How's the depth to this? Do I get to build a team how I want, chose items and gear to approach a level how I feel I want to? I've been a bit burnt with Arms and Splatoon 2 so I've cancelled my preorder on this to hear some feedback.
Bear in mind I still haven't finished World 1 yet (I'm up to 1-8) but from what I've played so far:
- You pick 3 characters to make up your team. For a long time you only have 3 characters anyway but I've just picked up my fourth so finally have a choice to make on that side. I have no idea if your team ever expands past 3 in terms of number.
- There are some minor differences in characters base stats but they're not huge. E.g all 4 characters have the same range of movement and jumping, and 3 of the 4 have very similar HP. One character does slightly higher damage per slide attack than the others. One character has significantly lower HP than the others as he's more of a sniper class.
- Each character has their own special power which has a cooldown meter. These range from firing when an enemy moves in your line of sight to a shield that reduces damage for one turn.
- All characters have primary and secondary weapons. The secondary weapons can be things like short range melee hammers or sentries. Primary weapons are all character-specific guns with varying attributes. Some weapons are better against certain enemy types. Some weapons do more than just damage, e.g one gun gives you a 30% chance of burning the enemy with fire. This causes burn damage but also causes the enemy to run around, exposing themselves from cover.
- All characters have their own skill tree. I'd say about half of it is shared and half is character specific. It dies what you'd expect - increases range of movement, reduces cooldown, allows you to slide into two enemies in a row etc.
So there's certainly plenty of options. That said, however, I don't know if it's really the type of game where you'll agonise over which character and weapon to take into battle. At least, so far. Mainly because there have only been two different types of regular enemies so far (excluding bosses) - the standard rabbid enemy (can't remember the name) and the hopper. So when there's only two enemy types you don't really feel the need to keep switching up your team or loadout.
Now don't get me wrong, the game has been tons of fun so far and they do a really good job of making each battle feel unique. I'm sure more enemy types will be introduced later on and maybe players will feel the need to mess around with their loadout more. Bear in mind I've only just unlocked the skill tree. I played for hours yesterday and still haven't finished World 1. It feels like a reasonably meaty game and I can only comment on a small percentage of it so far.
My initial feeling is just more that it's about adapting to each map's layout and core gimmick rather than obsessing about your team make-up.