After spending around 4 hours with the game and getting through the first dungeon I thought I'd give some thoughts on the game.

Firstly, the game looks fantastic. The art design is gorgeous and the textures are surprisingly sharp, though obviously this is all in standard definition, which is a shame considering how good it looks. Secondly, even though the game opens rather slowly, there is a lot of charm to the characters, most of it making me laugh. However I hate this game... The controls are awful. They are completely unresponsive for the majority of the time, you'll be swinging in one direction and Link will be swinging the other, and thrusting forward is even worse, it just doesn't happen and if it does, he doesn't stop doing it.

I wanted to like this game, I really did, but the control just kills it for me. I feel really bad for Tom Mc Shea, who reviewed the game over at Gamespot, as he is getting a lot of stick for giving the game a poor score due to it's controls. I don't think I have the will to carry on with this game. I might trade it in...

I have no idea if this has been brought up before,   (it seems like a familiar subject, maybe brought up by the bomb squad) but has anyone noticed that Naughty Dog have a pattern of creating three games within a franchises, then moving on to a new one. I mean, they started out with Crash Bandicoot which were one of the flagship games for the Playstation then created two sequels, and then a driving game 'Crash Team Racing'. Then for the Playstation 2, they brought out what you assume was another flagship game, Jak and Daxter. Again this was followed up by two sequels and a racing game Jak X: Combat Racing. Lastly is obviously Uncharted which is again one of the Playstation 3's flagship games. 

 I have played a few JRPG’s over the years, ranging from .Hack to Final Fantasy, Star Ocean Till The End of Time to Demon’s souls and no matter how easy the rest of the game has been I always hit the wall, the part of the game that becomes so difficult out of nowhere that you just give up. I bought Star Ocean the last hope the other day for around £5 a bargain I thought and have been enjoying it. Looking at forums after I beat a dungeon and I find that I am over leveled which is most likely the reason that I am finding the parts so easy. However (spoilers coming) I have reached a part of the story which I am assuming is where shit gets serious and we are on the true quest, the PHANTOMS... During the cutscene which introduces them (kind of) the game shows you around 20 enemies and I thought to myself, I’m over leveled hear I’ll be fine! How wrong I was... after the 7th “ambush” I got to a part where the enemies became incredibly strong out of nowhere and kicked my ass stunning me and preventing me form healing or reviving allies if they went down. 

After a few more tries and trying new tactics, then failing miserably, I decided to leave it for tonight, due to frustration, I will most likely come back tomorrow and find that I can slaughter the enemies really easily and if not I will grind a bit more so that I really am over leveled. 

But now that I have come off I have thought about the JRPG’s that I have played in the past and where I got stuck and if I carried on, most of the time I didn’t, disappointing myself but not without trying repeatedly to get past the point.

.HACK Infection - Last Boss - Having to go back through the dungeon every time I wanted to retry the boss was not my idea of fun and I sold the game.

Demon’s Souls - World 5.2 - Not so much stuck but giving it a break as I got frustrated not being able to dodge this big ogre thing’s club because my character won’t roll in the swamp

Final Fantasy PSP - Couldn’t figure out where to go, don’t like using guides may go back to it some day.

Monster Hunter Tri - My friends stopped playing it and I found no people of my skill level to help me (Just before Altareon)

Infinite Undiscovery - Getting to the part where Edward goes crazy, kept getting killed, wasn’t enjoying the game much anyway, sold the game.

Lost Odyssey - The Arthrosaurus attacks where you have to fight 4 and swap between them, killed the first one easily the second one always killed me. After that I couldn’t find anywhere to grind, got bored, sold the game.

These are the few that I can remember, I really enjoyed them up until those points (except for Infinite Undiscovery, I really disliked that). I probably could have gotten further than that on them however I felt like I was wasting my time with some of them, also 1 or 2 were due to a lack of skill.

Let me know what you think about “the JRPG Wall” and if you have experienced it yourself.