I was told it gets better around Chapter 5 and 6
I intend to endure. I don't think it's a bad game, if a bit too much of a God of War clone so far. But yes. This is seriously some of the most unnecessary drawn out tutorialising and gameplay repetition for the sake of padding the adventure I've played in a long while. I feel that so far, for the kind of character action semi-but-not-really Metroidvania thing it has made two crucial mistakes in the pacing.
1) Not recognising the difference between fundamental skillset/ability upgrades, that the player expects and should have access to early, and equipment improvements that aim to surprise and expand your abilities. Getting a new piece of equipment that gives you a fresh new power is good. Making me fight a bunch of spiders over and over before unlocking them for use as mounts, then making me do that over and over before unlocking puzzles that use their attacks, with no real reason for those skills to be arbitrarily locked off, is really fucking dull. Instead of finding new equipment and going "oh cool! I can discover new stuff!" you end up feeling like the game has locked off a bunch of skills you can already do
but can't until the game tutorialises them for you.
2) Stretching dull gameplay that is neither difficult nor stimulating over long stretches of level design. Like climbing/exploring. Wading through the fucking dead marshes or whatever. Repeating the same encounter variations. It's not like putting two swamp grabarm bubble pits in a row is harder than just having one; I can still press any button at the exact same repeated cue to get out without a scratch. A lot of this stuff just seems to be there to give you something to do and have you moving through locations but in almost all cases they could halve if not trim off two thirds of the actual level, combine it with following stages with similar cuts, and have much tighter and more interesting level pacing.
Then there's other issues like:
- Shit like paths and corpses hidden off screen and in difficult to see places not because of clever placement but because I have no power over the camera.
- Almost no consistency in level design platforming of what you can/cannot grapple, jump on, or over.
- Awful hitboxes that seem 30% larger than the already badly telegraphed enemy attacks.
There's something enduring about it. Probably the atmosphere, sense of scale, and soundtrack. The whole epic gothic fantasy vibe is neat. So I'll keep playing. But
fuck.
