I love the Sorrow cast and a good IGAvania more than anything but so many things about this game piss me off.
It feels like beating a dead horse to complain about the art style shift, but the change is stark and depressing. The pseudo-anime opening is charming and ALMOST makes it up to me personally, but the character redesigns are so fucking ugly that it doesn't quite do it for me. There are also way better anime art style choices that could have been used and still been viable for animation like that.
The writing has some semi-solid ideas but its quality is only second-worst to Legends to me given it's working with pre-established characters and just completely ignored their pre-established traits, for the most part.
The soundtrack wins A LOT of points back -- really worked with the DS hardware extremely well and as a veteran HOD fan I can appreciate that.
The gameplay's great, if you can ignore the glitched, non-effective luck stats making a couple of major gameplay features (souls & the weapon forge) completely useless. The seal mechanic is unnecessary and cumbersome, as well, but nowhere near the most uncomfortable experience I've had with a DS-family game before.
Additionally, 100%-ing the game requires NG+, which is infuriating to any completionist who isn't aware of that going in.
It feels like beating a dead horse to complain about the art style shift, but the change is stark and depressing. The pseudo-anime opening is charming and ALMOST makes it up to me personally, but the character redesigns are so fucking ugly that it doesn't quite do it for me. There are also way better anime art style choices that could have been used and still been viable for animation like that.
The writing has some semi-solid ideas but its quality is only second-worst to Legends to me given it's working with pre-established characters and just completely ignored their pre-established traits, for the most part.
The soundtrack wins A LOT of points back -- really worked with the DS hardware extremely well and as a veteran HOD fan I can appreciate that.
The gameplay's great, if you can ignore the glitched, non-effective luck stats making a couple of major gameplay features (souls & the weapon forge) completely useless. The seal mechanic is unnecessary and cumbersome, as well, but nowhere near the most uncomfortable experience I've had with a DS-family game before.
Additionally, 100%-ing the game requires NG+, which is infuriating to any completionist who isn't aware of that going in.