JIA JIAN TIN

High anticipated though overall low expectation because... EA... The gameplay and story start out great. It incorporates a good deal of the Expanded Universe or Legends into the storytelling. However, after your first real mission is when things started getting "not so good." I'll start with non-spoiler issues and then follow up by issue with spoilers... 1. Way way way too many glitches... there were glitches so bad I had to restart my entire game (not quit to desktop but launch new game) because my character got stuck after glitching off a platform and falling and respawning to an area I can't reach yet or a script in the game makes me use a skill I don't have yet and gets my character trapped. A few of these issues were patched but I had to restart my gameplay 3 times in total. 2. Horrible horrible AI. Most games don't have the best AI in the world but holy christ... I walk into a boss fight that ended in 5 seconds because the boss walked off the map... Most units aren't really a threat and are really just there for you to test your lightsaber combos. Each specific unit has 1-2 highly predictable moves that they repeat over and over again. 3. The mechanics in the game are repetitive and mostly stolen from other games. There's really no introduction of anything new in this game that excited me... missed opportunity to really try something new, the developers went with a save idea of using what's worked in other games like puzzles exploration from ACII, climbing structures from AC series in general, fights feel like Dark Souls with baby mode turned on (even on hardest difficulty). Overall, after about 2 hours of playing it... there was nothing new. 4. One of the things every single player RPG game has is collectible. The "databank" or lore collectibles are extremely easy to get and most are hard to miss. Chest on the other hand are harder but absolutely useless. Nearly every chest in the game gives you cosmatic, and its not any unique cosmatic, its literally just a different paint job for you spaceship that you barely see, the pancho you're wearing, the driod on your back, and barely noticible changes to your lightsaber hilt. You don't even unlock lightsaber colors, you just get all of them as part of the story! SPOILERS! 5. The story just never made sense to be from the very beginning. You're a Padawan... and you run into a pilot and a failed Jedi... You know the Empire is out looking for you, there's a Sith Lord, and inquisitors after you but its somehow a great idea to unlock this Jedi Temple to retrieve a holocron containing every single young force sensitive in the galaxy? Seriously? You're not even fit to train them and you can barely protect yourself! 6. More story problem. Merrin was a great character introduced in the game but the game hardly cared about her once she joins your crew... like you never get to play her as a character, she never goes with you on mission and play any significant role beyond a couple of lazy story points. 7. EA style "freedom." After you explore your first Jedi Temple and set out on your mission, you're given the freedom to explore a couple of different worlds. But this freedom is a typical EA illusion, its not real. You have to follow the exact linear storyline the developer wants you to follow or else you run into blockades due to lack of abilities.

I'm a big DOTA fan, but I'm already realistic, this series was very disappointing. Maybe it was more disappointing because I am just a big fan and had high hopes. DOTA: Dragon's Blood was not brave. I think that's the best way to describe it. It's not terrible as a series. It is a so-so series. It plays off a stereotypical plotline with no creativity whatsoever. D: DB basically puts DOTA characters into a boring stereotypical plotline. Everything was predictable and the only excitement was really seeing the DOTA characters I love come to life, in a sense, in the animated series. I'm not sure whether the producers were too afraid to test the water with D: DB in fear of offending the fanbase? Or whether they were just lazy because they know enough of the DOTA fanbase would eat this up like candy (because they kind of did). Hell, even I watch till the end hoping it would get better (Clone Wars anyone?). D: DB, I initially thought tried to balance too many characters and I felt, in the end, failed to properly tell everyone's story. Yet, we do have examples of this done well. So, I initially thought it was an attempt to please fan to show as many characters as possible that messed them up. But then, Arcane showed up... and did exactly what D: DB failed to do. Told an appealing, original story, from the perspective of multiple characters, building and growing each individual character and the world. I had no excitement for Book 2 after watching this series. But, after watching Arcane, I'm somewhat hopeful. Hopeful that D: DB will learn and give us a much better Book 2 story.

I'm a DOTA fan and casually played League of Legends. I was bored and decided to give Arcane a try after being disappointed with Dragon's Blood (DOTA 2 series by Netflix). Arcane is amazing. It is a well-written and well-executed story, with excellent artwork and voice acting. My biggest beef with DOTA: Dragon's Blood is that you MUST be invested in DOTA lore to get a lot of things about the series. If you have never played or looked into DOTA lore, Dragon's Blood can at times be hard to follow or enjoy. After a couple of episodes, the only thing keeping me going was my love for DOTA, not the series. Dragon's Blood felt more like a fan service series than an actual series made for everyone. Arcane (maybe they learned a lesson from D: DB) executed storytelling so well. You needed no foundation or knowledge about any of the lore of the world. The Series takes time to build the world and the lore so that anyone can enjoy and become invested in the series. Arcane tells the story of multiple characters in this same world and does an excellent job balancing the screen time of each of these characters. Starting the series by emphasizing how separated and connected these characters were with one another. What Arcane did was take LoL characters and world, present it in an animated series and build on it throughout the series. An actual series that anyone can dive into and get really invested and enjoy. One does not need to know anything about the LoL characters but can still understand and love the characters. Unfortunately, that was something D: DB failed at. I'm truly impressed with this production. I'm really hoping D: DB will learn from this and have a better season 2.