There's a demo launching today/soon, nets you some dlc for the full game. looks interesting...
reading about it, the sound of the controls remind me of Bushido blade, strangely enough. Being touted as Dark souls X Ninja Gaiden, as it looks quite hard. Aesthetically looks more up my street than DS/BS.
Who knows though, team ninja aren't what they used to be.
Interesting things in this straight from the off. It basically looks like Dark Souls crossed with Onimusha rather than Gaiden (it's more about smart blows rather than sick combos) and there is definitely stuff in here that is just blatant Souls. Stats are very similar, stamina bar, HUD (albeit this is far messier), 'graves' items to 'search' rather than pillage, the death screen being "FREED FROM YOUR MORTAL COIL" etc
There are interesting things instantly though: You have three weapon stances to toggle through, which is nice. There appear to "revenants" which are players that have been killed by things that you can summon to have a go at for... loot or souls? It seems more dungeon crawler than Souls, as there are lots of item upgrades and stuff.
It makes Bloodborne look slow with its lightning fast dashes, and enemies do not give a fuck - the will cut you to ribbons and catch you horrible hit stun chains. You can see their stamina too, which is cool and if they or you exhaust too much... you have to take a breather which is worse than a Souls style one.
@Tempy - Being able to see their stamina sounds like it could add a level of tactical depth. The three stance thing worries me on a faster paced game. Do you get time to decide on a case by case basis which stance is most appropriate or is it more that a certain type of enemy will be more appropriate for a type of stance?
You have three stances, High, Mid, Low. Each of them have their own combo trees. At the end of each combo you can slot moves into them from an upgrade tree. I currently have a really cool kick into slash on my low stance, but the input window is tiny.
The way stance switching works is very hard. Basically combo chains expend ki (stamina I think) but after a certain number of blows you can stance swap to get rapid stamina back, thus continuing your chain - I presume this works kinda like, 1 hit for a heavy weapon in high stance, 2 for mid, 3 for low etc.
Each stance has different properties for dodge too, high is a far dodge, mid is mid, low is really close. You can unlock parries in stances too, and they can be different for each stance of each weapon. Basically think Godhand modular move lists, but more restricted.
It's very complex and very fucking difficult.
Weapons and armour break like twigs.
If you expend all of your stamina your bar goes red. You have the choice of trying to move away or take a hit, because pressing any other button will exhaust you. It's a bit like Street Fighter in that pressing the wrong button can get you taken apart.
Why hasn't anyone mentioned the dismemberment? Also, is blocking a bit OP? I don't seem to stagger or take damage/lose too much stamina, so feel pretty safe just blocking attacks, although I am only ten minutes into the tutorial.
Have you fought any of those axe fuckers paul?
Took my stamina then my life rather quickly.
Aye two! Thought they'd be unlockable so I was surprised to see 'em bounce off. Just noticed that my weapon seems to have a health bar, and mine's half dead, so that might be a trade off. Fuck going into battle with s blunt blade!