|
I'm almost 10 hours into Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and I still somehow have no idea if the game is actually good. Maybe it's because I haven't played any Castlevanias so I have no reference but this game feels deficient in pretty much every aspect compared to the modern classics, the ones that are more metroid than vania. But then I imagine that's because it's deliberately aiming for something else - the loot grind, I guess? I don't know. The combat is bad, though, and the level design is just so bland. Hitboxes are iffy. No delay on the respawning enemies makes backtracking and exploration a pain. Somehow I keep playing though. It's all very confusing.TeaJay posted:I just finished both Lone Fungus and Haiku the Robot recently. I also played through both of these last week and my feelings are more or less similar. Haiku was more conventional and less adventurous but ended up the better game for me. Lone Fungus's million and one movement combos were just too much to track in my head; I grabbed the first two ladybugs then checked out of everything optional and raced to the finish line.
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 18:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 05:28 |
|
|
Sway Grunt posted:No delay on the respawning enemies makes backtracking and exploration a pain. This reminds me, I'm occassionally playing through The Messenger after seeing it talked up here some weeks ago and that game feels excellent. Very tight controls, a unique double jump mechanic that I'm kind of surprised no one else thought of first, rad soundtrack, a neat level design gimmick, and one of the best feeling grappling hooks I've ever experienced. Granted the game is more Ninja Gaiden than metroid or vania but those elements are still there. The later half of the game is feeling more like a slog than the first half but that reveal about 1/4 or 1/3 of the way through, along with it's humor and amazing soundtrack that also smoothly transitions with its level design gimmick, have all been real real fun. The enemies instantly respawning on any sort of backtracking doesn't even feel bad but instead somehow feels right? Pretty good bosses too.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 19:09
|
|
|
Bloodstained is pretty good but the randomizer is still busted so don't play it on full settings or it can be unbeatable without some real busted rear end glitches, the art style, character designs, and graphics in general are awful and muddy (and you can accidentally fall out of the right z-level lmao), and the progression sucks at times. Despite all that it's pretty fun to play through and I'd really like a sequel. I understand why it isn't but it really suffers from being in 3D and not using sprites. The boss revenge mode seems completely impossible though lol how the gently caress are you supposed to win with those shitties
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 19:17
|
|
|
Sway Grunt posted:I'm almost 10 hours into Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and I still somehow have no idea if the game is actually good. You should play some Castlevania. FunkyFjord posted:This reminds me, I'm occassionally playing through The Messenger after seeing it talked up here some weeks ago and that game feels excellent.... The later half of the game is feeling more like a slog
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 19:47
|
|
|
The Messenger suffers a lot from not having a proper fast travel system in the second half. If you could go directly to any store, it'd be a lot better.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 19:51
|
|
|
The instant respawn in bloodstained I think is designed to help with the grind. When I wanted (for reasons I don't really know) to get all the shards I found that nearly every enemy had at least 1 spot where they were near a screen change. Only a few had actual frustrating runs to grind. I don't know why I bothered
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 20:18
|
|
|
I really didn’t enjoy bloodstained. Combat wasn’t fun, exploration wasn’t enjoyable, plot was super dumb. A pretty huge disappointment. From the standpoint of silly anime metroidvanias the closest analog would be Valdis Story, which I absolutely adored by comparison. Good music, really engaging and interesting combat, and exploration was fun.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 20:21
|
|
|
I didn't finish Valdis Story, the focus on combos and perfecting bosses was pretty tedious It certainly looked a lot better though
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 20:22
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:The Messenger suffers a lot from not having a proper fast travel system in the second half. If you could go directly to any store, it'd be a lot better. Yeah I super agree, or even if you could immediately return to the tower homebase from the map screen using the scroll. Something, the back tracking is a massive slog strickly because of it's more ninja gaiden level layout. Good thing the music rules.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 20:25
|
|
|
The Messenger is a great platformer padded with a pretty terrible Metroidvania. The gimmick works great but I just wish you went through the game backwards through remixed levels with switching. Maybe even have more bossfights instead of nothing until the linear endgame. Bloodstained is indeed subpar in pretty much every aspect and I don't know why it has the reputation it has. Valdis Story is much better, but would benefit from removing the boss ranking system (or at least its rewards) and flattening out the rpg systems. As is, the game not just allows, but heavily encourages glass cannon builds which clear bosses in seconds. When they're actually interesting enough that I wouldn't mind having longer battles with weaker builds.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 20:29
