Not being completely familiar with Conan lore and all of its extremities, my initial thought was, "Who the heck is this old man talking to me like he knows me and thinks he knows what's good for me?" Anyway, it's not like I had a choice in the matter. I humoured the old man and took his advice to make my way to the city of Tortage to speak with some old hag called "Nadini", the seer, because apparently it was important that I do so. Fast-forwarding a bit, I make my way into the city of Tortage, meet with Nadini and here begins my Destiny Quest. Each archetype (Mage, Priest, Rogue, and Soldier) has their own unique Destiny Quest line in the city of Tortage that takes them to different places and doing things in a way that is genuinely unique to the archetype that you have chosen. Since Rangers are part of the Rogue archetype, I was going to be following the Rogue Destiny Quest line. My Ranger had a "trainer" to speak to, someone that I would be in frequent contact with throughout my time in Tortage to help me regain my memory and the skills I need to become a "dancing machine of death".
There is unrest in Tortage, and the city is on the verge of collapse as the locals find themselves oppressed and blockaded by an iron-fisted leader, Strom (apparently he's a bit of a bad-ass too). You learn quite a lot about just how corrupt and unsavoury the city of Tortage has become under Strom's rule and that there are bigger things here at work, and it seems that me, a lowly galley slave with a bit of a past, is involved somehow, apparently.
Upon entering the outskirts of Tortage and reaching level five, I was awarded with my first combo move, and by the time I had finished from Tortage I had eight combos to my name, each with their own very distinct and brutal animation. I decided to test my first combo on a lowly Pict (they inhabit the Acheronian ruins just outside the city of Tortage and among the outskirts of the city), and really, he didn't know what hit him. I toyed with him at first using by directional attacks where the shield indicator wasn't present, and when I saw that he was low enough on health I let fly with "Brutal Onslaught". It was simply a matter of pressing on the combo icon and following the directional keys that lit up on my combat rose to execute the combo. To my own delight I had not only successfully pulled off the combo, but managed to execute a fatality move in doing so; I sliced the Pict's head clean leaving only a bloody stump, his body slowly falling to the ground, and blood splattering on my screen and out of that Pict's neck. How murderously delightful! As if the satisfaction of executing a combo wasn't enough, I had also noticed that the fatality had granted me a temporary buff to damage and stamina regeneration. It lasted long enough to notice a difference in damage output, and there's time enough at that level to completely recharge your stamina as a result of it. I think the trick was to make the fatality buff short and sweet enough in order to give me some sort of incentive to execute another fatality move. Sure, critical hits happened, but the fatality move was something else; it left me uttering, "Oh yeah!" in a fit of glee.
As far as the combat system is concerned, it feels "natural", and in my honest opinion, no one should have any trouble getting used to it, but this is something I will discuss in greater detail in another journal entry.
