Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (10/10 title) was incredibly charming in its presentation but man the combat felt super clunky thanks to some of the strange unchangeable controls: a single tap in the direction of an attack to parry, double tap forward to dash (hardly ever used this, so useless), and - the worst offender - double tap R1 to dodge. Right up to the very end of the game it felt like I was half fighting against the controls. You better come to a full stop before you use a quick attack or you're locked into a dash attack that has absolutely no follow-up capabilities and leaves you wide open.
Also why were the directional inputs so unnecessarily sensitive? My controller doesn't have any stick drift yet countless times I found myself locked into an animation facing the wrong way. Early on I hated how little you could do to knocked down enemies (without doing fancy aerial juggling stuff with the raiment) but the game would be so brainless if you could just stun lock everything lol
I probably tried too hard to optimize my rice farming considering you have unlimited years to farm but I suppose that was part of the fun (plus how you avoid overlevelling). Farm sim games probably aren't particularly for me though if they're like this half of Sakuna - it was neat and surprisingly deep but I don't find it relaxing or "comfy" thanks to my silly optimization anxiety (le gamers will optimize the fun out of their games)
The story was fine but the point was definitely the characters - Sakuna herself had a very endearing maturation from her arrogant, lazy brat start and there was a nice "found family" vibe with the farming gang humans. Each member of that gang could have used a tad more fleshing out though (I'd happily sacrifice combat missions for more side stories). That one side quest reveal of Yui's origin shocked the hell out of me lmao (those who know, know)
Oh yeah I played with the English dub and Laura Post was fantastic as Sakuna! Rest of the cast sounded solid too, although I never bothered to compare them all to the JP dub
Also why were the directional inputs so unnecessarily sensitive? My controller doesn't have any stick drift yet countless times I found myself locked into an animation facing the wrong way. Early on I hated how little you could do to knocked down enemies (without doing fancy aerial juggling stuff with the raiment) but the game would be so brainless if you could just stun lock everything lol
I probably tried too hard to optimize my rice farming considering you have unlimited years to farm but I suppose that was part of the fun (plus how you avoid overlevelling). Farm sim games probably aren't particularly for me though if they're like this half of Sakuna - it was neat and surprisingly deep but I don't find it relaxing or "comfy" thanks to my silly optimization anxiety (le gamers will optimize the fun out of their games)
The story was fine but the point was definitely the characters - Sakuna herself had a very endearing maturation from her arrogant, lazy brat start and there was a nice "found family" vibe with the farming gang humans. Each member of that gang could have used a tad more fleshing out though (I'd happily sacrifice combat missions for more side stories). That one side quest reveal of Yui's origin shocked the hell out of me lmao (those who know, know)
Oh yeah I played with the English dub and Laura Post was fantastic as Sakuna! Rest of the cast sounded solid too, although I never bothered to compare them all to the JP dub