Holy shit, really the perfect culmination of all of the best parts of KF1+2. Playing this one specifically feels like taking a FromSoft art history class, there's so much here to pick apart and trace into the future, down to what I think is the studio's first ever poison swamp,
This time the game follows my favorite kind of open world design, being one giant map that's segmented up into smaller open areas that connect in clear ways. I rarely found myself getting lost like I did in the previous games. It really helps that you receive an automapper as soon as the world gets more convoluted, which I expected would take the fun away from mapping the areas myself but instead made it a little easier to focus on the rewards of exploration. The exploration was one of my biggest complaints with KF2, as it always felt like the reward was just XP, and no area was clearly delineated from other ones, so any exploration felt like a neverending tangent. The way the levels are formatted here feels a lot more like future souls games, where you're very aware when you've crossed a boundary into a new area, and you have a clear line to go back and keep exploring if you feel like you missed anything.
I'm really enchanted by these games, it feels like no matter what my final "rating" is they still have a really special grip on me. I'm more excited than ever to play Shadow Tower and KF4, I can feel a tangible edge between KF3 and Shadow Tower and I'm anticipating that everything after this is going to have a huge impact on me as an artist and an enjoyer of art.
This time the game follows my favorite kind of open world design, being one giant map that's segmented up into smaller open areas that connect in clear ways. I rarely found myself getting lost like I did in the previous games. It really helps that you receive an automapper as soon as the world gets more convoluted, which I expected would take the fun away from mapping the areas myself but instead made it a little easier to focus on the rewards of exploration. The exploration was one of my biggest complaints with KF2, as it always felt like the reward was just XP, and no area was clearly delineated from other ones, so any exploration felt like a neverending tangent. The way the levels are formatted here feels a lot more like future souls games, where you're very aware when you've crossed a boundary into a new area, and you have a clear line to go back and keep exploring if you feel like you missed anything.
I'm really enchanted by these games, it feels like no matter what my final "rating" is they still have a really special grip on me. I'm more excited than ever to play Shadow Tower and KF4, I can feel a tangible edge between KF3 and Shadow Tower and I'm anticipating that everything after this is going to have a huge impact on me as an artist and an enjoyer of art.