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I've played a lot of PC metroidvanias over the years, and probably my favorite are the ones that let you sequence break and use movement abilities/damage jumping etc to get to where you shouldn't go. But that's not really the only thing I care about, I really enjoy good gameplay and music/ambience. I loved La Mulana, La Mulana 2, Environmental Station Alpha, Valdis Story, Hollow Knight, and more recently Metroid Dread. Axiom Verge /2 I was more on the fence about, I think just because the exploration side felt very 'you will follow this path' and didn't allow for much freedom and the platforming felt pretty unsatisfying for some reason. I adored Celeste as well, but that's obviously just a straight platformer. I guess I'm trying to decide whether to try Bloodstained, Ender Lilies, or something else, and figured this was the place to ask for a recommendation.
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Nov 23, 2022 13:32
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Mercury_Storm posted:I got Ghost Song and yeah, it has issues. Controls are pretty bad and straight up bugged for me on mouse and keyboard, the character just stops aiming if you let the mouse sit still for a few seconds. Selection controls on the map screen and shop menu don't work right and the lack of a minimap is pretty glaring. The issue with the dodge invincibility frames being seemingly random is likewise not good. Also there is no point to sprinting instead of just dashing repeatedly as far as I can tell, and I got dashing first? They had years to fix these things so it's just bizarre. I've been playing on ps5 and haven't run into any bugs but yeah your complaints are valid. Lack of a minimap is pretty egregious and to add insult to injury, the game doesn't even loving pause when you want to check the map One thing about the dash though is, only your first dash does the pass through invincibility thing. After the first one there should be a cooldown bar above your head...if you dash again before the cooldown is done, you don't get the invincibility and it drains stamina. You know when this happens because it makes a sort of whistle sound.
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Nov 23, 2022 13:48
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Velius posted:I've played a lot of PC metroidvanias over the years, and probably my favorite are the ones that let you sequence break and use movement abilities/damage jumping etc to get to where you shouldn't go. But that's not really the only thing I care about, I really enjoy good gameplay and music/ambience. I loved La Mulana, La Mulana 2, Environmental Station Alpha, Valdis Story, Hollow Knight, and more recently Metroid Dread. Axiom Verge /2 I was more on the fence about, I think just because the exploration side felt very 'you will follow this path' and didn't allow for much freedom and the platforming felt pretty unsatisfying for some reason. I adored Celeste as well, but that's obviously just a straight platformer. I guess I'm trying to decide whether to try Bloodstained, Ender Lilies, or something else, and figured this was the place to ask for a recommendation. Play Unsighted, it's a Metroidvania fan's Metroidvania and an overall excellent game
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Nov 23, 2022 13:55
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Velius posted:I've played a lot of PC metroidvanias over the years, and probably my favorite are the ones that let you sequence break and use movement abilities/damage jumping etc to get to where you shouldn't go. But that's not really the only thing I care about, I really enjoy good gameplay and music/ambience. I loved La Mulana, La Mulana 2, Environmental Station Alpha, Valdis Story, Hollow Knight, and more recently Metroid Dread. Axiom Verge /2 I was more on the fence about, I think just because the exploration side felt very 'you will follow this path' and didn't allow for much freedom and the platforming felt pretty unsatisfying for some reason. I adored Celeste as well, but that's obviously just a straight platformer. I guess I'm trying to decide whether to try Bloodstained, Ender Lilies, or something else, and figured this was the place to ask for a recommendation. I love the hell out of Bloodstained. It's the only game I've got 100% on. That said, while you do get a Double Jump ability that will let you sequence break, there aren't really a lot of opportunities to use it that way. You'll spend more time either moving forward, or going back to previous areas to get to new areas using the new ability/item you just got. It's very much just Symphony Of The Night with whiteout over the serial numbers, but it's still a fantastic game. If you enjoyed SOTN, and/or even the Soma Cruz GBA Castlevanias, you'll enjoy Bloodstained.
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Nov 23, 2022 14:08
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Speaking of, the Castlevania Advance Collection is on sale too. Circle of the Moon was my very first Metroidvania, I’m looking forward to giving it another go.
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Nov 23, 2022 14:13
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Has Toki Tori 2 come up yet. That's got the sequence-breaking open-ended MV thing going on but in the form of a puzzle platformer.No Dignity posted:Steam Tags will let you search for 'open world' 'rpg' 'anime' and bring back Dark Souls 3, it really needs much higher thresholds for relevance for to produce garbage results Kind of a bad example because Dark Souls 3 easily fits into those criteria. John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Nov 23, 2022 |
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Nov 23, 2022 20:08
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John Murdoch posted:
I used it as an example exactly because it does technically fit that criteria whilst also almost certainly not being the type of game people would be searching for under those tags!
