Posted 25 April 2012 - 02:05 AM
The demo hit JP PSN yesterday, and I played it. Sadly, I was underwhelmed by it.
Is it out in the West yet?
Here are my detailed impressions on it:
Graphics: (The good)Standard Fare now-a-days. The lighting is amazing, the colors and textures are vibrant and fit the style/mood of the setting quite well. The environment effects and everything else is fairly good, top-notch. Probably on par and exceeding say Dark Souls and Biohazard 5 in some elements.
Graphics (the not so good): Animations for some of the characters while fluid, get jerky here and there and it can be distracting. The screen clutters with a lot of stuff and as a result some minor slowdown ensues but not a deal breaker by any means but yeah it is still there. Frame jitters occurs often when the action is too hot and camera placement gets obstructive in some cases when action is too intense and you are next to a larger polycount enemy/boss. I don't need to elaborate on how awful that can be (death by camera stubbornness, always sucks).
Controls (the good): Controls are fluid, you will slash, stab, jump, and everything else on cue. The A.I. Companions also are non intrusive in your movement and for the most part seem to ease your flow into the game world.
Controls (the bad): Attack patterns on some weapons change drastically depending on distance to foes, where by normal sword slashes feel like cumbersome great sword swings. Very distracting and overly conflicting with the style of fighting the weapon seems to offer at first. Ranged fighting is cumbersome at best, as you have to aim, then release to shoot, the counter intuitive control scheme for this on MOVING targets makes for not so much. Compound this with the fact that there seems to be no way to lock on or easily track a target, and ranged battles on some foes seem nigh impossible. While the scheme is like monster hunter in that regard, it lacks all the grace of the MH formula in execution. Think Biohazard 5 slow panning but against things that move 3 to 4 times faster....
Gameplay (the good):Character creation is detailed (close to Dark Souls detailed) you can choose appearance, gender, ears, lips, voice, leg shape, body shape, the works! From the get go you can make a highly personalized character and sidekick that you can relate to or that you like looking at. Getting A.I. Allies seems to be snap. They are non intrusive and actually helpful, they will heal you when you need it and will in general clear a baddy or two for your when fighting a large groups of foes. They back you up, but don't do the whole job for you. The menu system is clear to follow and objectives and controls are clearly labeled on screen. The combat hud is useful and displays your active/possible actions clearly.
Gameplay(the needs work part): I will be a little more forgiving here for the demo, but considering the release is less than a month away....it is just the wishful thinking on my part talking. I could make a huge list but I will just write the basics of what left me feeling disappointed. The general HUD, is cluttered with useless information. While you can turn a lot of it off, some of it is pertinent to your game. I don7t care to hear my companions opinions too much during down time nor do I care to be summoned by them when I am lagging behind enjoying the scenery. Just a personal preference but yeah I found it distracting. The varying control scheme when fighting while fun, gets confusing quickly, you end up resorting to the simplest fastest attack types possible and counting on your A.I.s for support abilities more often than not. Specially healing since getting to items on the fly isn't that obvious from the combat HUD and seems to be a run-off of the general HUD. Very wonky. Combat can feel further disjointed by varying or multiple and all viable combat alternatives being spewed by your companions on the general HUD, assuming you are not busy trying to staying alive and can actually notice what they are saying to you. Free flow of styles is not well implemented despite having the ability to switch some weapon types on the fly, it is not clear enough or explained how to pull that off effectively and smoothly. A real downer. You are warned to not wander at night but are given no means to hunker down and await for day light so the warning is moot because you are forced to fight at night anyway. Pointless game mechanic. And I'll stop there.
Overall The demo could have been better considering the release is so close. As it is, it is just a display show that will run you 30 to 40 minutes MAX and not really compel you to purchase it. The setting is old and tired (dragons, castles, dungeons). The goals while clear have also been beaten to death (beat the dragon, move on the next objective, do that move on the next objective). The game does excel at giving you the atmosphere of a huge active MMO complete with banter from your A.I.s that actually sounds applicable (the Goat's head is silenced! press your attack!) It actually felt like I was with a team of thinking people, but the novelty quickly wore thin when they spewed too much information and cluttered out the important bits in their droning. The fact that they seem to compete for attention only made it worse.
As it stands it feels and looks like standard fare for this generation of consoles, the presentation while solid is not imaginative in the slightest. The gameplay while promising is disjointed and could use more tweaking. The story (who knows) though it can be pieced together from the trailers, it still not that compelling. The combat/general HUD needs tweaking or integration, and the weapon performance needs more consistency. Overall a C effort from in overall execution.
狩人の名前：狼子 （Los)
狩人級：（２ｎｄG：９）（３ｒｄ：６）
Flaxfire 
Quel33, on 14 April 2011 - 01:15 PM, said:
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