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welcome posted:I believe the OP is complaining about the same thing about HK's map system (having to activate the automap for each area) that everybody who complains about it, complains about. "No no, see when HK does it it's okay because I like that game."
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Jul 18, 2023 23:53
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Finally decided to check out Blasphemous after picking up the Steam version in the Metroidvania bundle. I also have the LRG physical copy from a few years back on Switch that I never got around to. The weird thing is that the Steam version is 1.1 GB installed, while the Switch version is 3.5 GB with another 3.5 GB of updates. It also has aggressive HD rumble and, inexplicably, lacks the ability to remap buttons. Guess I'm going to play the Steam version but weird port.
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Jul 19, 2023 00:28
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ExcessBLarg! posted:It also has aggressive HD rumble and, inexplicably, lacks the ability to remap buttons. I think this is because the Switch itself has the ability to remap buttons natively on a console level.
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Jul 19, 2023 01:49
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Kurui Reiten posted:I think this is because the Switch itself has the ability to remap buttons natively on a console level. Also, Blasphemous came out before the 10.0.0 system update that provided system-wide remapping. So unless they removed the feature, I don't think they intended it to be implemented.
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Jul 19, 2023 02:28
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Fuzz posted:"No no, see when HK does it it's okay because I like that game."
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Jul 19, 2023 05:38
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ExcessBLarg! posted:So does Steam. Fair enough, no clue then. I can't think of a good reason beyond that it was a core system feature already, and without that, yeah, dunno. Sorry.
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Jul 19, 2023 05:49
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Hey I liked Islets, that was a fun little game. Movement felt really good, it was cute, and I was sorry when it was over
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Jul 19, 2023 13:35
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Various thoughts on Rain World: The movement is kind of awkward at first, but I got used to it after a little while. Your main "weapons" throughout the game are pieces of rubble and pointy sticks, and while they are technically capable of killing other creatures, the fact that even the weakest lizards take 2-3 spears to kill (and you can only carry one at a time) makes combat more of a backup plan than a general strategy. And if you're playing as the Monk - which I did on my first playthrough - spears deal even less damage, making offense basically not an option. It nails the atmosphere of being all alone in a hostile, uncaring world. Most large creatures try to kill you, but nothing is specifically targeting you (unless you really piss of the scavengers). On the other hand this also gives you little reason to care about the world, or the few actual characters in it. Even the ending just feels like a thing you can do rather than something to work towards, even "in character". As a whole, it mostly feels like a sandbox. There's a lot you can do, but very little of it has any gameplay benefit, leaving the only reason to do most of it as "because it's there". The main noticable gameplay upgrade is the player glowing permanently after eating a Neuron fly, but this only means you no longer need to carry a lantern - no new areas open up from this. The extents of the story consists of small pieces of backstory contained in the colored pearls scattered around the world, which can only be read by one specific NPC at a remote edge of the game world. By the way - fast travel has limited uses, which each use being unlocked by a different achievement. The in-game map is hard to read, due to the decision to use different layers instead of having a single scrollable area. I quickly ended up using the maps from the wiki instead, since those are actually readable. After going all the way through the game as the Monk, I decided to try out the Hunter - which only unlocks after finishing the game with one of the "normal" characters. The actual unlocking criteria is a bit finicky - it seems like you need to start a new game as Hunter without quitting the game after reaching the ending, as I exited the game after reaching the ending the first time, and the the Hunter was still locked the next time I botted up the game. Gameplay-wise, the Hunter is kind of ridiculously difficult, with a whole bunch of upgraded enemies (leaping lizards, vultures with harpoons) and generally a lot more of them (the normal starting region suddenly has a lot of Dropwigs). Also you get basically no food pips from bats/fruits, which is somewhat compensated for by being able to eat from dead lizards and other predators. Your spears to a bit more damage to compensate for this, but the food restrictions overall felt like a bigger issue than more/stronger monsters. Still, I actually found the difficulty level more entertaining that frustrating - and the fact that the Hunter has an actual objective made that campaign a lot more interesting than the regular game. Since I kinda liked playing as the Hunter, I ended up bying the DLC. So far I have only played the Gourmand campaign, where you play a really fat slugcat with an objective of eating a lot of different food. His main drawback is running out of breath after running/jumping too much or throwing spears, after which you need to stand still for a few seconds to regain normal movement. However, to compensate for this your spears deal TRIPLE damage, which is enough to oneshot a lot of monsters. Also, you can injure/kill monsters by jumping on them from a higher platform. Overall this makes the Gourmand feel way more effective at killing things than the Hunter, and since he can also eat just about everything he feels overall stronger even with the "out of breath" mechanic. It should be noted that the DLC also makes a few changes to the base game, including an additional region in the middle of the world - mainly useful as a potential shortcut. It also makes the colored pearls appear in the Monk campaign, where they were previously absent. Oh, and one last thing: Do NOT play this game if you're scared of spiders.
