Firmament1
2023
If anything, the game isn't committing to its weird ideas enough? For all the complaining about things like how much anxiety stuff like the consumable checkpoint system i.e. vestige seeds cause (Which would actually be fucking awesome, for the love of god please bring back some tension when exploring levels in these sorts of games), the illusion falls away when temporary checkpoint spots are so frequent, and the one place you can always teleport back to is also the place that infinitely sells seeds for not very much. It used to be higher, but people complained enough that they halved the price. Thus, there's no real consequence to just placing a checkpoint down whenever you see one.
Complaints about how you need to use the lamp to pop the umbral parasites to knock The Hushed Saint off his horse in his boss fight are also pretty funny to me, because that's exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see; Have the umbral lamp be used in a way that adds a bit of a puzzle element on top of the standard Soulslike roll-and-slash-'em-up without replacing it. Sadly, the game doesn't really do this to the same extent after; The few times it tries to after just come off as token with how little of an advantage you get from using it, or unneeded with how easy the boss is. Alternatively, where are the other umbral parasites that add some sort of buff to normal enemies besides just invincibility + regeneration? One that adds poison? One that increases their damage? No? Just on a couple of bosses? Ok then.
The dual-world system in general is also weirdly underexplored. There are a few moments where you find a pretty lengthy path in the Umbral, you dive in there, and actually find yourself with the timer ticking down, or have to use the lamp in a way that allows you to avoid fully immersing yourself into the umbral, but most of the time, it's just another part of the main path that you have to go into; Certainly not helping that the whole "avoid having to go into the umbral" puzzles I mentioned are often undercut by it just giving you an escape point right after you cross it. This is where I think the movement restrictions (i.e. only being able to walk) while holding up the umbral lamp greatly hold the opportunities presented by this gameplay back. You could present far more scenarios to strategically use the lamp to partially immerse themselves if they could fall or sprint while holding up the lamp. There are a few more neat uses, like the one time where they use it to hide a level (Revelation Depths), and a few times where you have to fight a boss in it, but said bosses are literally just normal enemies with a health bar, and a pretty crappy NPC fight. At least the last one added some incentive to backtrack to various levels to find the required items to reach him, but where's stuff like having to go into the umbral to use a shortcut, thus raising the stakes for a bit? Or using the umbral to find an alternate entrance to the level? Or a level set entirely within the Umbral, with you having to scavenge around for checkpoint spots that aren't part of it to catch your breath and rest there?
Other than that, my complaints aren't anything you haven't heard of already if you've been paying any attention to the discourse around this game; Excessive use of ganks, mediocre enemy variety with a fair few reskins (Looking at you, Harrower Dervla! Don't think I didn't catch you splitting your moveset in half to create Crimson Rectors and Proselytes.), balancing, overreliance on tracking, skating on your attacks, overtuned enemy stats, nonexistent variety in movesets within weapon classes, bosses too easy, yada yada. Still though, I'm opting to give this a step above an above average rating. The art direction, the physicality of the world, and a lot of the enemy designs certainly help to get the game on my good side. But the overall experience was pretty electrifying, warts and all, if just for how willing it is to try to make exploring levels tense again. It's willing to throw you into stressful situations. And most importantly for me, it remembered that Soulslikes aren't just action games. It managed to ignite a sense of adventure in me in a way that other Soulslikes haven't.
And just to really be a shitter, there's something appealingly ironic about the way Dark Souls and Demon Souls got attention and praise for flouting what was "conventional wisdom" in games at the time, and now, a portion (Not entirety by any means! Don't misunderstand me) of flack towards this game was for the way it flouted conventional wisdom as established within Soulslikes. At the very least, this game bothered to strike out on a pretty interesting vision of some kind. If there ends up being a Lords of the Fallen 3, or a DLC of some kind, I'll definitely be on that rickety, experimental train ride.
Alternatively, this could all just be copium on my end, and I'll have an SMT V arc the way my man Fortayee did.
Complaints about how you need to use the lamp to pop the umbral parasites to knock The Hushed Saint off his horse in his boss fight are also pretty funny to me, because that's exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see; Have the umbral lamp be used in a way that adds a bit of a puzzle element on top of the standard Soulslike roll-and-slash-'em-up without replacing it. Sadly, the game doesn't really do this to the same extent after; The few times it tries to after just come off as token with how little of an advantage you get from using it, or unneeded with how easy the boss is. Alternatively, where are the other umbral parasites that add some sort of buff to normal enemies besides just invincibility + regeneration? One that adds poison? One that increases their damage? No? Just on a couple of bosses? Ok then.
