Ravenbound Review

ign.com:

Simply looking out over its gorgeous vistas and up at its gnarly monster designs was enough to sell a curious dungeon diver like myself on Ravenbound. But as much as that first impression made me want to love this 3D roguelike, turbulence threw this bird far off course soon after taking flight. What starts as a promising action game eventually had me flying against a torrent of obscure and regressive systems, a flurry of frustratingly uncontrollable loot randomness, and a storm of very annoying bugs that quickly grounded any hopes I had for it.

As The Raven, a weapon made by the old imprisoned gods of the world of Ávalt, you’ll possess a randomly generated character called a vessel on each new run. Every vessel has a different mix of mostly mediocre traits, weapon specialties, and even racial bonuses, but they’ll all inherit your own persistent ability to soar across the sky as a magic bird and absorb power from the foes you defeat in combat. You’ll wander the vast and boring stretches of this open world’s five beautiful regions, dropping in on enemy camps, killing everyone in sight, and collecting items as part of an aggravating card-based loot system until you’re strong enough to slay the betrayer god who doomed this world..

Combat isn’t complex, but it can be fun. Each of the five weapon types have unique properties you’ll start to notice after playing with them a bunch, though I wish they were explained more clearly from the start. Greataxes and the sword and shield are good for staggering, while greatswords have a wide swing that's good for clearing crowds. With only a couple of combos for each, successful hacking and slashing comes down to mastering the satisfying dodge and parry systems, both of which give powerful