So.
Darksiders.
I plan on doing a much more substantial write-up for this series in the long run, but I'm playing Warmastered Edition for Wii U after having played the Deathinitive Edition maybe... gosh, three or four years ago? I wasn't too keen on that game, but I've since warmed up to the series because there's nothing else really like it out there, and the difficulty is surprisingly satisfying. Dodge mechanics are great, the puzzles are straightforward but there's plenty of side content to be exploited, and the second game has a great alternate weapon system, in particular.
So I booted up Warmastered as was immediately like "oh right, this was the first game." There's some pretty bizarre choices here, as the tutorials teach you to dodge before blocking, because the first set of mid-tier enemies you encounter have unblockable attacks. It sort of weirds me out that you would choose to do this in an action-adventure game, but then I remembered ultimately Darksiders doesn't really know what it wants to be. Is it character action? Well, there are launchers, but the aerial combos are pretty awful from the opening because they leave you vulnerable to attack. There's a combo meter, but it really doesn't contribute to any sort of rank or reward system. There are parry mechanics, but the window for execution is very long. The low-tier enemies can be instant killed with a single input. So if that's not what it wants to be, then is it an action-adventure akin to Zelda? Eh, kind of. There's a lot of telegraphing that goes on in the puzzle design that doesn't encourage player thought, but there are some side-puzzles that are kind of neat and open up new rooms and such. The dungeon design is pretty painfully linear, and so far, the inventory additions have been a bit rote and bland. The game's boomerang is neat, though.
So what is Darksiders, really? Well, I think it's simply a game that has one foot in a pool of character action and the other in action adventure. Neither is particularly outstanding, but they also aren't offensive. The narrative is just dumb, so you certainly shouldn't be playing it for that. There's some mythology and I can respect the series for going all in with regards to aesthetic and world-building, but there's little of real substance. There's a lot of in-game currency to be had, and most of it is spent on unlocking further combo chains for combat, but the way the weapon level-up system works is a bit ass-backwards and doesn't promote neat combination attacks. I'm certainly going to beat the game, but there's a lot of potential here that feels untapped in ways that the sequel partly improved, but also ignored.
Also, I'm hoping Darksiders 3 comes to Switch so I can ruthlessly critique that, as well.