facing_w0rlds
Zeno Clash II 2013
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Completed
Playing
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Rating
Time Played
--
Platforms Played
This game crumbles quite considerably under it's own ambition, failing to surpass the original in everything but concept.
People complained about the length, so it's now an open world which seems like a great fit for such a unique setting. Sadly a small indie team can only go so far with this so it's largely empty and the graphics took a hit since it's harder for them to apply their art-style to the source engine (even if it looked better), so now they've had to re-do it in Unreal.
The gameplay was too easy to abuse before, so now you can barely move while pulling off pretty much every attack. This is due to a new emphasis on combos which never feels truly fluid to pull off thanks to extremely precise window for chaining attacks together. This ironically makes the simpler combo system from ZC1 easier to go back to (helped as well by that game's considerably shorter length stopping it from getting too tiresome). They also seemed too confident in this new system so enemies have extremely inflated health pools and they cannot stop throwing the fuckers at you en masse. Maybe the new co-op mode makes this easier? Who knows if the servers are even still up?
There is plenty to love though, despite the graphical downgrade I still appreciate the chance to walk around this unique world. I LOVED the conversations you had with the weird moth dude. The Golem weapons were unique even if they were quite tricky to use (but essentially became the meta unless you somehow managed to wrangle the combo system). Despite the overabundance of static canned-animation cutscenes, the story has some interesting characters, especially right at the end.
This is a tough game to dislike because you can tell this tiny dev team was really pushing to make all of their mad ideas work - the open world which took so many resources from everything else was something they've been planning since 2002. I have nothing but respect that they managed to pull it off by themselves and it's nothing short of an achievement. They committed to their vision no matter what and I will always set aside some time for their games. I just think they spread themselves way too thin here and the end result is a game I just cannot see myself replaying, unlike the more tight, varied, and compact little gem that the first game was.
People complained about the length, so it's now an open world which seems like a great fit for such a unique setting. Sadly a small indie team can only go so far with this so it's largely empty and the graphics took a hit since it's harder for them to apply their art-style to the source engine (even if it looked better), so now they've had to re-do it in Unreal.
The gameplay was too easy to abuse before, so now you can barely move while pulling off pretty much every attack. This is due to a new emphasis on combos which never feels truly fluid to pull off thanks to extremely precise window for chaining attacks together. This ironically makes the simpler combo system from ZC1 easier to go back to (helped as well by that game's considerably shorter length stopping it from getting too tiresome). They also seemed too confident in this new system so enemies have extremely inflated health pools and they cannot stop throwing the fuckers at you en masse. Maybe the new co-op mode makes this easier? Who knows if the servers are even still up?
There is plenty to love though, despite the graphical downgrade I still appreciate the chance to walk around this unique world. I LOVED the conversations you had with the weird moth dude. The Golem weapons were unique even if they were quite tricky to use (but essentially became the meta unless you somehow managed to wrangle the combo system). Despite the overabundance of static canned-animation cutscenes, the story has some interesting characters, especially right at the end.
This is a tough game to dislike because you can tell this tiny dev team was really pushing to make all of their mad ideas work - the open world which took so many resources from everything else was something they've been planning since 2002. I have nothing but respect that they managed to pull it off by themselves and it's nothing short of an achievement. They committed to their vision no matter what and I will always set aside some time for their games. I just think they spread themselves way too thin here and the end result is a game I just cannot see myself replaying, unlike the more tight, varied, and compact little gem that the first game was.