Recent reviews by Oninomiru

To be honest, suffers pretty much from the same issues as Coteries. I'd say writing is actually a bit weaker here compared to the first game.
But has pretty good music. Art is pleasant to look at as always. On technical and narrative side still has ways to go.

+ Background art is nice and I like the art style.

- Writing is very weak.
- Choice is illusory, you get more or less the same result regardless of what you do.
- Stiff character sprites. Extremely low sprite variety.
- No auto play, no chapter select.

This game's performance and overall technical side makes it really difficult to recommend. Poor visuals aren't helping either.

+Interesting defensive options. Block, timed block, soul shield, dodge - you have variety of actions you can use to defend.
+Job switching mechanic mid combos allows for some flexibility.
+Hit strings allowing you to cast magic as combo enders.
+Very good soundtrack.

-MP system is terrible, might be the worst resource system I've seen so far.
-Offensive options are underwhelming, move variety is a lacking.
-Boss design is awful. Most bosses have extremely simple patterns or have like 3-5 moves total. For a defensively focused game this is a huge detriment.
-Forgettable story and annoying protagonist.
-Stuttering, fps drops and crashes still happen. Some segments drop game to 23 fps (I9, 3080RTX)
-Graphics look like this game came out in 2004.

This is the second best Fallout game to date. First one is better though. More focused, polished, better tone and narrative.

i9 11900k, 3080 RTX, 32 RAM.


So far 9 crashes. Fps goes from 60 everywhere, combat included to 35 in cities. Not unplayable, but extremely annoying, I'd advise to hold off on purchase till they patch it. Hence "not recommended" review.
Also, microtransactions in single player is a bad move. I will always be opposed to that. Even though in case of DD2 MTX are completely worthless in the literal sense and you should not buy those or even let them influence your opinion on the game.

Overall this game is not bad by any means, it is fairly alright, just very disappointing. A lot of steps have been taken back from the previous game, a lot of lessons completely forgotten and the same mistakes have been made again. Certain things feel very unfinished.




+Fun combat, pretty fluid and has decent variety of interactions. Not only you can chain together certain abilities, you can also climb enemies, attack their weak points to break off certain parts or disable their specific attacks. Oil barrels, explosive barrels, poison barrels, stone blocks, ice blocks, etc etc. There is a lot of ways you can interact with enemies.

+Vocations are pretty distinct. Each one has specific weapon only it can use as well as different vocation specific mechanics. Such as thief having dodge button, fighter being able to block, mystic spear hand having access to teleport, etc.

+Gear variety and design. Visually it all looks great, absolutely superb designs. Artists did great job here.

+Pawn system. They are hilarious, effective, customisable, interactive and pretty much the best part of this entire game. I care about my pawn way more than about my own character.

+Graphics is pretty alright. Very crisp, good lighting, even though might be not the the most modern.

+Character creator is pretty good. Downside is that it is still a hybrid between slider and preset based and preset part brings it down. Facial scans was not the best decision tbh. Skin has innate tones which you may have to counter with different pigments like blue. Face type affects: eye shape, jaw shape, nose shape, mouth shape. If you don't like either of those - too bad, can't change them. Have to pick entirely different face type. It's more of a mixed bag here, hair styles are also abysmal. But still for the most part gets things right.



-Enemy variety is extremely low. Humans, goblins, lizards, chimera, cyclope, ogre, minotaur, medusa, drake. That's pretty much it?

-Story is very bad. Somehow worse than in Dragon's Dogma 1. DD1 at least had interesting themes, here it's just so meh. I finished every single side quest too and most of them have pretty much no story telling value.

-Wyrmforging gear adds super obnoxious ripples effect on armor, making it look terrible. I have no idea how this even got approved. If you have eyes, you straight up can tell it looks bad.

-Dragonsplague is disappointing. Obnoxious, leads to 1 cutscene with no interactivity. Adds nothing of value to the game aside from the fact you gonna dismiss pawns more often just to cleanse them.

-Scars on pawns. Your pawn can get scars during combat and to get rid of those, be ready to visit hot springs often. Again, just more tedium, adds nothing of value to the game. Plus you can add scars in CC already, so doubly pointless and annoying.

-No real endgame/post game. It's kinda sorta somewhat here, but is super limited and again, Dragon's Dogma 1 somehow did it much better.

-Mage/Sorcerer gameplay is extremely underwhelming and reduction of spell variety did hurt those two a lot. Also can't quick cast when levitating. Why?

-Balance is a bit scuffed, skills and sprint cost way too much stamina. Enjoy slow walking.

-DENUVO

This game is great.

+Complex combat system. Easy to get into, takes time to master.
+Fun boss encounters. Designed more like bosses in MMOs, but in a good way.
+Party of up to 4 characters, controlled by CPU.
+Visuals and art style is nice. Especially for an anime game.
+Music is great. Pure bangers all around.
+19 playable characters to pick from with different mechanics and styles.