The dual-world system in general is also weirdly underexplored. There are a few moments where you find a pretty lengthy path in the Umbral, you dive in there, and actually find yourself with the timer ticking down, or have to use the lamp in a way that allows you to avoid fully immersing yourself into the umbral, but most of the time, it's just another part of the main path that you have to go into; Certainly not helping that the whole "avoid having to go into the umbral" puzzles I mentioned are often undercut by it just giving you an escape point right after you cross it. This is where I think the movement restrictions (i.e. only being able to walk) while holding up the umbral lamp greatly hold the opportunities presented by this gameplay back. You could present far more scenarios to strategically use the lamp to partially immerse themselves if they could fall or sprint while holding up the lamp. There are a few more neat uses, like the one time where they use it to hide a level (Revelation Depths), and a few times where you have to fight a boss in it, but said bosses are literally just normal enemies with a health bar, and a pretty crappy NPC fight. At least the last one added some incentive to backtrack to various levels to find the required items to reach him, but where's stuff like having to go into the umbral to use a shortcut, thus raising the stakes for a bit? Or using the umbral to find an alternate entrance to the level? Or a level set entirely within the Umbral, with you having to scavenge around for checkpoint spots that aren't part of it to catch your breath and rest there?
Other than that, my complaints aren't anything you haven't heard of already if you've been paying any attention to the discourse around this game; Excessive use of ganks, mediocre enemy variety with a fair few reskins (Looking at you, Harrower Dervla! Don't think I didn't catch you splitting your moveset in half to create Crimson Rectors and Proselytes.), balancing, overreliance on tracking, skating on your attacks, overtuned enemy stats, nonexistent variety in movesets within weapon classes, bosses too easy, yada yada. Still though, I'm opting to give this a step above an above average rating. The art direction, the physicality of the world, and a lot of the enemy designs certainly help to get the game on my good side. But the overall experience was pretty electrifying, warts and all, if just for how willing it is to try to make exploring levels tense again. It's willing to throw you into stressful situations. And most importantly for me, it remembered that Soulslikes aren't just action games. It managed to ignite a sense of adventure in me in a way that other Soulslikes haven't.
And just to really be a shitter, there's something appealingly ironic about the way Dark Souls and Demon Souls got attention and praise for flouting what was "conventional wisdom" in games at the time, and now, a portion (Not entirety by any means! Don't misunderstand me) of flack towards this game was for the way it flouted conventional wisdom as established within Soulslikes. At the very least, this game bothered to strike out on a pretty interesting vision of some kind. If there ends up being a Lords of the Fallen 3, or a DLC of some kind, I'll definitely be on that rickety, experimental train ride.
Alternatively, this could all just be copium on my end, and I'll have an SMT V arc the way my man Fortayee did.
the rise of skywalker of ace attorney
the last jedi of ace attorney
2014
Scuffed to the point of hilarity. Never before have I seen things like a game just handing you stuff like a spell that gives infinite stamina, or boss matchups in an action game being so ridiculously dependent on the type of weapon that you're using that they're almost impossible with one type, while being a complete cakewalk with another.
Take for example, the final boss. Almost all the openings that it seems the game is giving to you are actually completely invalid, and you'll proceed to get hit by his follow up. This is because of just how much time it takes to walk over to him, get in a hit, and get out of range. EXCEPT... If you use the greatsword with two hands. This is because when using the greatsword, the game will slide you over to an enemy when within a certain range, cutting down on the amount of time you need to walk over to the boss before getting in an attack. It ends up giving you just the right amount of time to safely escape his follow up.
Let that sink in for a moment. It's not safe to try and go for an opening with a non-great axe, but it's safe to go for that exact opening with a greatsword. It's really quite something.
Alright. In all seriousness, I don't think it's quite as bad as its reputation precedes. The bosses, while simplistic, can still act as surprisingly okay tests of spacing and whiff-punishing, though for all I know, it can be just as weapon-dependent as the last boss. Spacing and positioning is still very much present in most other Soulslikes to a degree (See any clear of an Elden Ring boss by Ongbal), but it definitely takes a backseat to tests of timing more often than not. That's usually not the case here.
And beyond the bosses just being "okay", there are some moments where the trifecta of spacing, whiff punishes and "clunky souls" combat actually just pops off. Aside from the archers, I found the encounters with human enemies at the very end of the game to be really fun; Since they're using the same moveset you are, that also means they're just as slow, and stun as easily. Suddenly, it becomes a game of waiting right outside their reach, watching them whiff, and hammering them with a deadly punish, with timed strikes to optimize stamina consumption so you can get in that one last hit that takes them right over the kill threshold. All while knowing that just a couple of hits will end you. At least, if you're like me and didn't bother levelling up your HP, because you were too busy spreading your stats amongst 3 different attack stats to try out different weapons.
Lastly, if there's one thing that I think all of us can acknowledge, landing a hit in this game feels amazing. Just listen to the sound of hitting something with a hammer. Fucking hell, Hexworks really should've just ripped a bunch of the weapon sounds from this game for the sequel, and called it a day.
