My friends and I had very high hope for this game, we were planning to play this game for months to fill the hole of game releases until later this year when all the big titles coming out. However, after demo on xbox360, and some full-game play thru on PC with xbox controller at my friend's place, we decide to pass on this game, and here are the reasons.
1. Animation 4/10
The animation is very poorly done. Most of the animation feels very light as if they are doing sword/staff... play instead of combat fighting. Especially on Anjali's human form, at some point, I feel she's trying to give slaps in the face instead of killing her enemies. Comparing to a 6/7 game like Dante's inferno, a 4 is a mercy score; I would give it a 3 if comparing to Bayonetta.
2. Camera control 2/10
Very odd and old-styled camera control, very few modern games invest such kind of camera controls/views, that reminds of old and unsuccessful J-games.
For example, if I want to take a close look of my newly found armors/weapons, I can't do so with ease. Since this is a hack-slash-loot game, this is very important, and once again this game failed to provide so.
3. Game control 4/10
Since this is made to the console, I found it hard to believe that the developer didn't invest a little time to use the vibration on the game pad while you are smashing your enemies. This combines with bad animation and camera control makes me feel like playing a dream cast game once again in 2011.
4. Character design 5/10
The reason that I gave 5 out of 10 is because all the woman in this game looks pretty good and some of them have almost perfect proportion on the face. However, all the male characters in this game feels pretty awkward, Old people have way too smooth skin for their age. Very odd design for the mage "Reinhart", I don't know if the age for him is set to young or old. I do feel very funny when Marten said he met Reinhart when he was a boy. Marten looks like mid-30~40 at best(with his oh-so-smooth skin), and Reinhart looks like 50+ with his white hair with voice of 20+ years old.
5. Special effects 8/10
I do like some of the environment settings and some of the special effects are cool, and at some points amazing.
6. Loot system 5/10
Although there is a random loot system invented in the game and there are many types of loots in the game, it doesn't really make sense. Why? Because this game has no new-game+ mode, you can't really go back and treasure hunting chests/bosses/mini bosses again. If you had some series of bad luck when opening the big shining chests after each boss, YOU ARE DOOMED FOREVER!! No going back, unless you made a save file beforehand, so you could re-do them again. Random loot system and no new game+(or instance/dungeon that you can revisit) makes it a horrible game design. Although the quality of the shop items is good, buying is not as satisfied as from dropping it from mobs/chests in front of you(And half of the fun in this game is loot management)
If you are the kind of person that likes to tune your characters the way you like it, sorry it's almost impossible to do so unless you are very lucky or save/load million of times every time you tried to open chests.
7 Dialog cut scene 4/10
Mass effect styled dialog option is nice and easy for the eyes. However, if you want to make close-up view of characters, at least make their face animated instead of only the lips.....which makes people look hilarious when they are making a big speech. Also, when NPC are talking to each other, their heads won't turn to face each other, it is just very very odd. Imagine everyone's facing away when talking to you all the time in real-life.
8. CO-OP mode 1/10
My friends and I were very excited that we are gonna have a hack&slash game that we can co-op together. We were expecting a borderland, but instead we were giving with a half-effort game design. What's the point to play a loot game without being able to save what you got.
9 Re-play value 3/10
If you want to go back and check on different choices and characters, yeah sure. However after finish the first play-thru, all I feel is emptiness. I can't even load back in to check all the loots I got. Like in dragon age origin, sure there is no new-game+, but I could load back in after I beat the game, to check loots/people/places all I like; however, Obsidian decided that players don't need that.
10 Overall score/value 5/10
If DS3 is a arcade game, I'd give a 8/10. However for a retail $60.00 game, whoever gave it more than 6.5 is blinded and failed to do a honest review. Unless of course if this is the first hack&slash-loot game they ever play. $15.00 torchlight is way past the value of this game, I still play torchlight sometimes to finish collecting all the set armors after finishing the game 3~4 times.
I am pretty sure this game failed expectation for many many experienced gamers who want a fun, lasting hack&slash-loot game for the summer. It sicks me to see some of the fan post that blinded support the dumb siege III. Flame me all you want, but this doesn't change the fact that this is most disappointing game in 2011.
