So i watched the LO demo from the pre-TGS conference, and I have to say I'm at once surprised, and disappointed.
LO seems to be more cinematic than pretty much any JRPG to date. Even when the scenes aren't epic, the presentation seems to be impeccable. I don't know what they're saying in the demo, but some of the occurances are visually explanitory. The voice work is excellent, and the character animations are also pretty good.
The environments are 1 of the disappointments. The battle field in the combat system was pretty bland. There were no details really. More polygons and whatnot, but otherwise, it doesn't look anymore impressive than FFX. The actual world the main character explored in the demo looked like it was a little lacking also.
My final disappointment was the combat system. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but even watching it for these 20 minutes, it already felt uninvolved and tedious. It's typical menu combat, but like old school suikoden style, where you input your whole parties commands and kind of watch (you have to do some minigame with some attacks, where you time a button press while a clock counts down, and the closer you get the 0 the better the attack). I'm not sure how the system could get any deeper as you get into the game, but it certainly feels pretty empty from the demo footage.
The attack animations look great, as do the spells. I love how the camera shifts as a character charges. It's not the sexiest looking game ever though. That becomes pretty clear when the main character for one reason or another gets naked. He swishes back his hair, but that one bang in the front kinda just looks stuck...the physics of his hair are awkward. More importantly, you get to notice that the skin textures are very simple, and bland.
Anyway, overall I come away a little disappointed. I think I was expecting something a little more perfect, despite knowing that the combat system would be random encounters and turn based. I'm not sure why my expectations were so high either.
Log in to comment