Of course, that's not the majority of the game, and it's definitely let down by other enemies, and things like the contextual sliding on weapons. I'll let IronPineapple do the talking here. Said knight enemy can be trivialized by other forms of magic, but still, it's poor form to not give you a significant opening after breaking an enemy's guard.
Then there's the encounter design; Lord (heh) help you if you get ganked in this game. For all the complaints about ganks in its sequel, at least your guy is really quick, and has a bunch of projectiles at their fingertips that they can use to make space, and get a breather. Not as much luck here; Have fun trying to wrestle your magic gauntlet to very slowly throw an explosive while you're getting nibbled at by 3 little gremlin dudes that are as fast as any dog from Dark Souls 3.
None of this is helped by so much of the game being set in these cramped indoor corridors that give neither you, or the camera much room to maneuver. Moments where I was stuck in a hallway with my slow-ass weapon, and fast enemies charging at me had to be some of the least fun I've had in any game, period. Many times, I ended up just having to use my magic that slowed down all incoming enemy attacks in an area, and just brute-force my way through them all without giving them a chance to even attack.
So yeah. There's some fun, both unironic and kusoge-esque reasons, to be had with this game, but it's not great overall. If the sequel and Deck13's current output are of any indication, the design direction for this game is kind of a dead-end. Regardless, this game interested me enough that I was left curious as to what Lords of the Fallen 2 originally looked like before Hexworks was formed, and quite surprised at some of the ideas this game had that didn't come back in the new game, or at least were much more de-emphasized. Shield-bashing, timed attacks and variable attack speeds for weapons in a given type for the former, and a kill-based currency multiplier and more whiff-punishable bosses in the latter. Flawed, and amateurish as this game is in many, many ways, I do wish that some of its ideas lived on in a greater manner. Alas, we'll never know.
Take for example, the final boss. Almost all the openings that it seems the game is giving to you are actually completely invalid, and you'll proceed to get hit by his follow up. This is because of just how much time it takes to walk over to him, get in a hit, and get out of range. EXCEPT... If you use the greatsword with two hands. This is because when using the greatsword, the game will slide you over to an enemy when within a certain range, cutting down on the amount of time you need to walk over to the boss before getting in an attack. It ends up giving you just the right amount of time to safely escape his follow up.
Let that sink in for a moment. It's not safe to try and go for an opening with a non-great axe, but it's safe to go for that exact opening with a greatsword. It's really quite something.
Alright. In all seriousness, I don't think it's quite as bad as its reputation precedes. The bosses, while simplistic, can still act as surprisingly okay tests of spacing and whiff-punishing, though for all I know, it can be just as weapon-dependent as the last boss. Spacing and positioning is still very much present in most other Soulslikes to a degree (See any clear of an Elden Ring boss by Ongbal), but it definitely takes a backseat to tests of timing more often than not. That's usually not the case here.
And beyond the bosses just being "okay", there are some moments where the trifecta of spacing, whiff punishes and "clunky souls" combat actually just pops off. Aside from the archers, I found the encounters with human enemies at the very end of the game to be really fun; Since they're using the same moveset you are, that also means they're just as slow, and stun as easily. Suddenly, it becomes a game of waiting right outside their reach, watching them whiff, and hammering them with a deadly punish, with timed strikes to optimize stamina consumption so you can get in that one last hit that takes them right over the kill threshold. All while knowing that just a couple of hits will end you. At least, if you're like me and didn't bother levelling up your HP, because you were too busy spreading your stats amongst 3 different attack stats to try out different weapons.
Lastly, if there's one thing that I think all of us can acknowledge, landing a hit in this game feels amazing. Just listen to the sound of hitting something with a hammer. Fucking hell, Hexworks really should've just ripped a bunch of the weapon sounds from this game for the sequel, and called it a day.
Of course, that's not the majority of the game, and it's definitely let down by other enemies, and things like the contextual sliding on weapons. I'll let IronPineapple do the talking here. Said knight enemy can be trivialized by other forms of magic, but still, it's poor form to not give you a significant opening after breaking an enemy's guard.
Then there's the encounter design; Lord (heh) help you if you get ganked in this game. For all the complaints about ganks in its sequel, at least your guy is really quick, and has a bunch of projectiles at their fingertips that they can use to make space, and get a breather. Not as much luck here; Have fun trying to wrestle your magic gauntlet to very slowly throw an explosive while you're getting nibbled at by 3 little gremlin dudes that are as fast as any dog from Dark Souls 3.
None of this is helped by so much of the game being set in these cramped indoor corridors that give neither you, or the camera much room to maneuver. Moments where I was stuck in a hallway with my slow-ass weapon, and fast enemies charging at me had to be some of the least fun I've had in any game, period. Many times, I ended up just having to use my magic that slowed down all incoming enemy attacks in an area, and just brute-force my way through them all without giving them a chance to even attack.
