:lol
This is a demo impressions thread. Whether or not the bugs are fixed, is it not understandable that people can be turned off by something supposed to be representative of the final product?
Cool, but no. I really hope I'm wrong, and I really hope that this is the best combat ever. But, from where I'm sitting, that's not the case at all. Long post alert.
Those chains aren't meaningful, and, upon closer inspection, even all that varied. They're just displaying the one combo different character builds can do against enemies 1v1. For starters, you probably won't be changing up your equipment or build constantly enough to make a montage like that a common occurrence. Also, you'll likely be fighting multiple foes at once, so a long, novelty attack string is bound to get you injured in the process. And even 1v1, there's no reason not to just spam quick attacks since you can continue pummeling enemies while they're still on the ground (unless it's different on Hard or later in the game--you can gang up on enemies just fine in the demo; they don't seem to have any recovery invulnerability once they've been downed). Your character can do a lot, but without the meaningful application of that utility within any given build or situations/enemies where mechanics like ostentatious juggling, stunlocking, animation speed/canceling, etc. actually matter, it is a combat system that's only halfway finished. If you have the ability render some enemy helpless by a long juggle, then that better damn well be some payoff for a risky encounter. As it stands, this looks like a combat system destined to get extremely repetitive, especially considering how big the game is if that map is anything to go by.
In the combat diary, it's stressed that you normally start with light attacks and work your way up to finishing with magic. That's an alarmingly linear way of tackling mechanics that would've otherwise intrinsically offered more room for player creativity. The auxiliary abilities/power attacks on weapons are all triggered by the same button as attack--you will either need to stagger a regular combo attack, or spend time charging up to access them. The fact that they are not readily available only makes them less practical. For a game with supposedly so many potential builds, many characters will function similarly no matter their specializations in a system like this. The majority of destinies only give one or two abilities with slightly different effects while the rest are simply % modifiers. And none of that doesn't seem to matter because it looks like you will be walking death by the end of the game, anyway. I am not convinced by this PR bullshit. Amalur is Fable in more ways than one.
The example of a mage you have in that post only highlights these problems. So many of the tricks that mage has up her sleeve function similarly. Why list several AoEs as unique options (why knock down enemies when you can juggle them? does enemy size/weight affect falling speed and force you to modify attacks on the fly? what's the proration like? is there any? from the demo, enemies can actually lift higher and higher with quick, consecutive attacks! and how does juggling compare to other effects like gathering or stunning in terms of utility? do these debuffs stack? overwrite? what about damage? time to cast?)? Why list several escape maneuvers as unique options (the ice blink will slow enemies down for free, and you've probably landed other effects by now--why bother with the chakram evade when blinking away is probably the better choice?)? Why list skills that take a while to charge up as a viable options to approach and respond when they are often not immediately accessible? There are only a handful of techniques effectively different enough to be considered meaningful in that build. And some skills don't even seem particularly useful. Why bother with marking enemies to explode them later when you can just directly damage them right away? Can you kite things for a while to explode enemies nearby? Is the explosion worth the tradeoff? Does it grow in damage as time passes? Is it viral, like in Diablo? What effectively is the difference between an ice barrage and other attacks that directly damage? Where is the tradeoff? The bonus? Elemental advantage? Magic cost? Speed? Recovery? Enemy resistance? Enemy amount? Affected area? Special targeting? It lists piercing damage, ice damage, and freezing damage. What's the difference? What's the point? The game is too slow with too borked a camera to capitalize on most of that build's theoretical potential. Why have all those options if there's no specific reason to? Why is there so much overlap, so much fat, when there's already little to choose from? There are too many unknowns, too much "going on faith" in proportion to what the demo has unfortunately displayed. There's too much focus on creating complexity within a box of simplicity, if that makes sense--a lot of stuff seems needlessly padded out, overflowing sideways instead of driving deeper. This particular build doesn't even seem like it'd be all too different from any other mage one in terms of how it plays--you'd have to rely on might/sorcery or finesse/sorcery for a more varied mage experience because there's not enough variety within the sorcery tree alone. The demo's ability tree in general is dreadful. It's almost as bad the perks in Skyrim. 1/3 of each tree is devoted to giving you combat abilities any other (action) game would've started you out with, another 1/3 gives the entirety of the skills you'll be using throughout the game if you refuse to hybridize, and the last 1/3 gives bonuses to those skills that could've just been upgrade paths.
Demon's Souls and Dark Souls have been getting thrown around. Let's use them as an example. Comparatively, those games give players less options. The reason the battle system is good is because enemies are bound to the same rules as the player. You're not grossly overpowered. Most spells are unique and properly balance cost with effectiveness in a myriad of ways. Attacking, defending, evading--all of these require commitment and management of resources within dynamic combat scenarios where your environment matters almost as much as what you're fighting. The system is simple, quick, and elegant, not superfluously convoluted. The camera and targeting are not the best, but encounters are intimate, dire, and thus generally unhindered by technical shortcomings. Amalur seems about as simple but with many more augments attempting to create an illusion of depth that does not appear to exist at all, or, worse, draws out the whole affair much longer than it needs to be.
