Hello! Welcome to Feedback Que- wait.
I kid, I kid.Y'know, I wasn't sure if you were going to submit a game this time around. After the last two times, I thought you might not. But we're here, so let's get going.
So like most people who played this game, they likely had trouble finding a weapon. I eventually DID find out, when I began just pressing use against everything and finding out I could go inside the fortress. Once I had a weapon, I thought things would be okay and I'd be able to get somewhere. However, I found I couldn't tell if I was hitting the spiders (and due to dealing with mild arachnophobia, I wasn't exactly looking directly at them). So I took my fight to the skeletons, only for them to kick my ass. Eventually, I found gear and put it on. I was making progress! Then I discovered magic! And whoa! Suddenly, I could kill the skeletons in a single hit. I felt much stronger and like I could do something, even though it wouldn't last long.
After this, I spent a while trying to play through. I burned through the few spells I could use rather quickly. Even a mana potion didn't really help. Meanwhile, attacking felt sluggish and difficult to pull off. Now this isn't to say this sort of combat can't be good, it's the sort of thing that From Software games do all the time. However, those games have great feedback to let the player know they've done damage. A lot of my attacks, I'd see an animation but no indication that I dealt damage of any kind. Some attacks did make it obvious, thankfully. Then arose the complication of how long I was fighting. Like I said, I was testing on skeletons because I couldn't look at the spiders for personal reasons. And while my magic could destroy a skeleton in one hit, I found it taking dozens to do the job by melee.
I also wasn't quite sure what the bars that empty on attack and fill up are for. I had assumed they were related to how much damage an attack did, but without any means of knowing how much damage I do in a hit, it's impossible for me as a player to confirm this.
Of the games you've submitted to FQ, I find this one has the most actual game to it. Areas don't look repetitive, I can discern where I am in a world, and there's stuff I can actually do as a player. I actually enjoyed playing this a bit. Whatever my personal feelings on the controls, I was happy just to be doing something. Unfortunately, I can't put in enough time to get really in-depth with the game. I would like to know more of what's going on, but since I have to cover many games I can't dedicate as much time.
Looking at things, I'm unsure what would be the best way to improve the starting situation while keeping your intent with the game. You could give the player some starting money, or you could give them starting equipment. Alternatively, you could make early leveling easier (I don't know how much experience you need to level, I had around 30 or 40 at my top) so that players can make some early gains that let them just be capable of taking more hits. Whatever the case, something to make the start work more smoothly would help the experience for players and make them overlook the shortcomings from using older software.
I have more to say, but since I want this post to focus on the review and feedback for the game I'm separating the rest into another comment, which will be as a reply to this one.