Just got my copy

[SgtFiddler]

So FedEx just dropped of my copy at work. Really tempted to quietly disappear during the course of the day to get playing.
Gonna be a loooong day. Will post some impressions either late tonight or tomorrow morning.

[SnakeEater]

i got mine
i am loving it!

i say if you love god of war and dantes inferno then you gona love this!

[G_SHARK001]

Awesome stuff. Maybe start a poll to rate the game?

[riezo]

Its gonna be a long week :sigh:.

Did any of you get the LE that will not be gracing our shores?

[SaiYaN]

nice sgt
NICEE!!!

give some impressions

[SgtFiddler]

The LE has apparently been delayed, just got the vanilla version.

4pm's so far away...

[trinityblade]

Awesome, glad they delivered on time!

[SgtFiddler]

So managed to put in some time last night - not nearly as much as i'd have wanted - but managed to get some decent time in with it.

So after about 3 hours, here's my initial impressions:

Had to tear myself away to eventually go to bed last night, and that's always a good thing.

I think what's been most striking so far is the varied locations i've already seen, and i'm still only on Chapter 2. Each Chapter's broken down into 5 shorter chunks, with a trial being unlocked in each Chapter once you've finished it. Already replayed Chapters 1-1 and 1-2 to beat the additional trials, which so far have been easy, but i can see the difficulty spiking very soon.

One of my favourite things is the art design - i love it. Perfect combination of medieval european influences, with a darkly gothic feel to it, and a few sections had a definite Pan's Labyrinth vibe to it. (you'll notice it once you get there)

Little things i'm really impressed with are the black and white pencil illustrations of characters and beasts as you encounter them, each with their own little piece of history and lore - so much more effective imo than unlocking the 3-D models of everything that so many games do nowadays.

Other small things that caught my eye are the amazing attention to detail, the way Belmont would bless each knight's corpse he encounters, and so far the cut-scene direction has been fantastic.

VA's are great, and the story seems to have much potential at this point. The score's suitably epic and in fact the sound design so far's been very impressive.

There is some framerate issues happening, but so far it hasn't been at all bad, and certainly didn't hamper the gameplay yet. One thing i needed to get used to was their QTE of 2 circles gradually decreasing into each other but i've found the sweet spot last night and they're a breeze since then.

The combat really has some GOW flavour to it, which is sufficient for a game like this. There are still loads of combo's and moves to purchase, so it has the potential to be something deep, but i will only be able to make this judgement probably on the harder difficulties.

What i do like about the combat so far is that you'll NEED to block. It actually uses a similar mechanic to Ninja Gaiden where you block with R2, and to dodge you keep holding the same button and push the let stick in a direction. This gives me hope that the combat system could potentially be deeper than GOW which i'm hoping for, since i'm enjoying this atm way more than i did GOWIII.

If the pace, varied locations and enemies can continue throughout the game (i almost can't see how that will happen), i'm going to be very impressed.

Will post back after some more gametime.

[Azure Wrath]

Thanks Fiddler! Downloading the demo now, need to be introduced to this series...

[Thor]

Dude don't DL the demo it's way way to short and you'd want to play the damn thing over and over and over again and again and again hahahaha you get my point!!!