God. Fucking. DAMN! Was that a rough game to get through. Even on Normal difficulty, it was long, hard, GIRTHY, and exhausting to get through in one attempt. Even breaking it up in multiple sessions, it was a nightmare to beat. I expected Iga-sama to pull one of his classic tricks for unlocking the true ending, but I didn't expect it to be ANOTHER FUCKING HALF OF THE GAME LOCKED. This isn't even, like, SOTN Inverted Castle stuff, this is more Order of Ecclesia half the castle is blocked off unless you do a series of long and arduous events to get the means to unlock it. Seriously, I hope he tones this down for the sequel (but we all know he won't do that, will he?), because I was literally feeling the mental and physical fatigue of playing through it. Even skipping the cutscenes (which I shouldn't do, for my next playthrough... provided I DO one, given the investment I made to this one...) didn't help much. Didn't help that muscle memory fucked me over raw with the controls; the delay with the swing of the two-handed blades threw off my rhythm (yeah, they threw off the emperor's groove, man), and I kept pressing up and attack to use the bullet shards, instead of the dedicated button for them, leaving me fucked to attack too many times to count. I nearly beat it blind... almost. Got to the final, FINAL boss, but didn't have enough healing items to weather its attacks. Eventually, I said "screw it", looked up some tactics and where stuff was, and just maxed out the Chisel Barrage directional shard, took on the optional bosses for boosts and to get a hold of the entire library's worth of power-up books, and just spammed chisels to the face of the final bosses. I was just... so done with trying to beat it legit, by that time.
That being said...
...I thoroughly enjoyed it! It's an awesome game, very much worth your time! It plays very much like the Aria and Dawn of Sorrow games (which are some of my favorite Igavanias out there), so the shard usage was very intuitive (minus the muscle memory issues), I never really got that lost, the crafting was a bit of a workout (didn't get all of the crafting stuff, though I likely did get all of the recipes), and leveling up and buying/selling/using various equipment was rather fun to do. My favorite weapon, believe it or not, of the non-shard variety was the Spiral Sword, because it's basically a giant chainsaw. That was pretty cool, and I loved how it dealt multiple hits with each swing. Good way of racking up blood for the blood drain shard, too. Wish some of the healing shards were more useful, but eh *shrugs* The bosses were all pretty cool, if tough as nails, and the secrets were rather cool (still have yet to beat the 8-Bit Nightmare area or the Journey tie-in area, though). I never really got bored with the game, it was very engaging, and even through the exhaustion with its length and difficulty, I still felt the drive to push through and continue playing. Iga-sama really knocked it out of the park, here.
Just... don't try marathoning this thing, please. Save your sanity. Take it in reasonable bites. It is NOT the kind of game you want to burn out on, believe me.
