A game directed by Hideaki Itsuno, I should really like it, but I don't.

I'm honestly baffled as to all the praise this game gets, especially regarding its combat. I found it very clunky, unresponsive and not really complex. I've played a number of Action RPGs, and you can't tell me this is one of the better examples of combat in the genre. It's especially disappointing coming from the director of Devil May Cry 3 and 4, which have some of the best combat in any game ever.

One of the main gimmicks of this game is climbing onto huge monsters, which is apparently a feature first introduced in Shadow of the Colossus. Now, I've not played Shadow of the Colossus, but I have seen this feature in another game - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I didn't like it there, and I don't like it here. I don't really see why people find it exciting to turn a boss fight into a slow and tedious platforming section. It's awkward and frustrating, as the camera keeps shifting and altering your directional controls, and the monster keeps throwing you off before you manage to reach the head. In addition, if you play as a mage (which is the mistake I made on my first attempt), this feature is completely lost on you, because you're a ranged and vulnerable class that should stay away from the enemies and can shoot them in the head from a distance.

I mean, that's kinda a half-truth, because you can't really aim with your regular attack as a mage. Only with your skills, which it takes forever to cast. That is if your button presses register, which they might not, because the controls and animations are so ass. You have to hold down Ctrl or Alt and then click one of the mouse buttons (and hold it? Sometimes? I'm not sure tbh), and the skill ends up being cast when you release Ctrl or Alt, not when you release the mouse button. This is incredibly counter-intuitive. And because the animations are so long and can't be cancelled, sometimes you press Ctrl/Alt right after you released it but before the animation is done, and your character just ends up standing there. And you're just waiting for like a second for him to do something, because you can't tell whether the button press wasn't registered or it's just the animation taking up so long, or perhaps he ran out of stamina again, which he does constantly.

I hated stamina in Diablo 2, like most people, and could never understand its point in action-RPGs. I suppose here it functions as a sort of mana substitute. Except, the problem is, it's wasted on sprinting and blocking as well. What this essentially means is that ever action, aside from your standard attack, requires mana. And, I might be wrong about this, but I didn't see any way to tie potions to hotkeys. I have to go into the [extremely inconvenient] inventory in the midst of a battle, because my character needs a rest after every action, like he's 80 years old. Especially after blocking an enemy attack, leaving you vulnerable to a second attack.

But out of the three classes, it seems only the warrior can block enemy attacks, which is detrimental to the flow of combat. Every hit stuns you for a moment, making you unable to retaliate or break the enemy's attack-chain, and some hits knock you down, which will take you another couple of seconds to get up, during which your character doesn't respond to any button presses. If you're a magician, it's even worse, because your own attacks leave you immovable as well. You're a ranged class that can neither aim nor move while shooting. Which means you get hit and knocked down even more, which makes the whole gameplay extremely frustrating.

Kinda had more fun as a scout, who is more nimble and can actually aim and move when shooting arrows. Replayed the same portion of the game and a little more, and was surprised to run into all the exact same enemies. I kinda thought I had this many fights because I strayed away from the road (which the game warns you not to stray from), but no, you're still ambushed by enemies like every 30 seconds. And these are mostly the same types of enemies: bandits and wolves, and they're fought in the same way every time.

So after 3 boss battles and a shit ton of random encounters, you'd think there'd be some downtime for RPGing and stuff, but nope, an escort mission. I tried to force myself to play through it and died by accidentally falling off a cliff, and that's when I finally gave up. And while this death was totally on me, the level geometry in this game is pretty bizarre in general. There was a moment earlier where I slid down from a tiny hill, and then couldn't climb back up. It was about a 50 degree angle, only about a meter long, even a child could've climbed it, but not my character.

I can't really comment much on the RPG aspects of this game, but in my short time with it I barely encountered any. I leveled up a bunch of times and purchased one skill, but that is all. The game never offered me to manage stats or created a necessity to manage loot. Perhaps I missed something because I was skipping the majority of the tutorial pop-ups, but they were so goddamn annoying. 90% of the time the things they tell you are either obvious or something you had already figured out just by circumstances. Can't really say I cared about the story either. There was a bunch of generic fantasy exposition dumped on me, but I did not notice anything interesting.

I found the graphics ugly too, despite the fact they're using the same engine as Devil May Cry 4, which is a gorgeous game.

There were exactly 2 things I liked about this game: the customization and the music. That's it. Nothing else.