It's like they designed this game from the ground up to be a shitty console port in an era when a game like this would feasibly be played on controllers even on PC.
The controls/movement in this game remind me of a claw-toy machine I used once that had two joysticks, one for forward-back, one for side-to-side. Only problem is it didn't go diagonal if you used both joysticks at once, it just stuttered and seized. At some point somebody designing that machine should have asked why not just have one joystick if you can't even use both at the same time, right?
Why have left-stick movement in permanent strafe mode, basically, requiring constant camera corrections with the right stick to 'aim' your direction running in the world and attacks. Especially when button presses are require for two of the three timing dependent actions, dodge and empowered strike (I think it's called, the one you have to hit right after an attack, that if you're hovering to hit the button you aren't aiming your attack well enough and will miss). But your thumb needs to be on the right stick 'aiming' your character for basic strikes because there isn't auto-target. And of course when you've manually target locked the game, it's also zoomed in shit.
I'm pretty sure at some point they had attacks on buttons and wanted a 'meaningful' aim-target style action combat like shit MMOs kept trying to do where you have to aim heals, and it wasn't working because testers said: "you know, having to use both sticks to control movement really makes it hard to aim attacks using the buttons. Solution: move the attacks and parry and dodge to trigger/finger buttons! Yeah, wait, but I'm used to zoom-in-aim being left trigger in shooters... Okay, leave that one left trigger! Great! Then later they added timed empowered strikes and dodge and now they just had too many buttons and not enough thumbs.
Why didn't they just make controlling your character all left stick, with occasionally right stick camera looking, like is pretty much standard for console/controller games these days that require 3 timed reaction inputs?
Why did they design movement such that it makes me think the dev team all play with controllers like and old person using their fingers instead of thumbs.
The aim for attacks not using target lock seems to suck, with a lot of attacks missing, or with animations that take you past the targets. Why not focus on a serviceable auto-target system, or at least a target-lock system that isn't zoomed in shit?
Actually, ignore all that, one of the shills just answer me this: Why the fuck have one part of the camp a 'map' where you select where you want to go, and then you have to run to another part of the camp to then auto-teleport to that location? Why? Muh immersion?? Can't have players just click a map and load, people will be confused because their character didn't run out of camp... so let's just have them run to a weird teleport pad. Worst of both worlds! It's not even like it LOOKS like you're running out of camp. It's literally you look at a map in one part of camp, select where you want to be auto-teleported to, and then for no reason the game makes you pointlessly run a little just cuz to get to where you're auto-teleported.
Could not a single member of the dev team come up with a better solution than select your auto-teleport location on one UI screen at one part of camp, then run across camp to actually auto-teleport? Nobody said 'why don't we just let people load from the map screen? Nobody said, why don't we at least make it look like you're running out of camp, and the background environment of where you run to load will change based on what region you selected on the map (the selected on the map and loading zone needing to be separate to load the background). Nobody said anything at at all to a system where you run to one part of the camp, click on something to pull up a map, click on the region of the map you want to go to, exit the map, run to another section of the camp to a spot where you just auto-load your mission from there? Not one dev was like 'this is pointless and doesn't add anything fun or interesting at all.
See also, you load the first mission, run in a weird, walled area (so only one way to run) approaching where the game/map obviously starts, then the game pauses, sorta loads again or at least just pauses to show you tutorial/tips/hints (even after you just did the tutorial), and then when you exit out of those, you run a little more to finally enter where the 'map' obviously begins. WHY!? Not one dev had a different solution to THAT? Why not just have loading screen tips on the loading screen? Nah, games load to fast now days. Why not just while it loads, have tips that it doesn't finish loading until they cycle through the tips? NAH! Lets have them load to a pre-area, run, then re-load the hints/tips, then when they cycle through those they can run more into the actual map area! BRILLIANT!
Let me guess, the only best response is "it's not that far to run" from people who are in co-dependent abusive relationships with bad game design. Hi,
Nirgon
