It's apparent after just a few hours that the negativity towards this is pretty absurd. It's a lot of fun. Love the new inn skits. Lots of fun dialog with some character building that was nearly completely absent in the original.
I've heard some complaints about aspects of the weapons in this that I don't really agree with. One of the early review said it was harder to aim ranged weapons, which is kind of true to an extent, you need to take more care to be facing the right direction before you shoot now, but the reviewer didn't mention the VERY generous aim assist that basically seeks enemies in a cone in front of you.
Someone last page was complaining about the Spear having a slower animation now. It does have a bit more windup on the swing, but I'll respond to that by saying that all the weapons I've used so far feel way more unique now than they did in the original. Like the spear is a millisecond slower, but the tradeoff is the attack ranges it hits are a lot farther or wider than the sword depending on whether or not you do the swing or thrust. Axe is even slower than the spear (it was a bit slower on SNES too) but has a real wide sweeping arc in this one. The axe was so bad in the original because it had a tiny hitbox. The hitbox here seems way more massive.
In the original game my setup was ALWAYS Randi using sword/spear/axe depending on what was needed for traversal (cutting rocks, bushes etc) and then having Purim and Popoi using the whip and boomerang to keep them at range and the bow and javelin were "useless" because they could only hit single targets but otherwise behaved exactly the same. Having only the bow and boomerang for ranged weapons so far I see more of these tradeoffs that make the melee weapons feel more unique. The boomerang, like the spear has a longer animation but the tradeoff is it can hit multiple enemies. The bow still only hits 1 target but fires way faster and is super reliable killing different elevations (like around the ledges of Gaia's Navel). Looks like it might reach a couple pixels farther too, but don't quote me on that. Can't wait to feel what the whip and javelin are like now. I don't think I've ever used the javelin in this game longer than it took me to max its level on my original 100% save.
Don't give in to the negativity guys. Flaws aside there's a lot of fun to be had here especially if you've played the original a whole bunch like me and want a new way to play thru this!
