Agreeing with all these comments. The game started off really strong in my opinion, but it falls flat very hard after a certain point. Both from a writing perspective and in the combat variety.
The interrupts were interesting to me because I hadn’t seen a mechanic quite like that before. But I suppose it’s true that once you see an enemy charging up there is essentially just one “correct” choice to make, which limits what choices you actually have and puts you on a rail.
I don’t know what game first came up with it, but Super Mario RPG was the first time I saw timed hits for attack and defense in a JRPG. While the mechanic isn’t exactly ubiquitous it has popped up in a handful of other games over the years and it always reminds me of that game.
I’ve played a fair amount of both but to be fair never competitively. Like for example I played tons of Warcraft 2 and 3 with friends at LAN parties. But these days I’m more likely to be drawn to a single player turn based game like XCOM, Civ, or FF Tactics style games.
In retrospect yeah. I was very excited just to see a trailer at all. After sitting with it for a while I’m kinda like, that’s it? To me it looks exactly like the recent Metroid Prime remaster (which to be fair I did really like).
I wonder if the reveal of the big baddie was intended to carry more weight than it ultimately did.
I love the aesthetic of this. I played the white label version back when it came out and then kinda forgot it existed till now. I’m not always big on rhythm games so I’m not yet sure if this will be for me. But I can already tell the OST is gonna rip.
Haven’t had a chance to play this patch yet, but I’ll say I’m impressed at how much they are reworking already. Even going so far as to throw out certain hammers for example.
I attempted Trial of Haste pre-patch and quickly realized I stood no chance, neat to see that being adjusted.
Vow of Forsaking got the nerf treatment. Probably for the best.
There was a time in my life when my friends and I played a whole lot of Halo, particularly Halo 2 and 3. I never played online but we would have essentially LAN parties where multiple people lugged over their TVs and consoles and play for hours. It was a blast. In college Halo was the de facto way to spend Friday night if nothing else was going on.
Strangely enough though I feel no desire to go back to that.
Oh hi! I played XI from release until recently (with some breaks). IMHO the original story (basically up to Rank 6 where you defeat the Shadow Lord) is fine, but it’s really more of a prelude and setting up the stakes. If you stop there it’s not really worth your time.
Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia (+ optionally Apocalypse Nigh) are pretty good from a story perspective. These can be completed solo. This is what I’d recommend playing through to anyone interested in the real story.
From there it’s somewhat diminishing returns. Treasures and Wings add some interesting bits to the lore. Rhapsody is actually great but will take a lot of time and effort and is probably only worth it to a die hard fan.
Played about 5 hours tonight and I’m loving it. I wasn’t sure how much content to expect for early access but this is more than I would have guessed. The combat feels really really good. Charging your abilities with mana starts to feel better once you build up some regen on it and you can use it more freely. It took me a minute to nail how to aim the long charged special but now it’s one of my faves to spam.
A few little surprises have happened that made me grin really big as a big Hades 1 fan as well. I did not play EA last time around but I decided this time I want to be a part of that experience and see how the game evolves.