After approximately 84 years I am playing an actual bona fide Soulslike again. Early Access for Withering Realms opened a week ago and despite my usual principle to not play early access I simply couldn't keep my hands off. The first game (Withering Rooms) quickly became one of my favourite games immediately after I played it at the beginning of this year, and so the sequel instantly shot up as my most anticipated game of the fall.

So far it's been phenomenal and frustrating in equal measures. Everything that was good about the first game - the lore, the characters, the vibes, the music (all composed by the solo dev!), the weirdness, the setting, the design and art - all of that is still here and more. The story is interesting so far and I can't wait to see whatever twists it has in store. It looks to be a direct sequel, so now we know which one of the four endings of Rooms is canon, too. The exploration feels really fantastic, the puzzles are great, the world is as interesting as the first game.

The big difference is in the combat. It's not a roguelike anymore, but a Soulslike: you have bonfires and flasks that refill when you rest as enemies respawn. Most of the consumables have been removed (at least so far). The economy has been rebalanced to mana and stamina bars instead of limited use consumables and a curse bar. Combat and movement is still janky and clunky, but now it's in 3D with a fixed camera instead of 2.5D, and that both takes some getting used to and also inherently feels a bit worse. The clunk is more noticeable, somehow.

A lot of that is just down to early access polish being needed, however. I have no doubt that on full release sometime next year it will be excellent. The bones of something really great are here already, and even though I am still reasonably early I can also already tell that the build variety is going to be even greater than the first game - and all the planned weapons and features aren't even in yet.

The balancing is rough so far though. The game is pretty damn hard, and the difficulty curve is even more brutal than the first game. Some early encounters are way overtuned. The game has a bit too much of large groups of enemies swarming you with overlapping attacks that are almost impossible to engage with. Some bosses have very binary designs: boss X is almost impossible to melee while boss Y is almost impossible to fight at range. You're expected to switch up your approach for the situation, but everyone won't like that. But again, I expect that to be tweaked. The Discord is very active and this dev works insanely fast.

So, recommendation? For the most part I would hold off on joining early access unless you are truly Withered up like me. The game is playable from start to finish, but it will be an even better experience down the line. I couldn't wait, though. And also, I will take any excuse to talk about this developer. The first game (Withering Rooms) is truly something special, and you should absolutely play it if you haven't already. Once you do you'll probably understand why I couldn't wait until full release for the sequel.