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Jul 20, 2023 16:00
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Nostalgamus posted:Various thoughts on Rain World: The DLC is definitely good if you're looking for more directed gameplay. The Gourmand's campaign is actually the most similar to the base Monk or Survivor playthrough, though you do have the optional Food Quest and some cool new locations later on. All of the other campaigns have clear goals to work toward, once you figure out what they are, and some very rad new locations and/or changes to the original map. I really had a blast with each of them, particularly Rivulet and Saint. And yeah, Rain World must have the worst spiders ever. They move in an uncomfortably realistic way and the relative lack of detail lets your brain fill in the blanks to make them seem even worse. Spearmaster's campaign is Spider Hell, it was pretty rough for me and I'm merely "super creeped out" by spiders instead of "actually terrified".
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Jul 20, 2023 16:26
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I've been misled by not reading steam store pages, Dave the Diver is not a metroidvania, it is in fact a fishing-themed roguelite collectathon. It is not bad, it's very very good, but I definitely thought I'd be doing more exploration and problem-solving. Every new feature you get includes a forced tutorial where you cannot stray from the step-by-step instructions on how to use it, and you cannot progress at all through the linear chapter-based story until you reach certain checkpoints based on what day it is. That being said, you get to capture some of the wildest/scariest abominations living deep on the ocean floor and have Bacho feed it to some rando that'll snap a selfie with it and post it on Cooksta with a caption like "can't believe I'm eating jellyfish 🤮🥵😱 but this sushi place makes it taste amazing! 😍😩😭" for 4 likes the jellyfish in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8fs_uqLANA So to get back to Metroidvanias, I started up Aeterna Noctis today to give it a try. I started playing a ton of Metroidvanias earlier this year by beating Hollow Knight first, since I'd never played it before and Silksong seems like it'll be coming out some time soon. Out of all the games I've played/beaten since then (Axiom Verge 1 & 2, Ori 1 & 2, Blasphemous, Metroid: Dread, SteamWorld Dig 2, Transiruby, Afterimage, Souldiers) Aeterna Noctis is the only one that feels almost the same as playing Hollow Knight again. The very first thing's it's teaching me are "you can jump higher by holding A or shorthop by barely tapping it, your movement lets you turn and stop on a dime (both in the air or on the ground), you can down-attack in midair to pogo off both enemies and certain obstacles" poo poo, I thought for a moment that attacking the enemies felt familiar, so I planted my feet on the ground and started attacking a slime to see if it also gives you the minor bits of knockback when your sword connects with an enemy (something I hadn't noticed in other games until Hollow Knight) and sure enough! I hit a slime 3 times and ended up a few pixels back every time I hit them with my sword. HK's jump is way higher if you hold it down the entire time, but the similarities are striking. Which: also not bad! Very very good! I'm excited to try this out, I wanted something that can properly scratch the HK itch
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Jul 20, 2023 19:51
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John Lee posted:I like Banjo-Tooie more than Banjo-Kazooie
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Jul 20, 2023 20:22
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I'm gonna say yes, but barely
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Jul 20, 2023 20:27
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bawk posted:So to get back to Metroidvanias, I started up Aeterna Noctis today to give it a try. I started playing a ton of Metroidvanias earlier this year by beating Hollow Knight first, since I'd never played it before and Silksong seems like it'll be coming out some time soon. Out of all the games I've played/beaten since then (Axiom Verge 1 & 2, Ori 1 & 2, Blasphemous, Metroid: Dread, SteamWorld Dig 2, Transiruby, Afterimage, Souldiers) Aeterna Noctis is the only one that feels almost the same as playing Hollow Knight again. The very first thing's it's teaching me are "you can jump higher by holding A or shorthop by barely tapping it, your movement lets you turn and stop on a dime (both in the air or on the ground), you can down-attack in midair to pogo off both enemies and certain obstacles" Aeterna noctis definitely has some really precise controls and earns the right to have platforming as hard as it does. but I didn’t regret playing on the difficulty with easier room layouts, because it’s a metroidvania and I don’t want to have to do egregiously hard platforming every single time I backtrack for secrets.
