"Introduces a new side-scrolling function"

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Turns out to be a waste of time and effort, as the feature ends up adding nothing to the game. Any time something happens you are pushed back into the first person perspective.

It's a time wasting feature and nothing more.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by Irx:

It feels lacking because it does lack both function & substance. The majority of gameplay still happens in separate dialog, search & combat interfaces. You don't do anything fun in the side-scrolling parts, or basically anything at all aside from walking between story segments (which is just walking left or right) and sometimes clicking the underwhelming lost souls marks. Since these sections are boring and consist of backtracking 95% of time, they do seem to waste too much of your time.

Still, I think the problem is not with the mechanic in general, but the implementation. Just add more things happening in this mode, stuff to do, actions to take, and it can be fun. Tons of games of various genres doing it right.

I suppose that is true since there are other games in the "point & click" genre that make the travel more eventful, interactive, or just interesting to look at.

[TMALIVE]

Ya, I found the side scrolling element to be more of a downgrade than an upgrade. Downgrade because I loved how in the original games, you were searching for hidden things all the time. And at any moment, something could pop out. Whereas with side scrolling, you always walk into whatever is hidden, so it's not really hidden. And because you have a wide screen view of the level, there's no fear of something popping out.

If they do make another game, and bring back the side scrolling, I hope they make better use of it. Like add a chase mechanic, where the player is running from a pursuer. Or a time attack section, where the player must reach certain locations before the time limit ends.

[Kavi]

Side scrolling system also disconnects you from the character, you are not constantly from the point of view of the character and you feel less into the action or as if you're acting like him, which is a huge problem to me. If it was done properly why not, but no, I played NG and Death Mark 1 and it felt so much better, right now the pace with the side scroller system adds more tedious exploration and more disconnection, I thought I was falling asleep while exploring those class rooms in first chapter.

Sadly I don't think I'll go back to DM 2 for now.

[arta]

navigation was pain in first game because you not have map and easy to lost