like if resident evil was even dumber and every puzzle amounted to “kill 100 guys and then a boss.” so much to love about this; the gonzo gothic horror aesthetic is imaginative and engrossing and when it’s working, the combat feels fantastic. varied and dynamic enough to allow for some real creativity in your load out and play style. hack and slash isn’t really my genre and i was kinda expecting to slice through everybody without much friction, but no, this is often very challenging. boss encounters especially bear a striking resemblance to souls games, in their structure and level of difficulty. the lack of coherent narrative information (really had no idea why dante was on this island or what he was trying to do for most of it) in combination with the macabre fantasy environments gave me a distinct souls feeling, too; idk if miyazaki’s ever mentioned it but this feels like a clear precursor to those game to me. shame that there are some significant…limitations cause this could have been something truly great. biggest thing is the camera. most of the time it’s serviceable and keeps the field of view open enough that you’re able to keep track of things in combat. but then sometimes it doesn’t at all lol. some really egregious moments here. boss fights start on an angle where you can’t see what you’re supposed to be fighting. you’ll frequently dodge attacks only to land in some corner of the room where you can’t see anything. several times throughout the game i found myself standing still for minutes at a time firing grenades toward the screen having absolutely no clue what i’m aiming at. it’s absurd. this isn’t like the early resident evil games, either, where the fixed angles serve a real aesthetic and affective purpose and are essential to the whole project; this would clearly be a much better game with a modern camera system. platforming is also just a fucking chore my god. like i said it’s relatively serviceable most of the time but the unsuccessful moments really drag it down a ton. i don’t think the staccato level structure is to the game’s benefit, either. the castle is an amazing locale and it would have been cool to experience it as a cohesive, ever expanding structure a la the mansion in re1 but, while it is basically that, the constant breaks in the action don’t allow for that same feeling. wish there had been some sort of diegetic save system, so it wouldn’t need to be broken up quite so much. that’s not too big a deal tho i’m kinda asking for the game to be something that it’s not. the camera tho…that is a big deal. holds up remarkably well beyond this one aspect but it’s a very important one!