Ashen

i have played this game all the way though with my freind. If you are looking for a dark souls style game but with much more simplified RPG mechanics, then this is the game for you. When playing, you can only upgrade your stats by equipping new armor, and upgrading your weapons. you also have four runes that give passive bonuses, and a single artifact you can equip to give you some kind of gameplay changing buff. like if you dont get hit for 50 seconds, the next hit you take does significantly less damage, or you deal more damage if you attack five times in a row without being hit, etc. 

my only complaints are that the game itself seems rather small. unlike dark souls, there are no big side areas you can explore. My other complaint is the multiplayer. playing with a freind is a blast and on a gameplay aspect its as good as it could be. my issue is how you can even join with a freind in the first place, as you both need to be at the same point in the story and standing in the same relative area to join. there is no invite system of any kind, just a tag filter you can use. aside from those complaints, it is still a great game.

Definitely not recommend it in single player. The story and the lore are so weightless. It's difficult to explain why, but nothing seem important. The side missions in particular are always the same: the NPC tells you of a personal story of them something, something, go fetch me this fantasy-sounding object. The world look very cool, though. Same how linear it is. Yeah!, in summary, feels like they needed some good writer or something, feels very incomplete in that way.

A definite Hazy rating for me.

It's a touch, to use something that makes less sense the more you think about it, "over-balanced"? You start with a stick hitting enemies that have 2 basic attacks, and die in 4 hits. By the endgame you've got the maxed-out Club of The Heavens, armour of the Deep Dwellers, mask of the High Enchanter, fighting monoliths and ancient guardians that have 2 basic attacks, and die in 4 hits.

Combined with 3/4 of the maps being just flat planes with stuff littered across them (borderline Ubisoft map), no real music to speak of, and very dry sidequests/lore/characters, and it's an extremely monotonous experience.

Only thing that kept me going to the end was the little townbuilding side-thing. It's hands-off and just passively happens when you progress the story, but you get to see a little town come together, it's neat. But the ending sucks so even that has some baggage.
 

More I think about it, closer it is to Doubt. But it had enough going for it that I got to the end.