4Pillars

Super cool concept but the execution is honestly terrible. The controls/mechanics aren’t NEARLY good enough for there to be so many instakills .

It’s a shame this game receives so much hate. It’s free without any ads, and contains considerably more depth in the first ten levels than most paid games out there. It’s incredibly difficult, and it may take a lot of effort and strategy to kill bosses. That’s just how it is. If you don’t like challenges this isn’t a game for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game. I personally like the almost Dark Souls-ish feel and the platforming is diverse enough to keep me playing when more levels arise. I agree that it’s not complete yet, and still faces some control problems, but the effort is definitely apparent (especially in the art style and atmosphere). With upgrades and character customization this could be an amazing game, and it already is incredible. Giving this game away is definitely a huge deal, and I think it will only improve.

It’s decent at best. I’m actually a little disappointed I spent money for this game, should have known to be wary of pre-orders. I get that it just released not even a full 24hrs ago, but I’ve played other mobile games at release that have a lot more polish on a much smaller budget (I’m guessing a game like this wasn’t cheap to make) Pros: - beautiful world building with plenty of detail filling the levels - nice model design for the player character - variation in the enemy design, not all skeletons are the same etc. - somewhat interesting boss battles with interesting twists Cons: - level design is too linear, feels like you’re playing the same level for the first 6 or 7 levels - none of the environment is destructible except blocked areas you’re supposed to go through to further progress, which makes the game feel stagnant and lifeless - movement is wonky, sensitivity of controls is way too high and there’s no way to adjust it. Fell off of so many bridges by trying to simply turn around because of how sensitive the joystick is - attack animation feels slow even though it’s not terribly slow, but it makes battling a chore because you can never improve your battle tactics or improve your fighting ability. You’re stuck with the same basic attack. - because attack animations have lag, you get hit trying to attack when enemies gang up together, so any battle becomes a suicide mission because you can never really block everything when 5 or 6 enemies are all swinging at once - jumping doesn’t serve you much in battle, as the timing window for dodging attacks with a jump is so small you may as well just stay on the ground and eat the hit - some enemies attack faster than you do, which makes some battles nearly impossible to win if they have backup - your shield can’t block everything, namely fire arrows, and since you typically never run into bowman skeletons by themselves, they become incredibly deadly because they can sit there and spam arrows while you’re trying to deal with their friends and just kill you in no time flat - arrows do too much damage, and it makes survival missions impossible to win because you get overrun by melee mobs while snipers just pump you full of arrows from a distance (how does a sword or axe strike do half the damage of an arrow???) - traps like fire or floor spikes shouldn’t be one-hit killers, leave that to the swinging axe blades and the spiked/saw wall sections - there’s hardly a story in the beginning, just a narrator citing really vague and enigmatic sayings, just for the sake of trying to sound clever. Could be done better - voice acting needs some work, at certain points I could barely hear what the narrator was saying because the audio was so poorly balanced, an obvious one is at the very beginning of the game where it seems like the narrator is practically whispering Bugs: - sometimes if enemies get you in a choke point or surround you, you can’t get out even if you jump - if you die at certain parts of a level, it might respawn you behind the background terrain, thus dropping you into a dead zone and killing you again, and trapping you in a loop of death. This can only be fixed by restarting the entire level, which is tedious to say the least - some hits if timed wrong don’t even register on the enemy - there’s no practical way to dodge, you either block or get hit - no upgrades so far to armor, weapons, no abilities or skills, not even stats All in all it seems like this game is just stretched out with the blocking mechanic, because if you don’t want to die you have to block, and blocking forces you into this turn-based hell where you attack, then block, then they attack, then you attack, block, over and over and over and over and over. And this pads out the game, because there’s really no other content to explore, it’s just turn-based battles through super linear levels. Edit: I left such an in-depth critique with valid points that should really be addressed or at least answered for, and all you could respond with was “this game didn’t cost anything”. Really? You’re not going to at least acknowledge that you read my critique???