So yeah. There's some fun, both unironic and kusoge-esque reasons, to be had with this game, but it's not great overall. If the sequel and Deck13's current output are of any indication, the design direction for this game is kind of a dead-end. Regardless, this game interested me enough that I was left curious as to what Lords of the Fallen 2 originally looked like before Hexworks was formed, and quite surprised at some of the ideas this game had that didn't come back in the new game, or at least were much more de-emphasized. Shield-bashing, timed attacks and variable attack speeds for weapons in a given type for the former, and a kill-based currency multiplier and more whiff-punishable bosses in the latter. Flawed, and amateurish as this game is in many, many ways, I do wish that some of its ideas lived on in a greater manner. Alas, we'll never know.
i want wenona to violate my labour rights
A quick note that I only finished this on hard mode, and not on Titan; Think of this more of an “impressions” writeup than a full review.
Still plenty of fun to be had here; It’s classic God of War, which is a formula that’s almost impossible to actually make badly. Unfortunately, there are a lot of changes here that really make this worse than it should be. It’s a shame because with a few tweaks, I could see this being one of my favourites in the series.
The most obvious change of note is the new rage system; meter fills up as you attack with the Blades of Chaos, and Kratos can’t use certain combos that he previously had access to until he fills up that meter. Probably the most infamous change, but I think there are a lot of other aspects to its design and what surrounds it that just make it feel like even more of a middle finger.
To first focus on the rage system itself, a good chunk of Kratos’ (Already smaller) moveset DOESN’T fill the meter; Throws, finishers, parries, and world weapons. It’s only standard attacks from the chains that work. Throws, I can understand, seeing as they give i-frames and are some of the safest moves in the game. But the lack of rage on parrying is baffling given the fact that it’s already been nerfed (L1 + X and endlag instead of just L1), and hasn’t seemed to have gotten much stronger. World weapons not giving rage is also just another reason to barely use them, if most of them lacking much in the way of significant attack power isn’t enough. The second is its extremely punishing nature: Get hit, and the meter drops. And if you’re hit while in rage state, poof, you’re out. As a result, unless I was abusing the shield glitch, I didn’t find many moments where I actually wanted to keep the rage state up instead of just immediately expending it on the special attack.
That second point ties into the enemy design. In principle, I like how ridiculously aggressive the enemies in this game are; Some of the most aggressive I’ve seen in an action game to date. But a good chunk of them are harder to stun than in past games, and they seem to have a greater quantity of difficult-to-avoid grabs that force you into QTEs and instantly drain all of your meter; See the Sirens, and Gorgons for the worst examples of this. And in the case of the Talos enemies, they straight-up can go into a state where if you light attack them, you just get hitstunned. Combine this with the chaotic as ever encounter design of classic God of War (Though fair play to the game, it doesn’t ALWAYS throw those enemies at you, and there are a good number of encounters where the game actually pops off), and a generally weaker Kratos with more limited tools, and I found myself falling into boring, defensive play that devolved into spamming magic for i-frames more often than I would’ve wanted.
Then we get to Kratos’s actual toolset in this game, and… It’s a mixed bag. To add in some positivity, the new grab system I really like. Kratos can now leash enemies from afar, and drag them around the arena, being able to slash with the chains (Which DOES build rage), evade, slam or throw enemies. Gives a lot more dimension to the already fairly unique grab system of this series. But outside of that, the elemental Blades of Chaos are a pretty weak substitute for having multiple weapons, with the main attacks on each of them being mostly the same and the variations stemming from magic, rage attacks, and L1 + Square and Triangle. And the world weapons, while interesting in concept, generally fall apart in practice. 3 of the 5 weapons’ are largely unhelpful, with the best move upon obtaining them to chuck them away immediately for decent damage and stun, and the shield being completely broken due to a glitch that allows you to switch elements while using the plumes, causing it to fire off multiple times at once.
Balancing in this game is generally not great, with probably the highest quantity of tools in the series that feel mostly useless, and as per usual for God of War, a few tools that are absurdly overpowered; To give a couple of examples for each, respectively, we first have the Ice of Poseidon on the chains, which does some of the worst damage amongst the elemental options and whose freezing barely works. When you DO manage to freeze an enemy, it takes an absurd number of hits to actually shatter them which by then, the enemy will have already unfrozen from time. On the second front is the Oath Stone of Orkos, which is an item has a high area of effect, damage, stun, and recharges fairly quickly. You really want to throw this one out a lot later in the game.
I’ve been relatively harsh on this game, but that’s mostly because I just find it to be less than the sum of its parts. You could easily pitch this to me in a way that would sound like a perfect God of War game; A revamped and more in-depth grab system, meter management that rewards both strong offense and defense, some of the best sound design in an action game to date and graphics and art direction that are still jaw-dropping today? Fuck yeah, sign me up. But I came away from the game feeling with a general sense of “meh”; Here’s hoping for a re-release on newer consoles at some point at least, so we don’t put that last point to waste. Will probably revisit this again in the future on Titan mode to try sorting out how many of my problems with this game were just skill issues, since at the end of the day, I still find a lot of its ideas compelling.
