Booted up the game and presented a cutscene and opening segment to set the tone for the entire game. Mystery, a feeling of the golden age has passed and the future is unknown. A tale that far exceeds you and do not deserve to see the full picture.
I was having a lot of fun for the 1st half, had a mystery building while having a good side plot happening at the same time between the protag and the knight meeting at the beginning. I like the potency mechanic, the enemies are unique and found myself overwhelmed when fighting a group of enemies. When I saw the stats and get to choose where my points go into, I was excited as I’m a megaten fan, I love things like this as it gives the game replayability.
What carried this game the most has to be the map design, each area is memorable in the way you have to navigate and keep notes to come back to certain segments. The transition of area to area felt natural and rewarding to opening gates, the puzzles, and secret areas light my inner light bulb nearly each time.
Then at the 2nd half, the budget of the game really started to show as like the “newer” enemies are reskins with no new added mechanics to them except maybe a status element change. I learnt that building your stats mean nothing and are forced to conform, by putting your stats all-rounder as it’s needed to meet a certain threshold to equip this armor, weapon and so on. Then it’s easy found out that magic found is far and few except the upgrades in the shop of course. The spells/skills are found or gotten are underwhelming to say the least. The skills that are in the game are so basic the enjoyment to come out of them drains quickly. However, I did find a lot of enjoyment putting status elements onto the blade! Bonking monsters on the head with an electric blade feels great every time when you hit them from the back and the sfx comes along with it.
I feel the skill mechantics could be more fun if there was more to play around with and yes, I would go out and grind a weapon’s potency for skills or bonk enemies for drops, I still feel a content drought in the skill mechanization. The same goes for the guardians, they don’t add enough to the table. Enough to switch some around like what your intent is. Trying to grind a weapon’s potency? Add the guardian to help the grind. Going into a boss fight? Maybe should add tue guardian that gives you more skill points so you can use more spells. However, the guardians impact wasn’t enough to make builds around the guardians.
Skeleton keys mean little to nothing, the price for them is so low and finding bones to sell is incredibly easy to find as you can just cut grass to get them. It feels like there’s 0 purpose for them to be here as it just became something to drop some coins into that makes little impact in gameplay except extending the game’s time by 30 minutes if that.
With all that I listened above, it felt like a slug to get through and the game was over layered to look bigger than it really wanted to be. The game felt bloated and so I am wasting my time continuing. I made it to the final dungeon and it’s been 2 months since I touched the game, I have no plans to go back either.
I feel disappointed than frustration, there’s a lot to the game I enjoyed and mechanics I feel can be excellent, but they fall flat to implement it and make the experience feel fresh throughout. When for once I thought falcom was gonna get a W, it choked ;(
I was having a lot of fun for the 1st half, had a mystery building while having a good side plot happening at the same time between the protag and the knight meeting at the beginning. I like the potency mechanic, the enemies are unique and found myself overwhelmed when fighting a group of enemies. When I saw the stats and get to choose where my points go into, I was excited as I’m a megaten fan, I love things like this as it gives the game replayability.
What carried this game the most has to be the map design, each area is memorable in the way you have to navigate and keep notes to come back to certain segments. The transition of area to area felt natural and rewarding to opening gates, the puzzles, and secret areas light my inner light bulb nearly each time.
Then at the 2nd half, the budget of the game really started to show as like the “newer” enemies are reskins with no new added mechanics to them except maybe a status element change. I learnt that building your stats mean nothing and are forced to conform, by putting your stats all-rounder as it’s needed to meet a certain threshold to equip this armor, weapon and so on. Then it’s easy found out that magic found is far and few except the upgrades in the shop of course. The spells/skills are found or gotten are underwhelming to say the least. The skills that are in the game are so basic the enjoyment to come out of them drains quickly. However, I did find a lot of enjoyment putting status elements onto the blade! Bonking monsters on the head with an electric blade feels great every time when you hit them from the back and the sfx comes along with it.
I feel the skill mechantics could be more fun if there was more to play around with and yes, I would go out and grind a weapon’s potency for skills or bonk enemies for drops, I still feel a content drought in the skill mechanization. The same goes for the guardians, they don’t add enough to the table. Enough to switch some around like what your intent is. Trying to grind a weapon’s potency? Add the guardian to help the grind. Going into a boss fight? Maybe should add tue guardian that gives you more skill points so you can use more spells. However, the guardians impact wasn’t enough to make builds around the guardians.
Skeleton keys mean little to nothing, the price for them is so low and finding bones to sell is incredibly easy to find as you can just cut grass to get them. It feels like there’s 0 purpose for them to be here as it just became something to drop some coins into that makes little impact in gameplay except extending the game’s time by 30 minutes if that.
With all that I listened above, it felt like a slug to get through and the game was over layered to look bigger than it really wanted to be. The game felt bloated and so I am wasting my time continuing. I made it to the final dungeon and it’s been 2 months since I touched the game, I have no plans to go back either.
I feel disappointed than frustration, there’s a lot to the game I enjoyed and mechanics I feel can be excellent, but they fall flat to implement it and make the experience feel fresh throughout. When for once I thought falcom was gonna get a W, it choked ;(