I hated Ninja Gaiden which provided all of the frustration the NES could muster to a kid in the '80s. And I love The Messenger. None of the frustration here. All of the fun and then some. I can't recommend this experience highly enough. If it looks like something you might enjoy don't hesitate.
Having grown up with the NES, "Classically Trained" as they say, this game is not too hard. The difficulty is perfectly tuned and combined with such excellent controls I laugh when I fail over and over on the harder parts because I know and can feel in the thumb sticks that it is completely my fault. The game does a great job of making you feel like a hero with the combo system. If you put some effort into it you can pull off some crazy stuff. The layers of graphics are gorgeous and really show a labor of love in the details. The music is that perfect mix of great yet flows seamlessly into the background. I am truly blown away that this is as good as the first one. A modern masterpiece that is just good old fashioned fun.
To start, I'm surprised that largely one person put such a big and detailed game together. I played Fallout 1 for the first time a year ago (2015) and loved it. When I saw this game I skipped Fallout 2 and jumped on it. It seemed like a good time as with version 010 any bugs or issues would have been sorted out. Indeed, the game is pretty bug and issue free. However, it was unfortunately a waste of my time. The story was not well developed (we'll let the typo's slide). Even in the first ten hours of play, I understood more about the background story from reading online than I could figure out by talking to everyone. And the ending concludes just one part while leaving a lot of unanswered questions and an unpleasant "cliff hanger" - By the time I dragged myself through the last area of the game I cared even less what was going to happen than before, so to imply that "cliff-hanger" means I was on the edge of my seat is... not accurate. The mechanics of the game were diverse enough where I wondered about different builds. And a second playthrough will be smoother in a sense because you will know what to do when you approach non-senseical, inconsistent game mechanics such as when trying to do whatever (I forget now) to the out of control monster by way of talking to it's incapacitated body... or in the end when you have to stand in front of doors to get them to open unlike anything else in the game to that point. The difficulty on normal was well managed though beating the last guy was frustratingly almost impossible and by the time I won I was out of almost all of my consumables. I would have grabbed more from my stash but I didn't know I was going to be trapped in the last area which is a significant percent of the game to not be allowed to leave. Spoiler-ish: I would have loved to know that if the eye is on you the enemies are limitless. And grabbing the heart from the plant is NOT OBVIOUS. Finally, the music could have really used extra tracks. Sigh... Cheers
