Things that kill: El Shaddai, COMBAT

[Falcondynamite]

El Shaddai: Ascension to the Metatron is easily the most beautiful game I've ever played in my life. Now being an actual fun game, no. In fact, I absolutely hated El Shaddai. I enjoy when a game shows off in a different direction (in this case art and story) but when you introduce a broken combat system that takes up the overall majority of the game and not realize it's terrible, something has gone horribly wrong.

Now I'll start off with saying I couldn't finish it, I got at least halfway through it though (The Fire Nephelem part). I could not bring myself to beat it, I wasn't enjoying it at all! I had no problem with the story it was based upon (If you don't already know google it), I loved its art, but the battle system is utterly atrocious. This includes not being able to dodge between combos, having actual free will to move around while using your attacks, constantly having to use weapons that you can acquire from your enemies (whom by the way have ridiculous amounts of health), cheap bosses and even with all this the game isn't particularly very hard at all. You endure this throughout the whole game, since it is the very thing that is used the most as you progress through it and that being said, it's the weakest element.

So is it funny that one of the main things they forgot to include it the game was "enjoyment" and "fun"? It isn't, so much potential was in the game and I felt it dropped ever since the first enemy encounter.

El Shaddai may still only be memorable to me for its astounding beauty, but for everything else, it's something I wish I could torch. Its way has been sent back to a Gamestop return bag. I'm Not saying what I got as a replacement.

Thanks for reading!

 

[OctalLord]

That was actually the thing that threw me off the game when the demo first came out. Watching the trailers I was thinking "Oh look at that! This game looks so cool." Which it does. But the combat just seemed unintuitive and hard to do in most cases. Especially having to pause to clean your weapon every so many strikes and then getting hit while doing so became a pain and a half. So I agree with you entirely.


On a side note, that's a cool thread title. Makes me all intrested in what goes on inside the thread and what not.

 

[Falcondynamite]

Yes, I forgot that one as well. That also destroyed the flow of combat. It's one thing to make a game look absolutely beautiful and then later on realise what all you threw effort onto was making a nice looking strawberry cake but not realising the interior was full of shit.

Thanks, I've been thinking about continuing on from here with others if more people start commenting and viewing.