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Nov 23, 2022 20:38
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I finished Ghost Song this morning and if I don't post about it somewhere I'm going to explode. I contributed to the Kickstarter way back in the day, when a Dark Souls inspired Metroid game really spoke to me. That was uh, nearly a decade ago. I've played approximately four billion metroidvanias since then and have wholly had my fill of the Souls aesthetic. For the past several years, the occasional update email coming into my inbox was more of a joke to me than anything. Some day that game was going to come out, and there's no game that's been in development that long that hasn't come out a mess in some way. Unsurprisingly, it turns out it's not a very good game. The combat is super clunky, unresponsive, and unbalanced. The flow between overheating and switching to melee is not satisfying, and in fact, discouraging with how much damage enemies do on contact. Save rooms are spread out enough that an errant death is a glaring pain point, made worse if you aren't playing on Explorer mode— because now your max HP is decreased, and you can only fix it by going even further backwards than the death set you and find one of just a couple repair points. The Souls-inspired elements added nothing to the game. The delayed heal often never went off when I pressed it, there's no audio indicator that you're out of subweapon ammo, there's a separate dash and sprint button for some reason. Most boss battles were just fighting the controls more than the enemy, honestly. Even then the most difficult part of boss fights was when they would spawn adds, which quickly made things entirely unmanageable. I'm not even convinced half the modules or suit upgrades even did anything. The game is only about 8 hours long but is an absolute slog. I would be half the length if they took out all padding in the main story. When I think of an intricate metroidvania, I think of games where you're left to explore, you earn a new powerup, and it tickles a part of your brain as you remember somewhere else in the world this might be used to unlock a new area. In Ghost Song, once you have missiles and one form of extra height, that's about it, the world is your oyster. Instead of fighting bosses for new powers, you're sent out to find a macguffin for the camp of survivors, you find that part, and then you have to turn 180 degrees and walk all the way back. It's egregious and boring. There's new enemies in your way, I guess. There's one ship part that's like two screens away from camp and feels pointless. There are two ship parts as far away from camp as possible but extremely close to each other, but you're only allowed to carry one part at a time. There's nothing interesting about the schlep, it's just busywork. Even if I wanted to explore on my own, the map system is genuinely terrible. There is no minimap— you are constantly opening and closing your menu just to make sure you're going the right way. Even worse, the map isn't broken up in a grid; once you enter a room, that entire room is uncovered on your map. I was often left entirely unsure if I had actually explored a room before or not; I could never remember if I had been to that corner or if it was just given to me for free. On top of all this, the map just also lies to you. Early on I was lost for an hour, because where my map said there was a solid wall, there was actually a tunnel. Not a secret tunnel I had to blow open, just a natural pathway. I never thought to look there because as far as I knew, because the entire room was already available on my map, I had probably already been there. I never thought to look there because as far as I knew, there was nothing there to find but a wall. All that said, it is a game I cannot stop thinking about. It's a game I desperately wish was good, because it absolutely crushes the aesthetics of just... being there. The visuals are great, the dialogue is endearing, and I caps-lock italicized LOVE the soundtrack— I bought it after playing the game for one night, I'm listening to it right now. It's a world I want to want to explore, but it hates me for doing so. I just want to continue to exist in that space; I want to talk more to the planet's inhabitants before trudging off on my isolated journey through a wet alien world with a soft piano and synthesizer reverberating off the walls. The vibes are operating at 130% and I just wish, so badly, that the game was just... better. If the game is elevated this much by just a strong few parts of it, imagine if the core gameplay didn't make me groan in frustration every step of the way. It could have been something so, so special. It's realistically a game I can't recommend to anyone. I'm probably going to play it again. Kaubocks fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Nov 27, 2022 |
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Nov 27, 2022 05:48
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Part of me really wants to get Deaths Gambit Afterlife in this sale but another part of me is wondering if I'm a little burnt out from metroidvanias lately and I'm just going to play it for like an hour then put it down.
