Personally, I think the game looks nice, runs smoothly. Matchmaking is quick and efficient and there are little to no problems with the netcode. I have only played the quests so I cannot speak for the first portion of the story.
Regarding the combat. I like that each character plays somewhat different to each other with their little perks(Gran's Class Arts, Rackam's heat gauge etc) and the cooldowns can be fun to use at the right time. The combat loop where you build up the stun meter to perform a link attack and raise the gauge is satisfying enough, even if link attacks feel weak in terms of damage output. What I really appreciate knowing now having played the demo is that it actually seems optimal a lot of the time to split the SBA gauge rather than just spam full bursts which is what I feared the most when I was watching all of the footage shown beforehand. As FB damage is only about 2% which usually isn't a good tradeoff for more opportunities to keep the boss stunned whenever the boss is going apeshit and knocking out all the party members unless you are confident that your team would be able to handle the overdrive phase without needing it. SBA is a balanced risk/reward mechanic. You can just spam them together to get full bursts during break phases(when the boss takes more damage) but on the flipside, you wont have them available to keep the boss frozen in place during the overdrive phase when it actually poses a threat and allies are knocked out left, right and center which can cost you the game if the critical bar fills up as a result of that. I also really like the link time mechanic as well, it makes ytou think what is the optimal way to extend its duration as much as possible and maximise damage output whilst it is active. And it's just pure hype, it feels liek such a relieving payoff after gradually building up that gauge.
There were aspects of the combat I weren't so keen on however. I think there could have been more impact on certain attacks. Even for platinum game standards it feels like the attacks are too soft, like hitting with a foam sword. In Bayonetta your basic punches and kicks were light but the weaves had a satisfying impact. In MGR your heavy attacks and combo finishers felt strong. Perfect dodges feel satisfying but the reward feels negligable in most scenarios, at least against the boss in the demo. The benefit is you get invincibility frames for a few seconds but the thing is, the bosses in this game are giant enemies which attack slowly so after each attack, they almost always dont attack for another half a dozen seconds anyway which ultimately makes those invincibility frames pointless. It also seems like the game is just mashing the attack button most of the time. You only have four cooldowns, 1 or 2 which usually tend to last very long, like anywhere from 30 secs to over a minute. And even those cooldowns are very simplistic and don't require you to think too hard about when the right time to use it is. They're usually just either an attack with no sort of perk, an attack with a basic perk like(10% defense debuff) or a support skill like reducing damage taken for nearby allies. There are a few interesting abilities like charlottas which starts with a moderate attack buff of like 10%(cant remember) and slowly goes up and up until 140% but if you get hit you lose it. But those are few and far in between. I know it's a demo so maybe we will see more complex abilities in the full game however. But nonetheless, it feels like most of the game just boils down to mashing attack. You get your occasional link attack but there's no reason not to use it so you dont need to think, just tap circle and then get back to mashing attack. It gets very repetitive.
Outside of combat, you have weapons and sigils which augment your character stats. I really like the way sigils work where you can customise each character to your preferred build you see fit. I think health upgrades seem to overshadow everything else however. Like for example, I could equip health upgrade III and almost double my characters HP from 1200 to 2100 or equip a cooldown III buff which merely shortens cooldowns by about 7%. Which makes me concerned that there wont be much of a balance when it comes to sigil traits.
I think the game is still very fun to play however. It seems like one of those games you can just switch your brain off, chill out for hours and have fun slaying bosses whilst grinding for high tier loot or trying to maximise your rank on a quest. Sort of like the Xenoverse games. I can totally get behind that, I loved playing those games in 2010s.
NightmareFarm
? That's what everyone has been doing myself included...
