Mechanics: Climbing is good. However, say you have a vine grabbed in one hand - then grab the vine with your other: this makes your character mini-teleport/jump downwards slightly. This is the most intuitive way to climb, because why would you ever not have atleast 1 hand on the vine (as you would fall IRL…). The best way to climb in Orbus is to climb with the left hand, let go, grab with the right hand, let go, repeat. You 100% let go of the vine with both hands for a moment to prevent this teleporting, it’s very unusual.
In the world: I felt like I climbed once in the spider caves to get to the knight spider and Dreadfang. I guess a 2nd time to get over the river in the pond-map (although I just pally-hammer over). I felt that climbing was cool but there wasn’t enough use of it. The climbing seemed to be more about treasure chests, side quests, and moderate exploration. Basically, I would have enjoyed more climbing. Some of the climbs felt long but that didn’t super bother me, although maybe making some of them shorter would have been beneficial.
How the vines looked:
Kind of good, bearable, but kind of bad. The vines could have been tailored to each wall and maybe even unique, possibly even some horizontal vine climbing rather than just vertical. If I have to judge the appearance I’d give it like a C for acceptable.
Ropes:
Having a tool or some way to zip down the ropes would have been really cool. Possibly even up the rope just for fun. Instead some of these ropes are extremely long and the climb takes quite the amount of time, usually to no real benefit due to the lack of use of the climbing areas. Like a giant chasm with a rope climb to get over it, beyond pally-hammer range, and so-on. Missed opportunity.
Summary: You added climbing but did you really leverage it? Did climbing feel like it was a big part of this DLC? I’d say no to both of those questions. It was cool but it didn’t feel like it made a big impact on the game or even just in the DLC.
Also because the DLC has no replayability besides treasure maps, it’s quite rare to go back to the DLC and actually need to climb to get anywhere you care about. Somewhat related, Dreadfang was a missed opportunity to add a legitimate dungeon with climbing mechanics to get there / while in the dungeon and unique loot.
Maybe in the current story rather than killing Dreadfang, you could edit it so that he escapes wounded and you retrieve the crystal. You can then finish him off for good by entering the 5 man Dreadfang Dungeon.
