ok I have now completed all of the stages of chapter 1 and chapter 2.
The game does get better as far as sucking you into the pace of the story and the characters.
An interesting note is that you can select from many European voice tracks - I am currently listening to everything in Dutch
they also have like German, Fench Italian, etc... No Japaneese.
The core gameplay is fun and a new twist for tese types of games. the three stances, combined with three types of attacks, blocks and counters is brill.
Something I noticed was that after you unsheathe and start fighting with the heavenly sword, the game shows some odd character animation bugs, especially during combos.
If you hold L1 you are in the light stance, you swing your pieces of the HS around on long chains ala Kratos except you dont do alot of damage...when in this stance and not pressing attacks, you can block ranged enemy attacks such as arrows.
if you dont hold a trigger you are in a normal stance and do medium damage, can block melee attacks by standing still, and have medium counters.
Holding right triggger puts you in fierce stance - you slowly swing the heavenly sword around 2 handed style but do alot of cleaving damage...when in this stance you can block heavy enemy attacks....
so fo course the new twist is switching stances as needed.
I still dont like those shooting parts - but I havent see too many of them.
My opinion on the GFX has gone up slightly - id say they are now a "mixed bag" instead of mediocre. The cutscenes are in game engine stuff and as such things like the character faxes look great - some of the clothing textures can look bad at times.
The biggest crime of the GFX IMO is the flickering $0.05 shadows....beautiful scenes are ruined by these flickering beasts.....
