It's finally here!
With Control Resonant downloaded nicely last night, I booted the game up this morning and have been playing it, well, most of the day (had a doctor's appointment in the middle).
I've now beaten my second Resonant boss - the major monsters whose power dominates each of the various zones that the warped Manhattan is broken into. The first, I'll note, is basically part of the tutorial, coming before you even (if I recall correctly) get your secondary Aberrant form.
Thanks presumably to a day-one patch, the reports of intense difficulty in the early game seem to have been addressed, as I didn't really struggle much. Indeed, this second major boss, the Central Resonant (who has appeared in some of the previews and trailers) is the first time that I really had to work, dying three times before taking it down on the fourth attempt.
First and foremost, let's talk about the action gameplay:
I actually really like it, despite a lot of reviews poo-pooing it. Each button does something different, and at least with my build, it feels like each ability and weapon serves a clear purpose. My heavy secondary attack, using the titanic hammer form seen in the announcement trailer, is for building Falter on foes, which can eventually stagger them for an execution. Likewise, my launch-like ability gained from the first boss gives me a ranged option and also inflicts some Falter, while my wide-sweeping scythe main attack is a quick source of damage that hits lots of foes. I have a combo finisher that launches enemies into the air, during which I deal bonus damage to them, and I cant then bring the hammer down on them.
Falters and Executions are a really interesting mechanic: while executing a foe doesn't give you back health, you will gain a buff that increases your damage done and the health gained by defeating other enemies, so I try to get something staggered as quickly as possible and then slash at the remaining foes with my main attack as much as possible during that short "Dominance" window.
One of the issues I have with a lot of action games is that there's often little that really distinguishes attacks, and you wind up spamming the same things over and over, but here, it feels at least as if you're constantly making tactical decisions.
Now, the flow of the game is something I'm still wrapping my head around: monsters (mostly the Hiss early on, though I've seen some Mold and there's also a new enemy faction called The Pattern, which seems to actually be the central antagonist of the game) don't respawn until you beat the area's resident Resonant, and thus as far as I can tell, you get to fight each just twice, so I think maybe you want to fully clear a zone before going after the boss to maximize the resources you gain.
Completing objectives within a zone will level that zone up, increasing rewards dropped from enemies and enhancing the offerings at the spooky ice cream trucks that serve as your merchants. There are various objectives to complete across a zone, including side missions with their own little plots.
There are a few familiar faces: I did a side quest for Langston (though I don't know if he'll pop up elsewhere or if he's just a one-scene appearance). The overall plot is a bit slow to develop so far, though I've also been really pushing side quests and side objectives rather than driving forward with the main stuff.
Dylan traverses Manhattan with the weight of his role as the herald of the Hiss, and also the destruction that he wrought while he was in training as P6. We did get a Dr. Darling video, though sort of non-diagetically. His role in Dylan's abusive upbringing is something the game seems eager to explore further - as charming as Darling is, and as much as he plays a role of kind of absent guide for Jesse in the first game, Dylan naturally has very complex feelings about him.
Similarly, the FBC has very mixed (mostly negative) feelings about Dylan. Zoe, the FBC agent he meets when he first exits the Oldest House, becomes his handler, and while they're working together, she's also got a kill switch for the "Mobile Containment Device" attached to the back of Dylan's head, which will give a lethal blast of electricity if they decide he's too much of a threat. I'm curious to see how much of a Chekov's gun this is.
But despite the atrophy of being in a coma for seven years, Dylan is an absolute beast. Traversal abilities that took a long time to get in Control come much faster here, which makes it a bit easier to traverse the tall buildings of NYC (though there are buildings too tall to climb still, meaning you need to either find a way to get up shorter buildings or need to unlock Shift at some point.
Dylan is, of course, nothing like was in the first game, and it's really interesting to see someone who is clearly a good guy deep down reckon with the traumatic loss of identity that the Hiss, and his upbringing as P6, which pushed that kind, heroic personality back.
A few notes:
There are some secret hideouts hidden in various buildings around Manhattan. There's no proper nouns here to associate with any existing lore. They issue memos with verbiage similar to that of the FBC. If this is the Blessed Organization, it would imply that that organization is far more professional than we might have assumed, and I even wonder if it's a splinter cell of the FBC itself. Either that, or this other faction has nothing to do with Blessed.
Expect a lot more posts about this game.
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