|
|
|
ExcessBLarg! posted:I played the first half of the game on Switch and then, stopped. It feels awful on the Switch. I recently loaded my save on my Steam Deck and it plays much better there, but I haven't really picked it up again yet. Yeah, Bloodstained is poorly optimized on Switch, and the mobile versions are full of bugs with no signs of the company that did the ports caring about fixing them. I'm not sure why enemies are instantly respawing. I have never had that happen. Maybe it's a feature on Hard/Nightmare? For a pixel Castlevania-like, get Curse Of The Moon 1 and/or 2. For a 3-D on 2-D Castlevania, you can play Classic Mode.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 20:52
|
|
|
Instantly respawn as in on screen change I'd imagine.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 20:53
|
|
|
ilmucche posted:Instantly respawn as in on screen change I'd imagine. Oh, yeah. I thought that was normal in most Metroidvanias, but I haven't played a lot, so I didn't think about that.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 20:54
|
|
|
guppy posted:Yes, it's pretty good. The story is borderline incomprehensible, but the mechanics are solid. Lodoss War is basically Lord of the Rings with serial numbers filed off and made somewhat more depressing in several places. Deedlit is basically Arwen, Parn is basically Aragorn. It's just that, unlike that story, Deedlit didn't get the choice to surrender her elven lifespan if she wanted, and her race is notorious for it being extremely rare for them to conceive children.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 20:59
|
|
|
Had a weekend all to myself so I finally gave some real attention to Aeterna Noctis and it's real good. For some reason I remember dropping it due to requiring some ball-busting Path of Pain style platforming for progress but either I just wasn't in the right headspace at the time or they patched it to be easier, because it's been pretty smooth sailing. I'm at what seems to be the end and cleaning up sidequests, and dark crystal jesus this Celestial Dragon rear end in a top hat is really bringing out the worst in it. The "fast travel" system was already a minor annoyance (you have to go throne-to-throne, most of which are centrally located in fairly sprawling areas, and there is also a train that goes to specific places and is only kind of close to one throne, both are loaded with long unskippable animations) is full on tedious aggravation as you have to poke around a bunch of far corners of the map where this dude might be. Not at all a deal breaker but I don't know who thought this was a good idea. Other than a couple of downright absurd boss fights, I've had a fine time with it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 21:14
|
|
|
I found some of the platforming quite difficult, playing on Noctis. Especially in the Cosmos. Combing microplanets with precision platforming is an interesting choice. Mostly in a good way, the teleport arrows are a fun complex platforming tool. In general, between this and Lone Fungus, I'm glad more metroidvanias are adopting precision platformer elements and not assuming they're the first metroidvania you're playing. (I wish a 2D Metroid could be made with this approach. the shinespark is such a cool and complex tool and then it's used for like 3 interesting challenges per game.) The CD quest is probably the worst part of the game. It's like the mushroom from hollow knight, except presenting as a regular quest instead of some weird easter egg. Besides this, the game also suffers from consistently terrible background/foreground distinction and, like Valdis Story, has endgame bosses which might have interesting patterns but are a lot easier to damage race past certain phases. Queen 2nd/3rd and Emperor 3rd in particular.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 21:35
|
|
|
Koburn posted:More Afterimage opinions I finished Afterimage a few weeks ago and would second all of this. it was pretty funny to have voice actors giving their fullest to lines that make no sense at all (some real Symphony of the Night energy there), but it got less funny in the second half of the game when I had no main objective in the quest list and no idea where I was going or why. They would have been much better served sticking to chinese VA only and putting the english VA budget toward a better english translation, even if the english voice actors legitimately did a decent job with the incomprehensible lines they were given. Most of the endings made no sense at all and the ending cutscenes seemed to have nothing to do with...anything. the NPC quests were totally unparsable with no hints about where to continue them, and I had to look up the locations in a steam guide to complete half of them. Random peeve: I lost my mind at how many times Renee gets killed during dialogue, and it shouldn't even matter because she canonically comes back from the dead! it feels cheap and it doesn't even mean anything! I had a really great time with the first 15-20 hours. it's super chill, pleasant environments, easy to progress but with just enough friction that finding secrets feels rewarding, some beautiful artwork, and