BTW I think I'm gonna pick up El Sheddai. Jerk.
I was working on this wall of text dump in the interim, enjoy.
First playthrough of El Shaddai done, currently I would peg it at a low 8. Art style stays beautiful throughout, I never ran into any bugs or framerate dips at all. 2D platforming segments were fairly challenging at times, but fair.
The area the IGN video review highlighted as an example of bad 3D platforming is because he made a poor weapon choice (usually before platforming segments the game will give you the chance to pick which of the 3 weapons you want to use). The gale (drone throwing weapon) has a mid-air dash (think DMC trickster dash) and the arch (staff weapon) lets you hover/glide after a jump for a few seconds if you hold the jump button instead of pressing and releasing it. Basically if you need a lengthy jump and the platforms are fairly large, you'll want the dash, but if platforms are small you'll want more control of your jumps and that's arch. The platforms were small and very close together but he was using the air dash and overshooting/missing the platforms.
There is only one level in which I would call the 3d platforming bullshit, and that is because of an artistic choice by the dev. In one level you have entered The Darkness (which is actually quite bright and colorful). Have you ever been in a parking lot and seen when relatively fresh motor oil has leaked from a car and into a puddle of water? It kind of looks like a bubble of a kaleidoscope of color on top of the water. Now imagine that effect smeared over your screen as a layer of film grain and that's what you have to platform through. It makes keeping track of your shadow (which is how you can tell where you will land on the platforms) more difficult than it needs to be.
The story gets kind of scattershot as it goes on so I suspect I will have to google a summary of the Books of Enoch to hopefully fill in some of the narrative gaps of WTF was happening other than the simple "me capture fallen angels."
Once you get access to the 3rd weapon early in the game nothing really changes in your arsenal other than a Rage of the Gods-esque hyper mode which you can periodically activate, so the rest of the game is about mastering the combo system and the guard and dodge mechanic. The enemies develop a few new tricks during the course of play, but nothing really substantial, mainly things are only changed up during the boss fights. Though by near the end of the game they start to run out of ideas, the last 2 bosses before the final boss only have 1 or 2 attacks so its all about alternating between dodging that one attack and getting a few strikes in over and over. The first of those two, the reprise of the pig boss, particularly feels like pretty blatant boss padding.
Combat is definitely a challenge on normal which really makes me think that IGN reviewer must have lowered the difficulty to easy. The basher weapon veil is either a dud weapon or I could never figure out how to use it. The attacks are slow, didn't really feel that much more damaging than arch attacks, and the one damaging combo in which you alternate punches about 20 times and finish with an epic punch is REALLY long and is only really effective when there is one enemy on the screen. If there is a second he will likely saunter up and punch you in the back, knocking you out of the combo before you can deliver the epic punch. Veil is helpful when playing defensively though as when you block it forms a shield that protects not only your front but the front portion of your left and right side (so like 140 degrees of a protection) and its guard can only be broken by strong boss attacks.
If you get all 6 of one type of collectible (the other collectable type that gives a trophy is like 13 or 14 pages) during your first playthrough you get access to a costume you can use in your second playthrough which makes you immune to damage for your 4th level difficulty level run so I'll probably at least do that run. I don't know if I'll be able to stomach the God Rank scoring requirement on each chapter on hard (you can't use the zero damage costume as it penalizes your score) I'll have to see how forgiving the scoring system is in the game, apparently how fast you complete the level does not factor in significantly to your score so that is helpful as I can't
ing stand being forced to rush things under a time limit in games.
