Xaan
08-30-2008, 06:34 PM
I wasn't sure what to expect from this game when I went to buy it. I was well aware that it had been in the works for quite some time, and people had been patiently awaiting it's arrival since the launch of the 360. I knew it was a dungeon crawler and had looked up it's status and the basic premise of the game a few times. I have enjoyed other such games in the past (Diablo I&II, Dungeon Siege I&II), so I pre-ordered about a week before release. Jump to now. I've logged 50 hours on my Defender and have experimented with the other classes for a few levels as well. I've enjoyed the game, please keep that in mind when reading the rest of this review. Given what I know about it now, I would still have made the purchase as it has, over these 50+ hours, more than served it's purpose as a dungeon-crawler. Alas, this is not the masterpiece game that a lot of people are making it out to be. I have seen others mention it, and I too have been wondering how a game that has been in development for so long could have allowed some glaringly obvious problems to slip by. On the flip-side to that, I am intrigued by the fact that SK devs actively read and post on the forums, something which I have not seen with a lot of other games, and I certainly have played a lot. Hopefully the feedback provided by many of us will be used to make Too Human 2 the game that I expect it has the potential to become.
Graphics
+ The game looks great and the frame rate is steady enough that the quick pace of the combat isn't hampered by the typical enemy zerg that comes with this type of game. The large selection of armor and weapon graphics, though expected from any RPG these days, is fantastic and I was surprised to see how well completely different styled armor pieces visually fit together on the character. Color customization is a huge plus, as nobody likes to run around looking like a clown (Something the 'welcome to Outlands gear' is infamous for in WoW).
+ The environments are excellent and the views from many places, particularly many of the Cyberspace areas, are spectacular. Sadly the limited camera control often prevents the player from seeing everything.
Combat
+ Melee combat being performed simply by holding the control stick is very much welcomed as it makes clearing through weaker enemies as simple as it should be while still allowing more complex actions to be performed against stronger ones when required.
+ The combo system fits well, and Ruiners scaling with combo level are a nice reward for using better combo building attacks.
+ Item customization is excellent, so you can build your gear around your own play-style.
- Unfortunately a lot of stats are left unexplained, and some are just plain hidden (Hammer+Shield mitigation bonus).
- Ranged combat seems a bit lackluster. While it's obviously not the focus of playing as a Defender, it doesn't seem like anything more than a gimmick thrown in and it really slows the pace of the action. The game's forceful use of ranged attacks against many of the bosses is not enjoyable, and even less so when you are faced with a ballistic-resistant Troll. The hitboxes for the arms inconveniently cease to exist whenever you need to melee them, and even with the legs destroyed they are still capable of rotating faster than you can get around behind them to mount.
Sound
+ Aside from being assorted levels of volume, the sound effects are well done and don't sound out of place. The music, when audible, is also very fitting for the environments.
- No volume controls? Not only is this game nearly twice as loud as anything else I have played on my 360, but many parts of it are played at a significantly different volume level than others are. Eventually I gave up on adjusting my speakers every few seconds. Some parts of combat had sound effects miles louder than others, and rather than having obnoxiously loud explosions come from my room, I ended up just leaving the volume quite low. Infact, it was so low that aside from the combat, I couldn't really hear anything else and didn't get to hear most of the non-cutscene dialogue present in the game and I had to turn on subtitles for the cutscenes so that I had at least some idea of what was going on.
- When dialogue did happen to be audible during non-combat time in a level, it was an annoyance. I honestly couldn't tell whether or not Baldur was involved in some of the conversations, as the voices sounded far too much alike. On top of that the comments being made were, without exception, completely out of place. Men are crying about how they are going to die and screaming as if they are being eaten when you are walking down a hall with no enemies. Then you kill a pack of enemies and they start bragging about how many they killed. What, while they were off 100 feet away from the action facing a wall? Guess I missed it.
AI
- Oh boy... unfortunately there are no positives for me to write about in the AI section. Melee enemies work off of little more than a mob mentality. They run straight to you and attack. Something that I think would make Goblins much more interesting enemies would be to have more Elite Goblins among them, and then have the normal ones attached to the Elites so they can lead them like a pack. When following an Elite make them faster, make them weave while running to avoid ballistics, make different packs alternate attacks against you in hit-and-runs from different angles, and then when the pack leader Elite goes down have them panic and act unorganized like they do currently.
- Ranged enemies don't move, and shoot at you regardless of whether or not their line-of-sight is definitely being blocked by a wall or pillar. When you rush them through a pack of melee they should be constantly trying to retreat to locations that put the melee between the player and themselves.
- Trolls often begin smashing the ground while you are out of range, and then just continue to do so without ever moving closer.
