Guild McCommunist said:
I never thought this game was relatively good at all. It's just incredibly overrated because of its art style, like Okami. In the end it seems to me to be glorified button mashing, and even as a button masher it's too much.
Though flawed, I certainly enjoyed the gameplay. The bosses were mostly fun and the random encounters felt pretty satisfying when you started to learn how to make the best use of your moves instead of mashing your way through. It also looks gorgeous when you're gracefully flowing across the screen, slicing through enemies and hitting back projectiles without taking any damage.
The main problem with this product is that it can't really decide whether it's an RPG or a brawler. Like how the random encounters are isolated "battle mode" events instead of there just being enemies thrown in here and there. It really takes me out of the flow when that "scoreboard" or whatever it is pops up after every fight. I wonder if they originally wanted to have it more like an RPG but wound up cutting a bunch of stuff, because the RPG elements seem really half assed, and the fighting doesn't carry the game for as long as you need to play it to finish it.