Noah's Tower of Genshin's Heart

I figured I might as well complete the trifecta and play Noah's Heart since I recently played Tower of Fantasy (I'm literally wincing in pain as I type that name out it's so cheesy) and Genshin Impact. Why not? It's Blaugust after all, and I need something to write about!  It was either Noah's Heart or my D&D game I played last night where my lizardfolk monk almost died unspectacularly twice, so Noah's Heart it is!

I downloaded it and . . . It's all the same game, y'all . . . Noah's Tower of Genshin's Heart. You want a chibi friend? You got it.  You want a stamina bar for sprinting? Done.  You want Gacha personas-a-plenty with an SR rating attached to 'em? It's yours. Need a little anime fix with some girls in furry ears? Absolutely. Enjoy.

You're a little tall for a Chibi, aren't you?

Now I get it . . . I get it . . . there are differences, and again as I said yesterday, whether I'm eating at McDonald's, Burger King, or now Wendy's, I'm going to have a burger, and I'm going to get an aftertaste of regret.  So, lemme just say, I tried Noah's Heart, and it was a hard burger to swallow. Does it mean I won't try it again . . . mmm . . . I don't know . . . I'd probably give it another shot, but wow did I have some issues.

Did I choose . . . poorly?

I mean, maybe it's because I made the wrong decision for combat at a critical juncture? But what in the world are they thinking putting the attack keys on the J, K, and U keys? Why wouldn't you just make it left click to attack like every other game? I don't get it. It's an action game with dodging and that requires strafing with a mouse in one hand and WASD controls in the other. Does this game actually expect me to lift my right hand off the mouse and press the J, K, and U keys or even take my left hand off WASD to do the same? They're sitting there telegraphing attacks on the ground that I'm supposed to dodge, so that makes it incredibly difficult and even frustrating to use the J, K, and U keys. 

I'm supposed to tap J and avoid that telegraph? Are you crazy?

Maybe the problem is that I'm not playing this on a mobile device because these combat control decision for a standard keyboard layout are HORRIBLE. Why wouldn't you just do it like everyone else? Left click to attack? No? I couldn't even remap it. In fact, I couldn't even find a way to enable mapping for a game controller if I wanted to use one! I just don't get it.

I can forgive the lack of polish in a game.  Believe me.  I can tolerate A LOT of pain in games (lest we forget I played Project Gorgon), and I did not miss the cut-off and mis-matched voice lines, the lack of professional de-essing (you can actually hear the voice actors' P and T sounds punching in the microphone), the bad designer creative writing with nonsensical plot jumping, the weird voice acting choices, the absolutely outlandish Twitter account authorization allowances for logging in to the game, and the low-quality UI animations. I could have forgiven those. What I have a hard time forgiving is an action combat game that doesn't use standard action combat keyboard schema. Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel here?

So, anyway, after struggling to find the options menu, which was buried three UIs deep (THREE!), I found a way to remap the combat keys to E, R, and T, which allowed for me to at least make attacking something I can do with my left hand.  Another strange thing to report here . . . apparently the N key is supposedly used for enabling auto-combat? Unfortunately pressing N did nothing for me. Maybe I haven't unlocked it yet or I'm just using it wrong or I made the wrong choice at a critical juncture?

On the upside there looks to be some kind of horse breeding?

So, there you go. At the end of the day I was level 21 with remapped combat keys. I don't know how I reached that level. At one point I earned a level for just standing still in one place? There was some super weird stuff going on. Maybe day 2 would be better. Actually, I'm sure day 2 would be better, but day 1 just put a weird after taste in my mouth.

Now, that all said, I know for a FACT that at least one fine blogger, who I respect very much, absolutely adores this game. If you want to read a very detailed description of this game from someone who is impressed by the depth of this game and has put in infinitely more hours on it than me, do yourself a favor and go read Bhagpuss's adventures on Noah's Heart. In his own words,  "One thing I can say is that I'm having a lot of fun. There's very little about the game I've seen that I don't like. I like the way it looks, the way it plays and the way it sounds. I even like the story." I don't take those words lightly. I know there's more here . . . I just need to get past my bad first impressions.

Happy Dueling!