|
...but ultimately, there are just too many little things left incomplete or poorly implemented. Don't get me wrong: there are LOTS of things to like about this game. There's a good variety of enemies, and scads of different abilities you can put on your equipment. The traps are good; the monsters are well-designed, the story is... serviceably translated, and good enough to do what it needs to.
But game balance is terrilbly off. It's far too easy to make your equipment crazy strong, to the point where most of the game just doesn't seem challenging. Worse, when playing on hard mode, there's a weird glitch (?) with the monsters in the first few levels; as you get stronger, the enemies do, too--exponentially so. On your first delve into the dungeon, you can probably kill six to eight bats. On the second one, you might manage three. After that, I mostly ran from fights, trying to grab some good equipment before leaving. The result is that by the time you get out of the first area, you're level twenty-something, and kitted out like a god of war.
There are other little hiccups, too. When you're running along, the game sometimes blends your inputs together, and you wind up running diagonally through walls a bit when you change direction. A bigger problem is that moving diagonally (at least with a keyboard) is hit-or-miss; if you don't hit the keys just right, you wind up just sidestepping, which can leave you in a bad tactical situation.
The worst is a game-crashing event that happens when you're playing in English. When turning the Ominous Thorn into a potion, you need to set the language to Japanese, and keep it that way until AFTER you drink that potion.
Looking back at all that, it seems a little harsher than I mean it to be. I *do* really like this game; the H-animations are pretty good, and all the different spells and status effects are awesome. If it were a little bit harder in the easy spots, if it had a gallery feature, and if the code were polished a bit more, this would be a definite winner. As it is, it's still a dang good Roguelike game, and I keep finding myself playing--it must do *something* right!
|
