Like, really early thoughts.

It’s good.

Ok, seriously now. It’s a Souls-like in respect to shrines that heal & respawn enemies, a slosh of complex boss fights and a pile of dodging. Where it differs is that there’s no death penalty, no interconnected zones, no maps, no weapon selections, very fast combat, easy respecs, no stats, no real “choice”. It’s linear, which is quite a bit different than most games of late. The comparison just doesn’t hold.

My only gripe with the game thusfar is a lack of a map and the invisible walls. It makes exploration tedious.

The combat is relatively tight with a decent amount of options. You can’t dodge cancel, meaning you need to learn to pace attacks. Bosses have tells and it has yet to feel dramatically unfair. I expect to die a few times on every boss in order to learn their patterns, and that’s exactly what happens. The lack of weapon variety means that you need to adapt to the range of your staff, which removes risk vs. reward decisions, but there are still plenty of move options present. I have not yet found any world-traversal skills (e.g. hookshot, mounts, etc..) – maybe that comes later, though I can’t see much use for it yet.

The world looks amazing, and the music is awesome. The dialogue is horrendous, but the lore/background info is a lot of fun to read through. I’ve heard gripes of people not understanding the context behind the game (as it’s based on Journey to the West), but that’s really just western entitlement here. It may increase enjoyment of the overall plot, and given more context to the bad guys but it’s far from any deal breaker.

The rest of the mechanics I’m still discovering. Player progression is quite flexible, with unlimited respecs. Crafting is simplistic, and you can revert some of it. There are levels, but only in the context of giving you a single point to invest in a complex tree of options. It’s ok, but there doesn’t appear to be any depth here.

So back to my original thought. It’s good.