Well I'm a few hours in and wanted to post my appreciation here for what is a genuinely fun game. Beating a Hearty Gorefist was a heart pumping and exciting time, the exploration continues to be fun. The interesting levels I'm now encountering are really stretching their legs as far as design and look-and-feel and, as many have mentioned, the combat model is fantastic. It feels just right.
It took me about 30-40 minutes to come to grips with how I want to play it -- what weapons suit what ranges, how do I want to engage different enemies etc -- but once I did, I found the way you move in the space and defeat things tactically very satisfying. When I was running low on ammo, I devised a method of engaging to just outside of melee range, shooting the mob with one pistol shot to knock it back and then finish it with 1 or 2 melee hits. This helped me learn melee timing, knockback timing, stun locking etc. and made group management much easier. Plus I had ammo to dump on an elite when I needed to. All in all, the game presented me with interesting problems that I was asked to solve in any variety of ways that were completely viable. I've been watching streams and people are coming up with their own solutions and I think that speaks to the generally flexible design decisions. Kudos.
I'll just throw my $.02 in on the "adds are bad design" comments. I was super annoyed by the exploding guys in the Gorefist (hearty) fight but the first few attempts were true problem solving for me. Listen for the squee sound, try to triangulate it while running to gain space and put something hard between me and Gorefist, using that stunlock management mentioned above to halt the advance of the adds and set them up for finishing shots that would kill more than one. These tactics were all extremely satisfying to devise and execute. Once I figured out some ways to go about it, the actual run where I beat Gorefist was still quite exciting and difficult but not frustrating. Thinking back on it, if the adds weren't there keeping pressure up, the entire fight would have been pretty boring. Bait out a big hit, dodge, shoot, repeat.
Anyway, good game. Really enjoying it.
