Hey, so first up, great game!
I've clocked about 10 hours at this point, and I'm still having a blast.
Art direction, soundtrack, vfx and level design are really nice. The world looks really fantastic, love the variety and the forna. Character design is really nice too, with Solus enemies being really nicely defined and the player character (and mutations) looking really cool. Basically, good job, it all works together really nicely.
Also a really big fan of all the little secret levels where you unlock new weapons and gear. Getting the Lift down inside a security system or going into one of the Native/Solus caves is really cool.
Obviously I think the game is really nice ( I wouldn't put in 10 hours if I wasn't having fun), but that obviously means I have some feedback and suggestions :)
1) *Sorry, just saw this is already knwn** There's a certain secret area that requires you to dodgeroll across 2 collapsing platforms to reach an otherwise inaccessible area, if you fail the second dodgeroll the respawn drone tries to drop you on the first collapsing platform (that has now collapsed). You just repeatedly fall until you run out of health. Even holding right ( to try and land back on the solid ground) you can't fall far enough to make it.
Perhaps it would be nice to allow the player to steer the respawner drone a little bit, so that in this kind of situation you'd be able to avoid getting perma-dropped. Alternatively, don't detect collapsible platforms as "Safe ground" for a respawn.
2) Often when collecting Munitions powerups from the edge of wrecked platforms, the crate will just fire the collectables off the edge of the map into oblivion. It seems there's some general jankiness in the collection detection when there are multiple items overlapping, which can mean jigging items around until the one you want to collect is in the right space, perhaps with collectables like health/DNA/Nades, they could have some slight attraction to the player, so that within a radius they move towards you?
3) This is just a personal preference, but I find the aiming to feel a little floaty. Initially I really hated it, and perservered because I liked the game (and obvs improved auto aim is a buff-able stat so you want to leave room for it to get better), but often I found that I simply can't aim fast enough when there are multiple enemies. It would be nice if as a player I could adjust the smoothing on the stick aim, so that I can make it more responsive if that's how I want to play.
4) I think the Solus creatures are really nicely defined and easy to identify, but the Droids are really hard to tell apart. In the heat of battle it's really difficult to tell the difference between the different weapons and abilites that the droids have. I know that part of a roguelite is learning this stuff, but a few more variations of droid (in size and colour) would really help tell the difference between the different types. Knowing the difference between a white flamer droid and a white rocket droid is really tough at the moment. Perhaps colour coded by weapon? Make the flamers white, the stun droids blue, assault droids black etc, basically help the player to identify between each different droid type more easily.
5) I might be wrong about this, but are droid/creature spawns random? I've often cleared an area of the map, then returned there later with a key or a detonator to find it over-run again with droids. Again, just personal preference (and it will make the game easier), but I think once an area is clear it shouldn't then be repopulated. The game is at the challenging end of the difficulty scale as it is. In addition, you can't simply choose to walk straight to the exit in a map (and avoid a bunch of potential combat), as the neccessity to find keys, detonators etc forces you to explore every area. With health limited, and combat often punishing, having to fight 2 sets of enemies - one when you reach the door and another set of them when you return with the key, seems like the game being harsh on me. Additionally, having this constant stream of enemies doesn't really encourage me to explore (and there's loads of cool interesting stuff to find), since I'm always aware that every diversion will cost me additional health. When I'm playing I kind of which I could "clear" and area, then be able to explore it and look for secrets in peace!
6) Small UI thing, but the grenades that the black assault droid throw are marked with a little white UI element, that looks really similar to the little white UI elements that mark collectables. In the heat of battle it's really easy to confuse the 2. Perhaps the Grenade UI element could be like, RED or flashing or something. Similarly, some of the white droids seem to throw a torso? or Arm? or bomb? when they're killed, that kinda rolls at you and explodes. It seems odd to me that the game marks the grenade hazard, but not these kamikazi bombs.
7) Again, small thing, but the hit distance for the flamer seems to reach slightly further than the actual particles of the flamer itself. You can be dodging the particles and still be set on fire.
8) This one is probably contentious, but, I'm playing the game in 16:9. This means that left-right I have almost twice the field of view that I have up-down. Now, obviously the game is Isometric, so it looks cooler when you're moving up/down the screen because you see more depth and whatever, but the combat works better left-right because you have a better field of view, when fighting up/down you have half the space and half the reaction time to what your enemies are doing.. I think it would be nice if the camera panned up/down a little when you move the reticle to the top/bottom of the screen. Basically, if I push the reticle to the very top of the screen, the camera would pan up, moving the player from centre screen to the bottom third, and allow me to see a bit further up ahead.
9) In the DNA screen, its almost impossible to scroll when using the controller. Hovering over the scrollbar also selects the adjacent DNA.
Anyway, that's probably enough of a text wall from me. It's a really great game, and I'm going to keep playing. Looking forward to seeing where it goes in the future :)