GM80
01-03-2009, 04:32 PM
The demo's out on PSN and XBLM now. I was stoked heading into the demo this afternoon, thinking Star Wars Battlefront + Lord of the Rings = automatic bliss.
I think Pandemic/EA blew it, though, by mucking around with a good thing and adding bloat everywhere. What I liked most about the gameplay of Battlefront was the simplicity. You picked a class, and they had a primary weapon, a sidearm, and a trait or two.
In Conquest, those things are still true ... plus you have up to three different attacks, you hold your modifier button to make them special, such as poisoning arrows, and you've got a large number of combos and wildly varying control schemes between classes to keep up with.
Add onto that the totally unnecessary (and un-canon) Mage class (which is like a dozen mini-Gandalfs running around the arena shooting lightning and such) and other little geek alerts like run-of-the-mill soldiers having flaming swords at their disposal.
Compared to Battlefront, the scale is still there and the graphics are impressive, but the charm is gone and there's simply too much going on. As much as it pains me to say it, if the final product is relatively unchanged from the demo ... I'll pass.
I think Pandemic/EA blew it, though, by mucking around with a good thing and adding bloat everywhere. What I liked most about the gameplay of Battlefront was the simplicity. You picked a class, and they had a primary weapon, a sidearm, and a trait or two.
In Conquest, those things are still true ... plus you have up to three different attacks, you hold your modifier button to make them special, such as poisoning arrows, and you've got a large number of combos and wildly varying control schemes between classes to keep up with.
Add onto that the totally unnecessary (and un-canon) Mage class (which is like a dozen mini-Gandalfs running around the arena shooting lightning and such) and other little geek alerts like run-of-the-mill soldiers having flaming swords at their disposal.
Compared to Battlefront, the scale is still there and the graphics are impressive, but the charm is gone and there's simply too much going on. As much as it pains me to say it, if the final product is relatively unchanged from the demo ... I'll pass.