EPΘCH

It is intentionally bad. It's marketed as "dark souls-esque," but really, it's just a big ♥♥♥♥ you. Everything is wrong with this game. I didn't enjoy a minute, I muscled through thinking, "Oh, it will get good if I can only find _______" and it just never did. There are fights that are designed for you not to win. Not just like... "can't win now, come back later" kind of thing. The one that stands out to me is that there is a repeating rival you have. The first time, cake walk. Second time, not awful. The third time, he starts speaking while he's attacking, and your attack/roll buttons are in charge of the speech bubble. So you have to close out of the text box to attack him or run away. The next time, the room is barely big enough for the two of you, he speaks multiple speech boxes and you can't do anything until they are gone, so he will kick your ass over and over again. And that's not a fun challenge. There's no skill to be had there, there's no learning curve, you can't improve on your skipping speech skill. It's just mash the exit button and hope you don't get killed. And when you finally beat him, you don't feel accomplished, you feel like you wasted 30 minutes on a gian…

tl;dr: A Souls-like without the Souls-iness. Don't bother. Ps & Cs: + Lots of secrets and hidden paths + Graphics work fine for the game + Story seems interesting - Very imprecise controls destroys the Souls-iness - Controls are very bizarre and unintuitive I really wanted to like this game, but it's so slipshod. The inventory / crafting system is extremely poorly implemented. The game tries to be like Dark Souls, but without the tight controls it really just comes across as cheap. The game supports controllers, however I was never able to get a spell to work. They're also missing very basic functions like a close button. If you can find it for < $5, and you're a Souls fanatic, it might be worth your time, however for everyone else I can't recommend it. As an aside the dev did say he would address the close button which shows he's at least a good dude.

EPOCH is a fascinating game. It's one of the first RPGs I've ever played, and beaten. I got it several years ago back when literally nobody had heard of the game - which, let's be real here, that's *still* true even to this day. But that's a shame, because it really is a cool, mysterious, great game with intriguing story, few but endearing characters, wonderful pixelated graphics, and challenging fights all throughout, from Ry the Dark Warden 30 seconds in to [spoiler] Rios the Creator [/spoiler] at the end. You can play as one of several different races, from the traditional dwarves, elves, and humans, to more original ones, such as the aquatic race of the Ghroulians or the mystical automatons called Cogsmen (I think that's what they're called? Idk it's been awhile since I played). Each race comes with a special ability that helps you out in some way throughout the game, though I'm gonna be honest, some abilities are straight-up better than others. For example, as a Ghroulian, you start the game with the ability to swim, which you would otherwise get around halfway-ish into the game. It nets you some cool stuff that you wouldn't get until later, but once you hit the point …

Best Souls-Like On This Platform! And I've only played 18 minutes. A really cool classic RPG Dungeon Crawler feel with combat clearly inspired by the Souls Series. Would recommend checking it out it's fun!

this game is a labor of love and it shows, the small details that change the story line drastically is just amazing i fell in love with this on my first play-through and have replayed it online a few times just so i could see if i could figure out if "hey did he think of this? and most of the time he did, also cool Felix is pretty cool

This is definately one of my favorite games, I'd enjoy it a lot more if the multiplayer for it actually worked at the moment but aside from that the game has some very fun aspects and an amazing soundtrack that makes you fall in love with the game even more.