About a week ago, I finished my first playthrough of Baldr Sky Zero (Sakura's, if you're curious). I've been thinking about it on and off as I started approaching the conclusion of the game, and these are a few of my musings. The short version is: not a horrible iteration, but it's nowhere to the level of Baldr Sky.
Story/Characterization
- imho, the main character's not very relatable. Compared to the two previous Baldr iterations (Force and Sky; Bullet is a remake so doesn't count for this), Edward [WARNING: 18+ content] is an extraordinarily self-confident person, to the point where I would call him smug.
- In a somewhat similar vein, I'm not particularly enamored of the main heroines, either. I'd argue that there's a problem when my favourite characters in the game are secondary characters [WARNING: 18+ content].
- And... the story? Giga/Team Baldrhead decided to do something that's effectively a 180° change from their previous games:
This.
Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed. Team Baldrhead's done a pretty good job (well, at the very least prior to Material Brave) of having the different characters' storylines tie together in a relatively organic manner (yes, you can point to Sora's storyline in Dive2, but the way it tied together fit really well).
As a matter of fact, the ending felt a lot like that from Material Brave, with Meryl substituting for Ena, essentially declaring that there will be a sequel by leaving things open-ended at the end. Bleh.
And the vaunted connection with Baldr Sky? I have yet to see anything meaningful, although it may be in one of the other two storylines....
Gameplay
- Team Baldrhead tried to mix things up a bit with this iteration. I believe a previous version of the game system page noted that they were aiming to encourage players to use the long-distance weapons more, so they tried to balance the game in that direction.
- In a sense, they did. But by nerfing close-ranged combat.
- None of the weapons provide armour any longer, meaning that if you're surrounded during close-ranged combat (which happens pretty often), you're going to be taking a beating.
- Healing only occurs at the end of combat, with no per-kill healing (although there are options to increase end of combat healing). Given that close-ranged combat was traditionally about taking enemies out quickly and being willing to accept those hits to be able to land hits, it breaks that balance.
- No Pile Driver? What the hell?! 😛
- Other miscellaneous combat thoughts:
- Having different-sized usage limits for each weapon becomes an annoying exercise in juggling weapons. I've found that the most effective (??) way of handling this is by using a weapon until it needs to be reloaded, which means that there's very little cross-attack usage.
- Weapons only reload when they're completely exhausted. So you'll be shooting weapons into nothing between fights, which just feels ridiculous.
- Combat feels a bit slower, a bit more "floaty" than the previous games. There's something missing, but I have difficulty putting my finger on exactly what it is.
- The weapon selection is somehow less "fun" than previous iterations, as a lot of the attacks with character have disappeared.
Artistic
- I suppose this is the price of going 3D, but it feels as though the simulacra have lost some detail - perhaps it's just the shading that's different? Simulacra variety also seems to have gone down, and map/tile variety has gone down even more than that. In general, the world feels much smaller than it did before.
Technical
- The game runs pretty well - I'm running it at 2560 x 1440, maxed settings except for SSAO (which drops the frame rate noticeably). Granted, this is with a Geforce GTX 770....
All in all, Baldr Sky Zero feels like a definite step back from Baldr Sky Dive 1/2/X, which is unfortunate. I'll be waiting for the expansion to Baldr Sky Zero, to see if they addressed some issues (like they (arguably) did between Material Brave and Material Brave Ignition).