Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood

**Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood** tinha uma proposta que parecia bem interessante, principalmente por ser um jogo de lobisomem focado em combate hack and slash. O problema é que, na prática, o jogo acaba sendo bastante repetitivo e arrastado. Os combates começam divertidos, mas a pouca variedade de inimigos e situações faz com que a experiência fique cansativa rapidamente. Mesmo com a transformação em lobisomem sendo legal, falta conteúdo para sustentar a ideia durante toda a campanha. No fim, acho que pelo fator de ser um jogo de lobisomem hack and slash ele até chama atenção, mas infelizmente não compensa muito ser jogado. É uma ideia interessante que acaba sendo prejudicada pela repetitividade e pelo ritmo muito arrastado.

I really wanted to like this game. I loved the TTRPG, but his was a poor implementation of it. To be clear, it's not a bad game, just very mediocre. It felt like it was almost an awesome game, but was ruined by being rushed to market only 2/3rds done. I gave it a thumbs up that I felt it didn't really deserve, but it deserved that more than a thumbs down. The visuals (other than transformations, which are pretty lame) are great. Every one of the fomori look as good or better than the art in the RPG books. Unfortunately, there are only four or five variations, and you'll be seeing them over and over. The spirits are *amazing,* better than any art I recall seeing of spirits in the game book. Unfortunately, there are 2 unique big ones and 2 small variants, (one you can talk to and one you harvest XP from) which get recycled continuously. The combat was tedious without being challenging. I'm not very good at beat 'em up games, especially 3D ones, and I figured out pretty quickly how to dominate most fights without much effort. I played on normal mode, so this is definitely a design problem, not a me being a badass or playing on easy mode problem. While you'd think it not being very challenging would lean into the power fantasy angle of being an 8 foot wolfman slaughtering waves of heavily armed soldiers and mutants, it failed at that as well. Even the ordinary human opposition take multiple hits to drop, despite crinos garou canonically slashing through human rib cages with ease. Combat is consistently a hit and move affair, in which the area effect attacks (power slam and the healing that damages enemies around you) are always the best choice. Even if you're only fighting one powerful enemy, the right move is always to jump in with a power slam, maybe get a few quick (never heavy) slashes in, then jump back before they retaliate. The in-game info says that heavy attacks are supposed to interrupt enemy attacks, but that doesn't seem to have been implemented. Instead, it just holds the attack animation for a minute, like you're charging up, and then hit for more damage, but less than if you'd done 3 quick slashes in the same time frame. The stealth elements are largely a waste of time. Your reward is making the fights shorter, but generally they're not that hard even if you skip it, and you'll spend much more time sneaking than you would fighting. The story leaned hard into 90s style edgelord storytelling. At every junction, if you imagine the edgiest possible "twist" it's going to happen. After the first few, you'll see it coming a mile away. Most of the impact drains out pretty quick, as you only have one storyline choice in the entire game. It's also the sort of game that punishes you for not ditching the main quest to do all side quest first, as you'll quickly get locked out of finishing them, generally without warning.