Utente di ERA
i've been playing for an hour and the game has charm and good adventure spirit, but it is very rough and needs to be polished:
- World looks big and intrincate, I like that a lot.
- Puzzles seem to be clever, even if sometimes the difficulty comes from not being sure about how to interact with something.
- Music is awesome
- Art is top notch regarding geography and areas. Characters are a mixed bag, though.
- Whenever you talk to someone the game makes a weird instant zoom to the NPC that looks strange.
- Falling damage doesn't make any sense. It is necessary because of some puzzles but the game doesn't indicate it well.
- The hud is ugly. Shield icon has a green radiactive glow that looks terrible.
- The game makes a bad job comunicating things: you can run pressing R but anybody tells you about it.
- There isn't a fast function for opening the map, or at least I haven't found it. You can open it from the mission's log in the main menu, but even there you can't really zoom enough the area you're in.
- There are some inconsistencies regarding event order and character awareness. I went to the exit of the village because I didn't know where to go and my following character said something I wasn't supposed to hear yet because I hadn't been introduced to the mission she was talking about (going to some city and finding a key).
On top of all this, my main concern with the game is regarding story, characters an dialogues, which is something very important in a 50-hour adventure game, in my opinion. My first impressions aren't good about this:
Five minutes in and you are already being told out of the blue how you are some kind of chosen one of the cliché legend of pure hearted hero. In the previous conversation five seconds ago you were being asked to find some chickens, literally.
Since the beggining everyone is telling you about lots of places, lots of monsters, lots of dangers, and it is impossible to keep track of the information. I get that the developers wanted that you feel you're in a big world awaiting for adventures, but you can't just make all the characters to talk about dozens of faraway regions while you're in the tutorial.
Worst thing of them all, with difference, is how NPCs just
don't stop talking. And I mean it. On top of that most of the dialogue doesn't contribute with anything to your objectives, isn't interesting for the lore or makes anything for the character's personality.
Some of these things are quite hard to fix with a patch, but I hope my observations help the developers to make it better. You can tell the care and love they've put in it, but it should be more polished if they want it to succeed.
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It is a bit absurd that you can't find hearts or equivalent items to restore your life during the game. Death was starting to get really frustrating during the first dungeon because the timing of the combat and the enemy collisions are not very tight.
And speaking of which, the first dungeon was unexpectedly hard for a first dungeon. Don't know if that is a good or a bad thing, though. It is true that there were some obtuse puzzles (the order for the bells was told anywhere or you were supposed to try until you get it? And man those sliding tower boxes in the room with the water... just terrible) but it is also true that the structure of the dungeon itself was pretty good.
I don't know. Definitely a weird game.
