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Saturday 9 April, 2005
More good stuff, more bad stuff, and more un-ugly stuff.
The good: Episode II's battle system remains fun, and the fights are really tightly designed. The boss fights are especially good. When was the last time you got white knuckles whilst playing a turn-based game?
Also, I think I've become used to the weird juxtaposition of realistic characters and mediocre animation. Either that, or the animators finally realized they couldn't slack off any more.
The bad: The mecha (E.S.) sequences are poorly thought out. Sure, the fights are pretty good (as noted above), but at the same time the E.S. system feels somewhat like a dumbed-down version of the regular battle system (although it does have a few little extras that make it interesting). The field maps are excruciating because the designers made the E.S. move like they're on Valium. Reality check, Monolith: these are not Mechwarrior 'mechs. They are supposed to move FAST. As it stands, my grandmother could run faster than one of these things.
The un-ugly:
(1) One particular event during a boss battle made me, as well as a friend who was watching me play, burst out laughing incredulously. It's probably the coolest boss attack ever. (Thankfully, my party survived.)
(2) If Gran Turismo is "car porn", then many of the cutscenes of this game have to be classified as "mecha porn". They're that good, which makes the sedate nature of the actual E.S. battles even more sad.
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