So, admittedly the game's just out, but is anyone far enough to comment on the smoothness of combat with the later, trickier orcs? Have they done anything to curb the tactic of just running up everyone's face?
Early game not really. Everyone is fairly weak and I feel like Talion's regular attacks cleave way more normal orcs per swing than in SoM. So far I've run into a pack of guys and started swinging and scattering them easily.
But there are lots of new tricks. The Commander drops a war banner that makes every orc's attacks un-parryable who is in range, and they attack simultaneously more often. You'll be fighting and suddenly you'll be surrounded by a sea of "A" prompts. Curse is also super nasty, does a ton of damage and takes away your Elfin Charge or whatever you want to call the blue bar. Many captain types come with special melee attacks now as well, whether that's rushing at you and making you hit different buttons to parry their attacks, or a straight up heavy triple attack. Every Orc class feels like it's got some special attack, like a ground and pound or rush or big hit or multiple combo attack.
Captains feel like they can take a ridiculous beating sometimes too, which causes them to adapt if you don't kill them fast enough. It's just like SoM too where if your fight takes forever in a thoroughfare, you'll get a constant stream of reinforcements. And that's before Commanders or Trackers blow their horn and bring 10 additional orcs running to join the fight. Feels like there's always at least two archers somewhere shooting at you all the time too.
I imagine it just gets crazier from here, but also your damage goes up in time with Orc level, so maybe it all washes unless you're going after Captains way, way above your level. The first zone is tiny but has the full compliment of captains, so the area is literally crawling with encounters as you run around collecting stuff. Things aren't quite so cramped in the post-tutorial level.
All in all combat feels pretty smooth. Still has some of the same quirks as SoM. (No, Talion, you fucker, do not try to vault that fucking guy ag----nevermind.) I haven't felt unduly challenged, really the biggest threats are just the large damage chunks some captains hand out (like the guys with Curse Damage.)
Some of the new stuff does feel wonky though. Sliding only works like half the time, other times Talion just starts stealthing. The Wraith Glaive seems cool but the delay in swinging it by holding down X then releasing leaves you wide open to attack, so I really doubt it works when surrounded by a group of guys all focusing on you. Elven Wrath is kind of a mess IMO. Works for grunts but sometimes when you're trying to do the single target attack on a captain you just end up releasing a storm of arrows at him instead.
At least the new movement abilities work well (almost too well sometimes, you can easily overshoot your target by mashing jump too much, and you can catch ridiculous air if you double jump off a tower or something.) But if you're precise it feels like the game meets you halfway on most things.
If I have one enduring complaint about the game right now, it's that they made the Screen Shot tool use TWO BUTTONS to activate it. And it only correctly sees the input about half the time. So all those dank combat/execution screen shots are a lot harder to make since the game just won't freeze the action half the time when you hit the buttons. No idea why they did it this way, it's not like the left stick button press does anything so far that I can see.
Also gems seem like a pointless feature for the most part. There's three gem colors, 5 levels of gems, ever escalating bonuses based on the gem color and that's...pretty much it. You can see whole scope of the feature right from the outset, within the first hour of the game. So I can't imagine they're going to be interesting after 40 hours and picking up a few hundred of the things. Seems like they wanted to do more with this feature but it barely got past the most basic implementation.
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Topic: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (Read 75270 times)