Still plenty of fun to be had here; It’s classic God of War, which is a formula that’s almost impossible to actually make badly. Unfortunately, there are a lot of changes here that really make this worse than it should be. It’s a shame because with a few tweaks, I could see this being one of my favourites in the series.
The most obvious change of note is the new rage system; meter fills up as you attack with the Blades of Chaos, and Kratos can’t use certain combos that he previously had access to until he fills up that meter. Probably the most infamous change, but I think there are a lot of other aspects to its design and what surrounds it that just make it feel like even more of a middle finger.
To first focus on the rage system itself, a good chunk of Kratos’ (Already smaller) moveset DOESN’T fill the meter; Throws, finishers, parries, and world weapons. It’s only standard attacks from the chains that work. Throws, I can understand, seeing as they give i-frames and are some of the safest moves in the game. But the lack of rage on parrying is baffling given the fact that it’s already been nerfed (L1 + X and endlag instead of just L1), and hasn’t seemed to have gotten much stronger. World weapons not giving rage is also just another reason to barely use them, if most of them lacking much in the way of significant attack power isn’t enough. The second is its extremely punishing nature: Get hit, and the meter drops. And if you’re hit while in rage state, poof, you’re out. As a result, unless I was abusing the shield glitch, I didn’t find many moments where I actually wanted to keep the rage state up instead of just immediately expending it on the special attack.
That second point ties into the enemy design. In principle, I like how ridiculously aggressive the enemies in this game are; Some of the most aggressive I’ve seen in an action game to date. But a good chunk of them are harder to stun than in past games, and they seem to have a greater quantity of difficult-to-avoid grabs that force you into QTEs and instantly drain all of your meter; See the Sirens, and Gorgons for the worst examples of this. And in the case of the Talos enemies, they straight-up can go into a state where if you light attack them, you just get hitstunned. Combine this with the chaotic as ever encounter design of classic God of War (Though fair play to the game, it doesn’t ALWAYS throw those enemies at you, and there are a good number of encounters where the game actually pops off), and a generally weaker Kratos with more limited tools, and I found myself falling into boring, defensive play that devolved into spamming magic for i-frames more often than I would’ve wanted.
Then we get to Kratos’s actual toolset in this game, and… It’s a mixed bag. To add in some positivity, the new grab system I really like. Kratos can now leash enemies from afar, and drag them around the arena, being able to slash with the chains (Which DOES build rage), evade, slam or throw enemies. Gives a lot more dimension to the already fairly unique grab system of this series. But outside of that, the elemental Blades of Chaos are a pretty weak substitute for having multiple weapons, with the main attacks on each of them being mostly the same and the variations stemming from magic, rage attacks, and L1 + Square and Triangle. And the world weapons, while interesting in concept, generally fall apart in practice. 3 of the 5 weapons’ are largely unhelpful, with the best move upon obtaining them to chuck them away immediately for decent damage and stun, and the shield being completely broken due to a glitch that allows you to switch elements while using the plumes, causing it to fire off multiple times at once.
Balancing in this game is generally not great, with probably the highest quantity of tools in the series that feel mostly useless, and as per usual for God of War, a few tools that are absurdly overpowered; To give a couple of examples for each, respectively, we first have the Ice of Poseidon on the chains, which does some of the worst damage amongst the elemental options and whose freezing barely works. When you DO manage to freeze an enemy, it takes an absurd number of hits to actually shatter them which by then, the enemy will have already unfrozen from time. On the second front is the Oath Stone of Orkos, which is an item has a high area of effect, damage, stun, and recharges fairly quickly. You really want to throw this one out a lot later in the game.
I’ve been relatively harsh on this game, but that’s mostly because I just find it to be less than the sum of its parts. You could easily pitch this to me in a way that would sound like a perfect God of War game; A revamped and more in-depth grab system, meter management that rewards both strong offense and defense, some of the best sound design in an action game to date and graphics and art direction that are still jaw-dropping today? Fuck yeah, sign me up. But I came away from the game feeling with a general sense of “meh”; Here’s hoping for a re-release on newer consoles at some point at least, so we don’t put that last point to waste. Will probably revisit this again in the future on Titan mode to try sorting out how many of my problems with this game were just skill issues, since at the end of the day, I still find a lot of its ideas compelling.
2017
This review contains spoilers
A lot of people online went on about how this was better than the first game in every way, and I can't help but feel the opposite.
Before I get into my issues though, I'll say that I DID enjoy this game, albeit for different reasons than the first. I liked the more open-ended nature of the game, both in terms of the overworld map design, and in how you can approach enemies. Encounters in general give you a good amount of leeway between going aggressive, stealthy, and evasion, with that philosophy being extended to some bosses like the Guardian, who's able to be skipped altogether. Stealth also being built upon was also much appreciated, and now it actually feels like it has more of a seat at the table, mechanically speaking. It definitely ended up being one of my favoured approaches.
