Seriously, fuck the ice level
Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom (2008)
This is a long time coming, really, and I have no doubt in my mind that it belongs here. That said, I'd like to point out that I'm posting this using an icon of a character from this game and nothing can stop me from loving the characters of this series, despite how much the developers openly hate them and want them to burn in a pit of fire. That is the only reason I can come up with for why they've done this to them.
This isn't the first in the series, but it was a first for me. After playing Circle of Doom for a while and realizing that I really was only in it for the characters (and I'll explain why), I decided to dust off my original Xbox and try Heroes. And I've decided, based on two full attempts at trying to like these games, that the characters are all I will ever like.
And now I'll explain.
See, in Circle of Doom, which was recommended to me by a Gamestop employee based on "how similar it is to Diablo", is pretty much the game I would give to someone I only kind of like for their birthday. It certainly has a high point or two; the characters, which I mentioned, and the variety of weapons and fighting styles... but only until you find out that you have to go back over through the game itself at least five more times in order to actually understand anything, and then you find yourself openly resenting how you can't match a long pike with an arm cannon because your attack points or whatever don't load up fast enough if you're packing both.
I started the game with my boy Leinhardt, because I was all over this dude with a raging boner. I picked his chain and sickle and a pretty boss double sword combo and seemed to get through to the end of the game fine enough. Until I figured out that you need to go to sleep at the idol points in order to develop moves and to progress with the story. In order to learn new moves, you get a shopping list of enemies you have to defeat, which is the same way they get you to learn more about the story, too. I don't know how killing X amount of tiny artsy men leads you to find out that your father is a bastard, but who am I to tell the developers how to run their show? So I got to play through the game with this half-dead bastard again. Only this time I was bouncing back and forth between THE SAME FIVE AREAS OVER AND OVER AND OVER because nothing in this game is linear at all. I finished his storyline, which was bullshit, and then they told me I'd unlocked a new difficulty level, which explained all the enemies I couldn't find in the lesser levels.
And there I was, having just found out that not only can I not learn all of his moves in the two play throughs I'd already given this thing, but I was also looking forward to doing the exact same thing with five other characters. Which never happened. Why? Because that's such a load of horseshit. I think I beat one other storyline, and that character was chosen entirely because he was wearing a buttflap.
I think my biggest problem with this was the fact that they never explain anything. If a person can run through all the areas without advancing the story at all, you've kind of failed. I suppose it's alright if you only want to play online (another feature they fail to explain at all) and don't care about the storyline or learning new moves or staying alive during boss fights, but for someone like me that likes to destroy games and earn all of the achievements, I say no to all of this.
So I'm fond of Leinhardt and his daddy issues, and I like Celine and Curian because multi-race love stories are the key to my heart, and Regnier had that buttflap thing going on, and Keither both amazed me and pissed me off because seriously that name is so fucking stupid but I love it, too, and fighting him put a kind of joy in my heart I have never experienced before, but for the rest of this hot mess? No.
Seriously, no.