curst wrote:


Damn, that's, like, a flawless short list. But I'd like to take this time to mumble a bit about DW4. I still (mostly) stand by my original short review, as I still like the game a great deal, but...

I've found myself drifting back to DW3 and the expansion. For all that DW4 supposedly has this improved AI that ensures that the weak soldiers don't just stand around all day pointing at their throats and saying to you "slash HERE, please!", it's still about a trillion times easier than DW3:XL's Very Hard difficulty, which I still have major problems surviving in.

The only time I've actually been killed myself (although I've lost a number of times due to failing to protect my commanding officer) has been in those cheap-assed duels, a part of the game that I'm sure Method Man would say is more half-assed than a semi-colon. If you reduce the enemy to below 50% health, then fuck up in the SLIGHEST fashion (which is suprisingly easy given the dumbass camera that simply refuses to stay directly behind your character), then WHOOPS the enemy will fully heal themselves. Every... fucking... time. That makes sense in normal battles, since you can pick up health powerups the enemy cannot get, but in duels where you and your enemy are on a perfectly level playing field (other than their ability to FULLY heal themselves on a whim)? Fuck that. Not that any of it matters since you can just go into bow-and-arrow mode, point outside of the makeshift arena, and stand there while your enemy refuses to attack... I guess because they're too busy applauding your marvelous technique in drawing your bow?... in order to guarantee that the time limit expires. Man, why did they even bother with duels if they were just going to fuck it up like this?

I also dislike the new weapon system. DW3 has a sort of Diablo feel to it because of the randomly generated weapons - that's gone in DW4. Now you have to 'level up' your weapons, which feels pretty redundant seeing how you already have to 'level up' your character... and your weapons only get an attack bonus and nothing else. That kills DW4's replayability.

And I still cannot stand the voice acting.

I dunno, maybe if DW4 was my first DW game I'd be flabbergasted by it the way I was with DW3. But it's simply nothing fundamentally new. Plus it's mostly superficial improvements (better graphics, a good synopsis of the story the game is based on, the three new characters - and that's really all I can think of) are completely balanced out by the things it screwed up.