God, this game is awful. Don't buy it or play it, ever.
Now that that's out of the way, some comments.
This game really looked promising. It was being developed by tri-Ace, who also created the Star Ocean series and Radiata Stories (awesome game). The graphics looked amazing in previews, and it looked like tri-Ace was going to step into the big leagues of RPG development.
Wrong.
All of the focus was, apparently, on the graphics, and they completely forgot to make a good game. Right from the get go, you are thrust into fighting without any indication of why or how to do anything. Supposedly you look EXACTLY like some knight guy. And you don't even know who YOU are. And the dialogue/voice acting is LAME. Really Lame. Then, the game DUMPS tutorial screen upon tutorial screen on you. There is no gentle easing into the gameplay mechanics, like most well designed would do. You get 5 screens of text, and then they say, ok, go do it. This might beOK if the test weren't IMPOSSIBLE to read. They forget people still have normal, 27-inch, tube TVs. The text was beyond blurry, and even walking right up the the TV, I could not make out what buttons I had to press when they were talking about the L and R triggers. Luckily, the face buttons on the Xbox controller are colored, so at least I can see that. Bad engineering on that part.
Back to the bad design, this game is an action RPG. Actually, it is mostly a hack'n'slash. No turned based battles or even going to a different screen to fight. All the fighting is done right there on the game field. At first, it kind of reminded me of Zelda... only in no way was it good. it is an action-RPG that feels way to clunky. It was hard to maneuver may character effectively, and I also had to just rely on hacking everything in sight and hoping my party member healed me. Oh right, we have someone tagging along. At certain parts of the game, it forces you to control you other party member. This is an incredibly frustrating experience, since the tutorials do a horrible job of explaining how to control them. So you are left guessing, and usually end up dead. Again, terrible design.
Then, before you can even being to get your bearings with the combat system, you are put into a chase segment, where you have to run from a big fat monster thing. However, on the way, you have to kill people in your way. So, backing up a second, you press R2 to draw and sheath your sword. You can't loot treasure while your sword is out, nor can you inspect things or open doors. Frustrating. Also, you run faster while you have your sword sheathed. So, take it out to fight, put it away to run. So you run up to enemies to kill them, then you start running away from the fat guy. Oh right, I need to put away my sword to run faster. Your character has to FUCKING STOP and do this slow animation of him putting away his sword, and the while the monster thing is beating on you with his belly or large club. Frustrating. Oh there are more enemies and barricades I have to fight through. Start the whole annoying process over again.
Me and Meghan stopped playing after an hour. It was just too bad to warrant any more time wasted. Terrible game all around. It is a shame too, it would have been nice to see some of those awesome graphics. Guess they will be left.... undiscovered. (I'm sorry.. I just had to).
slow animations make clubs swing spontaneously near baby seals. it sucks when a potentially good game has clunky controls. lately i've been playing an FPS like this (stalker.. 5 bucks on steam woot!) where the character stops running when he gets hit. that's precisely the moment when you don't want to stop running... there's another issue where i have to stay behind cover and hope that when i press 4, a grenade will come out. there has been many a time when my clip runs out and i want to pop a quick grenade around the corner or something, i press 4 (grenade) and nothing happens. not really sure, but i think they make you (slowly) put away the weapon before being able to (slowly) take out a grenade. this makes weapon switching completely unbearable. and i can't tell you how many times i died in COD4 multiplayer with a grenade in my hand, mid throw except it never got completely launched so it didn't count. also COD4 takes the "run" out of "run and gun". it's more like "run, stop, crouch, zoom/aim, fire" which means you get owned by camping noobs.
ReplyDeleteso yeah in summary, these games nowadays make me want to fist myself
slowly