Graven

4 or 5 stars for the art, music and environment. That's the good side of it. The rest of the game just fails to deliver quality gameplay and that one review in youtube defending this game won't save it. they mashed up ideas from Zelda, Bioshock, Souls, Metroidvania, Resident Evil. All to make a game that cannot live up to be the successor of Hexen that Hexen-lovers wanted.

No voice acting for NPCs or for narrating the pages scattered on the game's world. If they wanted to follow on Bioshock steps, then this is a huge let down.

Loading screen happening 5m away from a door or passage. Even PS1 games took care to make the loading screen happen exactly when a door is opened, not from miles away from it. Pop up? Unreal engine 4, low res graphics and we have pop ups of objects, grass and lights.

No map. No NPCs to guide or follow. No cutscenes that show where to go. No markers anywhere. The shortcuts are deceptive because they have items that you can clearly see and you are deceived thinking that there is a secret passage somewhere. No, there isn't. What you see behind the grate is some shortcut from elsewhere, from another place. A path to be unlocked from elsewhere, after you complete some quest.

They could have adopted the classic higlight or make the cursor a hand to indicate doors that can be opened or boxes that can be picked up. But they didn't in this game. For whatever reason.

They tried to copy the same lightning, fire and ice spells of Bioshock. Including the gameplay that doesn't let you use spells and weapons at the same time from that game.

5 meters at the same time? Health, mana, mana, stamina and armor. All with different colors. They took the dual mana system from Hexen. Stamina in this game also affects your ability to attack with weapons and jump. Why???

Back when Hexen and Heretic were made we didn't have much research about art and design in games. Now we do. The Quartz Flask from Heretic and Hexen is a medkit with magenta color. It really confuses the players that would expect the color of the liquid to match the color of the health meter.

Why place weapons and potions in the same hot key bar? Even during the days of Heretic we had separated inventory keys, not mixed up with the numbers 1 to 7.

Janky animations and enemies. Janky game everywhere. I didn't bother to finish the first act and didn't even fight the first boss.