I gotta hand it to this game, it looks really neat in trailers. A lot of the reviews here will say the same things, and that's because they're pretty much spot on. The game has a lot to draw you in. The art direction is top-notch, the story they drip to you sounds interesting, and I think this would all play out super well in an action game starring the "Mother" character you get to messI gotta hand it to this game, it looks really neat in trailers. A lot of the reviews here will say the same things, and that's because they're pretty much spot on. The game has a lot to draw you in. The art direction is top-notch, the story they drip to you sounds interesting, and I think this would all play out super well in an action game starring the "Mother" character you get to mess with during the tutorial. After that... you get three classes that may as well negate the whole permadeath thing, dialogue that gets repeated over and over and over and says literally nothing ("When will their suffering end?" I dunno, lady, but you've said that at EVERY LOADING SCREEN FOR THE PAST FOUR HOURS.) and a difficulty curve that makes Xcom look like Skyrim.
The game's problems start with this description going around. There's nothing scary in the first several hours, if anything at all. There's creepy flesh monsters you kill in one swing that are only annoying because of how many the game throws at you for no reason. There's an incomprehensible plot about the ravings of a lunatic and a pandemic and some supernatural otherworld stuff. It sounds really neat, but the problem is in the presentation. You're going to read a lot of stuff that explains nothing while playing a game that features a meager three classes against about twenty or so enemies from the length of the bestiary at the start, and everything takes far too long to be enjoyable.
My biggest gripe with the game is how slow it is. Not just the story and learning things, but the gameplay loop. Often I'll move my three characters and then watch five enemies move up and do nothing, but their turns take twice as long as one of mine, as if the AI has to THINK about what it's doing, or the game's loading things needlessly. There's just a certain pause that it shares with Xcom that really grinds my gears and makes me want to skip my enemy's turns, especially the uneventful ones, which is many of them. In the first Era, the game's chapters are divided as such, the game tries to give you the impression there's a lot of depth, but I couldn't find it for all the confusion and tedium. Skill that interrupt enemies cost HP, HP can only be regained by sacrificing a character of equal or higher level, therefore interrupt skills suck and you should avoid them, but they're also incredibly necessary for setting up big damage or saving other characters. Risk/reward has never felt so lame! Imagine playing Fire Emblem, or Xcom, and every time you shoot your gun you take damage. Yeah, it's just pointlessly hindering for the sake of difficulty. Like, they didn't want to copy the Xcom accuracy system, so here's something more annoying. Oh, and there's no other way to regain HP other than sacrificing, and I can't fathom trying to raise more than three characters at a time over level 3, because that's how many you get to take with you on a mission.
Which leads me to the biggest downfall of the game. There's only three classes. There's only. Three. Classes. You get guns, a sword, and a spear and shield. That's it. Offense, range, defense. Not even, like, a mage? How about you use the damage skills in a more interesting way and make a blood mage that sacrifices HP to heal the other units, but can't heal herself? THAT would be better. But, no, here's three classes, you have three slots, they learn the same moves at the same levels, one swordsman is the same as the next. Yawn. Sure, they get different passives, but that implies you survive. The game honestly may as well reset if you lose someone, because you'll just hit a level wall if you keep going with an uneven party. And again, the stupid healing thing.
The game has an easy mode, that's probably the better experience, but overall the game feels like it aimed at the Darkest Dungeon fans, and I can't say whether it hit the mark or not. It's not a bad game, it's just tedious and hard for the sake of hard. It's like a Dark Souls clone that changes the formula to make the game "harder" so they can put it on the box. There's nothing wrong with difficult games, there's something wrong when you make the hard part boring.… Expand
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