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Nov 27, 2022 07:08
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Kaubocks posted:I finished Ghost Song this morning and if I don't post about it somewhere I'm going to explode. I also just finished it this morning! I felt like it was pretty neat and atmospheric. I don't have nearly as many complaints except for how hard it was to find the one specific spot I had to go next (I was supposed to remember there was a crystal spot I could blow up way to the left of the starting area?). I thought the combat was fine and the only times I died were against the ogre boss or when my controller hosed up (playing on game pass means I have to use my PS4 controller which has a wonky connection and dips out occasionally). Game was really pretty easy and quite short. The dropping cash/xp on death is totally pointless because the game is short and not difficult. The ending was dumb Why can't I just go on the cool spaceship and have a happy ending? Why do I have to die for no good reason because a big robot pushed me real hard? loving stupid it's 2022 tragic endings are out, people want wholesome happy endings. . Like if I kickstarted the game or even specifically paid for it I'd be at least a little disappointed. As a "oh neat it's on game pass" title it was a quick fun game in my favorite genre. Setting was really cool, art was excellent, sound design was excellent. It's just a shame the gameplay wasn't any better than a B.
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Nov 27, 2022 17:18
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Picked up Axiom Verge 2 in the latest Steam sale. Feels more open that the first so far, and I like the less alien atmosphere. However, I'm kinda stumped on where to go at the moment. I've just talked to the big Babylonian statue, where the dialog implied there's a new ability in the area behind it, but I can't figure out any way to progress in there - both the upper and lower paths on the right end in areas I can only access with the drone, and there's nothing the drone can do in either of them. Should I be going somewhere else? If I'm going towards the marker on the map it's either through there or a passage at the bottom of the water area I've somehow missed, and nothing more in the water area seems to be accessible with my current abilities.
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Nov 27, 2022 19:23
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Nostalgamus posted:Picked up Axiom Verge 2 in the latest Steam sale. Feels more open that the first so far, and I like the less alien atmosphere. Have you tried inserting yourself into the game, breaking the laws of physics, and becoming rich and famous? Worked for the main dev. HTH.
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Nov 27, 2022 19:44
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Finally playing Will of the Wisps and I regret having nearly everything about the game spoiled to me, but I still enjoy it. One thing I do appreciate is the game forces you to change your charm build. There's no "fragile strength+quickslash+soul catcher+grubsong" combo that suits 99% of the game. Movement and combat charms have to be frequently swapped and other than stuff like a 3rd jump there aren't many OP charms that I find myself married to. Kinda just wish there were more game. Feels like I'm already getting to the end of it. They have this great tech tree and right when you can finally use it all... you're done. DLC when?
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Nov 28, 2022 18:45
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Fuzz posted:Have you tried inserting yourself into the game, breaking the laws of physics, and becoming rich and famous? Wait what?
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Nov 28, 2022 19:09
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A Sometimes Food posted:Wait what? That's the plot of the first one. It's self insert fan fiction about him being a COOL AND FAMOUS SCIENTIST that then becomes badass savior Jesus for an alien race. It's super lame and aggressive about it with really lovely monologue first person storytelling.
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Nov 29, 2022 00:06
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Fuzz posted:That's the plot of the first one. It's self insert fan fiction about him being a COOL AND FAMOUS SCIENTIST that then becomes badass savior Jesus for an alien race. You seem bizarrely angry about the guy. And that’s not remotely the plot of the first game. I don’t know anything about his politics, but in addition to having his son born with severe issues due to complications during pregnancy his partner just had a heart attack and open heart surgery presumably in her thirties or early forties. I don’t see much in the way of bad behavior deserving of such scorn. Velius fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 00:14
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Velius posted:You seem bizarrely angry about the guy. And that’s not remotely the plot of the first game. I don’t know anything about his politics, but in addition to having his son born with severe issues due to complications during pregnancy his partner just had a heart attack and open heart surgery presumably in her thirties or early forties. I don’t see much in the way of bad behavior deserving of such scorn. I know nothing about the guy, it's just a goofy and poorly written game with the main protagonist literally being a pixelated edgelord version of himself. You're allowed to mock and comment on someone's work without it being a personal attack on their character or personal life or even politics. Not sure where the politics even came into the discussion.
