Overall I´m having fun. But some of the design choices are simply stupid and create unnecessary and totally avoidable frustration. I can´t believe the game is not saving bought upgrades for example. I kept dying in the same place yesterday. And each fucking time I had to redo the whole 3D-printer thing. You can´t even skip the cool but always the same upgrade animations.
100% agreed. The checkpoints are poorly placed.
The combat mechanics are ok but could also use some quality-of-life implementations. Healing is basically broken. Due to the overly long animation, healing during a fight is impossible.
You shouldn’t be healing in fights, unless you really have a window or lots of space. This is kind of an aspect of the genre of survival horror. The melee combat already deadens some of the horror, healing too fast would damage it further.
The same goes for switching weapons. Even the fast switch between two weapons is taking forever. Encounters with more than 2 enemies are especially frustrating as the combat mechanics were clearly designed for one on one fights in mind.
You have 2 frames, a primary and a secondary. Switching between frames is done by tapping left on the d-pad. This is faster than changing receivers on the frame mid-fight by tapping right and choosing a weapon. I would choose a primary and a secondary, such as Riot Gun and Hand Cannon, and stick to those. This isn’t explained in the game at all as far as I recall, or perhaps just explained poorly.
So yeah... it´s a cool game with next-gen level visuals, fantastic audio and great enemie design. But a forgettable story and needed quality-of-life improvements drag it down to mediocracy.
All fair. Sorry to be that guy, but it’s mediocrity. Mediocracy is something else entirely.
Inventory system is a bit annoying seeing how little slots you have. But not that too bad. You can sell bullets if you have an abundance of them. Personally I like to keep at least two stacks for the first weapon with me and one health pack (only one, and sell the rest at vendor) and I seem to do fine with item management. Leave spaces for scrap, maybe one battery. Sometimes I don't even bother with battery packs and drop them if I want something else in its place. The checkpoint/save system also sucks.
But yeah. Outside of those little annoyances the main qualm I have is the difficulty spikes at certain points which is not helped by Jacobs slow AF movements. Its almost playing like an old RE game with with how tanky it feels. Still really enjoying the game.. But I do feel though that some QoL stuff could've helped bring this game much higher. Like they should have made health packs MUCH faster to use which can actually be used in combat. Have a 180 turn and maybe damage markers or queues if they are going to spawn enemies behind you, about to attack. Like I would like the one or the other. Its bad enough trying to dodge and enemy in front of you and have a plan of action against multiple mobs, other than relying on sound.. some luck and have Jacob do a dodgy slow turn to see wtf is behind you.
The slow movement and slow health is part of the genre. I don’t know if we need a quick-turn as much as we need enemies to not gangbang you with your back turned or when they’re just off to the side.
Yeah I heard about it before but I swear it wasn't there when I switched to SDR
You have to turn it off at the system level, then close the re-poen the game for it to appear. I had the same issue.