Time to break down my thoughts on the reviews. After finishing the game, checking out the reviews, I'm just baffled. Some of the complaints are odd or just false. I'll fully agree that the map isn't good.
One general piece of advice: Keep AUTO-LOCK
OFF. You're better off enabling it yourself.
Gamesradar:
There's no discernable differentiation between a mandatory and optional quest, and it's far too easy to simply lose track of where you're supposed to go. Even when you know what you're doing it takes too long to do it, as sometimes the quest objective markers will simply vanish, leaving you to try to stumble into the right place.
Uh, side quest is grey and story quest is white. That's just a straight up lie. If you're lost, just check the bird flying that's tethered to a line. That is the exit. Quest markers vanish when the game's asking you to explore an uncharted area. Can we not explore and figure out the levels by ourselves?
Though the visuals are strong, we were surprised at how many glitches we encountered throughout the 10-hour campaign. We'd watch characters fall through the world and quest markers simply vanish, forcing us to reset at checkpoints or restart the game in hopes of fixing things. In one instance we hit a section where the game would repeatedly crash every time we entered an area we needed to go to--and it wasn't until we joined a co-op game that was past the section that we were able to progress.
I didn't encounter a single glitch or anything game-breaking. Was this limited to review copies? Either way, too bad for people experiencing them.
Hardcore Gamer:
With everything so weird and different looking, it can become hard to form logical points of navigational reference to fall back on.
Just look at the exits, they have a bird flying tethered to a line from there. Or the fast travel totems usually have beams of light shining into the sky. Do people really expect games to now have braindead bread crumbs (Fable, Dead Space)? It's not like areas have dozens of directions, just do a little exploring and the quest marker will guide you in the right direction.
Punches and kicks still feel sluggish, and the wind up animations for power moves take so long that it leaves you vulnerable to attacks. Especially when you are surrounded, which is about 90% of the time. Blocking and dodging will only get you so far until you have to begin relying on stringing together super complicated combos really quickly; constantly. The problem with that is that the hit detection in the game is far from perfect, and you can find yourself air punching enemies that are 6 inches away from your face.
I'm baffled, I haven't encountered any problems with hit detection. When I hit an enemy, I get clear feedback that they're getting hurt. If you find yourself air punching, just close the distance or lock-on. Know how far your attacks travel, like the hadouken (forward+left+right) goes really far compared to the launcher (left+right). Power moves take too long? That's because there's a risk/reward to using them, and you need to time them better.
Zeno Clash II does give you guns and Alien tech to play around with in later segments, but those things are so stupid and worthless that unless you are using one of the alien gadgets to solve a puzzle, youll likely not pull them out in a fight.
Not use Golem's Hand or Sun/Moon Harvester in combat? Insanity! They're life-savers for group combat. Clearly, this reviewer just didn't want to experiment. The Harvester is perfect when you have enemies coming in single file or bunched up, so when the fire line comes, they all get hit. Golem's Hand is great for lowering big enemies' health by piling on the little guys. I used Golem's Hand a lot for boss battles.
Unfortunately for me, I didnt get to see the ultimate resolution of that story because the game flat our broke on me and ate a crucial late game character.
Wait, reviewer didn't even finish the game? Great job, there :/
Destructoid:
There's a strange dearth of character or world building, with the journey itself becoming the focus.
Odd, I got enough world building even with the economical storytelling. Audio diaries really have spoiled some people. The shop keeper in Family Plaza tells you about Marauders. You're given a lot of info on the Tiamte who wear masks to hide their prawn bodies (the more masks, the more important). Each direction has its own Golem, and you're told enough about their history. If you really want to know more about the world, you can find it out by asking NPCs or reading the cryptographic text when later you can translate them.
Anywhere else, being surrounded by foes is just, frankly, fucking awful. With its temperamental lock-on feature, first-person perspective, and uncompromising field of view, Zeno Clash II seems to have been designed specifically with one-on-one battles, yet continually throws little armies at Ghat.
Foes get in each other's way, constantly jockeying for position, and fill the screen with flailing limbs and angry bodies. It becomes even more infuriating when you have no idea that there's a bugger right beside you, about to punch you right in the head, but you can't see him because of the ridiculous limitations of the FOV (which are apparently going to be fixed in a patch). The hit detection can be fairly iffy, as well, with strikes often not landing when it really looks like the should. It is far more noticeable in these big, annoying brawls than in less crowded fights.
I keep auto-lock OFF and really you only ever really need to use lock-on for bigger enemies. Use the Golem's Hand, Sun/Moon Harvester, and Chain Whip to manage the groups of enemies. If an enemy's behind you, no problem reverse kick. Since I never had auto-lock on, I didn't have issues with enemies ganging up on me from different directions. Again, didn't have an issue with hit detection once you know the distance of each of your attacks.
