gaming_again
Member
Have been playing through the first one recently and would actually welcome a second. I think there's a lot of potential in the first game, but it's not quite there yet. It feels very small compared to other FROM games, with a lot of recycled content past the mid-game. You have to fight Juzuo the Drunkard like four times to get all the Prayer Beads, while almost every other boss and sub-boss appears twice. Shinobi prosthetics felt like under-developed gimmicks for the most part and the upgrade tree didn't do a great deal to expand on them - the difference between the Shuriken you pick up in the first half-hour of the game and the Lazulite Shuriken you can craft end-game is barely noticeable, despite five consecutive upgrades. Likewise with the skill tree - while some feel transformative, a lot of them are a big shrug (especially for how much they can end up costing late-game). It also incentivises grinding in a bizarre way. Losing half your accrued skill with each death means that if you're sitting on a bunch of XP before a boss you have to go grind out scrub enemies to bank the whole point, or basically lose the majority in two or three deaths. Same issue with Spirit Emblems - unless you grind early and bank a bunch while they're cheap, you'll have to go and farm them later, which just dis-incentivizes their use. Would have made way more sense to auto-fill them like a gourd at the Sculptor's Idol.
There is a lot to like though and some really cool ideas - it just needs more work, more development as a concept and, I would say, more balancing: late bosses feel less like a skill check and more like a pattern learning exercise. Knowing which type of perilous attacks follow from which combos so you can respond effectively. It makes it so that you'll go from being pummelled in your first attempt to finishing with reserves in your last run, not because your skill has shot through the roof, but because you knew every attack, how to respond and when to punish.
Prosthetics are for style. Watch ONGBAL on YouTube.