Well, plenty of replies already kind of reflect how I feel about things, but having completed my first playthrough on Normal for my channel recently, I kinda' feel compelled to reply. I'll just pick out the points that stood out to me rather than go verbatim, becaue this tiny BT keyboard is killing my hands... hopefully doesn't sound too scatter-brained as I'm typing this on my iPad (laptop is currently on life support lol).
Anyways... I'm not a fan of the drive-by "git gud" posts... but, that said a lot of what you mention in the topic post Griss, does sound more like not really having a grasp at the basics. I say that as someone who, at first, thought the game was not completely living up to what I wanted to be in the first few chapters, and didn't understand how the game worked but for some reason decided that "hey I'm good enough to play this game on Normal first try, blind, on my channel!"
Thankfully I did have help from a couple people that were watching the vids, and once a few things got pointed out to me, it really started to click.
I'll say off the bat that I absolutely abhored most of the tablet+main screen sections, even with a controllable camera. At times they just felt very unintuitive and the camera seems to fight the tilt controls pretty often. Thank gawd there's a manual camera option.
Also, i do think the game could have done a much better job with tutorials of some sort. There's a lot that without doing extensive testing, you're just not going to get or even know.
That said? The game's punishment system is perfect for that.
A couple of things I realized as I played through the game:
- It really isnt punishing at all, outside of trying to get the better scores. At worst, dying on a boss simply brings you back at full health while the boss retains all its damage. In that sense, you have to train yourself to take more chances and try new approaches when something seems to just not be working.
- Dodging is actually not always the best thing to do. For a long time during my playthrough I tried to dodge EVERYTHING... in reality that makes fights take way longer han they should. What's better is learning to repel each enemies attacks, with what and why. And thus, why I think "Game Over" is so "soft" in this game.
To your point about genre-switching: I'm just going to have to flat-out disagree there. I found it to be rather brilliant, and it never got to a point where it felt like Kamiya and his team were trying to bait-and-switch the gameplay, but rather make the boss fights and certain sections feel as unique as possible. Very few of the big bosses feel the same as others (only two gameplay types repeats that I can think of amongst the big bads), and at least for me personally, at the end of the more unique ones I found myself hoping I'd get another dose of that gameplay.
To the point of recharging/battery usage: this is actually a pretty basic thing that you have to understand early on, and is almost completely mitigated by the charge item you can buy. If I recall correctly, during my playthrough it was one of the first things I bought with a credit card once I made one (due to a suggestion from the commentors on the vids).Initially I wasn't even taking advantage of it, but later on, I finally realized how... broken it is, lol. Seriously, once you get the Liner-charge ability, you not only rarely ever are in a position where you can't get battery back quickly.
Hell, some enemies will actually die really quickly when you use Attack Liner combined with... well, another ability. I'm pretty sure you have it if you're on 005 but I won't risk spoiling it.
Even without that though, as has been mentioned its really just resource management.
I won't lie though, as someone who spams items too much I do find myself frustrated quickly when I'm out of battery, lol.
To the point of being knocked out of drawing: If you're drawing with the tablet/pen... don't lol. Use the analog stick. Takes some practice but is MUCH better, much more intuitive, and tbh I almost don't know why tablet drawing was even included - analog works that well. Also, get the Speed Liner and Attack Liner buffs as soon as possible...
To the point of stuff being locked away: This is probably just me coming from an old-school mindset but... I seriosuly see nothing wrong with this, especially since the most important abilities are pretty much purchaseable after the Prologue (and if you're short on money to get therm, you can just play it again to get 'em). Guts IMO is necessary right off the bat, follwoed by Spring, then Attack Liner, then uh...whatever that block is that allows you to use the Wonder-Liner to build battery and HP lol.
* I'm too lazy to go look it up at the moment
To the point of having teammates knocked away: There's too many ways to get them back without having to go through the cycle you're going through. If you don't have the space available to run and get them back or draw a wonder line to streatch lng enough to reach them all... just wait a few seconds and they'll all recover anyways. Its been mentioned before but that goes back into team management and resource management. There were times later (once I understood things better) where if I got hit and everyone got scatered, and I couldn't get them all back but needed to defend myself, I'd grab just enough of my teammates nearby to do a Guts (block) or Spring (dodge) to keep from getting hit again, and just avoid combat until the rest of my numbers were ready (or I had space to pick them up).
I did run into situations where I felt like I had no chance to get out of being hit over and over, but as I played through and learned I realized that most of the time I was being impatient. I'm looking forward to picking the game up again after my "break" and really improving some of those scores since I understand where some of my fuck-ups were.
To the idea of "aint nobody got time fo dat": ...that's a fair point, definitely understsand able if you feel you dn't have time to be bothered to play the game through more than once or think of the first playthrough as a tutorial. And its perfectly fine if you don't find the game unenjoyable for you. But more of a time commitment is kinda' what the game demands to really get to the meat of it and understand it. In that sense, it is hit or miss.
If you're willing enough to go through more of it to try to reach the end, that sounds noble and all, but to me that means you're getting SOME sense of enjoyment out of it. If you're not? Well, personally if I'm not enjoying myself enough or the game/book/movie/etc. isn't compelling enough for me to keep at it for any other reason than time constraints, then there's little reason to force myself through it.
Hopefully it pays off for you.
I will say the endgame is literally one of the best / craziest I've seen in probably decades, but of course, YMMV.
For me, sticking with it despite my early frustrations (and I ran into a pretty bad glitch during my run that soft-locked the game!), paid off a ton, and its a game that I will definitely be going back to just to improve my scores and tackle more challenges long past the end credits.