At Chapter 6 now, in the outer castle before actually going in the castle.
When the game WORKS, it's a pretty solid action game with some good enemy types that are fun to fight against, a decent amount of moves, and a constant balance between focus gauge filling, light magic, and shadow magic. At it's good times it's a good 8.5/10 action game.
When the game IS BROKEN, the camera angles suck for battle and you get hit from off screen, the camera angles suck for platforming and you can't tell where the fuck you are supposed to be jumping, the double tap sprint jump is broken half the time so you fall into pits instead of jumping, the game is confusing as to what it wants you to do an consists of constant trial & error because of shitty level design, and the combat sucks because the LAG makes parrying/dodging/NOT GETTING HIT a huge pain, when it's broken you pick up a piece of a turn key and you can't see which side it's supposed to go into so you just have to keep pressing R2 on each side and half the time he drops the key because you're not at the spot it's supposed to go into. When it is broken the game is a frustrating piece of shit 3/10.
The problem with the game is that it's constantly jumping back and forth between working and broken. I guess it's just a fault of this being a new studio and their first major game of this type so it's janky as fuck. But unlike the euro jank which is charming, this jank just gets you game over screens and pisses you off, so it's not so acceptable.
I also realized that I just hate the combat design in this game compared to other games in its genre. By giving enemies 3 types of attacks: NORMAL ATTACK, UNBLOCKABLE/UNPARRYABLE ATTACK, GROUND SMASH, the game constantly is confusing you as to what it wants you to do in combat. Do you sit around and wait to parry OH WAIT IT'S ONE OF THE OTHER TWO ATTACK TYPES, PARRY FAILED, YOU ARE DEAD. Do you go for an attack and then find yourself STUCK IN ANIMATION FRAMES AND UNABLE TO PARRY/DODGE/JUMP when the enemy decides they want to stop being hit and counterattacks (since your attacks don't stun enemies at all), Do you go for a jump only to get knocked down instantly because you are in the air for a half of a second. The message is unclear.
In DMC you can attack like you want and then instantly parry or dodge when the enemy counters. This creates a good combat rhythm when you know what to do. Keep the attacking pressure on and react to enemy attacks with parries or counters. That's it. Nice and simple and clean fun. Bayonetta is pretty much the same. Ninja Gaiden is similar too with a lot more rolling.
The main difference between that and LoS is that I don't know if it's the battle system purposely designed this way or just the lag from a low framerate, but you can't instantly cancel dodge/parry/jump out of attacks. So suddenly if you do any attack you're often going to get fucked when the enemy attacks back and you can't react because you're locked into animations. Even in God of War/Dante's Inferno you can instantly dodge/parry out of any animation.
Then you have the whole parry is the same button as roll thing, so sometimes when you go for a parry instantly after you're moving you'll roll out of the way instead of parrying. The sluggish framerate causes stuff like this because EVERYTHING feels laggy.
There's a good combat system in there, but it's dragged down by FRAMERATE FRAMERATE FRAMERATE and some shitty amateurish design decisions. As it is, I still stand by that it's one of the worst combat engines in a beat em up. It's just too broken and often frustating and not often enough actually fun.
If the fix the combat in LoS2, and don't have any level design areas like Chapter 2 or all those stupid mud/gas sections (WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS FUN) that just drag on forever, then LoS2 could be good. I almost enjoy LoS, but it's just a bad bad jank game.
