For anyone who's sort of interested in this or liked Rogue Legacy, its just a ton of fun. I gather the PC version is the best but hopefully my PS3 experience doesn't go too far awry. Even with some weird bugs I've enjoyed every run I've been on and just keep wanting to play more of it. The combat isn't overly simple unless you're using a few overpowered characters and in general the variety every time out makes it feel like you're constantly learning something. Each different monster you can play as feels like a new character with different special cancel timing and different potential setups. The basic bosses are pretty much always challenging in straight up fights, especially in multiplayer where you fight multiple bosses at once.

If anyone wants to play on PS3 let me know, PSN is Valgresas. From what I can tell its impossible to drop down in a "?" area in multiplayer as the non-host, but leaving and rejoining sorts that out, usually lag isn't a huge issue and it seems to enable longer combo windows as well.

I agree. I'm on PC and have only played the single player stuff so far (all main chars unlocked, maybe 10-12 monsters at least). As a fighting game novice I actually needed some time to really wrap my head around all of those systems on top of the things one just needs to find out through experimentation for an hour or so but I'm having a lot of fun. Game came out of nowhere for me but, boy, did it deliver. It's just so much fun to play around with all the monsters and their abilities, so much to discover! Nice and pretty fucked up pieces of lore as well.

On top of that I'm actually a bit excited where ACE will go with these community unlock features. Definitely consider purchasing this game people, I think it's really worth it (though I went for the 10€ Humble Store deal to be fair).

Yep, this game is great!

It sure is!

Probably one of the biggest positive surprises of the year for me.

So how is the community stuff supposed to roll out? I beat the boss twice now and it seems like it's gonna take me in an endless loop. I'm enjoying that loop but am wondering if there is more.

So happy to hear this! Haven't played yet but I'm ravenous to as soon as my wallet allows.

ACE Team is one of the most fascinating devs working today. I don't think they get the respect they deserve.

Already got excited about someone praising Abe's Oddysee...

I was trying to think of more devs like them. Like, devs you can count on to be consistently weird. The only one I could come up with was Suda 51, and maybe Platinum Games. Platinum's more just over-the-top than weird.

I guess the Metal Gear Solid games are weird, but that's not the kind of weird I mean. I mean visually bizarre, conceptually strange, sometimes nonsensical.

...well alright, I guess Kojima counts.

The game tracks stats of all the players (I guess per platform) though I'm not sure if anything but boss kills count. The progress is indicated by the shattered mask on the "main menu" book. Once that is completely smashed more content, variants, maybe mosnters (?) will unlock for everyone. Not sure we have more precise info than that.

Those dark altars seem like it might have something to do with it. I may be guessing but every time I pass by one the mask on the altar shatters. It's the same mask that the boss has and the book has.

@sethphotopoulos: Right, now that you say it - that is pretty ominous. That might be a good way to have pure player progress (even without successful finishes) count towards the goal. Interesting!

Monk definitely seems to have the best cancel combos (Charged Slash into Jumping Slash into Running Slash into Jumping Slash) in terms of being able to land them consistently on most enemies outside of the corner. For enemies that throw daggers into the air (masked fencer guys) if you hold down the up + special button (instead of just tapping it) it throws it at a much higher/further arc, might work for grenade guy as well and I'm sure there's other enemies with charge specials.

Okay, I really want to know how this got all the way to release with friendly fire on. How did this go through what I assume were hundreds (thousands?) of man-hours of testing with everyone nodding and saying, "yeah this seems good?"

I just played co-op for the first time on Xbox 360 last night and it was a completely absurd dance where the other player and I were constantly popping our shields and giving each other a comically wide berth just to break pots of gold out of fear that one of our errant strikes would hit the other.

And that's before combat even starts, when we are locked into a small box together and we each go as far as possible to one side of the screen and try as hard as we possibly can not to hit each other. The fireball, useful in single player, is now a huge liability. What was friendly fire even supposed to bring to the table? It's pretty telling that it was almost immediately removed from the PC version. I'm stuck on the console version, though. Who knows when it will get patched here, if ever.

I guess I'll stick to single player for now, because I'm starting to find the depth of the combat, even if I think the traversal is a bit sluggish.