Support NeoGAF

[Mister Wolf]

Wolfy, you can just put it on easy after the tutorial/intro stage brother

Game's pretty mild difficulty wise now after the adjustments compared to the beta, I mean, it's not exactly a walk in the park, but, it's still easier than Wukong/Lies of P/Lords of the Fallen/Nioh even on Normal difficulty.

Anyway, a couple of thoughts after finishing the demo again :

- Before the black myth Wukong patch that introduced a map, I never thought that I'd consider it to be actually crucial to my enjoyment of the game.
See, while Kazan features small rooms connected by hallways/tunnels, It still features lots of branching paths which can lead to the usual OCD "shit, where should I go first ?" moments.
It's actually nice being able to open a map and see where you have been/which parts you have already explored and where you actually need to go, It's a nice quality of life feature that I didn't think i would ever need it and yet, here we are...

- I just can't gel with the combat's feeling, I'll have to repeat myself here but, it feels like you're slashing through cardboard enemies : The enemy reaction animations are feeble plus there's almost no hit stun at all.

- It's more Nioh than souls, meaning, game drops armor/weapons frequently, it's not as bad or OCD-inducing as in Nioh, but, IMO, souls-likes should refrain from this, this shit should be kept only for dungeon crawlers.

- Game performance is...not good for the kind of graphics it has.
I think Addam's apple mentioned that It can drop as low as 40 FPS even on the XSX and I can confirm that it also drops frames on the PS5 Pro - how the FOOK is this possible ? This is literally a PS3/X360 era looking game at higher res., shit's inexcusable.
Hope they manage to iron out the performance issues come release day (March).

- It doesn't have ONE original bone on its proverbial body, and frankly, souls-itis is starting to get to me...
Wukong at least feels more action-y than souls-y and has amazing art-direction, Lies of P had a good and meaty combat feeling and a nice art-direction, Lords of the Fallen lives and dies by its art-direction, shit's just GRIMDARK turned to 11 but...this ? This looks and feels as generic as they come for fuck's sake.
Its only gimmick/feature is having a cell shaded art style and...that's pretty much it.

This is yet another "I'm gonna grab it when it drops to 25-30 Eurdolllars" title, it does absolutely nothing new nor does it introduce any new features or gimmicks.

Judging from the demo, this is going to be one of the most 6-6.5/10 games of the last 5 years.

I want the difficulty to be adjustable at any moment. They lock you in on easy mode. If you set the game from normal to easy they lock the game to that decision.

 

[CosmicComet]

Beside dumbed down in comparison loot system I don't see anything Nioh-like here. It's straight up fromsoftware copycat, with all its faults.

What's dumbed down about it?

It's two chapters in. It works the same way as Nioh's loot drops, with varying stat differences from even the same equipment drops.

And no, the combat system and even control scheme is straight up Nioh. Square light attacks, triangle heavy attacks, X to dodge and hold X to sprint. As opposed to shoulder buttons to attack like in Dark Souls.

Enemies even have visible stamina bars like in NiOh, where they become staggerable/grapple-able once the stamina bar is drained. There is even a ki pulse like system that saves you stamina upon successful parries.

 

[hollams]

Started the demo and I was pleasently surprised it supported 32:9. It looked really good on the samsung 57. The performance was pretty good, but I did have some dips now and then.

 

[mayham2199]

It's crazy how many games like this we are getting. Felt like they went away for a while minus a few titles here and there and now they are back and I'm here for it.

 

[Danteyke223]

I... I like the art style and the venom-esque voice that possess that player character. I'm in. Nioh was absolutely boring as fuck in terms of presentation, and the engine Team Ninja uses is dogshit. This is at least better looking by miles.

 

[AJUMP23]

Cool box art or key art there.

 

[Northeastmonk]

Better or worse than Code Vein?

 

[ssringo]

Played through the tutorial stage and while I kinda liked it, it didn't convince me to jump in at launch for $60. Maybe later in the year at $40 or so. Plus there's a few other games around it's release date I'm interested in and there's a very real chance I'll simply still be playing Monster Hunter.

 

[ChoosableOne]

Combat is pretty solid, I liked it. The story seems interesting. I didn’t like the graphics thoug, it was too foggy. Maybe my old 1080p monitor ruined the experience. I’ll try it on my 1440p monitor with HDR sometime. Cellshade is a minus for this type of game imo.

I need to finish Nioh 1 and 2 before diving into this one. I definitely won’t pay $60 for this, come on Phil do your thing.

 

[Arsic]

Better or worse than Code Vein?

Worse imo. I dug CV

 

[Giallo Corsa]

Better or worse than Code Vein?

Better I'd say - not that it says much since CV was also incredibly mediocre

 

[Kacho]

Better or worse than Code Vein?

It's funny you ask because I thought about Code Vein when playing this. Did you like Code Vein? If you did, then take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Khazan is what I wish Code Vein had been. The combat is more engaging and feels much more satisfying to play. The anime art style is more reminiscent of violent early 90s anime, rather than the generic, derpy mid-2000s style seen in Code Vein.

The progression systems are typical Souls style stuff so not much to say there. I do very much like the look of the gear you collect in Khazan.

 

[Bartski]

Lol @ easy mode, the game is piss easy now on normal as compared to beta and the other build I played a while back. They nerfed just about every bigger enemy and boss to shit. But I'll take it over getting constantly wrecked thanks to the godawful "exhaustion". It's still there but somehow doesn't trigger half of the time (??) and they've done some serious stamina recovery tweaking so it's possible to perfect dodge out of stun sometimes. On that note I still don't fully understand how stamina works in this game but it feels MUCH better to play now. Happy they got the memo. Happy we got the demo. I'm in.

I actually dig the HD cell shading art style. Runs great on the 5Pro 1st level but then starts chugging in the second, so I'm worried performance will be all over the place. I can already tell it will be full of horrible anime writing, but no chance in hell anywhere as bad as Code Vein, good lord that shit was the worst.

 

[Zuzu]

Ben Starr (the voice actor of Clive in Final Fantasy 16) is the voice actor of the main character in this game.