Kayin Amoh

Have a +1. I don't agree with all of it, but I did like the passion behind the post. And that said, I'm maybe not the best judge of difficulty given that I competed on stage in Tokyo at the Ninja Gaiden world finals. I never had any problem with checkpointing even on Apocalyptic for example - if a game gives you a nice, responsive dodge I'm usually pretty good at tearing through it. I did find that the slotted items changed things up nicely - adding health leech to Fury's whip (Chaos rune?) would allow you to soak up plenty of excess health over time after a few upgrades. 6% of damage done isn't too shabby after a couple of combos. Can't defend the bugs, of course. That's my chief... it isn't even a complaint because it didn't bother me much, but it's a shame they're in there as it allows people to point their fingers and laugh at the game. I mean, I'd rather have this than the three games you mentioned which are obviously super high budget, but I found them fairly pedestrian in nature by comparison - especially God of War, which turned into the Gears of War of fantasy action games. DS3, despite feeling 'old', still felt nice and fresh given the lack of obvious modern day competition. Glad you liked it overall! I certainly wouldn't have been against Nordic giving them a few more millions to play with mind - if they short change Saints Row to focus on short term profit, as well as their other upcoming games, they'll be killing off a lot of potential sales of great games that aren't allowed to get where they should be.

Nowhere near as good. Musou Orochi 3 and DW8 are your best bets for content and gameplay, though I never played Fire Emblem. Arislan plays well too, but is totally anemic in comparison, content wise. It's not a little bit less, it's a hell of a lot less. And the 97 anime is absolutely fan-fucking-tastic. It'll be dated now, of course, but hell. What a series.

Now at the final boss. I seriously don't think I can be bothered inching over the finish line.

I've actually hit the stone further in now, so there is a checkpoint near the end at least. There's also a run to the boss through a valley filled with those lurker things that are pretty much zero fun to fight. Can't even team up with humans as my Xbox live sub lapsed ages ago - haven't really used my Xbox much this gen, so I let it expire a few years back. Besides, I like to take things slow at my own pace like Majora, so not sure the multi'd be for me unless you could team up with someone you know and stay paired up for a good length of time.

Yeah, it's a slight shame that the hollow weapons are tied to each hollow, though I found the whip in and of itself was a fun tool from start to finish. I'm not much for elaborate combos as a rule, I'm more focused on how important timing and dodging is in a combat system. That said, it could have opened up some really neat inter-weapon chains.

I'm honestly starting to hate this game. The AI companion is a complete imbecile - I'm at the seat of the matriarch, where you can barely see a damn thing, and the asshole keeps jumping off the nearest cliff every chance he gets. It's balanced for having a companion with you, so I usually wind up dying inside after this happens and losing around 15 minutes of progress because there's no checkpoints inside. The combat definitely lacks the grace of Dark Souls too, as the animation isn't tweaked to the same degree. This results in some really choppy scraps occurring with loads of enemies at once where the whole flow just seems off. It actually gets quite a lot right, which is annoying, as it fails to nail some of the cornerstones - like that Godawful AI behaviour. If he's not toppling into an abyss with no enemies around, he's ignoring the ones we're fighting and running half the world away to pick a fight with more enemies and drag them in as well.

Well said. I think it's great, but I also didn't encounter any of the nastier bugs. Audio stutters and a few dash crashes were the worst of them. Annoying, but easily ignorable due to constant auto saves. Not excusing them, mind, and it is weird they didn't hold it back for a month just to go bug hunting. It's not like they're a rarity in the game, and they'd obviously affect reviews given their frequency. Also, I'd much rather have a good 15 hours. God of War for example was massive, but felt like a third of a game stretched beyond breaking point to cover the rest of it. (Story included.)

Wipeout certainly does. Not sure how effective it is, but it basically adds blinders and the like to the cockpit view to narrow the amount of fluidly moving space you can see at once.

It's pretty great, and its old school approach is a real breath of fresh air from 'damn near linear corridor third person over the shoulder AAA approach' that's so critically lauded these days.

If it's the use I'm thinking of, enemies can grab you which is when you press LB to break out. For instance, the boss can suck you into his chest and spit you across the battlefield, if you tab LB while trapped you'll shatter one to escape.

Fuck the rest of them, GOAT Yakuza 0 didn't even get top 10.

Yeah, the lack of activity in this thread speaks for itself. Shame, as I thought it was a way more enjoyable experience than a lot of the more popular, super-polished bullshit that landed this year. Some of which was okay, but generally totally pedestrian. DS3 was super fun for a dinosaur like me. The bugs are unfortunate - I've had that audio bug Goemon mentioned, as well as several others (one where it tried to load in a new area's worth of content every few steps that required a shutdown to fix. That said though, they never really hampered my experience with it too much overall. I'd rather have a fun game with bugs (within reason) than a AAA billion dollar title that's as interesting as watching paint dry.

Amazing times for the final!

You also don't seem to lose souls permanently. They're always there when you go back, regardless if you happen to die again in the meantime. At least in my experience - there was one point I died twice in a row since for some reason I decided to test out how lethal the acid is in a certain area while making my way back. Spoiler: very lethal. I also find the camera fine, so long as you're not constantly trying to lock on to every enemy you want to kill - Fury's whip has awesome range, so flattening weaker mobs is generally pretty easy. You might want to lock on to bigger enemies who'll hurl things at you, but just destroy the smaller ones first and it's rarely a problem - only really had an issue during one boss fight. I mean, just holding square down does a great AOE attack for clearing up malingerers, so crowd controls simple without the lock.