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Jul 20, 2023 20:32
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bawk posted:the jellyfish in question: If this thing doesn't chase its prey to explode at them I'll be sorely disappointed.
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Jul 20, 2023 20:34
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Owl Inspector posted:Aeterna noctis definitely has some really precise controls and earns the right to have platforming as hard as it does. but I didn’t regret playing on the difficulty with easier room layouts, because it’s a metroidvania and I don’t want to have to do egregiously hard platforming every single time I backtrack for secrets. I actually picked the "Noctis" difficulty on this one, despite never liking to play on Hard Mode most of the time, because I figured if I'm in for a penny I may as well be in for a pound. It looks like it's pretty nice, too, every time I pause I've got the Difficulty option right there in front of me Fatty posted:If this thing doesn't chase its prey to explode at them I'll be sorely disappointed. lol you fuckin nailed it, if you see one of these things vs. one of the regular comb jellyfish, these are the ones that'll literally fire themselves up and chase you down to explode on you.
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Jul 20, 2023 20:42
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Owl Inspector posted:Aeterna noctis definitely has some really precise controls and earns the right to have platforming as hard as it does. but I didn’t regret playing on the difficulty with easier room layouts, because it’s a metroidvania and I don’t want to have to do egregiously hard platforming every single time I backtrack for secrets. Aeterna Controls are amazing. It’s so easy to maneuver all the tricky jumps and obstacles the game throws at you. Every death feels like the player made a mistake. The strange issue I have with it is that the levels feels a bit bland. Lots of similar looking locations that feel very copy paste. But there’s a lot of platforming to help cut down on the monotony. Plus the worlds is so loving huge. There’s so much content for a metroidvania. The other issue I have is it’s really easy. The game gives you so many options to quickly come back from any mistake with loads of checkpoints, ways to recovery health, and even mechanics to cheat death. It’s a bit of a dull edge because I feel a lot of freedom to experiment but also never feel truly challenged until I get to the speed running sections. (Edit: I completely missed that it had a difficulty selection as I usually just pick whatever the default is) Finally, the last issue is the bosses. A previous poster mentioned that it is challenging to know how much life a boss has. This is absolutely true. Basically every boss has ended with me going “wait that’s it?” I didn’t even know I was close to defeating them until the a cutscene interrupts the fight saying “ok you win. I’m off to my home planet now” and I have to mash through the mountains of dialogue. I still HIGHLY recommend it. One of the best metroidvanias so far. virtualboyCOLOR fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Jul 20, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 21:18
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My one complaint so far is the dash, you can't input a direction and dash that way, you have to first face that direction and then dash. It's just going to take some getting used to, it means I can't dash out mid-combo, I have to turn then dash. Makes combat seem a little more mindful since you can't instantly dodge a wind-up, you have to anticipate it
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Jul 20, 2023 21:59
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Noctis was the original difficulty the game was designed around, the easier mode got added in later. I think it just straight up removes many platforming obstacles, I don't know what it does for the combat. I only played it on noctis, but definitely wouldn't call it too easy, though it's not very punishing since most platforming sections feature precision platformer style instant respawns. The difficulty also noticeably ramps up once you get to the left side of the map. I finished everything at about 400 deaths. And as I said, damage number color shows enemy health, the health of the current phase for bosses. Which is a weird place to put that information, but it is there.
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Jul 20, 2023 23:36
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So far this is the only game I've played lately that's been crash-prone. I've had it hard-crash once (wasn't too bad, was just leaving one of the thrones by the cemetary) and just now, after using the pogo ability to make a jump I shouldn't have made yet, got softlocked on a loading screen between zones. 
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Jul 21, 2023 00:03
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Strange. Haven’t had a crash yet but I had a ton with Blasphemous. Modern gaming I guess. Luckily both games are generous with their check points.
