(Hopefully) least controversial thing first: the story sucks.
It’s not just “revenge bad”, it’s also “have you ever considered that the people who murdered you in cold blood might actually be the good guys? Bet you didn’t! Bet you feel really bad now huh?”
Also, it’s very funny that this game lets you spare bosses after killing all of their underlings (or the “drug addicts that they control”, yikes), that’s like ludonarrative dissonance 101.
I don’t particularly like the gameplay either. Attacking is fun but dodging feels very unreliable. There’s not enough feedback for whether you successfully parry or not. I also felt like parries barely did anything but who knows if I actually parried all that much, I certainly don’t. Also, when fighting groups, enemies are mostly waiting their turn, which just an occasional punch from someone you’re not currently engaged with to keep up the illusion of fighting many at once.
The game’s difficulty is almost entirely based on attrition. On a micro level, each individual fight (other than the boss fights) is pretty easy and you mostly just die because the chip damage accumulated too much.
And on a macro level, a singular death doesn’t matter all that much, you just age with every single death and eventually you’re 70 and your next death will be your last. So, if you’re struggling with the last level, you might have to replay older levels and get better at them so you’re younger at the start. I’m personally not a fan of attrition as a major form of difficulty.
How much the game’s difficulty relies on this attrition becomes obvious in the easy mode which I activated after getting frustrated during the second level. Easy mode reduces enemy aggression, simplifies some of their attacks, and most importantly heals you fully after every major combat encounter and slows down the rate at which you age when dying. These last two changes made the game trivial to me, I ended up beating the rest of the game in less time than I spend dying over and over in the first two levels. I’m not complaining that the easy mode is easy, I’m complaining that the difficulty falls too much from the previous difficulty option, I’d have preferred a mode between easy and normal.
The existence of shortcuts is very weird. You’d think that the game wants you to run levels over and over, improving each time, getting your age down. But for every level you unlock something that allows you to skip ~80% of the level. Would love to hear from someone who enjoys the game how they feel about the shortcuts.
The upgrade system is very interesting, but unfortunately, anything you spend on focus actions and weapons will be wasted on the final boss. I spent almost everything I had on focus actions and weapons so I imagine I would have been very frustrated by the final boss if the difficulty mode hadn’t made the entire game as easy as it did.
Don't want to be too negative so I'll also say that I think the game is really beautiful and it's the first time I've seen any game make interesting use of the speaker built into the ds4 controller.
I can see why people enjoy this game, but unfortunately, it’s really not my cup of tea.
It’s not just “revenge bad”, it’s also “have you ever considered that the people who murdered you in cold blood might actually be the good guys? Bet you didn’t! Bet you feel really bad now huh?”
Also, it’s very funny that this game lets you spare bosses after killing all of their underlings (or the “drug addicts that they control”, yikes), that’s like ludonarrative dissonance 101.
I don’t particularly like the gameplay either. Attacking is fun but dodging feels very unreliable. There’s not enough feedback for whether you successfully parry or not. I also felt like parries barely did anything but who knows if I actually parried all that much, I certainly don’t. Also, when fighting groups, enemies are mostly waiting their turn, which just an occasional punch from someone you’re not currently engaged with to keep up the illusion of fighting many at once.
The game’s difficulty is almost entirely based on attrition. On a micro level, each individual fight (other than the boss fights) is pretty easy and you mostly just die because the chip damage accumulated too much.
And on a macro level, a singular death doesn’t matter all that much, you just age with every single death and eventually you’re 70 and your next death will be your last. So, if you’re struggling with the last level, you might have to replay older levels and get better at them so you’re younger at the start. I’m personally not a fan of attrition as a major form of difficulty.
How much the game’s difficulty relies on this attrition becomes obvious in the easy mode which I activated after getting frustrated during the second level. Easy mode reduces enemy aggression, simplifies some of their attacks, and most importantly heals you fully after every major combat encounter and slows down the rate at which you age when dying. These last two changes made the game trivial to me, I ended up beating the rest of the game in less time than I spend dying over and over in the first two levels. I’m not complaining that the easy mode is easy, I’m complaining that the difficulty falls too much from the previous difficulty option, I’d have preferred a mode between easy and normal.
The existence of shortcuts is very weird. You’d think that the game wants you to run levels over and over, improving each time, getting your age down. But for every level you unlock something that allows you to skip ~80% of the level. Would love to hear from someone who enjoys the game how they feel about the shortcuts.
The upgrade system is very interesting, but unfortunately, anything you spend on focus actions and weapons will be wasted on the final boss. I spent almost everything I had on focus actions and weapons so I imagine I would have been very frustrated by the final boss if the difficulty mode hadn’t made the entire game as easy as it did.
Don't want to be too negative so I'll also say that I think the game is really beautiful and it's the first time I've seen any game make interesting use of the speaker built into the ds4 controller.
I can see why people enjoy this game, but unfortunately, it’s really not my cup of tea.