So I’ve played this game for a while now and I’ve gotten the hang of its quirks, its flow, and its general gameplay. Overall, I’ve come to enjoy the game more than I did at the start. I gave it the ol’ Dark Souls try and I’ve come to appreciate some stuff while continuing to dislike other stuff.
For starters, lock picking is probably the one thing that I’ve done a 180 on. I’m playing on PS4, so the initial few levels of lock picking were horrendous, to the point where I almost considered leaving the game alone until they patched it. After gritting my teeth and playing it for a while, I’ve come to realize that it’s fairly well implemented once you get the hang of it – even with a controller.
The save system still sucks. I haven’t budged from that position. I’ve learned to work around it so it’s less frustrating, but it’s one of those poor design choices that I’m glad they’re phasing out.
The lack of character customization is disappointing. I’m less irritated by Henry’s face than I was at first, but I still wish I could customize his features. Deep RPGs like this should have more in that department, especially in this day and age.
The speech system is convoluted and frustrating, especially when you think you’ve got the right stats to pass a check and end up failing inexplicably. I posted in another thread about how intimidate doesn’t seem to work like it logically should.
Combat is… okay. Honestly, for me it’s become a game of spamming the stab button since it’s the quickest attack in the game and waiting for the other guy to fuck up his block. There’s no real skill element to it, the combos are kinda wasted since dudes die so fast, and the first person perspective really wastes a lot of the opportunities to showcase the cooler elements of HEMA.
That brings me to the perspective: I’ve come to the conclusion that this game shouldn’t be first person. For starters, it’s Henry’s story, so us playing through his eyes doesn’t really make much sense – especially when the cutscenes and dialogue are all third person. The combat in the game would look way cooler and probably function better if we could see what was going on. Even the angle of attack system would function better in third person, as it does in For Honor or traditional fighting games. As it stands, half of the visuals and techniques are wasted.
The level grinding to get to the point where the game is fun to play is kind of a slog. Because I was sick of the time wasting, I decided to restart the game and just use an exploit early on, stabbing my way to level 18 and maxing out my strength, vitality, agility, swordplay, and warfare. That actually made the game a lot more fun, even if it did break the whole “hero’s journey” angle they were going for. But fuck it; it’s my game, I’ll play it my way.
The wait function blows. I hate how it slows to a crawl at the last hour, I hate how long it takes to begin with, and I can practically watch an entire episode of a half-hour show in the time it takes to wait for a prison sentence to be over. It’s just less time I’m actually playing the game and I don’t like that.
Overall, I really dig what they did with this game and I’d like to see more from this team in the future.