm a grandpa that shouldn't be here, and that's my biggest issue with your game.
There's also a fundamental misunderstanding in how you animate attacks. Everything is linear (use easings instead) and the swings take a long time. I get that you're "not an artist" but this can be fixed in code.
The general structure of an animation can be broken into 3 phases : an anticipation phase (= raising your sword), the action phase (= the actual swinging part) that is almost always faster than any other, and a recovery phase (= getting your balance back).
So where you want to modulate based on stats is mostly on the anticipation and recovery phases. Think of it this way : a weak person will take more time to lift a weight than a stronger person (=anticipation phase), but in both case the weight will fall at the same speed if they drop it (=action phase).
Again, I get that the aim is to get close to old dungeon crawlers, but it doesn't have to feel like I'm swinging my weapon 10 feet underwater.
- I will say that it was a lot more enjoyable playing with a bow as it did not suffer from those animation related issues. With less frustration over the melee combat, the game's mood takes a bigger place and becomes a nicer experience
- I wasn't a big fan of how quickly equipment breaks though the system is a good idea
- weapon swings can clip through enemies and hit the wall somehow, leaving you in a stagger state
- I really liked not being able to go as fast when strafing, it helps feeling as if you're moving an actual character and not a magic floating camera. Having to turn your back on an enemy to run away is fairly immersive.
If you wanted to play more into that idea, you could add a keybinding to look around (within limits) while maintaining the orientation of the player.
Overall my biggest issue is with the combat itself and how the animations play against the fluidity of the experience. Not so much the slow speed or pacing, but rather how it makes it unclear whether you're gonna hit or not, or what the enemies are doing.