[Kagezuno]

Well, I don't know if this is the proper place for it or not--sure hope so (mods feel free to correct me if I've placed this wrongly)--but since it's out, I thought I'd set it off.

My copy just landed stateside and I hope to have it in a few days, but in the meantime I've been watching this series of longplays, trying to get a feel for what the game will be like, and I thought I'd share some of my impressions.

-Ultimate forms are strictly timed--Climax Form, Blade King Form, Cyclone Joker Extreme, etc. They're very effective, but short-lived, maybe 10-15 seconds? Not sure how this impacts the Infinity and Beast Hyper DLCs (the footage of Infinity didn't seem to have this time limit, which would be . . .interesting.)

-Blade King Form destroys all in its path. The initial Royal Straight Flush will slash a quarter of life off bosses it looks like, even at a low level. That thing is insane.

-The early missions seem to follow a two-part structure--in the first mission you meet future ally Riders and fight them. After that mission, you take control of the Rider you just fought and complete a mission that's story-centric to that Rider and they can then be unlocked and used for any mission.

-Kabuto can spam the hell out of Clock Up, but it's VERY brief. You also have to hit the "special" button three times to trigger his Rider Kick.

-The missions are an interesting combination of tasks. In some bits you destroy enemy generators, in some you're racing on the bike to a checkpoint. In some you're trying to avoid a all-range spam attack (El of the Water and the Weather Dopant love this trick) and you have a few fights with them in between it all before the last battle.

-It looks like a lot of fun mowing down mooks on the bike.

-It also looks like this game is not very hard on normal difficulty--the missions take awhile to complete, but for pure challenge, there's hard difficulty or the Rider Lord Missions, which are survival-style missions.

Soon as I get my hands on the game, I'll try to have some hands-on impressions for you all.