First, this isn't an RPG. There are no character classes, only "backgrounds" that affect your starting stats and starting equipment. There are no experience points. You can buy levels with the in-game currency, but only at specific locations. Most importantly, there is no role-playing.That's exactly how my review of Elden Ring began and this Elden/Souls knockoff suffers from all of that game's flaws and offers few of its mitigating factors. Elden Ring at least had amazing graphic detail whereas Dolmen looks like a PS3 title. ER had passable AI for enemies but in Dolmen, going around a corner is sufficient to confuse many enemies into stalling or going back to their assigned posts. Shooting them at a distance seems the only way to get through the tutorial, which is loaded with enemies who will easily kill you. Some enemies respond to being shot by...standing still until you fire all 20-30 shots necessary to kill them. Ring allowed you to shoot through things like open windows but Dolmen won't; in some cases, you can't even shoot over low obstacles.Is it fair to compare a massive project like ER to a smaller studio effort like Dolmen? It wouldn't be, except that Dolmen repeats all of the failures of ER. Here's what I wrote about ER, which applies equally to Dolmen: The game seems designed to frustrate. Dying (which will happen to you all the time) causes you to lose all of your money (remember, money is what you use to buy levels). You can go and retrieve your loot after dying if it's in a safe area, but if you die a second time, the loot (i.e. your XP) is gone for good. Healing at special sites causes all monsters to respawn, so you don't want to do that. Buying levels also causes all monsters to respawn so you won't be in a rush to do that, either. There is no way to pause the game (if your controller runs out of juice, the game just keeps on plugging away until you get your other one) and no way to manually save.In Dolmen, you can't even craft items without respawning all enemies, since doing so requires teleporting to your ship. It's murder-rinse-repeat as you grind your way through a game that offers little incentive or payoff for doing so. There's no map, no quest tracker, no explanation for a lot of how the game works.The elements of "cosmic horror" that Dolmen supposedly contains were not evident to me. Between the subpar graphics, poor AI, and unpleasant grinding, nothing the game presented was remotely horrific. There is also no sense of immersion in the game, which is vitally important for horror titles.While there is clearly an audience for games that rehash the Souls formula, it's hard to imagine those people being willing to overlook the flaws of Dolmen. For those who view another Souls clone as mind-numbing, frustrating, repetitive, joyless drek, this game should be avoided at all costs.Thankfully, Amazon now takes returns on video games.