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Jul 21, 2023 00:27
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It's been much better after I had steam verify integrity and all that! I also beat a boss early enough that the game gave me a cheevo for it, so that was neat. Is there any point to these Time Trials? I've done two so far, and I'm never gonna get Diamond until I've studied game tape. It doesn't seem like there's rewards unless I'm missing something, just a global leaderboard to brag on?
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Jul 21, 2023 02:10
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virtualboyCOLOR posted:Not sure what to tell you. I’ve played through and beaten Hollow Knight around the time it came out due to both how it looked and how people raved about it. I kept searching for this amazing game people said was there all the way through to the end and it just didn’t exist. The poor controls, the unintuitive map system, the bland story (that thankfully didn’t get in the way), there just wasn’t anything magical I found. It was a thoroughly mediocre experience. Did you play on PC and have vsync on? That's the only thing I can think of that would make it feel floaty.
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Jul 21, 2023 02:27
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I have been enjoying Foregone quite a bit on my deck. It feels a little bit like Dead Cells but not as Roguelike. The looting stuff works for me though I bet it would cause the majority of posters to roll their eyes. It feels really good to control and has lovely music too. I think hand held is my absolute favourite way to play metroidvanias. I already had this feeling thanks to Metroid Dread on the Switch but I have SO many more via steam that once I got the deck and loaded it up, I have been blasting through them.
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Jul 21, 2023 10:49
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Foregone is a decent game but it's not a metroidvania at all.
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Jul 21, 2023 14:03
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Aeterna Noctis does not gently caress around  I thought it was funny when, on the way through the cemetery, there were spear traps similar to the Path of Pain in Hollow Knight. There's even a section that has spears almost exactly like one of the gently caress-you hallways in White Palace. Last night I beat an underground worm boss, did the entire platforming section after it, and I think that might actually be harder than White Palace. It involves some precise jumps/walljumps/firing arrows on fast minecarts. Luckily this game is a lot more forgiving and checkpoints are frequent, you respawn at the infinitely more common purple streetlamps instead of at the Thrones (this game's benches) You also don't unlock all new abilities immediately, you find keys that unlock doors back at a central location which hold powers for you. So when you find one in a dungeon, you have to go back for it. I beat the Forge boss last night, and got another boss achievement for killing a boss without getting X upgrade, because I collected the key and promptly loving forgot about it lol  Another point in its favor is that the upgrades you warp back to collect will make an area easier, but they aren't necessary. The rest of the Forge was easy and the boss wasn't too bad once you got the patterns down, and you can take advantage of some moments you'd normally be dodging between boss phases to deal extra damage/move around better with pogos bawk fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 17:18
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ExcessBLarg! posted:The weird thing is that the Steam version (of Blasphemous) is 1.1 GB installed, while the Switch version is 3.5 GB with another 3.5 GB of updates. Blasphemous is a Unity game. It appears that the original release used Unity's Resources system for managing assets. Since the game was divided into 1444 "levels", the assets that make up each level were duplicated a ridiculous number of times. As part of Patch #1 - Hotfix #1, the PC version of the game switched to using Unity's AssetBundles which allows for much more efficient storage of game assets at the cost of a bit of code to manage asset loading. This decreased the size of the PC game by 2.5 GB. Meanwhile, since Warp Digital had already ported and released the console versions, they stuck with the existing Resources system. For a platform like Switch, moving to AssetBundles wouldn't decrease the base game size, since the base download (which might even be burned to a cartridge) is fixed at the time of initial release. However, subsequent updates to the game have added even more "levels" and so subsequent console updates keep adding more duplicated assets, which is how the game ballooned up to 7 GB. Some of this is due to the Switch's inherent inefficiency in patching base game data, but even the underlying (decrypted) files still total to 6.1 GB. Also this file size issue affects the PS4 and Xbone versions too. So yeah, the massive size of the game (for a pixel platformer) isn't itself indicative of the quality of the console ports since there's a "reasonable" explanation for what happened. I'll still probably play it on my Deck though. Edit: While reading about the interworkings of Unity I ran across this gem: Assets, Resources and AssetBundles posted:3.1. Best Practices for the Resources System ExcessBLarg! fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Jul 21, 2023 |
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Jul 21, 2023 18:10
