Finally put some more time into this. Probably my last post on this, so I'll try to wrap things up without going as needlessly overlong as usual.
The traversal in this is a joke. The controls aren't too great to begin with, but in tandem with the archaic movement controls and level design, and the crummy locked camera angles, getting arounds feels exactly like a PS1 title with pre-rendered backgrounds where you follow one corridor while running against walls hoping for... Well, more corridors. That said, there's more detours and sorta hidden collectables than I expected. Which is to say more than none.
The combat I think is a mixed bag. It actually feels ok, just a little overdesigned and undercooked. The fact that you only get like 3 preset combos and can only change the effects of each press is unfortunate and repetitive, but non-regenerating health and the benefit of quickly eliminating the cooldown on your L2 burst skills help make the customizations feel at least somewhat necessary. The general flow is: combo, dodge, combo, canned finisher, repeat until L2 skill is available. Through customizations, you basically make something that keeps your health up and keeps your L2 up often. I suppose the fundamental problem being, nothing so far seems to really demand much continued investment in this system once you find something that's efficient enough. Most encounters feel like you could just set one cooldown reduction and one heal to your first combo and just mash one button and dodge.
Now the remixes are the real deal for me. I expected something essentially linear, where you just fish back and forth and click X until you find all the prompts. I was set for extreme disappointment as soon as the controls emerged to be rotating the goddamned left stick to advance/rewind. As soon as you get into it though, it immediately becomes apparent that simply clicking on everything isn't going to cut it. You are presented with multiple outcomes depending on the things you select, some mildly hilarious, and finding the right outcome actually involves only selecting the correct combination of details in the correct order. I easily could have dealt with this expanded and made even more complex and actually challenging as the primary focus of the game. Make the game nothing but remixes and combat, and this may have turned into something special. People saying the remixes remind them of Ghost Trick really makes me want to give that game a try.
I went into this expecting Enslaved meets LA Noire. Instead, so far I've got something that feels more like a less crummy Castlevania LOS with better performance but equally terrible story, dialog, and camera, married to an interesting, unique, but way too short adventure game, and built to a formula that would have worked better 13 years ago. Bottom line, rent it for the world, the music, and the novelty of the remixes at least.