- Bosses seem to suffer from the same range issues. GRNDL runs around in circles, charges you and takes a swipe, but as long as you are back-peddling he can't hit and just keeps trying. Hod is free loot once you are past the annoying and incredibly tedious 'shoot the platforms' minigame, as he does little more than get hit by melee a few times and then jump to a different location. GARM, on several occasions, has done nothing more than fire 1 missile volley and then just stand around waiting to die. Hel was a better fight, but far too easy.
- Friendly AI is sadly just as disappointing. On different levels and in different sections you will see that a variety of teammates are present (or not present, as is also sometimes the case). Whether or not they actually are supposed to perform differently in combat is left to your imagination though, as more often than not they do nothing but stand well back out of range, rush forward and immediately die, or stand behind objects and attempt to tunnel through them with their rifles. There are many cases, in Ice Forest especially, where their purpose seems to be little more than to spawn from somewhere behind you after a fight is over, run over to surround a jump pad, and then stand there never to be seen again. Entering the fight with GRNDL, after not boarding the moving platform they suddenly reappear in the room beside you and never move, only engaging in combat if you drag the boss over to them at which time they will immediately be one-shotted. The only time I found them useful was for amusement when fighting GARM, where they all ran and stood within 2 feet of each other and then died to a volley, only to result in having a never-ending train of them running to the same spot from off the side of the screen.
Misc
+ High quality charms take a fair bit of work to level, but provide some very fun effects
+ Co-op via Live
+ Fun. It is, despite the problems that it does have, I still felt like it was worth the time to play and I enjoyed it enough to do so.
- Co-op limited to only 2 players and not accessible over LAN
- The death sequence takes far too long to play out
- The game felt short. Though the levels are lengthy, there are only 4 of them, and each level is almost a completely separate chunk of story. 1-3 could almost be rearranged to any order with almost no consequential effects. Hall of Heroes serves as a provider for recent backstory about Baldur and a tutorial for Cyberspace. The location is interesting but as the boss is irrelevant to the main plot it feels like it should have been used for something much more important.
- Bugs. I have yet to fall through the floor like I've seen some complaining about, but I have experienced a few camera issues. On one such memorable occasion I had just completed one of the arenas in Ice Forest, and was walking over the bridge leading out when the camera suddenly shot below the floor and continued moving downwards. I thought I was falling until, after a lot of jumping, the repositioned itself above ground. There also seems to be an issue with timing slides on targets capable of jumping/teleporting. On my most recent play-through of Helheim, in the first room of the battle against Hel I slid just as she was teleporting to the next room. I ended up having to restart because Baldur changed directions mid-slide and attempted to travel through the wall in a never-ending slide. This also occurred a few times after juggling an enemy near a ledge, and then attempting to slide to them as they fell off.
Would I buy it again? Yes.
Should it have been better? Yes.
I look forward to the next installment of the game.
Graphics
+ The game looks great and the frame rate is steady enough that the quick pace of the combat isn't hampered by the typical enemy zerg that comes with this type of game. The large selection of armor and weapon graphics, though expected from any RPG these days, is fantastic and I was surprised to see how well completely different styled armor pieces visually fit together on the character. Color customization is a huge plus, as nobody likes to run around looking like a clown (Something the 'welcome to Outlands gear' is infamous for in WoW).
+ The environments are excellent and the views from many places, particularly many of the Cyberspace areas, are spectacular. Sadly the limited camera control often prevents the player from seeing everything.
Combat
+ Melee combat being performed simply by holding the control stick is very much welcomed as it makes clearing through weaker enemies as simple as it should be while still allowing more complex actions to be performed against stronger ones when required.
+ The combo system fits well, and Ruiners scaling with combo level are a nice reward for using better combo building attacks.
+ Item customization is excellent, so you can build your gear around your own play-style.
- Unfortunately a lot of stats are left unexplained, and some are just plain hidden (Hammer+Shield mitigation bonus).
- Ranged combat seems a bit lackluster. While it's obviously not the focus of playing as a Defender, it doesn't seem like anything more than a gimmick thrown in and it really slows the pace of the action. The game's forceful use of ranged attacks against many of the bosses is not enjoyable, and even less so when you are faced with a ballistic-resistant Troll. The hitboxes for the arms inconveniently cease to exist whenever you need to melee them, and even with the legs destroyed they are still capable of rotating faster than you can get around behind them to mount.
Sound
+ Aside from being assorted levels of volume, the sound effects are well done and don't sound out of place. The music, when audible, is also very fitting for the environments.
