I will never forgive Shinji Mikami for making me go through 8-1.
Possibly the kinoest action game at the time and even to this day if not for the poopoo lockon that feels incredibly janky in extreme contrast to the smooth controls. There's not a single bad boss in this, they WILL kick your shit in but never in a tedious manner. I haven't played a single game that has such boss consistency.
Some people claim that the combat is mainly designed around 1v1 encounters and that the gang squads go against the strengths of the systems in place, and they're quite wrong. There's enough crowd control options for you to be able to deal with 7v1 non heavy enemies give or take, they're just quite obtuse to get the hang of. Late game does go overboard with the amount of enemies it throws at you at the same time, going way past the threshold of what you're equipped to handle. At that point (unless you're a speedrunner knowing each enemy's attack patterns, positions and general behaviour in and out) you start needing to rely on roulette abilities and god hand to cheese your way through. I wouldn't call playing ring around the rosie while throwing boxes for half an hour particularly fun.
It's quite funny how the difficulty scales accordingly if you save scum with save states in emulation. If you skip loading screens with save states, Instead of retaining the level you had on death you come back at the same level you walked in there with. I think I spent the majority of the game on level 3 or level die, fun times...
Possibly the kinoest action game at the time and even to this day if not for the poopoo lockon that feels incredibly janky in extreme contrast to the smooth controls. There's not a single bad boss in this, they WILL kick your shit in but never in a tedious manner. I haven't played a single game that has such boss consistency.
Some people claim that the combat is mainly designed around 1v1 encounters and that the gang squads go against the strengths of the systems in place, and they're quite wrong. There's enough crowd control options for you to be able to deal with 7v1 non heavy enemies give or take, they're just quite obtuse to get the hang of. Late game does go overboard with the amount of enemies it throws at you at the same time, going way past the threshold of what you're equipped to handle. At that point (unless you're a speedrunner knowing each enemy's attack patterns, positions and general behaviour in and out) you start needing to rely on roulette abilities and god hand to cheese your way through. I wouldn't call playing ring around the rosie while throwing boxes for half an hour particularly fun.
It's quite funny how the difficulty scales accordingly if you save scum with save states in emulation. If you skip loading screens with save states, Instead of retaining the level you had on death you come back at the same level you walked in there with. I think I spent the majority of the game on level 3 or level die, fun times...