Grace Knight

Fun, but has major issues that ruin it. The game has a good story and nice boss fights, but there are multiple aspects of this game that just totally ruin it for me. Warning I yap a lot! SAVING: It might seem insignificant, but be wary if you don’t have several hours to spend playing the game at a time. You can only manually save at the Wak-Wak trees, and autosave only happens after ‘major’ events. I’ve had to lose progress multiple times because i’m unable to get back to a Wak-Wak tree. The Wak-Waks are also spaced weird to where sometimes if you die you have to walk through over half the area again just to get back to where you were. PAR CORE: I enjoy par core in games… to an extent. I’m not talking about the leaf puzzles in the forrest or the bell puzzles, but rather the hall-dashing ones. Why in the world would you cover entire pathway tunnels in reset material, I have no idea. It makes getting through one small section incredibly annoying and difficult. This is ESPECIALLY excessive in The Pit of Eternal Sands. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were only a jump or two, but to have such a long stretch of it is exhausting. Not only that, but when you die it takes you to the last solid ground you were on, meaning your respawn point could be AGES away, and you have to do it all over. It just adds unnecessary difficulty. ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS: These are also fine and a fun challenge to dodge to an extent. My issue comes when they’re placed excessively. An example is in the ocean area where many of the platforms need to have timed jumps before you get zapped ON TOP of enemies already being present. The par core is hard enough without being damaged every 2 seconds (not to mention the damage often cancels a jump, ruining it). It’s better to pick ONE challenge for players to focus on—maybe two—but any more and it becomes infuriating. That jumping puzzle to get out of the Azhdaha area for instance. Why put par core, constantly falling platforms, AND projectiles all at once? The amulet can help a little, but not enough for it to stop being a major issue. ANIMATION/RESPONSE TIME: Since the more advanced fights are well done, this is less of a problem but still a gripe for normal enemies. When fighting, you have to wait for Sargon’s animation to finish before doing anything else. While this isn’t a new concept, his animations can take unnecessarily long depending on your combo. This leads to difficulty dodging and can be the difference between victory and defeat. Overall i’m disappointed because this game has a great story, and with it a lot of potential. Unfortunately the items listed above really ruin the game for me and make it unenjoyable to play. There’s a lot I didn’t cover (ie. how ridiculous getting Xerxes coins are, long status effects, enemy bombing, etc) but I listed the main issues I have. They’re so bad that I wonder how much player testing they actually did before releasing. I’m not sure whether i’m going to continue the game or not, but if any of the above would pose a serious issue for you then i’m glad I could help!