My thoughts on this game last week after having time only for mission 0 - "this is okay I guess , not sure I'm playing it correctly though". I was left mildly frustrated with the camera and obviously the first level doesn't have zandetsu right off the bat either so some of the cooler mechanics don't exist yet.
Yesterday I finally had time to play some more and made it most of the way through mission 1 ... my initial thought that I had to be playing it incorrectly proved to be correct. Without a dodge,roll or block button the game literally gives you no choice but to parry everything and you get a crash course fighting Wolf. Also, why are half the tutorial levels blocked off ? would it not make more sense to give the player all of them at the start and while they're at it open up the first couple VR missions too , they showcase some of the mechanics without as harsh a penalty as the main game. I ended up quitting last night in the warehouse section before the first real boss fight wondering what to make of this whole affair.
Today, as with many previous actions games, things started to "click". I bought a bunch of upgrades for Raiden and got a better grasp of parrying and another unexplained gameplay concept - limbs turning blue - became more apparent to me. In this day and age I'm so used to videogames showing me how to do quite literally everything that whenever they fail to mention something in a tutorial or otherwise I just don't think it means anything. Getting back into the mode of discovering how to play a game on my own just took a couple hours I guess.
I'm still not 100% convinced the way this game works is the best way it could have been done though, I'll reserve full judgement for whenever I finish playing it but it seems like Platinum can vastly improve many aspects in this game if they are allowed to run a bit more wild with their own ideas then they obviously were here. This is MGR , not MGS and yet it still has tons of archaic ideas that don't suit MGR nearly as well- codec conversations (even though I've been enjoying them) , the way items and sub weapons are selected in a pause menu and finally the existence of sub weapons at all. Why would I ever want to toss a grenade when I could hack things to bits instead ? It's just needed.
Also, as cool as the blade mode is in theory, in practice it ends up being the same thing every time. I propose a sequel do away with it. Instead, use it sparingly against strong enemies/bosses/killmoves and instead of the stick snap or vertical/horizontal buttons how about a jet set radio style QTE ? I do think the stab and grab is a nice gameplay idea but it could be made better in a sequel if they got rid of the blade mode part. Just have Raiden land a killing blow and you simply have a second to grab it out for full power.
