Uhm, can I rectify?
I’m playing some more and loving it.
The in-game cinematics are still kind of lame as I said, but at least now the guys mover their mouth and it is an improvement.
The Hero interface and controls are really good. The idea is well implemented and lots of fun to use. You can unlock different NPCs and can use up to three at once. You can select aggressive, defensive or passive behaviours and template and subjob them as a normal character.
They level along with you, their armor auto-upgrade, while you have control on the weapon they use (can give them your stuff).
You can also give them waypoints and the same to all your other generic henchmen.
The only thing that misses is a way to set the formation. The rest is well designed and implemented. UI and all. Good work.
I’m playing with a dervish woman and it became a lot of fun after more scythe attacks were unblocked. I like the design and feel. I have an enchantment that I can cast on me (so no bothering with targeting) and it gives me a bonus to the health, when it wears off it heals me for double that bonus and can then be used as “fuel” for other scythe attacks. What I like is the fact that it has no trade-offs. I hate the kind of spells that give you a bonus while applying a malus to something else.
But the true love is about PBAoE attacks. The scythe doesn’t damage just your target, but all the hostiles one that dare to be near you and along with the standard attacks you also have PBAoE spells. Again, no need to bother with targeting, you just trigger the effect and it damages everyone around you. I loved these since the ice wizards in DAoC. What is even more cool is that they also have side-effects that trigger 20 seconds later on all targets hit, one puts them on fire, the other slows them down.
So I have this woman that fights in melee with a whirling scythe and with cool PBAoE attacks. It’s just great.
I also have noticed a skill that gives me 25% to walking speed and attacks. In other games they would have just made the running animation 25% faster and it would have looked horrible. Instead here they use a dedicate animation.
I like a lot the animations, very cool, but it could have been a DREAM if instead of seeing each attach separately they would have chained the animations to flow seamlessly from one to the other (right now she attacks, wait, and then attacks again). God of War isn’t that far, really.