- No volume controls? Not only is this game nearly twice as loud as anything else I have played on my 360, but many parts of it are played at a significantly different volume level than others are. Eventually I gave up on adjusting my speakers every few seconds. Some parts of combat had sound effects miles louder than others, and rather than having obnoxiously loud explosions come from my room, I ended up just leaving the volume quite low. Infact, it was so low that aside from the combat, I couldn't really hear anything else and didn't get to hear most of the non-cutscene dialogue present in the game and I had to turn on subtitles for the cutscenes so that I had at least some idea of what was going on.
- When dialogue did happen to be audible during non-combat time in a level, it was an annoyance. I honestly couldn't tell whether or not Baldur was involved in some of the conversations, as the voices sounded far too much alike. On top of that the comments being made were, without exception, completely out of place. Men are crying about how they are going to die and screaming as if they are being eaten when you are walking down a hall with no enemies. Then you kill a pack of enemies and they start bragging about how many they killed. What, while they were off 100 feet away from the action facing a wall? Guess I missed it.
AI
- Oh boy... unfortunately there are no positives for me to write about in the AI section. Melee enemies work off of little more than a mob mentality. They run straight to you and attack. Something that I think would make Goblins much more interesting enemies would be to have more Elite Goblins among them, and then have the normal ones attached to the Elites so they can lead them like a pack. When following an Elite make them faster, make them weave while running to avoid ballistics, make different packs alternate attacks against you in hit-and-runs from different angles, and then when the pack leader Elite goes down have them panic and act unorganized like they do currently.
- Ranged enemies don't move, and shoot at you regardless of whether or not their line-of-sight is definitely being blocked by a wall or pillar. When you rush them through a pack of melee they should be constantly trying to retreat to locations that put the melee between the player and themselves.
- Trolls often begin smashing the ground while you are out of range, and then just continue to do so without ever moving closer.
- Bosses seem to suffer from the same range issues. GRNDL runs around in circles, charges you and takes a swipe, but as long as you are back-peddling he can't hit and just keeps trying. Hod is free loot once you are past the annoying and incredibly tedious 'shoot the platforms' minigame, as he does little more than get hit by melee a few times and then jump to a different location. GARM, on several occasions, has done nothing more than fire 1 missile volley and then just stand around waiting to die. Hel was a better fight, but far too easy.
- Friendly AI is sadly just as disappointing. On different levels and in different sections you will see that a variety of teammates are present (or not present, as is also sometimes the case). Whether or not they actually are supposed to perform differently in combat is left to your imagination though, as more often than not they do nothing but stand well back out of range, rush forward and immediately die, or stand behind objects and attempt to tunnel through them with their rifles. There are many cases, in Ice Forest especially, where their purpose seems to be little more than to spawn from somewhere behind you after a fight is over, run over to surround a jump pad, and then stand there never to be seen again. Entering the fight with GRNDL, after not boarding the moving platform they suddenly reappear in the room beside you and never move, only engaging in combat if you drag the boss over to them at which time they will immediately be one-shotted. The only time I found them useful was for amusement when fighting GARM, where they all ran and stood within 2 feet of each other and then died to a volley, only to result in having a never-ending train of them running to the same spot from off the side of the screen.
Misc
+ High quality charms take a fair bit of work to level, but provide some very fun effects
+ Co-op via Live
+ Fun. It is, despite the problems that it does have, I still felt like it was worth the time to play and I enjoyed it enough to do so.
- Co-op limited to only 2 players and not accessible over LAN
- The death sequence takes far too long to play out
- The game felt short. Though the levels are lengthy, there are only 4 of them, and each level is almost a completely separate chunk of story. 1-3 could almost be rearranged to any order with almost no consequential effects. Hall of Heroes serves as a provider for recent backstory about Baldur and a tutorial for Cyberspace. The location is interesting but as the boss is irrelevant to the main plot it feels like it should have been used for something much more important.
- Bugs. I have yet to fall through the floor like I've seen some complaining about, but I have experienced a few camera issues. On one such memorable occasion I had just completed one of the arenas in Ice Forest, and was walking over the bridge leading out when the camera suddenly shot below the floor and continued moving downwards. I thought I was falling until, after a lot of jumping, the repositioned itself above ground. There also seems to be an issue with timing slides on targets capable of jumping/teleporting. On my most recent play-through of Helheim, in the first room of the battle against Hel I slid just as she was teleporting to the next room. I ended up having to restart because Baldur changed directions mid-slide and attempted to travel through the wall in a never-ending slide. This also occurred a few times after juggling an enemy near a ledge, and then attempting to slide to them as they fell off.
Would I buy it again? Yes.
Should it have been better? Yes.
I look forward to the next installment of the game.