The Shrine

This game has been getting quite the strange spread of review scores. This situation sort of reminds me of the Demon's Souls launch. I am intrigued by this game.

Or maybe I just want to play more Dark Souls/Demon's Souls. I dunno.

The demo stank, I ain't interested

It's not in the same league of Dark/Demon Souls.

It seems very casual friendly, although I heard the difficulty spikes @ night.

Also keep in mind this is a Japanese developed RPG aimed @ a Western Audience.

HEY!

I bought this game and am playing it.

It is super neat. There are some pretty crazy problems with it (movement, camera, aiming.... etc.), but it DOES play a bit like dark souls. I highly recommend playing around with the warrior class to get some nice blocking/counterattacking business going on ala dark souls.

The combat is pretty fun. It really carries that game. I have been having the most fun as the warrior, but I don't know if I need to find better pawns or if I don't know how to make a party.... or if the pawn AI is just broken, but I feel like I am doing most of the work in combat (80%). This lends me to just try and get support role pawns... but then I end up playing the super blocker like I did in dark souls and although that made some pretty awesome encounters of me taking down some large creatures with archers and buff wizards supporting me.... I found that to be HIGHLY DANGEROUS since everyone else can die and be revived except for you. If you go down it is over.

The story seems pretty throw-away and the combat is the real star of the show. Other than the problems I have with movement (you are slow and get caught up on level geometry and I never feel like my character is at full speed while not sprinting) the one big hangup I have at this point in the game is that it takes for goddamn ever to get anywhere. It leads to this feeling that every quest you take on is actually a QUEST. You have to set out in the morning because the night is super scary and you can easily get swamped by wolves or a roaming chimera or other shit that just sneaks up on you because it is dark. You have to plan your route, because you don't want to get caught roaming in the evening. And you get a pretty nice sense of accomplishment at every little side quest that you do.

I made the mistake of jumping straight into the side stuff when it became available. I should have done a little more story stuff, because I was pretty under-levelled for the situations I was getting into.

Anyways - she is a fun one. I am probs going to sink some hefty, sweaty summer hours into this game.

For some reason Bovine your reviews always amuse me.