The more focused, and personal story also definitely had its moments. I did get reasonably invested in Sebastian himself, and generally enjoyed seeing him change from a miserable alcoholic, back into the father he used to be before the events of the first game, though I miss his old VA.
With all that being said, I thought that this game was overall a lot more generic than the first. First way that's the case is in the art direction, which I'm not the first to point out. I really don't think they used STEM to its full potential the way they did with the previous game; The setting is largely just an ordinary town that while sure, is broken up and floating on multiple islands, isn't itself all that strange, or twisted, outside the final chapters of the game. I think there was some missed potential for seeing the town either gradually become stranger over time as opposed to just it abruptly being set aflame, and then being made completely desolate. And even when the game decides to go for a less grounded style in its levels, like Theodore's tower, or the theater, I don't think it stacks up to the first. But there are some moments where the art direction pops off pretty hard, like at the end of this one sidequest, where you see a ghost(?) of Stefano capping some dude in the head, and right as he fires, it cuts back to our "reality" where the dude is just getting blasted in the head on repeat.
In addition, I think the story of the game isn't particularly good either, even if it IS more focused. Now don't get me wrong, the first game's writing was also pretty bad, but this game's bad writing is bad for different, less entertaining reasons. A huge aspect of what made the first game's bad writing so much fun was how it seemed like none of the characters gave a shit about what was happening to them despite how utterly insane the setting was. Now, we just have poorly acted and written melodrama about Sebastian's wife and kid. Don't even get me started on some of the plot choices; Like, Lilly was found, and kidnapped by Mobius, because her standardized test scores were just that high? What? Also not a fan of how this game handles its villains: Stefano just dies halfway through, revealing he was working for this other, less interesting dude, and then less interesting dude gets murked, and then the final fight is with Myra gone insane, and meanwhile, there's the greater-scope villain, the Administrator, who shows up at the beginning, and at the end just to get killed.
And this is the part where I think people will disagree with me the most, but I also think the gameplay of TEW2 is a step back from the first, despite it building on stealth, and the attempts at more open-ended encounter design. A lot of the interesting mechanics from the first are excised altogether, or heavily pared down. Most obvious of which being the removal of matches.
Matches were a huge part of the risk-reward dynamic that made the first game so much fun, and instead, now we have the stomp, which I think is a vastly inferior mechanic. Let me elaborate a bit on what made the match system so interesting: First off, it was a limited resource where you actually had to weigh up whether it was worth using in a given encounter. Second, matches were not just for finishing off fallen enemies, but also for instantly killing attacking enemies very close by. So if you were willing to risk having enemies get close to you, you could use a single match to wipe out several enemies at once with minimal use of ammo. But if you screwed up and mistimed it, you would either waste a match, and/or get hit, possibly (Or definitely, on Akumu) dying.
Stomping, on the other hand, takes none of your resources (Not even something like stamina, which I think would've made some sense), and ONLY works on enemies who have fallen over already. The risk-reward dynamic that came from matches is gone. And sure, I've seen in-universe justifications for this with stuff like "Fire isn't a weakness of Lilly in the same way it is of Ruvik". Even taking this at word, I think that's an extremely strange decision at best considering how much of a role fire plays in this game's storyline, but that's not really my point. The point is that I think the new mechanics are less interesting than the first game's.
In addition, there are WAY less traps than in the first game; As far as I remember, there's only the explosive red barrels/fallen cars, and oil puddles. I get that the traps were frustrating for a lot of people, but again, it's another decision that heavily weakens the risk-reward dynamics from the first game, and really cuts down on the interesting environmental interactions.
And stealth, which while I appreciate being more fleshed out upon, is completely overpowered, especially when you have the upgrades that let you run over to a dude, and instantly kill them from a distances, and the one where you can kill enemies while in cover. Not to mention that enemies give up looking for you pretty quickly. Given my previous two points, you can probably predict what I have to say about that, at this point.
What else? Oh yeah, critical hits and enemy design. Critical hits are no longer insta-kills on headshot, which is already a pretty hefty nerf, but the enemy design makes them even worse, since enemies erratically jitter around in ways that makes it way more difficult to shoot at them with any sort of precision, making critical hits feel pretty much worthless.
I'll say this: For whatever criticisms I have of this game, I still enjoyed myself. At the end of the day, it's fun to throw a shock bolt into a crowd, and then run up and stomp on everyone's heads. It's fun to sneak up behind enemies, barrel at them full tilt, and then pounce on them with a knife to the neck. It's fun to get up in enemy's faces, and smash their skulls with an axe. I can appreciate the attempt at more accessible, open-ended gameplay, but it's not the type of fun that really makes me want to revisit the game from the same angle, or in the same way as The Evil Within 1 with what it removes and changes.
