Played a few hours in coop with the final retail (PS3) last night and had a good time. It's not a perfect game by any means--it's got its issues--but at the end of the night we both agreed it was a lot of fun.
So some random thoughts of the good, the bad and the ugly:
- The graphics on the PS3 version are mediocre at best. Occasionally the frame rate dropped during busy scenes, but it was never unplayable due to this.
- We played as the duo Reinhart and Lucas. It seemed like a good match up once we started leveling up and unlocking abilities.
- My initial impression with the abilities, proficiencies, talents and deeps was...confusion. I don't think the game does a very good job of teaching the player what the everything really does. Yes, you get a wall of text during the tutorial, however I had a bit of a hard time making sense of it all. After a few hours it all makes sense though.
- This game is surprisingly deep in its RPG elements for a console RPG. And it's not on an Oblivion level, but it's much deeper than Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance (my console RPG standard for fun).
- Reinhart starts off slowly and awkwardly, but once you get a few levels in he gets some really wicked spells--especially the one we called the "Pain Mat". It's a spell that not only slows down mobs that walk over it, but does damage.
- We had one boss fight that lasted a good 10 minutes, and it felt fairly epic once we downed him. The cool thing is we were totally changing up tactics, switching positions and complimenting each other along the way. It was a really good boss fight. I hope the are more like it!
- Gold is shared, doesnt matter who picks it up.
- Loot appears to go whomever the item is fitted for, no matter who picks it up.
- We played on the normal difficulty and (once we got past the demo area) we wiped a few times. Once during a mini-boss fight, once where we both got rushed in a hallway and another because we were laughing too hard (we were just having a good time with it all).
- The ability to revive someone by holding the R1 button over their body is cool and helps to avoid frustration. If you get hit by something during the rez, the meter goes back to 0.
- The chatty Mass Effect-like wheel is fine I suppose, but something about makes it feel boring. I cant put my thumb on it just yet.
- At first loot didnt appear to show up on the character, but I finally got a pretty awesome magic globe and in my characters hands you could see the fire--it was cool.
- There are side quests, they are fun, they are typical of what you'd expect for this genre (kill someone, get this lost ring, kill someone, I lost my husband, kill someone, FedEx, kill someone).
- So far the environments have been enjoyably varied.
- If you're playing local coop and the other play steps away, after 1 minute of sitting idle his player will begin to follow you where you go.
- If there is a way to give each other something we didn't see it (that doesn't mean it doesn't exist!).
- Reinhart is a badass!
- Pressing the Left Stick IN sucks up all the loot (sans items) near you. I didnt see this stated anywhere in the game, but it was in the reviews guide SE sent over.
- The really good loot is also rewarded to the players who explore.
in short: I'm having a really good time with the game via local coop despite it's issues.
If you got any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
