Never thought I would hear nor see Sacred mention in Giant Bomb.
I played both Sacred 1 and sort of "finished" Sacred 2. Never touched the third since I think it went down more of the hack and slash route and was received very poorly.
S1 and S2 basically came from an era when people were both asking for and trying to make a Diablo 2-like. If you approach it from that angle S1 and S2 had some interesting concepts for its time.
Their stats system attempt to split the differences between letting the player control some portion of stats distributions while keeping the flavor of the character with passive stats growth. I think in D3 stats are level/class lock, while in D2 players can fully distribute their stats beyond the initial.
The skill level vs cool down were different from Diablo hard caps and +skill approach. The combo system has promise also, but it was buggy as hell.
I remember genuinely looking forward to S2 before it releases since S1 was one of those "had potential, but not quite there game," but in the end both games had technical and balance issues that were never address completely as far as I remember. S2 might have been a little better through sheer tech.
The really dubious thing about Sacred might actually be its "lore"...the game actually has a sci-fi backdrop. S2 straight up have a robot bipedal dog as a playable class in between your typical elf and...what might as well be a Sith Lord.
Everything looks as expected so far both good and bad. Graphic looks good enough although not quite the powerhouse Square is known for, but looking like that Unreal alright.
Love the expansion on areas and the exploring, the characters dialog and story beat.
Early reveal of Sephiroth is expected, but not too welcome really. Will see how that plays out eventually in the grand scheme of things.
Gameplay however looks doubtful. Still not too hot on the stagger mechanics even though they have tried so many times, too much time sink. Knock downs continue to be the bane of the player's existence, and way too cheap and cheesy. The focus on movement and positioning when you only have full control of one character is bound to have a bad roll or two, quick reset to the rescue once again a la 13. Ben mentioned the lack of grinding spots also doesn't sound good. This definitely looks like one of the most action-oriented FF, doesn't even have the auto dodge of 15 it seems.
Will settle with waiting for the PC version I guess.
Looks good. Not exceptional nor terrible so far. Definitely keeping my interest. The voice acting of the support cast is better here than in trailer...Barret on the other hand however seem to have taken a step back, although they are probably hamming him up on purpose with his preachy talks.
Giving Jessie a lot of lines and screen time here; it is going to be interesting to see if that will work into later story bits.
The length of the combat concerns me a little, the camera also. A lot of heavy hits seems to be taken when player is blind sighted, also wonder how checkpointing works especially for boss fights. The thing with staggering mechanic in FF is that it is both time consuming and a race against time. I can see scenario where fights get tedious especially in repeated tries.
There's a LOT to unpack in FF7's world and story. The original localization didn't do it justice, along with limited time spent on each event. I think a longer and more expanded pass over it will be just what it needs to really showcase what the game is/was all about. Although I do wonder if they are dropping too many hints and doing too many foreshadow this early on, there's a certain realization on what exactly is going on and what exactly the game is about in the original that made it impactful.
The blue chests refills, but green chests are one time unique items, them not taking the time to teleport/reflector ray in is kind of meh.
Not stocking up on items is causing them to spent more time in the end. Plus farming for upgrading optimizer, passive healing, and healing shards are more useful.
Two handers are low key the better weapons for a lot of boss fights because of the overhead hit box and extra range.
They spent the time to farm the weapon, even if it isn't the final product they should still give it a swing and see it in action :p
Also Bovine Plume dropped on the first kill...they didn't even realized how lucky they are!
With the +Luck dress they should farm the Healing Shard and then craft the Regenerate Shard so they won't run into the low on health and can't proceed problem again.
I wonder if the red is giving Vinny trouble in seeing the blood rain.
This is one of those I wonder if contact damage should be a thing in the game. Some of her "attacks" are just quick steps towards you. The tornado is dangerous because the she stands in the center near you also.
Weapon choices are kind of limited for Vinny right now, either he has to dedicate time to dig through the list and hunt for materials to craft them which he has been avoiding all this time or just grind gold for more 8 and 16 bit coins. There's also the demon barber drop, but even that might be a little weak at this stage of the game. There's also the matter of matching weapon shards. He is kind of low on gold because candles aren't dropping money since they always have to drop the mp flower due to Vinny's constant usage of spells.
The train enemy is quite strong, it drops the resist curse shard, if you think farming it and sitting through the train ride every time is time consuming, imagine wanting to get 9 copies of it. There is a trick to kill the enemy relative safely. I think the mechanic with this enemy is that if it is facing you directly you take constant, and quite damaging, curse base damage. Which means you are likely going to get your health halves fighting it. This calls for jumping and hitting it in its back, it will turn around, and repeat. However you can also move to the left train cart and hide behind/on top of some boxes so you will be away from direct gaze range, then just equip a gun and shoot it until it dies safely.
Also I rather listen to Dan talk about wrestling than his hot takes on video games.
Apparently patch either just dropped or is about to. Weirdly lots of single player game nerfs, most importantly Vinny's favorite heretical grinder is on the chopping block!
When the quests start piling in Alex was like we are never getting out of this room are we, the funny thing is you really could just stay there for a long time crafting, buying/selling, and getting quests done.
Dismantling to get rare component, remaking the item so the shop will carry it, buy multiple copies, dismantling them again to get multiple copies of rare components, use the components to level up shards, equipment, or make items for quests.
Sometimes quests will give you item or component that is not available at the current stage of the game.
Money is very useful, Vinny using magic so often meaning the candles are dropping mana roses instead of gold. They haven't gotten the rare weapon drop from the barber also.
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