Before I get into my issues though, I'll say that I DID enjoy this game, albeit for different reasons than the first. I liked the more open-ended nature of the game, both in terms of the overworld map design, and in how you can approach enemies. Encounters in general give you a good amount of leeway between going aggressive, stealthy, and evasion, with that philosophy being extended to some bosses like the Guardian, who's able to be skipped altogether. Stealth also being built upon was also much appreciated, and now it actually feels like it has more of a seat at the table, mechanically speaking. It definitely ended up being one of my favoured approaches.
The more focused, and personal story also definitely had its moments. I did get reasonably invested in Sebastian himself, and generally enjoyed seeing him change from a miserable alcoholic, back into the father he used to be before the events of the first game, though I miss his old VA.
With all that being said, I thought that this game was overall a lot more generic than the first. First way that's the case is in the art direction, which I'm not the first to point out. I really don't think they used STEM to its full potential the way they did with the previous game; The setting is largely just an ordinary town that while sure, is broken up and floating on multiple islands, isn't itself all that strange, or twisted, outside the final chapters of the game. I think there was some missed potential for seeing the town either gradually become stranger over time as opposed to just it abruptly being set aflame, and then being made completely desolate. And even when the game decides to go for a less grounded style in its levels, like Theodore's tower, or the theater, I don't think it stacks up to the first. But there are some moments where the art direction pops off pretty hard, like at the end of this one sidequest, where you see a ghost(?) of Stefano capping some dude in the head, and right as he fires, it cuts back to our "reality" where the dude is just getting blasted in the head on repeat.
In addition, I think the story of the game isn't particularly good either, even if it IS more focused. Now don't get me wrong, the first game's writing was also pretty bad, but this game's bad writing is bad for different, less entertaining reasons. A huge aspect of what made the first game's bad writing so much fun was how it seemed like none of the characters gave a shit about what was happening to them despite how utterly insane the setting was. Now, we just have poorly acted and written melodrama about Sebastian's wife and kid. Don't even get me started on some of the plot choices; Like, Lilly was found, and kidnapped by Mobius, because her standardized test scores were just that high? What? Also not a fan of how this game handles its villains: Stefano just dies halfway through, revealing he was working for this other, less interesting dude, and then less interesting dude gets murked, and then the final fight is with Myra gone insane, and meanwhile, there's the greater-scope villain, the Administrator, who shows up at the beginning, and at the end just to get killed.
And this is the part where I think people will disagree with me the most, but I also think the gameplay of TEW2 is a step back from the first, despite it building on stealth, and the attempts at more open-ended encounter design. A lot of the interesting mechanics from the first are excised altogether, or heavily pared down. Most obvious of which being the removal of matches.
Matches were a huge part of the risk-reward dynamic that made the first game so much fun, and instead, now we have the stomp, which I think is a vastly inferior mechanic. Let me elaborate a bit on what made the match system so interesting: First off, it was a limited resource where you actually had to weigh up whether it was worth using in a given encounter. Second, matches were not just for finishing off fallen enemies, but also for instantly killing attacking enemies very close by. So if you were willing to risk having enemies get close to you, you could use a single match to wipe out several enemies at once with minimal use of ammo. But if you screwed up and mistimed it, you would either waste a match, and/or get hit, possibly (Or definitely, on Akumu) dying.
Stomping, on the other hand, takes none of your resources (Not even something like stamina, which I think would've made some sense), and ONLY works on enemies who have fallen over already. The risk-reward dynamic that came from matches is gone. And sure, I've seen in-universe justifications for this with stuff like "Fire isn't a weakness of Lilly in the same way it is of Ruvik". Even taking this at word, I think that's an extremely strange decision at best considering how much of a role fire plays in this game's storyline, but that's not really my point. The point is that I think the new mechanics are less interesting than the first game's.
In addition, there are WAY less traps than in the first game; As far as I remember, there's only the explosive red barrels/fallen cars, and oil puddles. I get that the traps were frustrating for a lot of people, but again, it's another decision that heavily weakens the risk-reward dynamics from the first game, and really cuts down on the interesting environmental interactions.
And stealth, which while I appreciate being more fleshed out upon, is completely overpowered, especially when you have the upgrades that let you run over to a dude, and instantly kill them from a distances, and the one where you can kill enemies while in cover. Not to mention that enemies give up looking for you pretty quickly. Given my previous two points, you can probably predict what I have to say about that, at this point.
What else? Oh yeah, critical hits and enemy design. Critical hits are no longer insta-kills on headshot, which is already a pretty hefty nerf, but the enemy design makes them even worse, since enemies erratically jitter around in ways that makes it way more difficult to shoot at them with any sort of precision, making critical hits feel pretty much worthless.
