Patient Gamers

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[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Brother, there is no suspension of disbelief that can hold this shit together hahaha. It's a shame because it's sometimes managing to hit that "so bad it's good" vibe, but too often it's held back by the voice acting. It's quite literally the worst I've ever heard and it fucks up the whole thing. It isn't even bad in a hammy way to match the B-Movie vibe, it's just... absolute garbage. Like people who have never acted before doing roles in their second language while cold reading their lines off the page over Skype bad.

I'm at the end of the Police HQ stage. I can't tell if it's a learning curve or just a fucked up progression, though. The first level was by far the hardest, but there's just way too much shit locked behind the skill tree I think. Like, when I got to the 5 shield guy ambush after the miniboss in the first level I hadn't yet unlocked any of the tools to deal with shield guys. Almost quit then and there.

I also kind of hate the sequences of huge gauntlets with no checkpoints. It's not the kind of challenge I enjoy that much. I'm sure some do, and there are some elements of strategy and planning it requires of you that I'm sure some love. I don't, really, though.

I'm also glad the game isn't that long. I think this is the penultimate level. The lack of variety in melee and the combos and attacks you have is starting to feel noticeable.

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[–] mohab@piefed.social 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

Yeah, I think what helped me get into it is I didn't really care for anything other than combat, so I skipped most of the cut scenes except anything I felt important.

I also never bothered doing well in the mini-games. They were just not that interesting and poorly put together overall.

These long stretches without checkpoints felt fucking impossible at a couple of points throughout the game. I had to take a couple of long breaks to make it through on my first playthrough.

Unlocking shit definitely makes the game way easier. Some parts don't feel doable without grenades, for example.

I did end up having a lot of fun in the last stages and on a subsequent playthrough though. Unlocking everything + figuring out guard cancels to increase mobility + tactically using grenades/weapon pickups made it all click in my head.

Guard canceling into gun at close range in particular made minibosses a lot easier, especially when combined with grenades.

It's definitely one of these games that get better after the first playthrough. Issue is the first playthrough can be so rough it kills any desire to revisit the game for most people.

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[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I only spent much time with the crane game, as that is the source of thousands of skill points and I wanted to unlock the skill tree faster. It's weird that the rest of the minigames don't give much in terms of rewards, but I'm not complaining, as I didn't enjoy them that much.

Grenades are definitely important, and in an attempt to copy Ninja Gaiden it feels like those long gauntlets are meant to test routing and planning. You're often punished for using grenades early, as there will come a later encounter before the checkpoint that almost require them, and sometimes it feels like it's intentional to force you to redo these a couple of time until you've seen enough to make a plan. But honestly it just makes a first playthrough kind of miserable.

There is some stuff you can do in the combat, even gun cancelling and alternating between the two combo trees, and the slide slash is pretty good for staggering, as is the running kick. But I don't know, it doesn't feel like there is enough juice here to make me want to do a second playthrough. I'd rather fire up any of the 4 Ninja Gaidens. Well, maybe not NG3.

EDIT: I am at the last level at the moment. I am having negative amounts of fun. I get the taking a break thing, I can only play this in stretches of 20-30 minutes before it pisses me off too much.