there's a sense of momentum propelling it even if the writing is definitely confusing. Most metroidvanias are starting to wrap themselves up by that 15-20 hour mark, and this tends to be the best size for them, since it keeps the world expansive enough for new abilities to feel meaningful as they open up more access but compact enough that you can remember how the world is laid out and every biome has a distinct identity. Afterimage went on for another 20 hours after that point. it's undoubtedly the most gigantic metroidvania I've ever played, but that isn't actually a good thing because it slowly and disappointingly unravels over that second half. it suffers from a lack of focus that drains all the impact from anything you do or find by the end. The talent tree is very boring and mostly consists of tiny 2% bonuses. There's a multitude of equipment pieces to find but they similarly only offer tiny percentage boosts that are hard to notice, and don't really open up different playstyles. The stat bonuses themselves are confusing (how does "final damage" differ from "main weapon attack" and "normal attack"?) Magic is extremely limited and you can usually only cast a couple spells between checkpoints, so all the varied spellbooks and equipment that adds 5% magic damage or whatever isn't exciting. The great artwork inevitably gets stretched too thin as they have to fill an absurd number of giant biomes with art, so a lot of areas have background assets scaled to the point that they're blurry or they're missing a lot of the detail that early areas had. To the game's credit they legitimately don't reuse enemies or do palette swaps almost at all, so every biome has a unique set of 4-5 enemies that don't show up anywhere else. But there's so many biomes and they're so large that they inevitably lose a lot of distinction anyway, with the metroidvania upgrades themselves showing up very sparsely at points that felt pretty random to me. speaking of those upgrades, I had a lot of cases where the controls for chaining different movement abilities in midair just...wouldn't work for any apparent reason or would sometimes need a second button press to trigger, which was really annoying during platforming later in the game. The super jump in particular was really mercurial. the difficulty was very confusing. 80% of the game was really chill and I didn't die once in those first 15 hours, 19% of it would be hard if I didn't cheese it with overpowered stuff (mostly the scythe throw and the afterimage that lets you jizz infinite spells for a few seconds when you run out of MP), and 1% of it felt quite hard even with those options, mainly just two bosses that felt out of place and comprised over half of my ~20 total deaths. But those bosses were hard in ways that felt much more annoying than satisfying, with some bullshit like screen-wide seemingly unavoidable attacks they did at low health that you were apparently just expected to tank, and more importantly they just felt out of place with how much of a nice easy vibe the rest of the game had. I'd rather they stuck to something tough throughout the whole game like Blasphemous or just stayed chill the whole way. Anyway it's clear that a ton of talent went into the game and all of the ingredients are there to be one of the absolute best metroidvanias around, but they sadly just spread it too thin and would have had a much better game if they'd kept it to a much more focused size that was maybe half as big. I still think the game is pretty good on the average and I wouldn't recommend against it, but I can't get over just how enthusiastic I felt about those first few areas compared to how confused and disengaged I felt by the end. bummer.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 04:43
|
|
|
Afterimage sounds like something that could be improved over time like Blasphemous.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2023 04:51
|
|
|
Anybody played Chasm? https://store.steampowered.com/app/312200/Chasm/ A friend recommended it for me, saying it's a decent game, and it seems like an odd mix of metroidvania and a roguelite, seeing that it has a random generated world (with certain set rooms) but otherwise progress is 'vania, with upgrades and stuff.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 19:13
|
|
|
TeaJay posted:Anybody played Chasm? I have played this all the way through, and I think I was a kickstarter backer. It's fine, but not amazing. Some really beautiful sprite work, and I enjoyed my playthrough, but I didn't like it enough that the procedural generation added value. I have never felt moved to replay, even when they added in another... character class, I think? You could be more of a mage type that way.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 19:17
|
|
|
avoraciopoctules posted:I have played this all the way through, and I think I was a kickstarter backer. It's fine, but not amazing. Some really beautiful sprite work, and I enjoyed my playthrough, but I didn't like it enough that the procedural generation added value. I have never felt moved to replay, even when they added in another... character class, I think? You could be more of a mage type that way. Yeah I'm in the same boat. It's very much an average title. Done with a limited budget and I think it does well enough with that, but eh there's better stuff out there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 19:21
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY0x2JanYeA Man, this showed up in my feed and all I can think of is "....is that Bloodstained?"
