The combat is really cool when it works, but I felt like too many of the skills were resource limited early on, and if you weren't in an environment with pits or spikes to combine with the kick it could easily turn into a slog. A real shame with how great the combat feels when everything's flowing. The skill tree progression is also a little slow, you do end up with a decent amount by the end, but I like that you can't unlock everything in one playthrough. It does feel worth going back to and trying a different build, maybe to get a different ending. There's also a lot of cool weapons, but many of them you don't get until very late in the game and they're locked behind skills you have to spec into. I would've liked to see the early unlocks go a bit faster. The inventory management is also pretty bad, and you end up with way too many things you want to actively use to fit on your hotbar, but opening the inventory doesn't pause combat so that feels unnecessarily limiting. Especially when one of your slots basically has to be permanently taken up by the night vision skill to see in the mostly very dark levels.
The level design is okay, there's some really good combat encounter areas, but I felt like many of the levels, especially in the back half of the game, were long and confusing on where to go. The objectives often don't really tell you anything about where you should be going. Also like I mentioned above, half of the game is just pitch black and you have to use the ugly inverted colors night vision. It's a shame, because this game looks amazing for its time and some of the areas that are actually well lit are very cool looking.
The story is pretty basic, and extremely horny. I didn't care much for the writing or characters, but I did like that it has some actual impact on the gameplay. You do get control over which characters live or die, and gameplay rewards related to the path you chose (though those could be fleshed out a bit more, I really wish the demon form was more useful, maybe with its own skill tree).
A really fun game overall, even if it's very janky on a technical level and crashed on me a good bit. You can definitely see the roots of early Arkane here, and if you enjoy their later games, or like physics focused combat like Half-Life 2, this is worth a try.
Silverhand
1 year ago
The combat is really cool when it works, but I felt like too many of the skills were resource limited early on, and if you weren't in an environment with pits or spikes to combine with the kick it could easily turn into a slog. A real shame with how great the combat feels when everything's flowing. The skill tree progression is also a little slow, you do end up with a decent amount by the end, but I like that you can't unlock everything in one playthrough. It does feel worth going back to and trying a different build, maybe to get a different ending. There's also a lot of cool weapons, but many of them you don't get until very late in the game and they're locked behind skills you have to spec into. I would've liked to see the early unlocks go a bit faster. The inventory management is also pretty bad, and you end up with way too many things you want to actively use to fit on your hotbar, but opening the inventory doesn't pause combat so that feels unnecessarily limiting. Especially when one of your slots basically has to be permanently taken up by the night vision skill to see in the mostly very dark levels.
The level design is okay, there's some really good combat encounter areas, but I felt like many of the levels, especially in the back half of the game, were long and confusing on where to go. The objectives often don't really tell you anything about where you should be going. Also like I mentioned above, half of the game is just pitch black and you have to use the ugly inverted colors night vision. It's a shame, because this game looks amazing for its time and some of the areas that are actually well lit are very cool looking.
The story is pretty basic, and extremely horny. I didn't care much for the writing or characters, but I did like that it has some actual impact on the gameplay. You do get control over which characters live or die, and gameplay rewards related to the path you chose (though those could be fleshed out a bit more, I really wish the demon form was more useful, maybe with its own skill tree).
A really fun game overall, even if it's very janky on a technical level and crashed on me a good bit. You can definitely see the roots of early Arkane here, and if you enjoy their later games, or like physics focused combat like Half-Life 2, this is worth a try.