I struggled to decide my final verdict on this game... The fighting, is awful, no question, swinging your bludgeon is so damn clunky you just never get accustomed to the timing.
The bosses are all really easy/hard to beat, they follow strict patterns, and always do just a little too much damage, however, they are predictable, so as soon as your familiar with their attack order, it's really just dodge, dodge, wait, dodge, stun with X, spam repeat.
The exception to this, is the clusterfuck of a last boss.
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The giant Mechanism you fight, is tough, I'll share my strategy, as someone said they had to hack the game to beat him. -.-
As soon as the fight starts, the boss will deploy Orbs that shoot those red razors, kill these as soon as possible, if they are too high, you need to use a slingshot to bring them down, after this, switch to your Artifact key, and stun three of the four eyes, and if the flying turret is out, you can hold the focus of the key on them to deactivate them and kill 'em real quick, now wait until the boss pulls out his lazer guns. Stun the eye and whack as many times as you can.
^Repeat steps 1-5 until victory.
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The bosses aside, some of the enemies are just so damn... fucky.
The Frogs, the Bees and the Beetles. < These assholes make your life miserable. in part due to the laggy weapons, and due to the awkward way they move, every enemy is a little frustrating, but these guys in particular are what pained me the most.
Everyone has talked about how beautiful the game is, I'm not gonna do that, I'm going to criticize the things that I personally disliked about it. (That aren't the fighting mechanics, did I mention those suck?)
These do contain spoilers, fair warning.
1: Finding the bombs, I didn't realize that I should have spoken with my friend multiple times, and spent about an hour getting EVERYTHING I could get in the desert town before I spoke to her, and found out the location. (This could so easily be changed to mark the location as soon as you finish talking to her the first time.)
2: Ruby and the Sewers, You couldn't have just put her in the sewers right? I didn't realize that I had to talk to the generic vendor to trigger her to spawn there. (Another hour wasted. :( )
3: moonstone hunting, I finished the game with 28 of the damnable things, and yet there are 40, I really have no idea where these last 12 are, o.o I looked so much. Some way to tell when an area is clear of Moonstones would help so much, ya know?
4: Rare item drops: Specifically, flying slime goo. I killed SO many of these things and did not get the damnable goo, I eventually gave up on the potion making side-quest. (I'm not sure if there was a special way to get this item... but I couldn't get it the only way that is apparent.)
5: You can ditch your lantern, this one... I lost 3 lanterns to this, accidentally clicking on the lantern, tapping "X" goodbye lantern. :(
6: Clusterfuck, basing an entire boss fight on clusterfuck man, that shit was PAINFUL. Bees and Bugs too, there is just too much bullshit going on there.
And finally seven: [BIG SPOILER]: There is no Save section between the last boss and the Final Chase. You die ALOT during that chase, so unless your loaded, you gotta fight the last boss... each and every time you wanna try it.
These seven things are deadly, and at times made me rage, however the game had a solid story, even though the fighting sucked some serious ass, there were times when I enjoyed it. The music is... forgettable, but each score serves it's location nicely, visuals are lovely yada-yada, you've read this all already in the other comments.
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The Idiocracy reference on the can of E-Soda, my god, you deserve 5 Stars just for that.
