The third game in the series continues previous' games pattern of mixing up the gameplay for each new Horseman. This time the game takes inspiration from Dark Souls and Bayonetta for its combat, and older games like Soul Reaver for the world design. The biggest emphasis in the game is on combat. Enemies are much tougher than in prior games, and Fury start out pretty fragile. As the game progresses, and you are able to level up, increasing the 3 stats - Health (HP), Strength (base physical damage) and Arcane (damage from counters, wrath attacks and Havok form), the feeling of being bad-ass form prior games returns, and a number of enemies become "trash mobs", killable in 1 or 2 hits. The lock-on camera is more useful than ever before, but being forced against a wall, or fighting in a pit against multiple enemies CAN still result in some pretty cheap-feeling deaths. And do be assured: the start of the game is tough. Learning to do the last second dodge to slow down time and counter (just like in Bayonetta's Witch Time) is a crucial skill. Exploration changes from prior games, because now you are looking at one deeply layered, interconnected world. There's no map, because it's incredibly difficult to break things down into "levels". You are able to fast-travel between Vulgrim plinths-and these are also the checkpoints where you respawn upon death, and places where you level up by paying the sould you collected to Vulgrim. Unlike Dark Souls, collecting souls here is very simple, and just like in the 1st game, smashing everyhting in the terrain gives you souls (and lots of them if you have the right enhancement). There's lots to explore- it took me almost 40 hours to search through and collect all the extra items useful in crafting. The game's not without its glitches (though a patch imrpoved the situation), and I had soem crashes, and some instances of Fury being stuck in textures. But these didn't detract from my enjoyment. Bring on Game 4!
I would not recommend playing the Warmastered edition. There's a bug that basically desynchs music and sounds from cutscenes, leaving only voices. It's jarring, and really disrupted my enjoyment of the game. But if you download the "Legacy" version (the original), it plays perfectly, and, imho, it still looks acceptable. Besides, you're generally too busy killing demons to note any minor graphical imperfections. The gameplay is solid; This series has become my "Gothic Action/Adventure" fix ever since the Legacy of kain series died. This is a dark, gothic Zelda, where you play as the Horseman of the Apocalypse. It borrows a lot from Zelda in terms of exploration and gadgets, and it's like God of War in the sense that you face some massive, cool bosses. It's not a perfect game, but it's a fun one that's not trying to be anything other than a fun game. And what it does, it does well.
I've played many RTS games back in the day. This is the one I still play often. on the surface of it, this game is just an Age of Empires clone turned up to 11: gather 5 different resources (food, wood, gold, iron, stone), build your production buildings, build units, wipe out enemy, rinse, repeat. Advance through epochs to get better weapons and technology, while leaving obsolete tech behind. Seems pretty straightforward, right? There is one HUGE thing to set this game apart--the scenario/campaign editor. It is one of the most flexible modding tools ever designed for a computer game. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands custom campaigns, and scenarios, many of them better than the ones that come with the game itself. This game still has an active modding community to this day, and new content's being made for it. There are cons, of course: the graphics are several gens behind what you'd expect, as are the animations and units have pretty bad pathfiniding, requiring additional babysitting when compared to what a modern RTS player may be used to. But the incredible amount of content the game can provide you with makes all of these petty concerns irrelevant. If you want to see how far RTS games can be pushed by normal users, who aren't full-time designers, get this game. ANd look into the user-generated content for it. If you have even a smattering of an interest in history, you will not regret it.
This game tries to combine 2 Genres--RTS and RPG. it was one of the early Warcraft III clones, and I've spent a lot of time playing it. The RTS part is really fun, considering that you have six races to play with (your choice--or, in some cases, the map's choice), and none of them are really self sufficient--each "side" (Ligh and Dark) is evenly matched, but individual contributing races may not be as well balanced against each other, and this requires smart resource management and planning. The RPG part is more of a hack and slash, which can get tedious at times The original is good, but as some others have mentioned, the campaign gets fairly generic, especially as you run out of side quests. The last few maps (the game revolves around the concept of travelling around islands, which are all that's left in the world, and once you've been to one, you can return to it anytime--at the price of losing everything you've built on your current map) really slide towards hack and slash with your avatar and his party, which gets seriously tedious. THe first expansion (Breath of Winter) is much better, with far more interesting quests and storyline. The second expansion starts of very strong as well, with a lot more focus in quests given to character interaction and introducing a number of "side challenges" (like playing a variation of chess against a god), but towards the end it becomes a real hack and slash grind again. overall though, it's an enjoyable experience if you are looking for something that's like Warcraft III, but with some originality.
