I agree with most of what you said. I never watched Dragonball so I didn't have that in the back of my mind as I played. The only thing that got repetetive for me was the combat and the ending is pretty damn strange, but overall it was one of my biggest surprises of last year. I just finished the Pigsy DLC last night and boy is that some good shit. As great as the acting and characterization was in the main game, I feel it's even better in Pigsy's Perfect 10. Check it out if you're so inclined.

"And honestly, I couldnt be the only one thinking monkey was eventualy going to do a kamehameha considering how Dragon ball this freakin game is, and yes, I realize that this and Dragon Ball are all based on a Chinese tale called Monkey or whatever. Dude had a "Cloud" that he rode, like in Dragon ball, he had a staff that looked pretty much like the power pole from Dragon Ball, he climbed like a monkey and was named monkey, goku was s sayain which was a race of warriors with monkey tales that would transform into monkeys and there was a pig man in this, and a pig man in dragonball. And i can only assume there was some kind of pig in that Chinese story. "

just so y'know, early dragonball was based on this
 

" @Raven_Sword said:

"And honestly, I couldnt be the only one thinking monkey was eventualy going to do a kamehameha considering how Dragon ball this freakin game is, and yes, I realize that this and Dragon Ball are all based on a Chinese tale called Monkey or whatever. Dude had a "Cloud" that he rode, like in Dragon ball, he had a staff that looked pretty much like the power pole from Dragon Ball, he climbed like a monkey and was named monkey, goku was s sayain which was a race of warriors with monkey tales that would transform into monkeys and there was a pig man in this, and a pig man in dragonball. And i can only assume there was some kind of pig in that Chinese story. "

You're spot on about how repetitive the game is - and that's coming from someone who loves it.  That being said, I don't think it's fair to criticize it for being too similar to Dragon Ball, since all the points you bring up are, in fact, from the source novel - one of the main characters is a literal monkey who flies on a cloud and beats dudes up with a huge metal staff.  I mean, if you make a game based on Greek mythology, you can't fault it for having characters that are broadly similar to, say, God of War. "

This.  Dragon Ball and Enslaved are only two of many adaptations of Journey to the West. "

I'm way late to the party on this game. Just beat the premium edition that came out a few weeks ago.

I'm not having the same problem everyone else is with the ending, I think it could have been good if they fleshed it out more and tied up some of the loose ends about Pyramid and the slaves, but not a big deal to me. The FMV was a little ridiculous.

My problem with the ending is that they left everything between Trip & Monkey unresolved. All the awkward moments and tension between them? Not another word on why Monkey wanted the crown left on? I feel like they missed a great opportunity tying their relationship into the story more.

Other than than the great music, art, and visuals, and solid combat partially made up for the really frustrating at times repetitiveness of the game.

I thought the game was decent, but that's all. However, I kept in mind that I'm playing it out of historical context. Had I played it in 2010 I might have had different option.

What I did find very interesting is that you can very clearly see that DNA from Enslaved that went into making the new DmC - and DmC is a far better game. There are definite stylistic and gameplay similarities between the two, but Ninja Theory honed and evolved both aspects into making a better game. Having DmC for comparison is one of the things that made me think less of Enslaved, so that's why I cut the game some slack. It's kind of like playing Assassin's Creed 2 before 1.

Shame about the bare-bones port though. Iron Galaxy's name is literally nowhere to be found on the game. No intro logo, not in the credits, not even in a readme. I'm wondering if it's not exactly their proudest project. I mean it's perfectly stable and runs fine, it's far from the worst port I've ever seen. And dot having detailed settings isn't a big deal, but I wished they put more effort into things like making the shadows not look horrible and eliminating texture popping/LOD scaling - both of which have been done in other PC ports of UE3 games.

DmC was definitely a better game than Enslaved. I loved the combat, enemies, and feedback you get from the gameplay in DmC much more than you get from Enslaved.

But Enslaved had WAY more potential with its story. Unfortunately how Enslaved's story actually played out was very underwhelming.

This may only make sense in the context of my experience with the game: I was 2 chapters from the end. At work I peeked at IMDB to see who the voice actors were. So when I saw that Andy Serkis was listed as both Monkey and Pyramid I was like "holy shit, you mean Monkey is Pyramid?! And he didn't want the slave helmet taken off in that one scene? This is going to be the most incredible love story / bittersweet / dark ending of any video game ever." And with the soundtrack having such a great ambient "love lost" theme and emotional touch I really believed it. I actually contemplated taking some time off work so I could go home early and finish the game. Good thing I didn't because the real ending was interesting, but a bit of a let down.

Yeah, I didn't even know the port was from Iron Galaxy. I have a huge appreciation for the games they've brought to consoles even though I'm not big into fighting games. Looks like I'm going to have to gift the PC version to a few of my friends on Steam.