I know this isn't Dan's thing, but a little more effort would go a long way. Maybe it's just me, but when someone in the video is so completely checked out, it really sours the mood of the whole thing.
Wow, the progression in the Battle Royale mode sucks. Spend several minutes running around and looting, get shot in the back, earn zero XP. Neat.
Also, I've played a couple of rounds of Zombies and... what is going on, y'all? I'm spending points to open doors to I guess get access to perks and better guns? Mostly, it seems to turn the level into a more and more confusing labyrinth and ensure that no one is around to revive me. If I want to refill my ammo, I have to find the spot where I bought the gun (good luck) or buy a new one from a different wall? You know what would be great? A map. Knowing where anything was or how the heck to get back to my teammates would be swell. There's also this elixir/talisman system on top of everything which I've barely touched. Can I just like... kill some zombies?
The standard multiplayer is... good! Fast-paced, satisfying shooting, good progression hooks. Enjoying my time with it.
The excellent town exploration and characters combined with caring just enough about the overall plot makes this game worth playing for me, but I have to turn off the voice acting to enjoy the main plot.
Unfortunately the game fails as a dungeon crawler since there is no risk/reward system for exploration, you can easily outrun enemies and explore regardless of whether you are leveled up enough for it, and even if you die there's no real penalty, so leveling up becomes just a chore to get through before being able to fight a boss.
But at the appropriate character levels with Harder Monsters enabled the boss fights ARE engaging enough that I care about improving my characters.
The music is occasionally good but even as someone who usually prefers MIDI orchestration to orchestral performances in JRPGs this particular music really does not benefit. I will also play a JRPG just for the music so it's a real shame it's not better.
You're right about the difficulty. I made the difficult decision to restart the game with harder monsters after playing for like 15 hours and immediately felt a lot more engaged with the combat.
For anyone who wants a decent challenge out of the game, there's a "Draconian Quest" menu at the name entry screen where you can choose from a bunch of modifiers to make the game harder. It's very easy to miss. You can disable them at any point during the game, but you can only enable them at the very beginning, so it's worth starting with them just in case.
SpunkyHePanda's comments