Impressions
Game is horrible in the
best way ever. But, it's also still horrible!
I've only played maybe an hours of this game, not enough to even get a gun, so these are very early impressions and I am likely totally wrong about specifics.
Combat's a massive point of interest. Specifically sword combat. The game tells you it has a combo system - great! The first combo? Mouse1, mouse1, mouse1. Wonderful. This is your primary means of attack against non-human enemies. You are also prompted to one other ability, a parry. Hold RMB down, you block indefinitely. The great thing about this ability, being a parry, is that it
does not work in the slightest against enemies without something to parry. Hold down RMB against a little scampering sea monster? Shit's gonna gut you like a fish. Because as a fish, that is the only way it knows.
NOTE: THE HUMAN COMBAT TALK IS BASED ONLY ON FIGHTING OTHERWISE FRIENDLY NPCS IN "TRAINING" - THIS COULD BE COMPLETELY WRONG FOR ACTUAL ENEMIES.
Conversely, combat against human opponents is a polar opposite! If you do not hold down block, you are -fucked-. There is no way to break enemy animation priority, so once they start attacking you, you have no means to stop them by attacking. You have to block. Thankfully, for the most part, your parry ability is infallible. Only a few attacks get through, although it is entirely random as to when they will do those. Combat against sword wielding human enemies is perhaps the single worst combat system I have ever encountered. The method to the madness is to hold down block until you are relatively certain the enemy isn't going to attack you for the next 3 seconds (there is no animation system in place to make it clear if this will be true or not) - you then issue a single attack against the enemy, and IMMEDIATELY HOLD DOWN THE BLOCK BUTTON AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT - WHICH IT DOES. Because attacks do not stutter enemies, they can attack you immediately after, or even while being attacked themselves. The worst part to this is that your blocking takes roughly half a second to initialise (with no animation to justify why it's taking this long, as your guy just snaps to position). Enemies take, assuming you have super shitty non-armour like I did at the start of the game, a very large portion of your health (again this is against actual friendly npcs in training so this could be skewed on the basis that I am under levelled?) out.
Okay, so apart from combat possibly being the worst thing in the world, here are some boring dotpoint notes
- Audio levels? What's that?! - When you enter the radius of two NPCs having a conversation, their dialogue audio just drowns out absolutely everything else. There is absolutely no fading out the audio the further away you are to these NPCs, so they're as loud up close as they are at the edge of the radius. When you exit the radius, audio cuts out IMMEDIATELY. No fade out, just immediately clipped out. Entering back into the radius causes NPCs to repeat the dialog you exited on.
- Voice acting is a mix of competent or hilariously slurred. Dialog sometimes makes some kind of sense when it's just massive exposition dumps, but some of the side npcs just say the vaugest fucking things. "I CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT NOW".
- Technically stuff looks really nice. Artistically, humans look incredibly awkward. And the animations in cutscenes and dialogue is so amazingly fucked up. Characters pivot and skew themselves, swinging their arms with wild abandon trying to shove their post-modern context unaware plot down your ear-throat. It's great.
- Pressing space to jump while standing still is perhaps the gold medal for underachievement.
- Pressing space to jump while moving is a feat bestowed to Magneto and paper aeroplanes.
- Don't jump down stairs, or you will kill yourself.
- Scripting in the starting area is
weird. Try jumping onto the beach at the start, from the castle walls.
- PEOPLE FREAK THE FUCK OUT WHEN YOU ENTER RESTRICTED ZONES, HOLY SHIT. They will come running with blood in their eyes.
- If you have read this far I assume you for some reason care about what I have to say so here is me actually playing the game
http://www.twitch.tv/kritz7/b/316301357 and giving some really boring, slurred, "I have no idea how to commentate this shit" kinda crap going on. Due to the way I play games, most of it is spent actively seeking out oddities instead of playing the damn thing. So you can watch this to see how bad I am at video games. I am a complete fucking hypocrite and never noticed my microphone was super quiet.
- They don't seem to care as much when you accidentally
attack them multiple times.
- Some of the translation stuff is amazing. KEYSTROKE ASSIGNMENT. What? Alright! When you die, the screen just says "END".
- When you attempt to do a charisma skill check, if your skill is too low, your character will vocalise, out loud, with full animations, "I don't have the skill to do that". They will say this
to the person you are talking to.
- When NPCs smile it looks like THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE:
- The depth of field effects look nice and while it's not a visually impressive game, it's still nice to look at.
- Game is extremely similar to Two Worlds 2. Both in general quality (i.e., pretty rubbish) and, um, how much I like it (i.e., I genuinely appreciate the ambition, and I absolutely
adore B-grade games and all their shortcomings).
So, there's that. If you love bad video games, I highly recommend buying this game. I will make another post with impressions when / if I get a few more hours in and notice this post is filled with Penn and Teller Bullshit. This paragraph is
entirely serious, and I know it's probably not too relatable that someone would like bad games. Or, even, call a game like Risen 2 bad. But I do it in an endearing way, and I feel this game is worth my money more than some fuckin shit like Syndicate or Video Game Super Hero Post Call of Duty 4 experience. So, just letting you know, this post is more of a love letter to jank rather than a legitimate spiteful post. I don't do that.
5/5 Stars
Kritz, Internet Man
