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RE: Review of City of Brass (Plus Design Reflections)
I thought this game will be good, but it's bad.
- Graphics is nice.
- Simple gameplay but nice too.
- Sound is poor.
- No map or minimap.
- No saving option or checkpoint. Have to play it from the beginning to the end, playing at middle of game then quit and you have to play from the very beginning of it (level 1)
I didn't really notice the graphics all that much, though I will agree that the actual design and stuff is well-done. After the first couple hours I was more appreciative of their visual design language than any aesthetic, though there were some sections that would probably have been pretty cool to see if I'd slowed down a little.
Honestly, I think it was the gameplay I tired of first. Some of this may have just been the fact that once you beat the game there's not a whole lot of reason to go again other than just to see if you can make it, but by that point I'd gotten so polished that it was either a matter of dying stupid really early or finding my groove and making it pretty far in. The final boss fight was disappointing, though spectacular from a visuals perspective, so that kind of put an end to my goals (admittedly, it was a very clever idea, just was too easy).
I didn't really notice the sound all that much, which is probably a problem. I found it functional in the sense that I knew what was going on, but the constant ringing from all the loot lying around got on my nerves as much as it helped me. A lot of repetitive screaming, grunting, and weapon clashing doesn't do a whole lot, but I've gotten used to it as a sort of par for the course of games thing.
There's actually a minimap/map function, but it's locked behind a relatively rare item. I think I was seven or eight hours into the game when I first found it. It's kind of a Pyrrhic victory when you find it, because then you wind up going without later and it's very jarring. It also doesn't show enemies, which is kind of a big deal because unless you pull up the map entirely by pushing M it will just let you get shanked while you're trying to figure out which type of genie it's indicating.
Actually, you can leave between levels (it's kind of a hidden feature) and take a break, but you just can't during levels.