-UI is awful. Extremely large damage numbers covering character and enemy models making it hard to read enemy movement and respond. Counter based characters are the most affected. Why is there still no option to turn them off?
-Story is short and kinda whatever, generic anime mediocrity.
-No build variety. Damage Cap stat is ruining balance.
-Translation. As somebody who speaks both english and japanese, I can tell you that english translation is horrendous. At times characters are not just saying poorly phrased things, but outright entirely different sentences between languages.

In what world is it not insane to retroactively patch in a DRM in an game that has been out for a year+ that negatively impacts performance and breaks mods?

This game is very charming. Short and sweet (took me close to 6 hours to beat story and all arenas), but is very engaging and has replayability value.

+ Voice acting is great. So are the characters. I really enjoyed that spanish flair a lot.
+ Writing is pretty clever and funny. Got quite a few chuckles out of me.
+Visuals are good. I liked environmental design too, some levels are very atmospheric.
+Gameplay is pretty complex. Not only base moveset is very robust, you also have different interactions with enemies, such as exploding them with barrels, kicking them off the cliffs, dropping crates on them and much more. In a way reminded me of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
+Music is good.

Don't really have any negatives to list tbh. I wish game was a bit longer, but that's pretty much it. This game is really very enjoyable.

+Great weapon variety. All of them have unique mechanics and movesets. Longsword has parries with i-frames and devastating spirit attacks, sword and shield is very agile, hunting horn is a good support weapon, etc etc. Just try all of them out.

+Absolutely gorgeous monster design. Monsters are very appealing visuals and mechanics wise. Was majority of them are a blast to fight. Zinogre, Nargacuga, Namielle are amazing in both flair and action. There are plently more, those are just my favourites.

+A lot of armour and weapon customisation, as well as build making. You can really customise your play style.

+Exploration and world interaction is also superb. There is incredible variety in terms of tools and possible interactions you can use to change how things play out. Ever dropped a bunch of boulders on a monster or put him into sleep only to wake up with a bunch of explosive barrels? How about inciting one monster against each other and watch them wreck havok trying to tear each other apart?

+UI. You can disable UI elements. Can customise directional input and camera. This should be the baseline standart. I can't believe so many games still miss that. This game gets it though.

+Visuals are pretty. This game may not have the best graphics, but it makes up for it with great artstyle. It will hold up even 10 or 20 years from now on.


-Controls are a bit unwieldy at times.

-Character creation is subpar. A lot of presets, you're fairly limited in terms of what kind of face you want to make. You can't change the shape of cheekbones, or chin, or anything like that. Character creation is closer to what TC's the Division usually offers, rather than the industry's best like Nioh 2 has.

-Clutch claw feels a bit too mandatory. I wish it was way less impactful. Makes game's meta focus around damage a bit too much.

-Handler. GO. ♥♥♥♥. YOUR. SELF.

So, first things first. Right now PC port is beyond ♥♥♥♥♥♥ (played on i9 11900K, RTX 3080, 32GB ram). Stuttering, fps drops, etc. Also get a gamepad for this game, you aren't a caveman, are you? That aside, to the actual review.

Honestly, coming from Nioh games, I expected to hate this game. But I have to say you probably should approach this game on its own merit. I will expalin in comparisons though. With dark souls too, since they brought Bloodborne producer and it shows. Also be aware this game is pretty easy.

+Combat has very solid core. It's focused on fundamentals. Gone is the complexity and freeflow feel of Nioh combat where you approach encounter on your own terms. It's more like dark souls, where you take turns to attack. But, you are also entirely responsible for those opportunities with deflects and deflect counterattacks. There are also several systems that enforce counter play. Like stronger virtue negating weaker virtue. For example, if an enemy has fire buff, you can hit him with ice damage or water related debuff and his buff is gone. You can do the same with spells. See fireball coming your way? Send an icicle as an answer. You will even see appropriate kanji flash on the screen. General combat is fairly simple though. Normal attacks don't deal much damage, their purpose is to generate positive spirit, which you can spend on other actions. Spirit attack powered with positive spirit will pierce guard and often is a nice combo ender. Deals a lot of spirit damage too. Which you can follow up with fatal strike. Fatal Strike is also powered by spirit and the main source of your damage. Martial Arts or weapon skills don't consume entire spirit bar however, so you can use those to apply debuffs, deals spirit damage, and minor hp damage. Yeah, as it stands right now martial arts don't deal damage either. Deflect is the main defence and also a mechanic to create windows of opportunity. Just hold block while deflecting, in case you mistime deflect. There is butterfly dodge (has i-frames) and normal roll too (doesn't have i-frames). Deflect Counterattack switches weapon while parrying and also regains a lot of spirit. So does Fatal Strike btw if you're in negative spirit. Jumping attacks have two versions too. And you can jump off enemy heads as well.

