Some style, almost no substance. Attempts to capture the feel of classic samurai films with a monochromatic style but a short and dull story and combat that starts awkward and bland and gets worse makes it hard to recommend.
Combat lacks a visceral feel as even some of the weakest enemies can just ignore and attack through your hits, all getting worse halfway through the game when you start to fight undead and spirits. Combos and parries don't respond well, and parries don't really time like they do in normal video games while also being much easier to do than in most games that have them. Dull collectible hunting, a lot of useless lore items but you can also miss health and stamina increasing items as well as some combos of which there are already few of. All but the most basic enemies will likely have you just using a light, light, heavy combo to stun them to allow for an instant kill finisher that will also regenerate some of your health, these finishers tend to be the only hits that have weight and good looking contact to them but there aren't that many and you will see the same ones even among different styles of enemies. The larger bosses from the later chapters seem to barely function in this style of game and can even just be beaten through sheer brute force on the normal difficulty.
Going from more free explorations to the fights that lock you to only moving left and right once enemies attack leads to some odd moments as enemies can get in each others way and you find you can't quite hit some targets that haven't fully entered the locked plane of movement when other enemies or the environment is in the way. You have to manually turn around with a button press to fight enemies on both sides of you but you quickly get the ability to block from other direction and attacks that can attack behind you and turn you around, that combined with most enemies being in front of you anyway tends to make being surrounded a fairly pointless feature. When it is always easy to just charge the ones in front with a stunning attack anyway I never found much use for all the backwards spin and attack combos you can do, some even coming near the very end of the game when they no longer matter at all. You unlock three ranged weapons that can get you some easy kills while you have ammo for them but none feel particularly satisfying to use. There are some nice visual moments often involving a way an encounter is framed or the background or by the use of fire and water effects but just as often an odd camera angle or the brightness of a certain area can make it difficult to make out enemy attacks.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1733994635239080025
Video: https://youtu.be/1Jla94SsHeg?si=nizpyrRAWYZYiIpe
Combat lacks a visceral feel as even some of the weakest enemies can just ignore and attack through your hits, all getting worse halfway through the game when you start to fight undead and spirits. Combos and parries don't respond well, and parries don't really time like they do in normal video games while also being much easier to do than in most games that have them. Dull collectible hunting, a lot of useless lore items but you can also miss health and stamina increasing items as well as some combos of which there are already few of. All but the most basic enemies will likely have you just using a light, light, heavy combo to stun them to allow for an instant kill finisher that will also regenerate some of your health, these finishers tend to be the only hits that have weight and good looking contact to them but there aren't that many and you will see the same ones even among different styles of enemies. The larger bosses from the later chapters seem to barely function in this style of game and can even just be beaten through sheer brute force on the normal difficulty.
Going from more free explorations to the fights that lock you to only moving left and right once enemies attack leads to some odd moments as enemies can get in each others way and you find you can't quite hit some targets that haven't fully entered the locked plane of movement when other enemies or the environment is in the way. You have to manually turn around with a button press to fight enemies on both sides of you but you quickly get the ability to block from other direction and attacks that can attack behind you and turn you around, that combined with most enemies being in front of you anyway tends to make being surrounded a fairly pointless feature. When it is always easy to just charge the ones in front with a stunning attack anyway I never found much use for all the backwards spin and attack combos you can do, some even coming near the very end of the game when they no longer matter at all. You unlock three ranged weapons that can get you some easy kills while you have ammo for them but none feel particularly satisfying to use. There are some nice visual moments often involving a way an encounter is framed or the background or by the use of fire and water effects but just as often an odd camera angle or the brightness of a certain area can make it difficult to make out enemy attacks.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1733994635239080025
Video: https://youtu.be/1Jla94SsHeg?si=nizpyrRAWYZYiIpe