OK, firstly to put this in context: I picked up the game again, started a new game and player for approximately two hours. I am basing everything I say off what I have seen in the tutorial and ice age area- 99% time spent either underground or in a commodity tower.
The regular mobs are not satisying to fight. They are annoying, simple, unpredictable and glitchy.
Case in point: the basic skelebot. It moves very quickly along the ground.
However, when it sights the player it suddenly moves at spastic speed, flying across the screen almost instantly. If it gets into range it tries to stand directly where the player is, clipping behind the player model.
There is time, when spotted by one in close cave networks, to fire once if you have good reflexes. Miss, and it will get a swing in, do minor damage- then die instantly to your next spell. In moments it will respawn, and the whole process will repeat.
this is not satisying combat. it amounts to a constant stream of hyper fast enemies that try and clip into you, but that die in one shot if hit and do very minor damage, which translates as a constant chore of twitch firing to supress them. I never feel threatened, I never feel clever or skillful- I feel annoyed.
It is very difficult to predict when you enter its line of sight, because they seem to be able to see straight up sometimes and through walls- other times not. sometimes they can jump up ledges, sometimes they cannot- and it all happens at blinding speed. If you place a platform above them and stand on it, all the skelebots will run directly under you and clip into eachother, spasming. If you stand on the other side of a wall they cannot jump, they will spasm and continue trying to run into the wall.
The sniper form is even more irritating- a projectile fires from offscreen at high speed. If you dont twitch you suffer knockback, which can be very annoying when moving via placed platforms on caves. the sniper will then attempt to move away from (at high speed) but will most often run into a cave wall and then spasm against it until its fleeing time runs out. Again, its ability to traverse ledges is very hard to predict, and again it dies almost instantly to spells and deals minimal damage, making it a simple chore to remove them.
bats are equally unhappy opponents. fighting them usually degrades into standing still and rapidly spamming click around yourself.
the bouncing ice crystal monsters are OK, but cause no knockback, which makes whether they hit you or not pretty difficult to vauge given they have the tail and particles that do not seem to damage you.
the desert tornado monsters deal trivial damage, but are frequent. the result is basically that the player bunnyhops everywhere when they are present and gives them no more thought (although when travelling above land, if you are not jumping high into the air then stormdashing across the whole level to the next chunk you are probably doing it wrong)
none of these monsters are satisying opponents, and there is no pleasure in removing them, because they are trivial but constantly respawning- attrition rather than threat. they are also extremely simple and almost unanimously difficult to hit with projectiles whilst moving at speed.
the boss that is a large glowing ball that spams out loads of splashy projectiles is unsatisying because it is unpredictable- its projectiles seem to be randomly accurate or innaccurate, but very damaging so sometimes its simple to jump away firing and sometimes it instantly removes 3/4 of your HP
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With all that said, there is plenty of potential by all means.. but what it mostly comes down to is making regular monsters more satifying, powerful and flexible opponents - and stopping the constant flood of respawn. After playing again I can definately say there is no need for the respawn- there is no compulsory backtracking in this game that I can find, and nothing 'fun' about finding monsters are back in places you cleared out 2 minutes ago- infact, it makes my actions feel meaningless.
Regular skelebots for example, could be given 3-4 behaviors/attacks - a ranged projectile that does little knockback or damage but significantly slows the player, a tendancy to stop in place and use an elemental shield spell when on low health while they quickly regenerate health (between which they advance on the player) and a mad charge and swipe when they get close enough. much more health and damage, much lower speed unless charging and even then not as high as now.
Sniper bots imo should relentlessly attack when at long range, and flee only when the player gets closer. when they encounter an obstacle, they should just attack. when the player gets within a certain distance, they could use an area attack that causes knockback or even cast the spell that turns inanimate background objects into barriers.
bats could be slower, but flee away from the cursor- so when you try and look at or target them, they scatter away or behind you.
the floating boss could vary between spamming out huge numbers of projectiles (which causes it self damage) and being relatively passive (and healing itself), or split into numerous smaller versions of itself that spread out when on low health.
ofc these are just ideas and ideas are rarely in shortage, but I just want to illustrate my point- that monsters COULD be made interesting opponents and much less annoying very easily
