| You only listed the good things about the combat. What is missing are the bad pieces.
- The camera can move into funny angles so that it becomes impossible to see where you are and what you do. Most notably in fights against bosses where it then can upset.
- You always have to point exactly on the opponent to make a hit. The bad thing is that the game engine has its own opinion about where that is. This happens often when you are fighting larger enemies. An enemy behind you, which is not visible to you, then receives the hit making it impossible to attack what you see on your screen. Sometimes you fail because the pointer is too small to see and using the pause mode here does not help.
- The keyboard input has a too low priority, meaning, that other parts of the game like the character animations go first. If you play by W-A-S-D control you often have to press these keys multiple times to move your character around. It becomes most notably when you unsheathe a sword and wish to move forward. It then runs the animation for the sword and ignores any keyboard input, making it impossible to unsheathe and quickly move forward. This problem makes any of the special movements, when pressing one of the W-A-S-D keys twice, impossible to apply in a quick sequence. Either you pressed a key too often and your hero starts to monkey around or you are just not moving. In short: it's sticky.
- The game engine sheathes the sword automatically. This turns bad when it does so right in front of an enemy. Your weapon is also sheathed every time after you opened a chest or took ingredients from a plant. If that weapon is the torch and you are in a dark cave it, too, can upset. Sometimes your sword is being unsheathed automatically during the events. The game is then capable to unsheathe either the steel or the silver sword, however it frequently chooses the wrong one. When it does so in front of a boss it can upset.
All in all you can say that the combat system, when it is generally a good invention, is missing a final polish to make it useful for a fun, fast-paced fighting style.
Sven  |