Quite luckily I was able to snag a copy of Sudeki from work last night and was able to put in an hour or so. I didn't get terribly far but that's why these are first impressions. I've never really done the whole impressions write-up or review or anything like that so this is probably gonna come off disjointed.
First off I should mention that I just finished playing Ninja Gaiden, a game that I'm still obsessed with so my standards are going to be pretty high. Furthermore, while I like the idea of ARPGs in concept I've never really played many of them, not even any of the Zeldas.
Despite all of this the game has been quite enjoyable thus far. I really enjoyed the style of the opening cinema even with the words sounding pretty corny. The story right now sounds like very standard fare, light vs dark and all of that jazz, but there'll no doubt be some twists however weak down the line. The voice acting is only mildly distracting in badness, but for the most part it's very passable.
But this brings me to my first real complaint, the way the dialogue works. Sometimes when you talk to a character a conversation tree opens up. I shouldn't say tree, more like conversation options. After choosing an option and the NPC going through their spiel, the exact same options come up, meaning you can ask the same question. However, this won't give you any new informaiton, the NPC will simply recite their response the exact same way again. Which isn't that bad, just would've been nice to have at least a couple of different responses. My real complaint comes from when you choose the "goodbye" option which obviously means ending the conversation, however you choose goodbye, it comes on the screen and the conversation window stays on. You have to press A again to close the conversation window. It's not a big thing by any means but it's rather unintuitive as you obviously want the conversation to window to close when you say goodbye.
Next up comes combat. Like I mentioned before, I'm coming from Ninja Gaiden so it'll be difficult for ANY game to not be a letdown in the combat department after that. Even still the combat has held up pretty well. I've only used Tal, the sword character so far, and even though his moveset right now is very limited it still actually provides some depth. Essentially you get 3 moves that have to be properly timed by pressing the X and A buttons. What this means is that there are right now 8 possible standard melee combinations, and then you get Skills that are like special actions. So having a beginning set of 8 different combos for a variety of situations is actually pretty darn good. But if it remains at this number for the remainder of the game I'd be disappointed. You can also block and roll around which is nice for dodging attacks and that type of thing. My complaint with the combat is that it's not very fluid. The attacks come out in a jerking manner, especially if you mistime your combos. I think if you get the timing down it'd be a fluid action, but the game doesn't handle asynchronous inputs very gracefully which is something Ninja Gaiden really really excelled at and I've been spoiled by.
Continuing on the combat, the enemies so far have been pretty easy, but I think I'm still in the "learning" phase of the game, and can see the difficulty of the enemies ramping up when the other members of the party join with my guy.
Now for the absolute best part of the game: The graphics. Even after Ninja Gaiden the graphics of Sudeki are REALLY wowing me. This game looks absolutely gorgeous. Screw the losers who care about the art, the colour scheme is great. If there's one way I'd describe the world is: lush. I'd also like to use alive and vibrant. The environments are gorgeous and feel very solid, many times I stopped to just look around the town or whatever and take in my surroundings. The characters as well, especially the enemies look absolutely fantastic as well. In fact this is the main reason why I'm continuing to play the game, the graphics are just that damn good and it's just a damn beautiful game and I want to see what it has to offer.
One of the weird things about the atmosphere of the game is its disjointedness. It starts off extremely light-hearted and jovial, and then you leave town and gets really friggin dark and gruesome with characters lying decapitated and nailed to trees and the like. It was very jarring to be in this cheery town and then all of a sudden see this disturbing imagery. I'm not totally sure why the devs took this approach so we'll see where it leads.
First off I should mention that I just finished playing Ninja Gaiden, a game that I'm still obsessed with so my standards are going to be pretty high. Furthermore, while I like the idea of ARPGs in concept I've never really played many of them, not even any of the Zeldas.
Despite all of this the game has been quite enjoyable thus far. I really enjoyed the style of the opening cinema even with the words sounding pretty corny. The story right now sounds like very standard fare, light vs dark and all of that jazz, but there'll no doubt be some twists however weak down the line. The voice acting is only mildly distracting in badness, but for the most part it's very passable.
But this brings me to my first real complaint, the way the dialogue works. Sometimes when you talk to a character a conversation tree opens up. I shouldn't say tree, more like conversation options. After choosing an option and the NPC going through their spiel, the exact same options come up, meaning you can ask the same question. However, this won't give you any new informaiton, the NPC will simply recite their response the exact same way again. Which isn't that bad, just would've been nice to have at least a couple of different responses. My real complaint comes from when you choose the "goodbye" option which obviously means ending the conversation, however you choose goodbye, it comes on the screen and the conversation window stays on. You have to press A again to close the conversation window. It's not a big thing by any means but it's rather unintuitive as you obviously want the conversation to window to close when you say goodbye.
Next up comes combat. Like I mentioned before, I'm coming from Ninja Gaiden so it'll be difficult for ANY game to not be a letdown in the combat department after that. Even still the combat has held up pretty well. I've only used Tal, the sword character so far, and even though his moveset right now is very limited it still actually provides some depth. Essentially you get 3 moves that have to be properly timed by pressing the X and A buttons. What this means is that there are right now 8 possible standard melee combinations, and then you get Skills that are like special actions. So having a beginning set of 8 different combos for a variety of situations is actually pretty darn good. But if it remains at this number for the remainder of the game I'd be disappointed. You can also block and roll around which is nice for dodging attacks and that type of thing. My complaint with the combat is that it's not very fluid. The attacks come out in a jerking manner, especially if you mistime your combos. I think if you get the timing down it'd be a fluid action, but the game doesn't handle asynchronous inputs very gracefully which is something Ninja Gaiden really really excelled at and I've been spoiled by.
Continuing on the combat, the enemies so far have been pretty easy, but I think I'm still in the "learning" phase of the game, and can see the difficulty of the enemies ramping up when the other members of the party join with my guy.
Now for the absolute best part of the game: The graphics. Even after Ninja Gaiden the graphics of Sudeki are REALLY wowing me. This game looks absolutely gorgeous. Screw the losers who care about the art, the colour scheme is great. If there's one way I'd describe the world is: lush. I'd also like to use alive and vibrant. The environments are gorgeous and feel very solid, many times I stopped to just look around the town or whatever and take in my surroundings. The characters as well, especially the enemies look absolutely fantastic as well. In fact this is the main reason why I'm continuing to play the game, the graphics are just that damn good and it's just a damn beautiful game and I want to see what it has to offer.
One of the weird things about the atmosphere of the game is its disjointedness. It starts off extremely light-hearted and jovial, and then you leave town and gets really friggin dark and gruesome with characters lying decapitated and nailed to trees and the like. It was very jarring to be in this cheery town and then all of a sudden see this disturbing imagery. I'm not totally sure why the devs took this approach so we'll see where it leads.
