I keep hearing Vanillaware games have mediocre gameplay, although they look like ok hack and slashes to me. Any thoughts?
in odin sphere you get a 5 hit combo which is pretty stiff and can't be interrupted,worst of all sometimes the enemy you hit don't get stunned by your attack so it's very possible to being hit back while you are executing your own combo,there is also tons of RPG element which you might not like,enemies drop souls and seeds when you kill them... you use the souls to power up your attack and the seeds (which too are powered by souls) so that you can get food to increase your max HP,there is also a system where you combine items to make potion some of them are also required to proceed (for example one level is a volcano and you need cool-down potions to proceed otherwise you take damage) the game also has a lot of slowdown with certain bosses
but the biggest problem is the repetition,there are 9 levels in the whole games and each of the 5 character play through 8 of them,the levels are identicaly for all the characters (this is made worse by the fact that the first level of character number 2 is the same as the final level of character number 1) with some of the boss being different and some of them being repeat so basicaly after you have finished the first character you have seen 90% the game has to offer but you have to yet finish the game 4 more times,even in the ending you get thrown in a gauntlet of 5 boss but 2 of them are repeat from previous level's
that sums out the horror of the game quite well but in case you want to read more...
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/odinsphere/odinsphere.htmExcuse me,
Odin Sphere features an intricately spun tale worthy of a place in the canon of classic literature.
still i implore people to stick with the game because as far as i'm concerned this is the best written jrpg that was ever done,i know that tagline sounds pretentious and stupid but for once it's right
The back of the English box brags that Odin Sphere is an "intricately spun tale worthy of a place in the canon of classic literature", a slightly pretentious tagline that suits the extraordinarily melodramatic storytelling. It's basically as if the script writer discovered the opera Der Ring des Nibelungen and decided to kinda sorta make a game based off that. Odin Sphere highly fancies itself as a Shakespeare play, to the point where the screen dims and the spotlights focus on the protagonists, letting their internal thoughts out as soliloquies. There are whole gallons of angst, as Gwendolyn fights endlessly for her father's approval, or Cornelius sulks over his appearance, or Mercedes cries over the death of her kin - and yet it's never quite as obnoxious as most RPGs that contain similar themes. Maybe a large part of this is due to the presentation, which feels like the most shockingly professional stage play ever produced. There are options for both Japanese and English voice options, but truth be told, you needn't ever switch on the Japanese unless you're one of those insane purists, because the English voice acting is incredible. The only issue with the story scenes is that you can't fast forward through the dialogue, requiring that you either watch each scene play out completely, or skip them entirely. It's not extraordinarily long winded, but these scenes can feel a bit long.
then comes muramasa,muramasa is easier to play cause your character are now ninja's so they are super agile and can dash the shit out of everywhere and interrupt their own combo,they also removed most of the rpg element (although not all of them) so there is less inventory sorting and dicking around to do... this time there are only 2 characters and they go trough different stages with different bosses but still a lot of stages throws you the same chumpy ninja's enemies over and over so while it's not as repetitive as odin sphere,it's still not perfect,the plot also sucks donkey ball,nothing interessing ever happens,no literature here at all
the last vanillaware game nobody ever seems to talk about it's grim grimoire,grim grimoire is an RTS on console which is pretty weird on it's own,you get 4 different families of units and they work in a rock-paper-scissor system (there are fairies which trump ghost,ghost which trumps demons,demons trump robots and robots trumps fairies) unfortunately the strongest demon unit is so strong (it's a hugeeee dragon that takes half of the screen and it's awesome to see) that it destroys everything,even the ghost unit that it's supposedly weak too which makes the game super easy (although there are challenge level where you are restriced on what unit you can summon)
but the plot... oooooooooohhhhhhh.... the plot kick ass,basicaly the main character has come to a magic school to learn magic and meets a colorfull cast of characters (particular mention goes to the robot teacher who is a freaking lion) everything goes all fine and dandy until the end of the week when someone ends up summoning satan and murdering the whole school,luckily the main character has an artifact that let her go back in times so she goes back at the start of the week and loops over and over until she finds a way to stop the summoning,did i mention how much i love time loop plots?