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Nov 29, 2022 00:27
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Fuzz posted:I know nothing about the guy, it's just a goofy and poorly written game with the main protagonist literally being a pixelated edgelord version of himself. This is the thread for games with plots like, and I paraphrase, edit: spoiler alert! You are a super galactic bounty hunter who has to go to a planet and kill Space Pirates and get super powerful and one of them is a big brain and then the planet blows up then you lose those super powers and go fight space pirates and one of them is a big brain and an alien decides you’re it’s mom and then it dies and you get it’s dna in you somehow and get super powerful and kill the brain then the planet explodes (again) then lose that powers and do this again a few times while a stupid robot voice calls you Lady. So I’m not really sure what your rants are about - axiom verge is hardly sillier than any other ones. Thanks for the insightful contributions to the thread though! Velius fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 00:47
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Didn't the axiom verge character get busted for plagiarism or something before the game starts
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Nov 29, 2022 00:52
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WHY BONER NOW posted:Didn't the axiom verge character get busted for plagiarism or something before the game starts The intro is his lab blowing up. The rest is revealed over the game. He isn’t some greatest scientist ever, he had some theory of everything that got a bunch of mainstream media press but the scientific community rejected, so he called himself Athetos - “without place”, in response to that rejection, then made his lab which then blew up and sent him to Sudra, so we don’t really ever know if he was or wasn’t a total fuckup. The game doesn’t portray him as some super genius at all. Velius fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 00:55
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Aah ok, thanks... I remembered thinking he was a d-bag for some reason.
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Nov 29, 2022 01:23
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It's the sideburns
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Nov 29, 2022 01:41
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Velius posted:This is the thread for games with plots like, and I paraphrase, edit: spoiler alert! You are a super galactic bounty hunter who has to go to a planet and kill Space Pirates and get super powerful and one of them is a big brain and then the planet blows up then you lose those super powers and go fight space pirates and one of them is a big brain and an alien decides you’re it’s mom and then it dies and you get it’s dna in you somehow and get super powerful and kill the brain then the planet explodes (again) then lose that powers and do this again a few times while a stupid robot voice calls you Lady. So I’m not really sure what your rants are about - axiom verge is hardly sillier than any other ones. Thanks for the insightful contributions to the thread though! That's the plot of four games put together. But yeah, a lot of metroidvania plots get pretty silly if you look at the plot directly, but most of the meat of the games doesn't have much plot at all.
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Nov 29, 2022 02:50
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Right, it’s all about gameplay (mostly) and if you’re lucky, kicking rad music too. I still love the Valdis story music even if the story is anime as gently caress silliness.
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Nov 29, 2022 03:08
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Fuzz posted:It's self insert fan fiction about him being a COOL AND FAMOUS SCIENTIST that then becomes badass savior Jesus for an alien race. If anything, Tom has been pretty humble about his indy success. Which I'm sure is related to his son being born shortly after release and his aforementioned health complications requiring expensive, life-long care. In other words, the guy is literally just trying to provide for his family. Velius posted:but in addition to having his son born with severe issues due to complications during pregnancy As a parent, that has to be crushing though, and I don't doubt that the sum of his experiences has informed his recent game development.
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Nov 29, 2022 03:32
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Anyway, I found out where I was supposed to go: I had failed to realize this was a platform.
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Nov 29, 2022 22:25
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1872680/The_Knight_Witch/ Anybody have first impressions of this? Looks like it just came out, I must have wishlisted it after a trailer. Looks like the game is trying to do a whole lot of stuff at once.
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Nov 30, 2022 00:26
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My first impression is that it looks like Bastion and Celeste had a baby and gave that baby a jetpack and a gun. The polish looks great, though, and I would guess the projected 5 hour game length is probably pretty dense.
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Nov 30, 2022 02:18
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13 positive reviews out of 14. That's not bad for day of launch.
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Nov 30, 2022 02:22
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Morpheus posted:Part of me really wants to get Deaths Gambit Afterlife in this sale but another part of me is wondering if I'm a little burnt out from metroidvanias lately and I'm just going to play it for like an hour then put it down. I know the sale is over but I put a few hours into it when they did the big expansion/revamp of the game. Felt solid enough but I put it down and I can’t recall why - I do mean to take another crack at it at some point. It’s definitely a game that takes the Souls inspiration very seriously, all the way down to picking from a half dozen or so character backgrounds that not only dictate starting stats and gear but iirc actually change how you get special attack energy as you go. Edit: I do distinctly remember that if nothing else Matt Mercer definitely sounded like he was having fun voicing Death, who is tangibly roaming around the game world in some amusing ways. Tortolia fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Dec 1, 2022 |
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Dec 1, 2022 05:33
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avoraciopoctules posted:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1872680/The_Knight_Witch/ It looks neat, but if the character flies all the time, then it's not really a platformer like I'm used to with these games, and I'm not a fan of the number of projectiles I'm seeing. The card system is certainly something. Makes me think of Lost Kingdoms. It's certainly trying some interesting things and looks very pretty, I just think that it's probably not gonna be my speed. There's a demo if anyone's interested.
