• Victor Vran Helsing
  

  17 hours playtime

  23 of 90 achievements

This is another hack ‘n’ slash/CRPG. Rather than unlocking cool-down skills, each weapon class has three set abilities: one normal attack and two cool-down attacks. You can also find stand-alone cool-down moves that you can equip to the left trigger (later, you unlock the ability to equip one to the right trigger as well). You have a dodge-roll, but there are no invincibility frames and it can only interrupt your normal attack animation, not your cool-down attack animations (which, admittedly, is still a huge step up from other hack ‘n’ slash games I’ve played). You can also jump, but there’s no platforming; it’s only used to get over ledges, small gaps, and the occasional enemy laser. Not long into the game, you get “hexes”; these increase enemy stats, but give you more experience: one increases the damage enemies do (fine in theory), one speeds up enemies (also fine in theory), one gives random enemies the ability to cast spells, one increases enemy defense and gives all enemies regenerating HP (which, as you can imagine, doesn’t actually make the game more difficult, just more tedious), and one deals damage to you every minute or so (need I explain why this is the worst one?).

As is sadly typical for hack ‘n’ slash games, level design is sparse. There was this one part in the Well of Worlds where a Gargoyle was placed on a ledge you couldn’t reach yet where it could throw projectiles at you, but for the most part, you’ll only ever face enemies directly on flat terrain. Once again, avoiding attacks is only guaranteed if you’re fighting the enemies individually, or maybe even in groups of 2 or 3 (though it depends on which enemies, and even then, it’s a bit of a stretch), so of course the game regularly puts you up against huge crowds of 5+ enemies, because how can the game be challenging if you aren’t forced to take damage? Heck, the game doesn’t even stop at “unavoidable-damage-by-proxy” like other games I played: some enemies can turn into an invincible green sphere that constantly damages you on contact, and you literally can’t escape it since it moves at least equally as fast as you; some enemies can shoot out several blue lines that, if touch you, drag you over to the enemy and trap you there with no way to get free until said enemy finishes its actual attack (and that’s time other enemies can spend attacking you); some enemies can instantly teleport to where you are and get an attack off before you have a chance to dodge; and just in case if you think that I’m simply missing something for how to dodge all of those attacks, there are a couple vampire bosses who can summon diamonds that instantly and constantly zap you with electricity, lowering your health continually until all the diamonds are killed. Oh, and don’t forget that on top of all those unavoidable moves, you’re gonna have to be fighting a few other enemies at the same time, each reacting to and attacking you asynchronous to each other.

EDIT: And you can’t even use the tactic of “dodge away, attack, repeat” because if you get too far away from their spawn point, they’ll run back and start regenerating health (even without the health regen hex enabled, even if the enemy doesn’t normally regenerate health). Speaking of spawn points, half the time, you can’t see enemies ahead of time; they don’t spawn until you reach a certain point in the map, then they suddenly come up through the ground or ground-pound from above, and the next thing you know, you’re surrounded.

The worst part of the game is the Apocalypse battle: as soon as it starts, the boss launches an arcing scythe attack that you’re in range of, and you barely have enough time to get out of the way (and that’s without the “increase enemy speed” hex enabled). Sometimes, I’d skip the intro cut-scene only to be greeted with the attack halfway over, the damage literally already done. Beyond that, it can teleport between the top and sides of the arena and spawn a wide, harmful carpet from it to the other side of the arena, so the only truly safe places are the corners of the room. That’s all well and good besides the opening cheap shot, but reasonable challenge isn’t enough for this game, so once the boss gets about halfway down, it gains a new attack where it just scattershots toward you, and since the bullets’ trajectories are erratic and brisk, there’s no way for you to predict or react to them to avoid them. On top of this, it summons wraiths as its health goes down, starting with just one, but later on summoning four at once, and by the way these are the enemies that can turn into that invincible green sphere (on top of having several other attacks). Combine their asynchronous assault with the unavoidable green sphere and the boss’s carpet summoning and unavoidable scattershot, and you can see how the fight is no longer about skill, but rather about patience and luck.

For the record, there are two bosses after this one before the end of the game, and both are way easier, even with hexes enabled.

Man, I thought the Tales franchise had unavoidable damage cornered, but the more of these games I play, the more common I see it actually is. It reminds me of when I played Antichamber: at first, I thought “wow, this is the worst game ever!” but over time, I realized that it was just part of a sub-genre, filled with other games that also try to mask unintuitive B.S. as “puzzles.”

Not recommended.