I'll say this: For whatever criticisms I have of this game, I still enjoyed myself. At the end of the day, it's fun to throw a shock bolt into a crowd, and then run up and stomp on everyone's heads. It's fun to sneak up behind enemies, barrel at them full tilt, and then pounce on them with a knife to the neck. It's fun to get up in enemy's faces, and smash their skulls with an axe. I can appreciate the attempt at more accessible, open-ended gameplay, but it's not the type of fun that really makes me want to revisit the game from the same angle, or in the same way as The Evil Within 1 with what it removes and changes.
2012
One of the worst action games of all time, and one of the worst games of the 2010s. Nearly everything this game does is an absolute affront to the action genre.
The animations and graphics of the game definitely deserve some amount of praise; Team Ninja has always been at the top of the industry when it comes to animations in action games that are fluid and believable, yet wonderfully stylized and over-the-top, and that's no different here. That's about where my positive comments for the game ends.
The gameplay is a borderline parody of Ninja Gaiden. 1 weapon in the base game, with 2 locked behind DLC. Upgrades entirely out of your control, and driven by story. Myriads of technical issues, from slowdown, to bugs, to dropped inputs, the works. An utterly broken instant kill mechanic with no clear triggers, while also being arbitrarily restricted in certain sections. Terrible bosses that make the chopper from Devil May Cry 2 look like Vergil by comparison. Endless quick-time events in and out of combat. A smaller, and less interesting roster of enemies than both 1, and 2. And of course, walking sections!
The game was also called out for being overly simplistic and mashy when it came out, and that's only half right. Because Master Ninja mode exists! And if you want to use the Dragon Sword on that version, I pray for your sanity. Master Ninja on this version of Ninja Gaiden 3 will absolutely change a person, and I only got through about halfway on there. A tedious, unrelenting nightmare that has to be among the worst higher difficulties of a game I've ever played.
What was all this even for, anyway? To focus in on a better story? Well, they even failed at that, because the story is utter nonsense. It's riddled with plot holes, the characters are flat, and has some of the most insane ludonarrative dissonance ever to be put in a game. This is most notably, and hilariously shown with the ending, which decides to try and outright spell out the moral of the game to the player and give THE answer to its central question (Ryu Hayabusa, hero or murderer?). But get this: It's straight-up wrong. I don't think I've ever seen any piece of media feature writing this blatantly, incompetently blind to what was shown and told directly on-screen. How the hell did Team Ninja consider this to be an improvement over the past game's stories?
All-in-all, just no. This was a complete misfire on Team Ninja's end, and I couldn't be any happier to say that they've redeemed themselves with Razor's Edge as well as their more recent, original output starting from Nioh. This game deserves to be remembered as one of the most embarrassing miscalculations in gaming, and a shining example of how NOT to change a franchise to appeal to a wider audience.
The animations and graphics of the game definitely deserve some amount of praise; Team Ninja has always been at the top of the industry when it comes to animations in action games that are fluid and believable, yet wonderfully stylized and over-the-top, and that's no different here. That's about where my positive comments for the game ends.
The gameplay is a borderline parody of Ninja Gaiden. 1 weapon in the base game, with 2 locked behind DLC. Upgrades entirely out of your control, and driven by story. Myriads of technical issues, from slowdown, to bugs, to dropped inputs, the works. An utterly broken instant kill mechanic with no clear triggers, while also being arbitrarily restricted in certain sections. Terrible bosses that make the chopper from Devil May Cry 2 look like Vergil by comparison. Endless quick-time events in and out of combat. A smaller, and less interesting roster of enemies than both 1, and 2. And of course, walking sections!
The game was also called out for being overly simplistic and mashy when it came out, and that's only half right. Because Master Ninja mode exists! And if you want to use the Dragon Sword on that version, I pray for your sanity. Master Ninja on this version of Ninja Gaiden 3 will absolutely change a person, and I only got through about halfway on there. A tedious, unrelenting nightmare that has to be among the worst higher difficulties of a game I've ever played.
What was all this even for, anyway? To focus in on a better story? Well, they even failed at that, because the story is utter nonsense. It's riddled with plot holes, the characters are flat, and has some of the most insane ludonarrative dissonance ever to be put in a game. This is most notably, and hilariously shown with the ending, which decides to try and outright spell out the moral of the game to the player and give THE answer to its central question (Ryu Hayabusa, hero or murderer?). But get this: It's straight-up wrong. I don't think I've ever seen any piece of media feature writing this blatantly, incompetently blind to what was shown and told directly on-screen. How the hell did Team Ninja consider this to be an improvement over the past game's stories?
All-in-all, just no. This was a complete misfire on Team Ninja's end, and I couldn't be any happier to say that they've redeemed themselves with Razor's Edge as well as their more recent, original output starting from Nioh. This game deserves to be remembered as one of the most embarrassing miscalculations in gaming, and a shining example of how NOT to change a franchise to appeal to a wider audience.