i got 4 copies of this game for friends and family.lots of fun.the co op chest u get that helps with fighting needs to drop earlier and more often to make playing together more exciting.as it is now u gotta wait 5-10 minutes for chest and pray u get a good roll.More spells would also be nice and they have already delivered one new spell.also it feels impossible to unlock Reginalds last skin with the 4 augment achievement. maybe im just unlucky.

To preface; I played with three of my other friends on this game and we each have somewhat differing opinions on aspects of the games. I am also not quite experienced in survivor type games, but I do have a few under my belt, and I have put many hours into many different roguelike games, as this is one of my favorites genres. I am also mostly a casual gamer, and this is my first review, and I understand that I do not seriously look into the numbers and intricacies of game mechanics with too tight of a lens. So understand that all of this is just MY OPINIONS on the game, and at the end of the day I paid 8 dollars for this game and I feel I have gotten my money's worth out of it.

My major concerns are with some of the level up mechanics, such as augmentations. It does not make a lot of sense to give players TWO augmentations options with one being a REGULAR level up option, this is because you only get FOUR Augmentations per run IF you complete all of the objectives. Because of this, you are heavily incentivised to pick the augmentations EVERY TIME. In fact, I do not personally see any situation where you would NOT pick the augmentation (Please tell me some exceptions), and I cannot see those exceptions not being niche. Therefore, I feel you should always get THREE augmentations, or be allowed to use your REROLLS on augmentations, or BOTH. My friends suggested making the third option ALWAYS a legendary instead, but I disagree with this, as I still see myself picking the augment. This is one of my MAJOR complaints because AUGMENTS PROVIDE AN ASPECT OF COMPELLING GAME PLAY, so why should I ever give up a compelling augment for a level up reward I get at least 50 of on an average run? You also cannot reroll new spells and infusions. Again these are some of the most IMPACTFUL and COMPELLING decisions for each run, and I feel like I have LITTLE to NO CONTROL over them. While the new spells are not really that bad to have a reroll for, infusions have been a pain point for some of my friends. I only bring up the idea of adding rerolls to spells and infusions because the developers plan on adding more infusions and spells, and as they add more the argument for rerolls on these will only become stronger and stronger. But for NOW this is not a problem in my opinion, especially since there are only 4 infusions. Maybe at a later point there can be three infusion choices instead of two?

My other concern, is that relics (or artifacts, i'm having a brainfart) in comparison to some of the other mechanics feel somewhat stale. My friends do agree on this issue. The reason why we see them as stale is because they do not really have any "build defining qualities," as one of my friends stated. In other words, these relics are very niche and do not really have much impact on a run except a like two or three. For example, the armor, luck, and movement speed seem like go-to relics in any builds where as the others seem very niche and slightly underwhelming to me. Some of the relics seem alright but I would much rather some other relic over them. I will say that I have also not tried all of the relics to see how they fair, mostly because they do not fit my play style all that much. The problem with the relics being underwhelming is not because they are niche, but because they are so rare. I do not have a problem with them being niche if they are good in their niche, but they just also do not seem like the reward for getting them matches their rarity at times, and again, being unable to reroll them is tough. I will not make any specific suggestion on how to change this as I do not know if it is really that big of a problem, and I also do not know how I would makes changes to relics at this time.

While I am on the topic of rerolls, I would like to mention that the number of rerolls you get is very SPARSE, especially since you can ONLY use them for LEVEL UPS. Even if you could use them for augments and relics, THREE rerolls at max is definitely not enough. If you get an average of 50 levels a run, that would be 3 rerolls for 50 levels, if you add augments, that is 3 for 54, and if you get maybe 3-4 relics, that 3 rerolls for ~58. If you add rerolls for new spells = 3 for ~61, and for infusions, and assuming you get about 3-4 infusions a run, that is 3 for ~64. I personally bought one reroll specifically to use with the luck relic, and that is it. I do not understand the idea behind giving so few reroll. My thoughts are maybe to take control from the player over run consistency to force randomization between runs to create more replayability, but even then I feel 3 is still too few, at least add a way to gain rerolls mid run, like in Death Must Die, you can find shrines that randomly give you rerolls. Maybe even make enemies randomly drop rerolls every now and then?

my last concern is something I understand is an intentional mechanic of the game, because the developer's statements on the inspirations behind the game, Helldivers 2, implies that this is their intent. But, I hate that my own spell can slow me to the point of not being able to move. This is a very personal pain point, but I got white lightning on my necrowhirl and it spawned on me, and almost just straight up rolled me, Now that I am done being slightly dramatic, this was more of a skill issue on my part, but hey, I thought I might add it anyways. Maybe remove self damage, like really remove self damage, for real remove self damage. I understand team damage, but self damage is annoying. For instance, getting the exploding augment on magic missile one time made me decide to never get it again as the missile did more damage to me than enemies were. And I do not believe this is as much a skill issue as it is an issue with the tight map design and enemy pathing. Do not even mention when enemies get in your face, or you are having to strafe through hordes. (Maybe make the reduce team and self damage relic reduce self damage greatly, if not fully)

Speaking of other survivor type games, I would love to see an option to continue playing past the boss. I enjoy playing endless after killing bosses just to see how long I can last. I will keep this short as I know this would require balance changes in several places to make this happen, but I would love to have longer runs just to see how broken I can get.

Since I have already moved on from concerns, I would like to make suggestions on additions to the game. These are very subjective and are highly up in the air. That is to say, I would not be upset if they were not added, but it would be interesting to see. That being said, there is a specific mechanic that Noobs Want to Live and Holocure: Save the Fans use to great success, and that is spell fusion. Since the game already has element fusion, I would love to see the spells fuse in some way, or at least interact with each other. I do see the arguments for not doing this, as there are not many spells in the game, this would be really difficult to implement right now, and the game design is not really set up to implement this as is, but I digress. Would love to see this mechanic implemented. For example: astral orbs would spawn mini necrowhirls when killing enemies, or hexbombs explode and shoot out phantom blades in 6 directions. I would also make this fusion optional.

Moving on though, I would love to see the skins of each character be more than just cosmetic. My thoughts are that they will work like a special augmentation to the spell that you can only get with the skin. Or at least make them change the visuals of the spell, or both to be honest both would be best.

All in all, the game is really fun for, and pretty cheap too. I love playing a survivor game with my friends and cannot wait for all of the roadmap features that will be added. If I have any edits or ideas I will add them in post. Love the game and thanks for the fun roguelike!

It's like a tower defense game if you only had one tower, it could be upgraded, and it was you.