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 20:41
|
|
|
Medullah posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY0x2JanYeA They're both Inti Creates games, but I got more of a Megaman Meets Castlevania Meets Metroid vibe from it... Also, someone copyright claimed the name, so now it's Gal Guardians. Kheldarn fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jun 21, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 20:54
|
|
|
It's basically a 16-bit version of the two Curse of the Moon games, distinct levels with secrets you can go back for.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2023 21:46
|
|
|
FunkyFjord posted:The enemies instantly respawning on any sort of backtracking doesn't even feel bad but instead somehow feels right? Pretty good bosses too.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 02:51
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2SHWfj7jfw
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2023 15:51
|
|
|
I've been going through the top-rated Metroidvanias on Steam and started playing Ender Lilies yesterday. Made it about an hour in, loving the aesthetic of the world/enemy designs but the movement and combat are difficult to get used to. I hate the fact that the sword attack freezes you in mid-air instead of attacking while also falling, and the dodge is pretty effective but extremely goofy looking and not in a way that I find endearing. I think I'd rather just be playing as one of the spirits than an elementary schooler, but as long as the plot isn't a 20 hour vehicle to brutally murdering a kid I might pick it back up. I bought Blasphemous at about the same time, since it has a similar aesthetic (and was also on sale), and I'm immediately much more hooked. The aesthetic/premise of "what if catholic guilt was made manifest from every person as a physical being you'd see on a metal album" is  and the controls immediately clicked, to the point that I almost no-hit the intro boss except for when I got a bit too greedy and tried to sneak a three-hit combo in when I should have stuck with a 2 hit-dash out-dash in pattern like I was doing. It's not a hard boss by any means, but it looked badass and felt badass to kill.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2023 02:40
|
|
|
Blasphemous absolutely makes you feel amazing when you wreck enemies; the blocks feel way more visceral than you’d expect for a 2D metroidvania title.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2023 04:40
|
|
|
I just started walking around fighting stuff and realized I could easily parry a few enemies, made my way through a ruined church and my instincts said "climb" So I just fought your standard face-and-two-hands boss through some careful dodging, realized I can bat some projectiles back at her and completed one of the first main three bosses completely by accident  then discovered the elevator that goes down to a junction with another elevator that brought me back to the start.Next on my poo poo list is a valkyrie I found down and west of the starting town who killed me at the start of the game, but now i seem to hit a little harder and found the personification of the seven of swords, who gave me more health. but I also walked past a fountain that goes to a snowy landscape, so I might go explore that tomorrow. I don't think I'm doing things in the "right" order lol
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2023 05:32
|
|
|
bawk posted:I've been going through the top-rated Metroidvanias on Steam and started playing Ender Lilies yesterday. Made it about an hour in, loving the aesthetic of the world/enemy designs but the movement and combat are difficult to get used to. I hate the fact that the sword attack freezes you in mid-air instead of attacking while also falling, and the dodge is pretty effective but extremely goofy looking and not in a way that I find endearing. I think I'd rather just be playing as one of the spirits than an elementary schooler, but as long as the plot isn't a 20 hour vehicle to brutally murdering a kid I might pick it back up. Oh hey I just started Ender Lilies the other day too! I feel like everything has slightly too much poise, there's a decent amount of things that feel cheap to use ranged attacks on that feel unreasonable to melee, I got super loving lost on one section, and the dodge sucked until it got upgraded. But the visuals are incredible, the map is good, my attacks feel cool, and it keeps mildly trolling me in ways that make me laugh. Blasphemous is also great, I finished the whole game and I think NG+, but some of the platforming was incredibly frustrating and (upgrade spoilers) you never get any good movement/platforming abilities. Definitely looking out for that sequel.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2023 07:35
|
|
|
Captain France posted:Blasphemous is also great, I finished the whole game and I think NG+, but some of the platforming was incredibly frustrating and (upgrade spoilers) you never get any good movement/platforming abilities. This is the thing that always confuses me with Blasphemous. Why do people call it a Metroidvania when it lacks the core, defining feature of the genre?
