Played up to the second save area. Here's my initial impressions.
Circle Of Doom is a mediocre hack n' slash game. The focus seems to be on getting lots of items and loot, and improving stats. There's even online leaderboards. The game play is done on more beat-em-up style linear pathways, however; there doesn't seem to be any sort of central hub or town to go and talk to non-player characters at. Instead, you will come across small areas with a deity present, allowing you to talk to it to buy and sell items, or synchronize weapons and armor. (I have no idea what this does) You can also choose to go to new areas, once available, and go to sleep at these points. Sleeping takes you into a dreamworld, where the camera is close-up and the frame rate and game speed and dreadfully SLOW. Luckily the only point of this area seems to be to talk to a few NPCs, learn new abilities (which are earned by doing side-quests, killing specific types of enemies), and save your progress.
There are five playable characters; not sure if you can unlock more. I chose Celine, a "fast" character, although despite this description, she seems slow. The combat is clunky; it's less Dynasty Warriors and more like a PC point-and-click action RPG or MMORPG. You have two attack buttons, although these are not light and hard attack buttons. Instead, you choose from different weapon types, with each weapon handling and comboing differently. Some also have attributes such as counter-attacking, which is nice since there's no way to defend or roll to evade attacks. You can also equip projectile weapons such as bows or slings, and pressing the L trigger takes you to a behind-the-back view with an aiming reticule. You have to use the right analog stick to aim, which is a little difficult since X and A are used for attacks, but it also lets you easily strafe back and forth to avoid any incoming enemy projectiles. Two different skills can also be equipped; there are a ton to learn and they are classified under beginner, intermediate, and expert.
All attacks and special skills take skill points to be used. There are small meters on the bottom of the screen that show your skill points; all weapons and abilities take different levels of the meter, which when not used will fill up depending on the skill points used. This is why the combat feels clunky, since certain weapons will only allow for a hit or two before being depleted.
The game's sound is pretty decent; music is good so far and the voice acting isn't too bad, but visually, it has issues, particularly with the camera. The character models look good, but are very "shaky" during cut scenes, and some of the backgrounds objects and textures are downright awful:
You will occasionally run into views like this one:
Fortunately, clicking the right stick will ALWAYS center the camera right behind you, but this is still an annoying issue nonetheless.
I need to play more of this game first, but right now I'd probably give this a 6/10. The online co-op sounds good, and if that's well done, this game is at least a 7 or 7.5 title. With so many other awesome games out right now, I'd probably pass on this game at full price and try it when it's cheap. It's nowhere near as bad as Ninety-Nine Nights was, but it's still not that great...it feels like a strange fusion of a Musou game and a point-and-click Diablo clone.
