Preview: Blightbound (Steam Early Access)
Blightbound is a multiplayer dungeon crawler that tasks three heroes to venture down from their mountain refuge to face the abominations of the Blight – a mysterious and corrupting fog that enshrouds the land.
Pros:
- Hand drawn cel-shaded style graphics.
- 3446mb Download size.
- Partial controller support. (still need the mouse for certain menus)
- ARPG dungeon crawler gameplay.
- Opening tutorial levels.
- Graphics-fullscreen, resolution, v-sync, multi-threading mode, anti-aliasing, reflections, sharpen, distortion effects, bloom, film grain, and depth of field blur.
- 3 heroes-Warrior/assassin/Mage.
- Hub-you, unlock new merchants and options as you play through the game.
- 3 player co-op, you always have 3 players and if you don’t have 2 friends then it will matchmaker to make up the numbers.
- Blightbound is played in a 2.5D game world.
- Anyone can pick up loot and it goes to everyone.
- Not tied to the same screen.
- Earn EXP, level up, and put stats points into your character.
- Level select-when starting a game you get to choose from a selection of levels and can vote on it along with difficulty.
- Each character has a role to play.
- End of run shows collected loot.
- Catchup system so if you get left behind you warp up to the group.
- You are randomly assigned a character to play.
- Recruit new characters that you can play as or that serve as a vendor/merchant in your community.
- Blacksmith-find plans and craft new gear.
- Overall you have story objectives that push you forward.
- Can revive each other.
- Puzzle elements.
- Hack and slash combat.
- Big boss encounters with an initial pop up screen of who they are.
Cons:
- No single play just online with randoms.
- Random which character you play as.
- A lot to take in.
- Browsing menus and generally moving around is not good with the controller as it feels clunky and unclear.
- Every game has a hint of lag.
- The slowdown can happen anytime.
- Nothing stopping other players running on ahead and leaving you to warp up all the time.
- Takes a long time to get going, the easy difficulty is far too easy.
- Boss fights don’t have the greatest loot drops if any at all.
- Controller icons can disappear.
- The story is broken up and hard to follow.
- The level selection is not clear.
- No Steam achievements.
- Mouse cursor stays on the screen.
- Small text.