OK, So I wish I could say " I was right ". Lestat was, though
It took me quite a few hours into the game to break the illusion, but I'm ready to say it now. *gasp* Characters are still cardboard cutouts. And whatever feeling of narrative depth I had, it's gone now. This is...
...another Hollywood Greek Salad.
Animations are pretty neat - it's kind of like a slower God of War - there's none of the frenzy, but things actually weigh in this game. Combat is of the action/adventure variety - no numbers, chance to hit, etc. But it does feel natural and flowy, no complaining there.
There's all kinds of "complex RPG elements" such as "speaking" with "NPCs". When you talk to someone, there are four dialog options you can pick from - each of them means sucking up to a God like there's no tommorow, and this is how you get (specialized) new abilities and stuff. The system works and all, but I personally would rather I chose speaking options based on Jason being an asshole/a saint than appeasing Ares, Apollo, Athena or Hermes.
On the good side, it went hack'n'slash all the way. Meaning no mind-numbing features like having to loot hundreds of generic items just to vendor them. All the weapons I got so far are pretty awesome.
There are side-quests too, but since RotA is obviously a hack and slash, the RPG layer is slimmer than I expected (gah, fucking hype :<). Don't expect to be doing much more than combat. Oh and it got to a point where AoE farming became a lot faster and a lot more fruitful, but that happens a lot nowadays.
The canon deviations get more and more frequent as you progress through it. In the first three hours I didn't get pissed at all the literary devices and simplification artifices, but now it feels they've taken quite a lot of liberties.
RotA is still one of my most anticipated RPGs, but Liquid raped the Greek mythology harder than Titan Quest and AoM combined.