It's also nice that there's constant AI vs AI if you can cheese enemies into hitting each other. A boss might start attacking its minions if you stay far away. It's always a pleasant accident when it happens
It is in these orgies of kicks and punches where Ghat's companions -- limited to two at any one time -- can be employed. I hate them. They are a plague sent to test me. Regardless of how difficult they are to recruit, they are all appalling brawlers, and serve only to distract enemies so that Ghat can get a bit of breathing room before they drop a smoke bomb and vanish, leaving players to fend for themselves at inopportune moments.
And whatever you do, don't go near them in a scrap. Inexplicably, allies seem to close their eyes during battle, and don't appear to notice if Ghat's standing right next to them. This inevitably leads to friends punching you in the face as often as foes.
I'll agree ally AI can be spotty (but then, ally AI in AAA games is no better), and I use them more as distractions but it's nice when they take down enough damage on the bigger enemies. They're not there for you to cheat, you're the one who should be handling everything. Also, use Golem's Hand on the enemies your allies are fighting so you can both work on the same two dudes even from a great distance. Then there's always co-op if the AI is not to your liking.
Lamentably, the world is never elevated beyond a gorgeous, bizarre battle arena, and its colorful denizens immediately become less interesting when they start to speak thanks to the shoddy voice acting and the rather dreary, pseudo-philosophical script.
Sounds like the reviewer just wants a codex or audio diaries to fill out the world, which is just lazy. Enough of the world is explained by talking to NPCs or reading the crytographic signs. How much more of the world needs to be explained before it becomes a bore?
IGN:
Combat could use more depth, though; getting the pace of the clicks for combos takes a little practice. Once I learned the rhythm, it was a little too easy to fall into a pattern of reusing the same moves over and over again, since enemies never learn to block a frequently used attack.
I saw plenty of depth. Some enemies even put their hands, clearly asking you to aim your punches. Some enemies have shields that can't be broken, so either you aim for their midsection, go around them, or go for the power moves like launchers. The wood enemies like to use kung fu attacks, so don't let them use their distance.
The other one, a gauntlet that harnesses the energy of the sun or moon, is an extremely clever idea that just doesn't work in practice. I love taking a moment to find the sun or moon in the sky and position myself so that the enemy is between me and the heavenly body, but hate that I have to look at the sky to actually trigger the devices explosive attack because I can't see what I'm trying to kill.
Huh? Ok, so here's my strategy. I see the enemies. I see an opportunity to use the gauntlet. I find a good spot to make a bee line from the sun/moon to the enemy. I aim at the sun/moon, and voila! Is he actually complaining that he has to aim the gauntlet?
Combat is rarely too hard, but some strange balancing issues pop up in the aftermath. There's nowhere near enough health pickups to let you recover from taking even a few hits in every fight, but dying restarts you nearby with completely full health and a fully recharged stable of summonable allies. I felt strangely incentivized to die, and that's something a game should pretty much never do (martyrdom excluded).
I think we can all agree, the game's too stingy on giving out health compared to the first game with its oranges.
Even though there are a wide variety of characters to recruit, none of them felt like a particularly effective fighter, and thus spending skill points in the leadership skill didn't feel like it gave me much return on my investment.
He says that, but he never got to experience the tankness of WORD in the last 4 hours of the game. Dude would stick around to see most of my fights end.
Ghat's voice performance is actually pretty good, and many of the screeching and grunting monster-people most notably the birdlike ones have a lot of character, if not nuanced performances. That makes the voice actor playing Rimat, Ghat's "sister" and co-op partner, stand out as really distractingly awful.
Yeah, not a fan of the voice acting for Rimat, while everyone else was interesting to hear.
The Escapist review is actually pretty good. Specifically they seem to get what you should be doing during combat:
Ghat can block, dodge and counter, but even on hard mode the key to a successful defense is positioning rather than timing or savvy skill use.
Ostensibly, you can use these skills to create combos, but there's no real creativity to be had here. All the combos are pre-defined, meaning you'll likely be using the same seven or so attack patterns throughout the game. The camera has a nasty habit of zooming in on enemies when you focus on them, meaning shorter opponents often end up throwing punches from outside your field of view. Imagine trying to box a midget, only you can't look down and he keeps throwing haymakers at your genitals. Not fun.
It's no God Hand, but there's enough creativity in just the moves. I used the counter kick A LOT against the Mountain Dwellers because the kick sends them flying, and then you can kick them off the cliff because they have plenty of health that you don't want to bother with. The enemies who block a lot, I just did the charged right hand strong attacks, or power moves. I didn't use the dodge+punch as much because I focused more on positioning to get the drop on them.
For the little Enforcers, I'd just sprint bash into them and get right up in their grill.