LogFAQs > #960207325

Kenri posted...

I agree that Riku wasn't a terribly difficult fight, tbh I was surprised that so many people had issues with it. On the other hand Maleficent Dragon just destroyed me over and over.

I think Riku is at this really weird section where he's really difficult as a kid, but as an adult you breeze through him. I always struggled at that fight when I was younger, but when I replayed KHI a couple of years ago I got him first try without too much effort either.

Metro 2033 (PC)
A solid enough game that doesn't really excel at anything but doesn't do anything too badly either.

The plot and the world-building are solid. The setting is interesting and unique while still being recognizable. The plot mostly suffers from pacing issues, as it really only exists at the start and at the end of the game, and in the middle you're mostly just travelling from place to place, meeting some people and fighting enemies. The 'good' ending is probably overshadowed by the fact that the game doesn't really do enough with it; you get one character who hints at the plot concerning the Dark Ones and a general gaming sense that killing them is bad, but the game doesn't really build up to it, highlighted by the confession of the protagonist in the ending that he "didn't know why he spared them".

Gameplay-wise, this game is hit or miss. I don't know how the Redux version does it, but this game gives you very little help on how the systems work. It took me until the end of the game to realize gas mask filters got replaced automatically or how charging guns or the battery worked. There's a bunch of guns available, but you don't really get any info on the difference between any of them. The opening area gives you a firing range to test out your first gun; it would be nice if any of the other hubs had had something like this, especially because ammo = bullets in this game. The stealth was also very unclear in this game, although that might also be because I only figured out at the end that your wrist shows you how hidden you are (but even then, I would consider the stealth subpar at best). Don't ask me how to deal with librarians, because even though I stood still they always aggro'd anyway. There's a lot of systems to make it stealthy, like lanterns and lights you dim or shoot out, glass and doors you need to avoid walking over, but the problem is that once you're spotted essentially all the enemies are on alert, so you can't really make any mistake which feels somewhat punishing, especially in large areas. The early guns also feel really bad and you get very little indication of whether or not you're hitting an enemy. Grenades never felt that useful to me either. The other gameplay, like managing the gas mask, are neat and immersive but not really fun to manage and play.

Graphically, this game looked a lot better than I expected a 2010 game to look. The character models aren't too impressive, but the levels and the monsters are neatly designed. Again, the Metro feels claustrophobic and intense, and the outside areas feel cold and desolate like they should. There are some technical shortcomings though. It is very cool and immersive that you can play this game with Russian voice-actors, however their audio only gets translated in cutscenes, which means that if you are not a native speaker, you cannot understand what they are saying in ambient dialogue, which is a big part of the world-building. There's also some very annoying bugs where you can crouch under something but the game just doesn't let you and you have to struggle with the camera and equipping different weapons or maybe getting hit by an enemy to force yourself through.

All in all, the game was solid enough that I'm interested in playing the other games in the series, but I would expect that the recommendation would be to play the Redux version, as it is probably a version that received the fine-tuning that the original does need.

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How paralyzingly dull, boring and tedious!