Forever Kingdom manages to be worse than Evergrace. This game is just awful. By far the worst From Software game I have played.
Two individual stories from Evergrace is replaced with three characters you can swap between at will (with a single shared health pool). This actually doesn't matter much other than that each character has a magic attack assigned that you can execute at will. Each character has individual equipment, so you could conceivably specialize them for fighting certain enemies, but I didn't find this to be that feasible without a ton of grinding.
Combat is astoundingly bad, even worse feeling than Evergrace.
Camera control is just as awkward and unwieldy, with only the ability to center the camera behind you while you run around monsters avoiding their attacks and setting up your own.
Every attack has extreme, vulnerable windup and extreme, committed recovery and every hit you take knocks you back and onto the ground for a tedious stand up animation. Your attacks can be chained into combos, but the timing is severely punishing and you are just as likely to get knocked out of your combo by the enemy anyway. Additionally, enemies do ludicrous amounts of damage with 1-2 hit kills being very common even if you are wearing the correct armor. There was never a point where I enjoyed anything about the combat and was simply frustrated for my entire playtime.
The narrative is more straightforward and actually makes sense. The characters and motivations are more clear and some of the world is explored here. It is kind of a bummer that the game is so unplayable, because I wouldn't mind seeing where it goes, even though it is pretty simple and predictable (at least as far as I played).
There are some beautiful scenes and the game looks much better than Evergrace.
The paper doll system returns, and it seems like they did away with the related puzzle mechanics for the most part. This game is just keys/locks and (really awful) combat. The actual level design is uneventful fields and repetitive dungeon mazes.
Evergrace is bad, but tolerable. Forever Kingdom throws what was tolerable out the window in favor of one of the worst feeling action combat systems I have used.
Even though the narrative has its legs under it this time, don't play this game.
Two individual stories from Evergrace is replaced with three characters you can swap between at will (with a single shared health pool). This actually doesn't matter much other than that each character has a magic attack assigned that you can execute at will. Each character has individual equipment, so you could conceivably specialize them for fighting certain enemies, but I didn't find this to be that feasible without a ton of grinding.
Combat is astoundingly bad, even worse feeling than Evergrace.
Camera control is just as awkward and unwieldy, with only the ability to center the camera behind you while you run around monsters avoiding their attacks and setting up your own.
Every attack has extreme, vulnerable windup and extreme, committed recovery and every hit you take knocks you back and onto the ground for a tedious stand up animation. Your attacks can be chained into combos, but the timing is severely punishing and you are just as likely to get knocked out of your combo by the enemy anyway. Additionally, enemies do ludicrous amounts of damage with 1-2 hit kills being very common even if you are wearing the correct armor. There was never a point where I enjoyed anything about the combat and was simply frustrated for my entire playtime.
The narrative is more straightforward and actually makes sense. The characters and motivations are more clear and some of the world is explored here. It is kind of a bummer that the game is so unplayable, because I wouldn't mind seeing where it goes, even though it is pretty simple and predictable (at least as far as I played).
There are some beautiful scenes and the game looks much better than Evergrace.
The paper doll system returns, and it seems like they did away with the related puzzle mechanics for the most part. This game is just keys/locks and (really awful) combat. The actual level design is uneventful fields and repetitive dungeon mazes.
Evergrace is bad, but tolerable. Forever Kingdom throws what was tolerable out the window in favor of one of the worst feeling action combat systems I have used.
Even though the narrative has its legs under it this time, don't play this game.