Snacks the sober sea lion
Member
Well, it's certainly the most excessive action game ever made in a number of ways.
I played the 360 version on Warrior. Got it months ago and played about 11 chapters, then took a break and came back to it recently. I thought the weapons were great, especially the Tonfa and Vigoorian Flail, but the Dragon Sword was the most reliable for boss fights, and I'm not sure what the Dual Swords are for other than style. However, I ended up finding that the game has the same issue as everyone always points out: It's cheap.
You CAN beat the game taking no damage, but the methods of doing so typically involve skipping all non-essential encounters, and cheesing your way through mandatory battles with Ultimate Technique spam. The game simply throws so many enemies at you that there isn't compelling enough reason to do much except use the Ultimate Technique. It's fun and flashy, but it definitely gets tiresome, and considering how fun the weapons and their combos are, I wanted to be able to actually use them, rather delimbing a couple guys with Flying Swallow, Obliteration, jump away and instantly charge a UT to kill 5+ guys. Alternately, using moves that give you iframes such as Obliteration and Guillotine Throw to avoid the endless projectile spam, because using the actual dodge button simply isn't feasible. The terrible encounter design just gets in the way of what should be a fantastic combat system. The boss fights are also a bit of a mix. Some are straightforward fights, some are really damn awkward. The infamous Water Dragon fight, that fight against the two dragon Fiends where you have to use arrows and Ninpo, the Zedonius rematch. They're all just very awkward and frustrating, especially because the camera isn't very good at following them.
Really great combat brought way down by enemy spam and bad encounter design. It's almost the best character action game, but it's just too messed up to reach that for me.
I played the 360 version on Warrior. Got it months ago and played about 11 chapters, then took a break and came back to it recently. I thought the weapons were great, especially the Tonfa and Vigoorian Flail, but the Dragon Sword was the most reliable for boss fights, and I'm not sure what the Dual Swords are for other than style. However, I ended up finding that the game has the same issue as everyone always points out: It's cheap.
You CAN beat the game taking no damage, but the methods of doing so typically involve skipping all non-essential encounters, and cheesing your way through mandatory battles with Ultimate Technique spam. The game simply throws so many enemies at you that there isn't compelling enough reason to do much except use the Ultimate Technique. It's fun and flashy, but it definitely gets tiresome, and considering how fun the weapons and their combos are, I wanted to be able to actually use them, rather delimbing a couple guys with Flying Swallow, Obliteration, jump away and instantly charge a UT to kill 5+ guys. Alternately, using moves that give you iframes such as Obliteration and Guillotine Throw to avoid the endless projectile spam, because using the actual dodge button simply isn't feasible. The terrible encounter design just gets in the way of what should be a fantastic combat system. The boss fights are also a bit of a mix. Some are straightforward fights, some are really damn awkward. The infamous Water Dragon fight, that fight against the two dragon Fiends where you have to use arrows and Ninpo, the Zedonius rematch. They're all just very awkward and frustrating, especially because the camera isn't very good at following them.
Really great combat brought way down by enemy spam and bad encounter design. It's almost the best character action game, but it's just too messed up to reach that for me.