Cantabile_style
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Hiya! I felt like I needed an outlet for my thoughts on stuff I've been playing so I finally made an account. There will likely be a lot of complaining and being a huge whiny baby, apologies in advance.
"Thank you so much for to playing my game" - Mario
Hiya! I felt like I needed an outlet for my thoughts on stuff I've been playing so I finally made an account. There will likely be a lot of complaining and being a huge whiny baby, apologies in advance.
"Thank you so much for to playing my game" - Mario
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Had a decent time with this one, some unfortunate bugs aside (dialogue triggering multiple times, qte prompts failing to appear etc. It's a generally "okay" level search action game with some clearly Dark Souls inspired structural stuff that never really quite comes together.
In terms of the search-action stylings the game it most reminds me of is a mix of metroid prime 3 and Samus Returns; you have these different planets you travel between, and new paths open up as you get new abilities, but the progress is actually linear. Like in Samus Returns, you go through each area once for the story, and then you can optionally return later with more powers to pick up some mostly insubstantial goodies (some new lightsaber cosmetics or maybe a healing expansion if you're very lucky), so I never felt much pull to re-explore locations. The game feels more like a series of zelda dungeons than a proper "metroidvania", for better and worse.
The combat is fairly clunky I thought and wasn't all that fun, especially the boss fights which range from boring to minorly frustrating (I hear this is improved upon in the sequel), and there's nothing much to encourage you to experiment with your moveset.
One major positive for me was the traversal which was a lot more fun than most of this style of game, you actually have multiple types of climbing, wallrunning and vine swinging type stuff rather than just clinging to a wall and holding a direction until you're where you need to be. It's not much but it's enough to make the climbing and traversal sections feel engaging which is nice.
The story is fine, I kinda enjoyed it but the characters felt like they needed more development time. The opening sections were a really good translation of the pacing and cinematography of the Star Wars movies to videogame format which I really enjoyed! The videogameyness eventually takes over but generally the cutscene and musical direction remains above average and puts you in a Star Wars frame of mind. The visual direction is also a lot better than it's peers if only because it has decades of material to work with rather than coming up with more generic looking locations from scratch.
All in all a thoroughly okay game that didn't overstay it's welcome and which I'm happy to have played.
In terms of the search-action stylings the game it most reminds me of is a mix of metroid prime 3 and Samus Returns; you have these different planets you travel between, and new paths open up as you get new abilities, but the progress is actually linear. Like in Samus Returns, you go through each area once for the story, and then you can optionally return later with more powers to pick up some mostly insubstantial goodies (some new lightsaber cosmetics or maybe a healing expansion if you're very lucky), so I never felt much pull to re-explore locations. The game feels more like a series of zelda dungeons than a proper "metroidvania", for better and worse.
The combat is fairly clunky I thought and wasn't all that fun, especially the boss fights which range from boring to minorly frustrating (I hear this is improved upon in the sequel), and there's nothing much to encourage you to experiment with your moveset.
One major positive for me was the traversal which was a lot more fun than most of this style of game, you actually have multiple types of climbing, wallrunning and vine swinging type stuff rather than just clinging to a wall and holding a direction until you're where you need to be. It's not much but it's enough to make the climbing and traversal sections feel engaging which is nice.
The story is fine, I kinda enjoyed it but the characters felt like they needed more development time. The opening sections were a really good translation of the pacing and cinematography of the Star Wars movies to videogame format which I really enjoyed! The videogameyness eventually takes over but generally the cutscene and musical direction remains above average and puts you in a Star Wars frame of mind. The visual direction is also a lot better than it's peers if only because it has decades of material to work with rather than coming up with more generic looking locations from scratch.
All in all a thoroughly okay game that didn't overstay it's welcome and which I'm happy to have played.
I remember reading a review of this game, back when it first came out, in the Guardian newspaper, which thinking back to it is completely bizarre given they used to review like 3 games a month. Maybe that's just how big Final Fantasy was back then, I can't say I was the most plugged in kid to that stuff. Anyway the review was about three lines long and mostly complained that Vincent was a lot cooler in cutscenes than he was under the players control, that being all they had to say about the game.
And it's not hard to see why that is, Dirge of Cerberus is a game that slides directly off the brain in real time, I couldn't remember what had happened in any given cutscene about 5 seconds after it ended. At first the cutscene direction most reminded me of, of all things, 2001: A Space Odyssey, with it's almost ethereal silence and dreamlike quality, but it quickly becomes apparent that this feeling is largely spurred on by the fact that nothing of interest happens in most of the game's many cutscenes. There's some decent visual direction in parts but it ends up giving way to boredom eventually as soon as the plot properly kicks in, and I'm not really an easily bored person so take that as you will.
