This game is just awesome. Melees are brutal, as one well-placed hit can sever a limb (and sometimes a head!), and powerful hits can knock fighters off their feet. It can get a bit quirky when weapons get mashed up close; weapons will get caught on each other, build up tension like a bungee-cord, and then whip out and chop apart anything in its path. This is from the nature of the game having it so that weapons can collide with each other, which when used skillfully can mean parrying a potentially lethal blow (OGRES). This game has a reputation for being tricky to learn and control, but that's because it is the -only- game with an interface of this nature. No other melee game I know of lets you directly control the path of your blade in combat, and the damage your weapon generates is based purely on kinetics. If you swing from right to left while you also -turn your body- from right to left, the motion of the body combines with the motion of the arm producing a more powerful swing. So understand, it will first be tricky to control moving your body and weapon in synch. But once you do...there's a crazy Quest mode that awaits! You play as Enric, a stout and keen warrior, in pursuit of rescuing his lover Maya. She has been captured by evil beasts who have only nefarious intentions, and as you chase them further into the depths of their mountain lair things become more dangerous, and treacherous! Kobolds, Orcs, Ogres, Skeletons, beasts made from fire, with traps and trickery abound. One feature I personally liked in this mode is that they offer different opportunities to completing levels and solving encounters, but only to those who are as keen as Enric! Once Quest mode has been conquered (or conquered you!), there's also Arena mode. It allows you to configure a battle-royale style combat in which you can play as ANY character found in the DBtS game, with multiple game modes, conditions, and handicaps. Try this craziness: Pit of Insanity / King of the Hill / Full Health to Killer / 100 points / 4 Combatants (one of which ought to be a minotaur). The game is also configured for multiplayer support, though I think given the gap in time there may be a bit to do with things such as port-forwarding. ANOTHER awesome feature this game comes with is a Move Editor. With such control over the motion of the body and weapon, it gets to be that some moves are either too-tricky to execute ideally in the middle of combat, or you might have a favorite move you wish to execute repeatedly (this is what the Arcade keyboard controls cater to), or maybe you want your character to sheathe their weapon and make a friendly gesture: this lets you do it all! It lets you make portions of the move independently, and then combines all the independent motions together. It also tells you in which frame of the move the most force is generated, and points a marker to the point in space where that force is applied. Now you can do that crazy-awesome somersault-decapitation maneuver! The best feature of this in my opinion is that it lets you overwrite the preset moves for any character in the game, which is fun to do after having played through it once already. Why? Consider it like this: -Recreate the moves for each character in the game -Optimize the moves for high damage, and striking in critical directions (such as diagonals, and straight up and down) -Now all of the enemies in the game, and arena, will use the moves you created. The more punishing the moves, the more challenging the gameplay! Though you can also use moves which do more blocking instead, and those can be extremely useful as well. TLDR : A very fun and innovative melee combat game unlike any other. It gives you control over the range of motion for your weapon arm for precise strikes. Quest mode, arena mode, and move editor!
