Ex Natura: Nature Corrupted Review Summary

Unique & Engaging Souls-like Experience: Players consistently praise the game for its unique blend of Souls-like mechanics, captivating atmosphere, and engaging gameplay, especially considering its indie budget. The nature-themed world and challenging combat are frequently highlighted as standout features.

Impressive Visuals & Art Style: Despite its budget, the game receives high marks for its visual presentation, including stunning graphics, beautiful landscapes, and effective environmental design that perfectly conveys the game's atmosphere.

Challenging & Satisfying Combat: Combat is frequently described as challenging, tense, and satisfying. Players enjoy the epic and unique boss fights, as well as the cool designs of the enemies.

Innovative Enrage Mechanic: The 'Enrage' or 'Rage' mechanic is a fan favorite, adding a dynamic, chaotic, and enjoyable twist to combat encounters. Players find it both challenging and satisfying to utilize against enemies.

Dynamic Wall Jump & Crafting: The wall jump mechanic is a particular highlight, making players feel agile and adding a fun, dynamic element to traversal. The crafting system is also noted as a cool and deep feature.

Game is riddled with bugs: Players report an overwhelming number of game-breaking bugs, glitches, and technical issues, including crashes, corrupted saves, invisible walls, and characters getting stuck. This makes the game largely unplayable and feels like an unfinished product.

Poor performance and optimization: The game suffers from severe performance issues, including significant FPS drops, stuttering, and unresponsiveness, regardless of graphics settings. Many players found the game unoptimized and demanding on PC resources.

Subpar sound and voice acting: The sound design is widely criticized for being glitchy, poorly implemented, and having issues with volume levels. Voice acting is described as mediocre or amateur, further detracting from the experience.

Outdated graphics and animations: Reviewers consistently criticize the game's outdated and low-quality graphics, animations, and overall visual presentation. The game's aesthetic is often compared to much older titles, indicating a lack of modern polish.

Awkward jumping and movement: The jumping and movement mechanics are described as bizarre, floaty, and poorly designed, often leading to players getting stuck or falling through textures. This impacts traversal and overall gameplay fluidity.

Extensive Crafting System: The game heavily emphasizes resource gathering and crafting, particularly for items like weapons, armor, and potions. Alchemy is a key component of this system, allowing players to create essential items.

Souls-like with Parkour: The game is primarily described as a 'Souls-like' experience, incorporating challenging combat and exploration. It also integrates parkour elements, such as wall climbing and dashing, reminiscent of games like Prince of Persia.

Gûl as Key Boss: Gûl is a significant boss character, often described as a formidable, sentient forest spirit or beast. The narrative involves battling Gûl to save nature and the world.

Exploration and Danger: Players explore large, open-world environments filled with various enemies and traps. The gameplay loop involves navigating these perilous locations while managing health and stamina.

Gradual Story Progression: The game's narrative unfolds gradually, providing a 'slow burn' experience. Small cutscenes are used to immerse the player in the story as it progresses.

Missing display options: The game lacks essential display options such as FPS limits and a functional V-Sync. This absence prevents players from properly managing their frame rates and screen tearing, contributing to a less optimized experience.

High GPU usage and temperatures: Players noted that the game causes graphics cards to reach 100% usage, resulting in unusually high temperatures. This suggests inefficient resource management or a lack of proper optimization for hardware utilization.

Do not recommend game: Many players strongly advise against purchasing the game, citing it as unplayable, not worth the money, or a waste of time. This sentiment is widespread and indicates significant issues.

Good for Souls-like fans: The game is recommended for fans of the Souls-like genre, especially those looking for a challenging combat experience or a unique take on the genre. It appeals to a specific player base.

Game needs more development: Several reviews indicate the game feels like an early access title with many bugs, suggesting players wait for updates or its full release. This points to a need for further development and polish.

Buy only on sale: Many players suggest purchasing the game only when it's on a significant sale, indicating that its current price point might be too high for its perceived value. A discount makes it more appealing.

Challenging but enjoyable: Some players humorously mention 'rage quitting' but still imply a recommendation, suggesting the game's difficulty is a core part of its appeal for them.

Enhance presentation and UI: Players are looking for enhancements to the game's presentation and user interface. Specific suggestions include adding cinematic elements for lore and more unique, thematic UI designs to improve immersion.

Improve character visuals and voice acting: Feedback indicates that while the game is generally appreciated, there's room for improvement in character visual quality and the consistency of voice acting. Addressing these could polish the overall experience.

Add co-op multiplayer: A significant number of players expressed a desire for a cooperative multiplayer mode. This suggests a strong interest in shared gameplay experiences.

Provide Chinese translation: There is a specific request for a Chinese language translation. This indicates a potential market for the game in China and a desire for broader accessibility.