I played this game a bit last night and I have some impressions. For anyone interested, keep reading
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First, the game DOES look similar to a JRPG, so if that's not your thing, you may want to skip it. I personally love me some JRPGs, so the style is right up my alley. This influence is seen mostly in the character models, the music and the cutscenes, which all look and sound as though they came right out of a JRPG.
The game has a lot of cutscenes. If you just want to skip through and get to combat, you're going to be waiting awhile. The cutscenes as I mentioned, are very much like JRPG cutscenes. They have similar writing style and presentation. I enjoyed them and didn't skip any of them.
The gameplay. The controls take a bit of getting used to, and I still don't have the best grasp of them, so combat at first is a little awkward. You can lock onto targets which is nice. You can dodge and evade attacks and have free motion when battling. Spacebar acts as a quick dodge backwards and comes in handy for avoiding damage. And you will want to avoid damage. There is no auto-heal, so you need either potions (which apparently are rare) or sleeping at an inn.
The way they handle the perma-death is pretty cool if you ask me. When you die, you become a soul. You have to visit a shrine to be resurrected, but watch out for the Walker demons, if they touch you it will lower your chances of being successfully revived. If you aren't successfully revived, it's game over, you lose that character. I'm not 100% clear on how this all works, but so far it seems like an interesting mechanic.
I'll admit, the game is pretty slow starting out as it's mostly cutscenes. It's going to be awhile before you get into action and once that somewhat short tutorial dungeon is over, it's back to town for more cutscenes
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Going back to play a little more today, and I'll post more impressions as I do. Right now I could say for sure this is not a game for those with little patience who just want to jump into epic combat right away. It's much slower paced at first. But yeah, more impressions coming later.