Good game. Love the premise. Wish there were diverse enemy designs rather than colour types among the orc models.
That said, I'm not a fan of the protagonist's situation switching gears when she gets the crossbow. Instead of fearing what's around the corner you suddenly overcome it with direct assaults? Enemy respawns were meh. Just pointless busy work that made backtracking more of a chore in later levels. Would have been cool if the game promoted stealth better in that if you did kill a guard you ran the risk of their body being discovered if you didn't drag them into a cell, hid under a bed, etc.
Even worse, dragging their bodies is in itself a difficult process. You don't have the strength so it takes a bit of effort. Golems, though? Impossible. Only way to hide their bodies is to get out that hammer and slowly break them into pieces. Because if you don't? If a body is discovered? This incurs an alert mode where you have to hide while an influx of enemies run around till they gave up the search. And even when they do that they position more guards so the game gets progressively harder if you attempt to kill anyone, thus stealth remains king and the crossbow is seen as a last resort.
Inventory management was a bit daft, too. Having to acquire the right numbered key for each cell was a bit much when it would have made more sense to sneak into a guard room and swipe a master key that allowed access to all cells that level.
I will end this on a positive note, though. Absolutely love the character's animations. You have no idea how much I appreciate her squashing her ample breasts with her arm when she has to run. Few games ever think about something so obviously needed in a situation like that, and why not? It's sexy in its own way. Poor gorgeous woman can't catch a break!
I totally agree, the addition of the crossbow really hurt the game. I absolutely LOVE the stealth mechanics, especially the sound was implemented superb.
Sadly, once they introduced the crossbow, the game's focus changes drastically. It was fine in the stage 4, as it barely had any stealth mechanics, and instead changed it into a frenzy. But with enemies being limited in their movement (most of them were bound locally to a specific area and/or didn't do a good job at chasing you), it had a good amount of offensive and defensive gameplay.
But area stage 3 specifically was horrible. Just outright horrible. The stealth aspect was almost completely thrown out of the window.
A) There weren't a lot of rooms to actually hide in, and the few we did get are on the corner/ends of the map
B) Too many enemies roaming around considering the lack of hiding spaces
C) It's hard to distinguish goblins from orcs. And with orcs taking A LOT of hits, this can seriously kill a run because of a little confusion.
D) Enemies keep respawning, despite their huge numbers. And they can actually spawn very close to you as well (got caught once by a goblin that respawned in the same room as me)
E) Random shouts after attacking is one of the biggest offenders. With the lack of rooms to hide, you are pretty much dead most of the time, because they will swarm you from all directions
F) Even without them shouting, it seems that pretty much all enemies within the vicinity (even those you can't hear walking anymore) will still get alerted.
These points together make stealth assassination nearly impossible. No matter how careful you approach the situation, you probably end up being swarmed by a lot of enemies and have to desperately try to fight your way out. Even if that isn't the case, the area just doesn't give you a lot of options to do stealth in the first place.
What's worse, there are some fundamental issues with the crossbow as well. First of all, it almost completely negates the already questionable use of the dagger. But the way the crossbow works just isn't particularly fun and feels very clunky. You can't even limit it to an emergency tool, as the game actively requires you to use it generously in their objectives. Yet, it's highly inefficient to the point I just don't want to rely on that thing.
Instead of adding a crossbow, they should have focused on the dagger instead. The way it works, there is a risk vs reward system, and even if you screw up, the game is still fairly generous to you. If you fail the timing on a parry, you still get to parry the enemy, but will drop the dagger. You can then decide to try grab it again, or ditch it and get somewhere safe.
Sadly, there are some quirks that heavily limits the usefulness of the dagger. First of all, you still take a fairly huge amount of damage. It feels punishing to the player, even though he did nothing wrong. Secondly, while the enemy freeze duration is perfectly fine, not being able to run past the enemy is just plain stupid. This also means that, in a lot of situations, this makes the dagger essentially useless. If you do find yourself backed up in a corner (which can happen quite a few times), it will not help you at all. In this case, you can only exploit it in order to throw some potion at the enemy. But again, combined with the health damage you take, it just isn't worth it. Better to just let you get captured instead.
If they removed the parry damage and let you run past parried enemies, this would make it a great tool to defend yourself in case of emergencies. If they also focused on the stealth mechanics (redirecting enemy attention, sneaking past them, etc), this would had been incredibly fun and tense.
But as it is right now, you just spam the crossbow on some random enemies and hope you can either survive the onslaught of enemies rushing to you, or there won't be any in the first place. If you can't defend yourself against them, just let them capture you and try again.
With the lack of proper stealth option in the later levels, there isn't much else you can do to approach your objectives either.