I've been quietly looking forward to this for some time. Partly because it is by Capcom, and they are on a roll at the moment (bar DMC2 and Dino Crisis 3, obviously), but also because the graphics look so well done.
The cell shaded graphics are really quite something, the intro in particular is very well done. In game graphics suffer due to the viewpoint and poor envronments, but the characters still look good.
The first thing that surprised me when booting the game up is that the game is developed by the team that brought you...The Bouncer. Don't worry though, because Crimson Tears isn't all that bad.
The game is essentially a dungeon beat um up, and you have to take one of three characters through a randomly created dungeon in order to progress up 4 floors before meeting the boss. The RPG-lite mechanics ensure that the game isn't as dull as it could have been, as not only does your characters go up levels with experience, various new moves can be learnt via a rather confusing flow chart. I've not quite figured this out yet, but it does at least look complicated You can see how the combos work, which is nice (for example, punch, punch, punch, kick, punch - as shown by the chart). Most of the chart is greyed out so you are limited in what combos you can do, I assume they unlock when you go up levels.
The combat is very simple but does allow for juggles and combos. Square and X are the two main attack buttons, while Circle fires a gun and Triangle is a special. You can also hit X and Circle at the same time to go into super-'ard mode, which makes the screen go red and your character speed up loads - your health also goes down slowly when doing this.
Different weapons can be found, bought or earnt during the game, including some stupidly large swords.
A nice touch so far is when one of the three characters die, you take control of one of the others back in the central town (a place with shops and people walking about, so you can get extra quests etc), and when reentering the dungeon you have 3 minutes to find where your recently-killed friend is. Because the dungeon is random they are placed in a different place than where they died, but when they are found you must use up some experience points to 'resuce' them.
So far the game is quite enjoyable, but it also feels very limited. Because the levels are randomly generated every time you enter them, many of the rooms are repeated which is a bit nasty.
I've only spent an hour with it so far, but progress is quite swift so expect a review soon
Ask any questions if you have them. Oh, most of the game is in Japanese but it isn't too hard to work out.
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