Damn, even the one thing people liked about deathloop (the kick) wasn't even original, they did it first here
Honestly kind of upset I didn't know about this game back in my Valve phase in High School bc even with though it's VERY flawed I would've been all over it.
The story's flat out just bad, but I think it bounces back and becomes a bit funny at points for how hard it tries. It's as generic medieval as it gets but the fact that Sareth is the most clueless person on the planet and keeps going with the demon chick in your head that constantly wants to bang you despite being very clearly evil is kinda funny to me.
The core melee combat straight up never gets old. Everything has good weight to it and the ragdolls are always funny even if it is jank at points. I feel like archery and most of the magic abilities are kind of useless and only show their uses sometimes but even still it's a solid foundation. Where the game really loses steam for me is during the later half when you fight mostly non-humanoid enemies. Spiders are just annoying to fight period and undead take FOREVER unless you've got a weapon that explicitly works against them, which you don't get until near the end of the game and if you have strength 3. Chapter 5 and 6 were the absolute worse with this and it didn't help either they had some of the worst levels in the game. I didn't get lost at all until those levels because it's only then when it decides that it wants to be revolved around solving a puzzle in one area.
Some of the skills are also kind of just useless imo, and really feel like they're just there because either they felt they needed it to be there or were just remnants of when they wanted this game to be Arx II and didn't bother to remove it. Stealth exists and can be done but it's honestly not well executed or really that fun to do, burglary is honest to god only used for some treasure chests that have locks and nothing else, and pickpocketing just speaks for itself, there's no reason to ever use it.
That's the biggest thing with this game. When it sticks to what it does best (being a FPP Melee game with light imsim elements), it's really fun. When it tries to be more then that, it falls flat on it's face. Again, I get they wanted this game to be Arx Fatalis II before realizing they couldn't get the rights anymore, and Ubisoft was the only company willing to fund their game so long as they tied it to M&M, but at a certain point I feel like they should've just ditched some of those other aspects they wanted and just focused on what worked, being the general melee combat.
Only other issue is this game no matter what is unstable as shit. It's probably the most unstable Source game I've played period. I did the hex edit fix so that the game would use more then 2GB of ram and even then it still crashed pretty often, alongside sometimes just softlocking if I alt-tabbed. I'm curious to see if that improves over time though with Ubisoft actually giving this game's community free reign over modding support now. Overall, worth a play if you find for very cheap. Not perfect, but worth experiencing just for the gameplay alone.
Honestly kind of upset I didn't know about this game back in my Valve phase in High School bc even with though it's VERY flawed I would've been all over it.
The story's flat out just bad, but I think it bounces back and becomes a bit funny at points for how hard it tries. It's as generic medieval as it gets but the fact that Sareth is the most clueless person on the planet and keeps going with the demon chick in your head that constantly wants to bang you despite being very clearly evil is kinda funny to me.
The core melee combat straight up never gets old. Everything has good weight to it and the ragdolls are always funny even if it is jank at points. I feel like archery and most of the magic abilities are kind of useless and only show their uses sometimes but even still it's a solid foundation. Where the game really loses steam for me is during the later half when you fight mostly non-humanoid enemies. Spiders are just annoying to fight period and undead take FOREVER unless you've got a weapon that explicitly works against them, which you don't get until near the end of the game and if you have strength 3. Chapter 5 and 6 were the absolute worse with this and it didn't help either they had some of the worst levels in the game. I didn't get lost at all until those levels because it's only then when it decides that it wants to be revolved around solving a puzzle in one area.
Some of the skills are also kind of just useless imo, and really feel like they're just there because either they felt they needed it to be there or were just remnants of when they wanted this game to be Arx II and didn't bother to remove it. Stealth exists and can be done but it's honestly not well executed or really that fun to do, burglary is honest to god only used for some treasure chests that have locks and nothing else, and pickpocketing just speaks for itself, there's no reason to ever use it.
That's the biggest thing with this game. When it sticks to what it does best (being a FPP Melee game with light imsim elements), it's really fun. When it tries to be more then that, it falls flat on it's face. Again, I get they wanted this game to be Arx Fatalis II before realizing they couldn't get the rights anymore, and Ubisoft was the only company willing to fund their game so long as they tied it to M&M, but at a certain point I feel like they should've just ditched some of those other aspects they wanted and just focused on what worked, being the general melee combat.
Only other issue is this game no matter what is unstable as shit. It's probably the most unstable Source game I've played period. I did the hex edit fix so that the game would use more then 2GB of ram and even then it still crashed pretty often, alongside sometimes just softlocking if I alt-tabbed. I'm curious to see if that improves over time though with Ubisoft actually giving this game's community free reign over modding support now. Overall, worth a play if you find for very cheap. Not perfect, but worth experiencing just for the gameplay alone.