Yikes.
This was not a good game. Just finished for the first time. I do intend to play a little more postgame, but not for a while. This was one of the most disappointing experiences I've had this generation. I purchased the game earlier this week for $25, and I feel as though I should have waited for another price drop.
What the game does well:
- When you're in the swing of things, it actually does feel pretty good to mash the stick and slice through enemies.
- The environments seem very inspired visually.
- The variety of guns is pretty neat. I had a good time switching from laser weapons to rifles. Rarely used pistols.
- The music is solid.
- The non-human boss fights and larger enemies are excellent and a real pleasure to dismantle piece by piece.
What the game does not do well:
- The character designs are abysmal. I can't think of a single one that was remarkable, and they were all offensive on the eyes.
- Lipsynching and voice acting are both poor. I think the voice acting is generally poor because of both an awful script and the poor lipsynching.
- Cutscene performance. The game CHUGS in cutscenes. I'm not a frame counter, but yeesh. What's strange is that the game performs generally quite well in battle.
- The characters are flat. IGN mentioned in their "second opinion" review that there's no reason to care about any of these characters, and I agree. I started to empathize with Baldr a little bit in the last chapter of the game, but the rest of the characters are as flat as they come.
- The camera.
- In-battle voice clips. These are some of the worst I've ever heard. The lines are stupid, they repeat constantly. Hel cycled through her 2 or 3 lines probably about a dozen times when I fought her.
- Cyberspace. This is not a "break" or "variety", it's boring and slow.
- The Norn. Why are they half the time in a visible cutscene and half the time as magical voiceovers? Where are the voiceovers? The acoustic profile on their speech suggests they're standing next to Baldr, but their physical absence suggests they should be inside Baldr's head or coming from above.
- The alignment system. You're asked to make a choice at the beginning of the game, it's permanent, you're given very little information about the differences, and it's not clear that the choice makes a difference in how the game unfolds or how you play.
- Consistency; why can't I attack in Cyberspace? Why can't I attack or roll in Aesir? Why can I jump in both?
- Too much time spent managing loot. The menus are laggy, so I feel like every ten minutes I'm spending 3 or 4 just to upgrade my stuff and keep pace. The interface needs to allow people to quickly deal with stuff, even if it's at the expense of cool visual effects.
- Level design is junk. Totally linear corridor crawling for the most part. It's pretty easy to get lost as well because any side diversion is down another linear corridor. It's even easier to get lost in the World Tree; when you're three or four wells away from the start and you have no idea which part of the forest goes where, that's really annoying. It's never evident in a forking path which is the next logical step in the level and which is the dead end side corridor.
- Item stats. Since you're getting loot so often, you end up no longer taking the time to pay attention to the modifiers. It's more sensible to just say "does this do more damage?" or "does this prevent more damage?". It might be the case that in the post-game things slow down enough to really read and make decisions about items, but during the main experience it's all just a blur.
- The game doesn't tell you anything. You've got tons of menus, tons of control options, and it's all dumped on you at once. I didn't use a Rune the entire game because it wasn't obvious how I was supposed to. The fact that there's a two page control section in the menu and no tutorial means users are forced to basically read over the two pages and memorize them rather than sort of learning by doing.
- The HUD. So you have a level-up experience bar on the left, but then over to the right there's a section called "EXP". You've got a combo counter. You've got rings after rings. Is all this information always necessary? Is it being presented in the best way possible? Nope.
- The use of the music is poor. I get that epic music should flare up when I'm near enemies, but sometimes when I'm running a distant enemy will trigger than untrigger this music so I'm cutting in and out. Why are 90% of the tracks in the game fantasy inspired with the other 10% having crazy guitars or an industrial feel? There's not much in the way of cohesion here.
- The plot has clarity issues. After sitting down and reading parts of this thread, I am more aware of everything that happened, but when it happens in the game it's not all that obvious. Furthermore, it's not un-obvious in the "wow, what a cool mystery to unravel" way, it's un-obvious in the sense that you want to just mash through everything.
- The dialog is some of the worst ever. 90% of the dialog consists of reminders that you are watching Norse mythology. Look, instead of "Oh my God", he said "By Odin's beard!". Instead of "What the hell" he said "What the Helheim!" At one point in the third mission, a character says "I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds", which is a quote from the Bhagavad Gita. Why are viking quoting Hindu scripture? Most of the conversations have this sort of freshman philosophy undertone to them that fails just as hard as it does in the "Tales of" series.
- Clipping. Why can't I jump over edges? Why does it feel like I'm in a box corridor even if it looks like I'm in this interesting ruin? Why do I have to walk down a u-shaped descending path instead of jumping down? I'm a God.
- The ending. It's not a cliffhanger. See Mass Effect for an awesome cliffhanger. You kill the last boss, fight several waves of basic enemies, go back to Aesir, hang around there for a bit, go to the feasting hall, and then you have a cutscene of fairly average intensity and a weird cutaway. Even the credits just sort of play average music and there's nothing pumping you to say "Woah, I really want to get into this series". This is bad, especially considering the entire Helheim section's plot really does amp things up and keep you interested.
- I do feel that the death system was a failed experiment just as BioShock's was, but it seems like it was an honest attempt so I'll give it a break.
I don't expect there to be a Too Human 2, and if there is I don't expect it to be published by Microsoft, and if it is I don't expect it to be high profile. If it is released and available to me, I'll consider playing it and I'd be happy to continue playing another game with the story consistently as intriguing as it briefly was near the end of this one. But there are serious design, gameplay, and technical issues that will need to be fixed. Were I a reviewer, this'd likely be a high 5 low 6 for me.
I hope I enjoy the post-game a little more.
Also, there's a section in the third mission where Loki taunts you and then two grenade launching big guys wake up. After that, you go down an elevator and fight two more as well as some small guys. I managed to screw up the game here by dying while fighting the guys on the bottom floor. I respawned on the top floor and the elevator would not come back up.
