A this-but-this of
ReCoreI had forgotten every impression of this by the time I started it up, but I was pleasantly surprised. At least initially.
- Combat and traversal feel good and your bots are very useful throughout (prioritize Duncan, he cleans shop).
- Dungeons rely mostly on combat and traversal challenges, no puzzles to speak of.
- Fights are fun for a while, but then they start forcing you to defeat waves of bullet sponges, dragging things out needlessly and highlighting how samey the fights are. Variety in types and encounters only changes what and how you dodge, not how you fight.
- You can decide if you want to yank enemy cores out (for upgrade juice) or blast it to bits (for upgrade mats). Later on you will be yanking them out just to get it over with, as that can be done at two-thirds of their health bar.
- Build up a 10-hit combo and you can insta-yank a core, even from a full HP enemy. You can even bank one insta-yank for the next fight.
- You can have one bot out and two on-hand, but there are three in total. Technical limitation, probably, but it's super annoying when you explore the overworld and run into a spot where you need one you left at home.
- The biggest kick in the balls though: you will at one point need 15 (then 30) McGuffins to progress the main story, which you can find by exploring the overworld or, most commonly, from what I had assumed to be optional dungeons. Almost stopped then and there, but kept going, cause I am stupid.
- The final dungeon is an infurating gauntlet set in nearly featureless environment. Same basic design as the challenge dungeons, except textureless cyberspace, i.e. this is where they blatantly ran out time and money. Was it really THAT much cheaper to make a bunch of filler than to make another dungeon or two? I'm guessing yes.
tl;dr
Good fundamentals, but padded to shit.