The villains are somehow both inscrutable and completely 1 dimensional at the same time, and come off as pound shop versions of a metal gear solid bad guy squad more than anything, none of them really get time to shine (although I did like the one cutscene of Rosso experiencing rain for the first time). In fact none of the characters really get time to shine, least of all Vincent himself who's arc is mostly a retread of his sidequest in FF7 but with a bunch of cruft. The other members of the party show up to do, uh... something off screen I guess but the game clearly just wants you to be psyched that they're here at all. A couple of the new characters have potential that isn't really explored, and I'd have loved to see more of Shalua personally (the scene where she holds the door open with her bionic arm was very striking).
The gameplay is not nearly as bad as I was expecting but overstays it's welcome and doesn't really do enough to mix things up once you've got all the guns about 3 missions in. And yes, Vincent feels very stiff in gameplay compared to the stuff he's doing in cutscenes but honestly I mostly found that pretty funny more than anything so I can forgive it. It felt to me like the game could have done with more sections like the one on Cid's airship where you get a chance to talk to all the characters before the next mission, since the cast doesn't really get room to breathe and grow on you.
That said though, after all the boredom I have to admit that in the final moments where the game goes full 2006 emo and the Gackt starts playing..... I was back on board again, haha. If the whole game had gone for that tone it would have been a genuinely enjoyable experience I think, even with the slightly bland gameplay.
All in all not nearly as bad as I'd been lead to expect, just a bit boring for most of it's 10 hour runtime. A game that is dumb in all the wrong ways right up until it becomes dumb in all the right way at the last possible moment.
And it's not hard to see why that is, Dirge of Cerberus is a game that slides directly off the brain in real time, I couldn't remember what had happened in any given cutscene about 5 seconds after it ended. At first the cutscene direction most reminded me of, of all things, 2001: A Space Odyssey, with it's almost ethereal silence and dreamlike quality, but it quickly becomes apparent that this feeling is largely spurred on by the fact that nothing of interest happens in most of the game's many cutscenes. There's some decent visual direction in parts but it ends up giving way to boredom eventually as soon as the plot properly kicks in, and I'm not really an easily bored person so take that as you will.
The villains are somehow both inscrutable and completely 1 dimensional at the same time, and come off as pound shop versions of a metal gear solid bad guy squad more than anything, none of them really get time to shine (although I did like the one cutscene of Rosso experiencing rain for the first time). In fact none of the characters really get time to shine, least of all Vincent himself who's arc is mostly a retread of his sidequest in FF7 but with a bunch of cruft. The other members of the party show up to do, uh... something off screen I guess but the game clearly just wants you to be psyched that they're here at all. A couple of the new characters have potential that isn't really explored, and I'd have loved to see more of Shalua personally (the scene where she holds the door open with her bionic arm was very striking).
The gameplay is not nearly as bad as I was expecting but overstays it's welcome and doesn't really do enough to mix things up once you've got all the guns about 3 missions in. And yes, Vincent feels very stiff in gameplay compared to the stuff he's doing in cutscenes but honestly I mostly found that pretty funny more than anything so I can forgive it. It felt to me like the game could have done with more sections like the one on Cid's airship where you get a chance to talk to all the characters before the next mission, since the cast doesn't really get room to breathe and grow on you.
That said though, after all the boredom I have to admit that in the final moments where the game goes full 2006 emo and the Gackt starts playing..... I was back on board again, haha. If the whole game had gone for that tone it would have been a genuinely enjoyable experience I think, even with the slightly bland gameplay.
All in all not nearly as bad as I'd been lead to expect, just a bit boring for most of it's 10 hour runtime. A game that is dumb in all the wrong ways right up until it becomes dumb in all the right way at the last possible moment.
This review contains spoilers
A game I found to be pretty mediocre all around which I consider to be a worse thing than being an interesting mess like XV. It's a game with a lot of missed potential, especially in regards to the storytelling. A lot of scenes are good in a vacuum but lack the buildup and context to really make use of them. I found it a fairly frustrating experience because the game threatens to be genuinely good at times but never quite gets there.
To start with the positive, the combat eventually becomes fun, though the game doles out your abilities extremely slowly early on causing the first couple of acts to be a bit tedious. You don't get any real character building opportunities until towards the end of the game's third act when you finally have enough eikonic power sets that you have to choose one to leave unequipped. But once you do get access to that stuff, the combat becomes more interesting, if a little "find your own fun". And yes as everyone and their mother has pointed out, the boss fights and the soundtrack both slap immensely. I also ended up quite liking the final antagonist in this one and his presence is a big factor in the game's final act being the most engaging (at least for me).
As for the negative.... well I guess let's start with the gameplay loop. The sidequests are all extremely boring and pointless, and usually feature one-off NPCs with very little personality and very little to say. Game's like this often use sidequests to explore bits of the world's lore in interesting ways, or as a vehicle for character work, but outside of a handful of (still pretty rubbish) quests, most of them are on the level of "bandits have attacked some merchants and we need to save them". This part of the game is stymied significantly by the game's party system meaning the game doesn't know what characters will be present for any given sidequest, so Clive is usually the only character commenting on anything, and our boy doesn't exactly have much to say. It's unfortunate to say the least.
