It should not be possible for a platform-defining AAA game in 2022 to have writing this good. Everything I know about the material realities of game production make me believe that anything this nuanced, this heartfelt, this willing to sacrifice "gaminess" in exchange for a truer and deeper story, should crumple like cardboard under the sheer size of teams needed to coordinate a game of this size and expense. And yet: here it is. A top notch example of writing not just for games but for storytelling as a whole, not just sitting in an 80 hour video game but earning the time it asks you to spend on it.
The writing is easily enough to make this game worth playing, but the rest of it is certainly solid enough not to turn a player away. The core combat systems are very strong, but they're hampered by the fact that the encounter design doesn't seem to know quite what to do with it. The player's moveset is built around a Dark Souls-style framework of asking the player to understand and commit to the wind-ups of their attacks in order to land powerful hits, but the battles don't seem to understand this. Enemies will teleport around the arena and only stagger unpredictably as though they're meant for a style of game much more like the original God of War series, effectively punishing the player at random for trying to reason through combat like the system seems to demand.
The encounters also lean heavily on fights with multiple enemies to dial up the difficulty. Although there are a fair number of (delightful!) fights with particularly tricky single enemies, the more challenging fights involving groups almost uniformly suck. Again, the combat system doesn't seem to be designed for this: enemies can freely attack even when they're offscreen, meaning that any commitment the player makes to attack the enemy they're focused on can just get broken by a projectile or mob slamming in from nowhere.
The right hand doesn't seem to know what the left hand is doing, which is honestly what I expect everywhere in a game this size. The fact that the combat works as well as it does given that is still impressive, and the fact that the writing is straight up excellent is nothing short of a miracle.
The writing is easily enough to make this game worth playing, but the rest of it is certainly solid enough not to turn a player away. The core combat systems are very strong, but they're hampered by the fact that the encounter design doesn't seem to know quite what to do with it. The player's moveset is built around a Dark Souls-style framework of asking the player to understand and commit to the wind-ups of their attacks in order to land powerful hits, but the battles don't seem to understand this. Enemies will teleport around the arena and only stagger unpredictably as though they're meant for a style of game much more like the original God of War series, effectively punishing the player at random for trying to reason through combat like the system seems to demand.
The encounters also lean heavily on fights with multiple enemies to dial up the difficulty. Although there are a fair number of (delightful!) fights with particularly tricky single enemies, the more challenging fights involving groups almost uniformly suck. Again, the combat system doesn't seem to be designed for this: enemies can freely attack even when they're offscreen, meaning that any commitment the player makes to attack the enemy they're focused on can just get broken by a projectile or mob slamming in from nowhere.
The right hand doesn't seem to know what the left hand is doing, which is honestly what I expect everywhere in a game this size. The fact that the combat works as well as it does given that is still impressive, and the fact that the writing is straight up excellent is nothing short of a miracle.