I enjoy the genre, and I played this game after Unepic. Well, it's different, and quite a few things should be known before you buy the game. The controls are very imprecise. And in a game with many plateforming areas, it's frustratnig as hell. But the difficulty is reduced by a very forgiving autosave system, basically if you "die", you restart just before your jump. So basically, You try difficult jumps until you're lucky enough to pass the screen. That's not difficulty, that's chaos. Rage-quit is very possible. The game has secrets, requiring you to backtrack in old areas with your new skills. That's nice and fun but there is a big lack of "shortcuts", the difficult random screens wll still be there and it's the same pain each time. The fights is of the "beat them all" variety. WIth combos, unlockable moves and stuff. A typical move can be "up, D, Q, Q, down, D, Z + press arrow, release Z". And that's the basic moves you have from the begining.. And with chaotic controls and several ennemies, you sometimes have no idea of what you're doing. On the plus side, the graphism are nice, there is a real atmosphere - even if I'm not a fan of pseudo vectorial - flash-like design, here it works nicely. The music is pleasant. The boss fights are challenging - they would be more interesting with better controls, but I enjoyed them. And you recieve new skills frequently, making new puzzles very different. But in the end, this game gave me much more frustration than enjoyement.
This game blew my mind when it came out. The feeling of freedom was huge : the city felt aliev - well, not so much in today's standarts, but I had a blast exploring it. A ton of hidden stuff to find. The story was great - not so much the whole conspiracy, IA and stuff, but the execution, the way it unveiled. It had nice puzzles, sometimes difficult but always rewarding. Sadly, I forgave a lot to the gameplay back then, that would be hard to overlook now. There are too many "street fighter" sequences, and they are weak and annoying. The FPS parts aren't great either. You can walk around aimlessly for ages in that big city, hoping to find something. The directions in the quest aren't always clear, you get lost a lot reaming endlessly. Al in one, I don't think I would enjoy the game so much without the nostaliga factor - not that the game isn't good, but the bad parts are really bad and more obvious now. The game is unique, and I would really like everybody to love it as much as I did, but I know it's not possible. But if you're aware that it won't be perfect and you just get ready for an experience, you can enjoy it greatly.