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Dec 1, 2022 07:07
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I also picked up Axiom Verge 2 in the sale. I could not get into the first game, and don't think I played it for more than an hour. However, 2 was immediately more interesting to me. It's also a much more attractive game, though still suffers from some lack of visual clarity, as Nostalgamus noted earlier.
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Dec 1, 2022 13:26
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SlothfulCobra posted:It looks neat, but if the character flies all the time, then it's not really a platformer like I'm used to with these games, and I'm not a fan of the number of projectiles I'm seeing. The card system is certainly something. Makes me think of Lost Kingdoms. It's certainly trying some interesting things and looks very pretty, I just think that it's probably not gonna be my speed. Goddamn I've wanted a re-release for the lost kingdoms games for so long.
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Dec 1, 2022 15:29
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Metroidvania sale at GOG
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Dec 3, 2022 00:57
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Finished Axiom Verge 2. It's a fairly different game compared to the first - feels significantly more focused on exploration than combat. Where AV1 had a lot of huge bossfights, while AV2 has basically none - even the final fight isn't about killing the boss, only occasionally requiring you to whack the boss a few times to keep it from blocking the buttons you need to press. The extra-large drones spread around the map are closer to regular bossfights, but they are also completely optional. The new drone-only grappling hook is fun, if a little fiddly to use. If you're using it in the air, you have to release the button almost immediately to actually pull yourself up, otherwise you fall past the max hook distance and it fizzles. (Nowhere near as bad as AV1's grappling hook, where it felt like a challenge to swing along a flat ceiling.) Still, once you're at the point where you can switch between drone and human at will, I found myself gravitating towards the drone due to the increased mobility - it's way faster than the human wallclimb/ledgegrab. Storywise it's basically independent of AV1, with a few references here and there. Having played AV1 adds a lot of "I recognize this" moments - mainly the rebirth chambers and what the human NPCs keep turning into, but nothing that felt neccessary to understand anything.
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Dec 3, 2022 20:26
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Any opinions on Haak in this thread? I keep seeing it come up as a hidden gem this year.
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Dec 8, 2022 16:58
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I'm sort of excited for this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wafFds3Ppb0&t=1s
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Dec 9, 2022 08:50
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cant cook creole bream posted:I'm sort of excited for this one. It looks pretty by the numbers but they still got a couple years to work on it and the Celeste devs are cool
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Dec 9, 2022 16:33
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My thoughts on The Knight Witch. Things I liked: Art style is beautiful and the story was just intriguing enough with mostly charming characters. Like Gravity Falls or Owl House or another really good mostly-children's cartoon, I've only seen those two. You can leave heavily on your normal fire or on spells, but you will definitely have to use both in combination, especially late in the game. No dud secrets. There aren't a lot of them but every find is immediately impactful. Every story upgrade has both traversal and combat utility, as Metroidvania God intended. Very good visual feedback, which is important. I rarely ever lost track of my character or the enemies in the cloud of bullets, which is usually a big sticking point with me and bullet hell games. Things I disliked: The endgame is rough for an old man. The final boss I thought was a well-tuned challenge where I squeaked by with little health and then it turns out there is a second phase. The spellcard deck-building is cute but there's literally no reason to just fill it up with weapons and damage. The defensive cards are practically useless and fights are too fast and demanding for you to bother with more tricky cards. It's pretty short, and replayability mostly comes from retrying ambush events to no-hit/speedrun them. Pretty short otherwise. Dialogue gets a bit twee at times. Never more than a little annoying but I rolled my eyes. The whole popularity system is essentially pointless. You can either lie to the people for more experience up front, or tell them the truth for a smaller gain but more trust in the long run. But you can buy off any experience you miss by telling the truth for a relative pittance and from what I understand, there is absolutely no difference whether you lie anyways aside from some incidental dialogue. I think it's a recommend at the price if you like metroidvanias and bullet hell games, but if you're iffy on it then maybe watch a video or wait for a sale.
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Dec 9, 2022 23:07
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Astalon: Tears of the Earth sure does like making you start at the start of the castle, alright. Why even have save points?
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Dec 11, 2022 12:50
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