The game misses a lot of it's emotional beats for me by having pivotal information be given to the player either far too early or too late resulting in what could have been an emotional scene not working. An early example of this is Clive's arc in the first act, in which he is forced to come to terms with being his brother's killer. This arc climaxes with Clive fighting his inner demons and accepting the sins of his past, forgiving himself, and gaining the resolve to atone by joining the effort to make the world a better place for the heavily oppressed Bearers. A powerful scene on paper, except that the player has known that his brother is in fact alive for about 5 hours of gameplay, rendering Clive's struggles essentially meaningless. Perhaps they were going for dramatic irony but the scene where Clive comes to terms with a sin the player knows he never committed is played as being triumphant rather than tragic so it's hard to believe that was the intent. This kind of thing happens several times later on, often with pivotal information to the emotional impact of a scene being hidden in the game's lore codex; a lot of tell and not a lot of show.
The cast is largely not very interesting, the vast majority are no-nonsense all-business stoics who rarely show their inner emotions, and the rest are smarmy jokesters who never show their inner emotions. The cast also get very little opportunity to bounce off of each other, and the supporting cast are often sidelined by the plot, meaning you never really get to see much of them, and when you do they only have Clive to talk to, a man who resists being bounced off of with every fiber of his being. The villains largely suffer from being insufficiently set up with a couple of exceptions (Kupka and Ultima) making their downfalls rarely narratively satisfying. They also kill off the most (only?) entertaining main character in the game's second act.
The game tries to go for a more mature tone but is often gratuitous or laughable in it's handling of it's subject matter, ironically making it a much more shallow and juvenile feeling experience than previous games, which tended towards the philosophical. There's really nothing going on beyond the surface level in this one.
All in all the game, weirdly, ends up reminding me of a particularly shoddy season of Kamen Rider: Only the main character gets to do anything, supporting characters are frequently sidelined, the rest only stick around for a single episode, and the plot is fairly surface level, but damn if it isn't exciting when he does a Rider Kick.
To start with the positive, the combat eventually becomes fun, though the game doles out your abilities extremely slowly early on causing the first couple of acts to be a bit tedious. You don't get any real character building opportunities until towards the end of the game's third act when you finally have enough eikonic power sets that you have to choose one to leave unequipped. But once you do get access to that stuff, the combat becomes more interesting, if a little "find your own fun". And yes as everyone and their mother has pointed out, the boss fights and the soundtrack both slap immensely. I also ended up quite liking the final antagonist in this one and his presence is a big factor in the game's final act being the most engaging (at least for me).
As for the negative.... well I guess let's start with the gameplay loop. The sidequests are all extremely boring and pointless, and usually feature one-off NPCs with very little personality and very little to say. Game's like this often use sidequests to explore bits of the world's lore in interesting ways, or as a vehicle for character work, but outside of a handful of (still pretty rubbish) quests, most of them are on the level of "bandits have attacked some merchants and we need to save them". This part of the game is stymied significantly by the game's party system meaning the game doesn't know what characters will be present for any given sidequest, so Clive is usually the only character commenting on anything, and our boy doesn't exactly have much to say. It's unfortunate to say the least.
The game misses a lot of it's emotional beats for me by having pivotal information be given to the player either far too early or too late resulting in what could have been an emotional scene not working. An early example of this is Clive's arc in the first act, in which he is forced to come to terms with being his brother's killer. This arc climaxes with Clive fighting his inner demons and accepting the sins of his past, forgiving himself, and gaining the resolve to atone by joining the effort to make the world a better place for the heavily oppressed Bearers. A powerful scene on paper, except that the player has known that his brother is in fact alive for about 5 hours of gameplay, rendering Clive's struggles essentially meaningless. Perhaps they were going for dramatic irony but the scene where Clive comes to terms with a sin the player knows he never committed is played as being triumphant rather than tragic so it's hard to believe that was the intent. This kind of thing happens several times later on, often with pivotal information to the emotional impact of a scene being hidden in the game's lore codex; a lot of tell and not a lot of show.
The cast is largely not very interesting, the vast majority are no-nonsense all-business stoics who rarely show their inner emotions, and the rest are smarmy jokesters who never show their inner emotions. The cast also get very little opportunity to bounce off of each other, and the supporting cast are often sidelined by the plot, meaning you never really get to see much of them, and when you do they only have Clive to talk to, a man who resists being bounced off of with every fiber of his being. The villains largely suffer from being insufficiently set up with a couple of exceptions (Kupka and Ultima) making their downfalls rarely narratively satisfying. They also kill off the most (only?) entertaining main character in the game's second act.
The game tries to go for a more mature tone but is often gratuitous or laughable in it's handling of it's subject matter, ironically making it a much more shallow and juvenile feeling experience than previous games, which tended towards the philosophical. There's really nothing going on beyond the surface level in this one.
All in all the game, weirdly, ends up reminding me of a particularly shoddy season of Kamen Rider: Only the main character gets to do anything, supporting characters are frequently sidelined, the rest only stick around for a single episode, and the plot is fairly surface level, but damn if it isn't exciting when he does a Rider Kick.