Sholmes said:
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa....whoa.
Are you telling me that Bebpo's damning criticism before hand wasn't entirely accurate?
Obviously, it's an opinion thing, but I actually really enjoyed the demo. The story didn't really do anything for me yet (too early to judge), but the game is pretty fun. It's a freaking action RPG, you aren't going to get DMC3 quality combat here. The combat system that IS here actually offers quite a bit more than your average ARPG.
The world is beautiful and seems like it could be large, the combat is fun and fairly responsive, and the music is just awesome and the VA is good. It really depends on what they do with the rest of the game, though. If they provide a lot of environmental variety and throw some cool dungeons (or dungeon-like) areas in to the game, it could rock. The demo just doesn't reveal enough.
Honestly, my main complaint is the lack of any blocking. I think that would seriously add to the combat...
I'll address his points, though...
-The way you walk around and navigate feels 'off'. It's like you're floating and sliding around when you move.
Disagree. The way a character moves through the world is very important to me. When it is off, I will be bothered all the way through. In this case, however, the movement and animation of that movement feels very good to me. I happen to love the analog disc, though, so not everyone will enjoy the feeling of movement.
-The load times are pretty crappy, but hey it's PSP.
No, they really aren't. In fact, I was astonished at how well they hide a lot of the loading times. Loadtimes are encountered between maps and between scenes. Only when moving between maps do you ever actually see 'now loading", and even then, it isn't long enough to be bothered. The presentation is very polished. Transitions into menus and everything are awesome. It doesn't feel as if it is being hampered by load times. For the record, it takes just shy of 6 seconds to load a new area (just timed it now). I'd hardly call that crappy and it only occurs when you shift the scene. Everything else is free of loading.
-Long boring cutscenes. Long cutscenes might be ok in a console game, but when you're on the go or something sitting and watching a 3-5 min scene of people talking is pretty boring and bad pacing.
I honestly don't mind them. They are fairly well animated and expressive. This game isn't designed to be played in short bursts either. Actually, my first play through of the demo was on a train riding from Hiroshima to Nagoya. Just threw on some noise blocking ear phones and enjoyed the game. If you were only going a short distance, this isn't the game to take with you.
-Controls are pretty bad, like I said earlier movement feels off, and there is almost no depth or fun to the battle system. You can't even block and you only have 1 attack button. R switches through 'stances' and each one has one attack string. But you can't even change stances mid combo. So it's just watching the same attack string over and over, and then you hit R and you watch another one over and over. You can go into the menu and disable hits on the string (like if it was 5 hits you can turn off hit 3 and it'll skip from 2->4) but that doesn't make it any better or less repetitive. You also get a button to use items like health where you'll stand still and drink a health thing.
That isn't really incorrect, but it isn't exactly "un-fun" either. It's an ARPG, afterall. Whether or not this works in the end depends on level design, however.
-Connected to why the battle system sucks, you can't control the camera (woohoo! @_@) both digital and analogue are movement and so not only do you get disorientated and lost in buildings...but you can't even look forward when you're walking down a trail and SEE THE ENEMY GROUP AHEAD.
I had no problems with the camera. It's a scripted, almost side-view like camera. I never found myself lost amongst structures and what not. They built the environment to support the camera. It's better than the cameras in games like DMC and Onimusha, and those are entirely action based.
Have to wait and see, but really, I thought it was pretty fun and has plenty of potential. They COULD screw it up, though....