Just bought the special edition used [off] my [fiancee’s] brother. Definite good deal there. I won’t go into too much detail since it’s an old game so not that many people are going to care.
I like it. Plot’s been fairly predictable so far and I think I’ve got an idea what the long-game twist is going to be like (the game drops some heavy clues). I’m presently a bit put off by the auto-save system. I died a stupid death from not watching my health and lost about a half hour’s worth of progress. I’m guessing that was a glitch.
On the whole though, I’m happy with the game. Combat is a fairly straight forward rock-paper-scissors affair with attacks, heavy attack, and blocks. There’s a variety of stances that let’s you throw neat status effects like slow or you different melee-fighting styles. I’m particularly pleased that there’s a technique that lets you steal chi energy rather than making you completely dependent on drops and recharge shrines.
This is just about right for me. I’m not really interesting in the amazing combos one can pull off in God of War. Instead, I like having a character that I can fine tune to a greater extent while combat itself feels more intellectual than reflex. It’s really kinda funny how long menu-based fighting stuck around when it really kinda sucks. Action RPGs are typically more simple fun while tactical RPGs are more of an intellectual challenge. But adding a time element to menu-based makes things twitchier and harder but not particularly more fun. Similarly offering full behavior programming a la FF12 removes some of the monotony and is a neat build challenge, but it doesn’t sound like it makes combat more fun.
There’s been a lot of fun menu-combat-based RPGs, but I think they’re mostly fun despite the combat limitations. I think the good number of action-RPGs and tactical RPGs from recent years, e.g. Jade Empire, show that designers have figured this out.
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