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2023 08:30
|
|
|
It has a grid map.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2023 10:55
|
|
|
bawk posted:I don't think I'm doing things in the "right" order lol Honestly the game basically follows a two act structure (not getting into some of the alternate scenarios you can trigger in NG+ cycles) and you can tackle the bosses and areas in each act however you please. It’s cool like that. King of Solomon posted:This is the thing that always confuses me with Blasphemous. Why do people call it a Metroidvania when it lacks the core, defining feature of the genre? You get new movement and exploration abilities, they’re just not the kind of “launch yourself around like you’re doing parkour on meth” types that people often expect. Hell, the “make blood platforms appear to reach new areas” relic is basically cribbed from Castlevania 2 where you couldn’t access some areas without Dracula’s eyeball to reveal hidden platforms.
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2023 14:25
|
|
|
I enjoyed Afterimage quite a lot but I also agree with a lot of criticism (particularly the lack of polish, the incoherence of the plot/lore/exposition, and the excessive size of the world), but also it has just had a patch addressing some common criticisms, including:quote:* Added map icons for NPCs like merchants and conjurors, now they will be automatically shown on map once you encountered them
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2023 08:34
|
|
|
Wow those are all great improvements I wish I had had.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2023 21:37
|
|
|
Just got 100% in Metroid Dread. The Burinia shinespark is loving nuts. Had to look up some more info on some of the mechanics because I had yet to shinespark into a slope, didn't know you could essentially chain a shinespark like that. Also got the Ferenia Missile Tank+ shinespark by completely loving stupid/wild means, where I would charge the shinespark just before space jumping onto the ledge, shooting some beam blocks, doing a cross-bomb over a gap, laying one final bomb and then immediately hitting the jump button to activate the shinespark. Went and looked up a solution afterward and saw "just walljump."  Now I should be done with Metroid Dread and it's off to figure out what the next one's gonna be on my day off tomorrow.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2023 07:10
|
|
|
I just played through Metroid Dread recently too, what a badass freakin game. I have issues with it but its strengths really stick more in my memory. I kept thinking the cutscenes would become too cringe but I ended up loving them right until the end.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2023 07:57
|
|
|
Martman posted:I just played through Metroid Dread recently too, what a badass freakin game. I have issues with it but its strengths really stick more in my memory. I kept thinking the cutscenes would become too cringe but I ended up loving them right until the end. I thought the story was pretty good, and the ending was pretty , looking forward to the next game they put together that follows along on this particular story path. I thought the EMMIs were kind of funny in how they were implemented. You start out learning the basics with them, then you get a couple back-to-back with slightly varying abilities, then the game decides "these aren't really that fun, let's just turn those off" and lets them sit for a while so you can go explore a ton. Then it turns them back on, making the next one the absolute worst out of all of them, then the next one wasn't nearly as bad since I had all these different kinds of abilities I had picked up from exploring, and the last one they must have decided they weren't fun again and just loving 86ed it for story purposes lmao I think the final boss fight was honestly the best I've fought in a while, It started off seeming way, way too tough right up until I realized that you could parry the melee move for some huge damage. At this point, my only lasting complaint besides the EMMI stuff will be the fact that I got to fight Kraid, but no Ridley! What a tease!
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2023 08:23
|
|
|
Re:final boss I lucked hard into realizing you can Power Bomb the black holes and suns he throws out, and honestly it turns out that makes it all super manageable.
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2023 08:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 05:28 |
|
|
lol I did the same thing, I said to myself "well if you get to make a big fuckoff explosion then so do I  oh gently caress wait what"
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2023 08:41
|
|