+Boss design. Gameplay wise, I think this game easily has at least 3 bosses that are now my favourite boss fights of all time. Yes, even comparing to Nioh 2. And the fact that you can deflect anything, even stuff like lightning bolts, makes these fights very fast and dynamic. I can't praise Team Ninja enough in that regard.

+Level design is honestly just ok. It is better than Nioh's due to verticality and different approach. You can sneak up on huge majority of enemies during levels. And fatal strike on unaware enemies deals a lot of damage.

+Companions. I found companion system to be pretty nice. They have rare banter and are pretty capable. Provide passive benefits and make you feel less lonely. Also easily dismissable too. You get the despawning branch the first time you access Reinforcements menu.

+Character design is great. Both humans and demons look great. But you know, TN has the best artists. So that was expected.

+Upgrade system. You just stright up upgrade your weapon like in dark souls. from 0 to +9 and you have endgame weapon. So don't throw away your favourite if you have one.

Now to the mixed part.

+- Visuals are a mixed bag. Sometimes game looks really good. Sharp and nice image. Sometimes it also manages to look worse than Nioh 1 LMAO. I don't know what happened, I guess bad lightning work, despite textures being improved.

+-Music is not distracting or annoying, but absolutely forgettable. I can't recall a single tune the moment I turn off the game.



Bad.

-Story. It's disjointed. You're shown a bunch of events and character's reaction to those. It's not very coherent. A lot of characters got a very different spin too, but it's based on RotK, which is historical fiction anyway.

-Morale system that gates spells and gives you scaling. I finished the game as lvl 1, so I didn't even unlock wizardry. But I have to say, I'm not a fan. It incentivizes exploring, but levels aren't that interesting to explore. And at times it feels like you have to plant every flag to have a good chance at boss encounter.

-UI and QoL. This is straight up degradation. I'm sorry, but what the ♥♥♥♥ happened here? I haven't seen such godawful UI in ages. First, nice job ripping off dark souls. What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ape of a human being thought that placing HP and Spirit bar in the middle screen and making them grow in size was a good idea, without even any option to turn that off or put those someplace else? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this is terrible. Also remember how in Nioh you could hold RB and RT to spend 10 or 100 points into single attribute while leveling? Gone. Remember how you could lock, destroy, favourite, etc equipment in Equipment menu? Gone. Now for whatever ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason you have status menu here. And guess what? The same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ status menu is doubled in another menu too. When you change visuals of your equipment, you have to pay for it first. No free preview. Also when you want to change the look, you have to undo that appearance first and then apply new one. There are so many stupid ass confirmation prompts on everything which you can't even disable. I don't have fingers the size of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ elephant foot. Why these even exist? Arrows and crossbow bolts don't auto refill upon praying at the shrine like they did in Nioh. I have 3 000 arrows in storage and have to buy new arrows during mission. Gear comparison is gone too. When you sort things in inventory it doesn't save it like it did in Nioh. It resets to "date of OBTENTION". What in nure-onna's scaly tits happened?

-Translation is very bad. That's par for the course, was the case for both nioh games as well. But translating from japanese to english is very hard, so I'm not gonna harp on that one.

-Fashion is a bit of a let down, not much variety in terms of visuals for both armour and weapon.

-Enemy variety. It's less than in Nioh 1. Which is to say it's really bad. Humans, demonized humans, a handful of demons. pretty much it. Outside of bosses, there isn't really any variety. You will see pretty much entire roster in the first like 5-6 missions.

-Loot system. Oh boy, another ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that gets apparent only once you reach NG+. Don't even know where to start. Martial Arts are all pretty much garbage damage wise. Find something that makes you jump or blocks hits, so you have stuff for utility. Now, the problem is with discovery system. You see, you learn effects only once you discover them. There is a tab with Status Icons that gives you descriptions of what buffs and debuffs do. You just have to use them first or see an enemy use those. Now, that applies to loot too. To loot some piece of gear you have to find it first. Why is it bad though? You fight yellow turban bandit. He drops his bandit gear. Now you can loot that. You fight yellow turban champion. He drops his gear. Now you can loot it too. You level up Zhao Yun to maximum loyalty and he gives you his gear. Now you progress to the next stage with demon tigers Changgui. Now those Changgui can drop both their loot and also yellow turban bandit, champion and zhao yun gear too. What do you think happens when you clear entire game and get like different sets of gear discovered? It makes farming graces basically impossible, because anything can drop anywhere and loot pool is so diluted you will have better chance of winning a lottery. So, yeah, have fun with that.

Overall the game is definitely very rushed and unrefined. Core game is actually good, it's just feels like every other aspect is covered with diarrhea. Maybe sequel will be better, if it happens.