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Gumball Gumption posted:Did you play on PC and have vsync on? That's the only thing I can think of that would make it feel floaty. yes to both but even turning it off...meh. Controls just are poor. Especially when compared too... bawk posted:Aeterna Noctis does not gently caress around I just beat it. What a joy to play. Bravo to the devs. The took everything Team Cherry attempted to do and actually delivered in all areas (except the art in my opinion. Felt very flat). The controls were tight and perfectly suited the platforming. The upgrades felt meaningful and not like the game was simply removing painful design choices. Even the "unlock the map" idea was done decently as you could still actually see the drat map even though you need to "unlock" it by finding the npc. The game is loving huge. Almost each area is the size of the first Metroid. The devs were also smart and included multiple check points + key teleport locations to make traversal a breeze. In addition, there are lots of shortcuts you unlock. Highly recommended. A few negatives: - The story is cheesy and forgettable. The characters talk way too much to say basically nothing or something that could have been stated in two sentences. - The game suffers a bit from "snake" level design. This is where a single screen makes you walk all the way to the right, then up one unit, then back all the way to the left, then up one unit, the back all the way to the right, repeating for a while. Every single new area has at least two of these "snake" areas. - Hard to see. Numerous times the particle effects and the foreground elements block your view and you get hit without knowing why. - Bosses are easy but hard to tell you are beating them. There's essentially no indication you are beating the boss until the boss flat out says "you win". This happened with every boss I fought. virtualboyCOLOR fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 02:56
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virtualboyCOLOR posted:- Bosses are easy but hard to tell you are beating them. There's essentially no indication you are beating the boss until the boss flat out says "you win". This happened with every boss I fought. Dunno if you've missed their posts but somebody mentioned the damage numbers as you hit the enemies change color depending on how much health they have. White is full health, orange is halfway, red is nearly dead. It helped me gauge a couple bosses that were kicking my rear end to see if I was even getting close, and if I could get them to orange then I knew I could beat them with some more practice.
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Jul 22, 2023 04:02
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bawk posted:Dunno if you've missed their posts but somebody mentioned the damage numbers as you hit the enemies change color depending on how much health they have. White is full health, orange is halfway, red is nearly dead. It helped me gauge a couple bosses that were kicking my rear end to see if I was even getting close, and if I could get them to orange then I knew I could beat them with some more practice. Maybe it was the amount of particles but I never paid attention to the numbers. I know there were "phases" because the arenas would sometime change, but the bosses themselves felt very static to me. Not sure how to describe it. Just one minute I'm following the patterns and then it felt like the game just went "ok thats enough, you can move on now" virtualboyCOLOR fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 04:31
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virtualboyCOLOR posted:Bravo to the devs. The took everything Team Cherry attempted to do and actually delivered in all areas Just can't let it go, can you? Are you, like, a mom who's spent the last ten years mentioning that time Carol hosed up her lasagna at every party, because I can assure you peole are tired of it there, too.
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Jul 22, 2023 06:17
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virtualboyCOLOR posted:Maybe it was the amount of particles but I never paid attention to the numbers. I know there were "phases" because the arenas would sometime change, but the bosses themselves felt very static to me. Not sure how to describe it. Just one minute I'm following the patterns and then it felt like the game just went "ok thats enough, you can move on now" I just beat the West Wall boss (same as the East Wall boss) and I don't think you're wrong about this, I think bosses might be locked into a pattern before finally dying. I had this boss on red health, and not just-newly-red, it had been red for a few scythe hits. It finally did the attack where it stays on the bottom of the screen, so I tried to damage-rush it and even with over 50% crit rate with the ability that does an additional hit on crit, it wouldn't die and I got killed by one of the shadow projectiles. Two attempts later, I hit it far fewer times (and not with the scythe, even) during the pattern where its on the side wall, and after the pattern finished, it finally played the death cutscene. I think if a boss has an attack that doesn't end until X number of times through its attack patterns, it might not die until its back at "resting" position or something
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Jul 22, 2023 16:43
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John Lee posted:Just can't let it go, can you? Are you, like, a mom who's spent the last ten years mentioning that time Carol hosed up her lasagna at every party, because I can assure you peole are tired of it there, too. You should play Aeterna Noctis if you haven't yet. It is really good  bawk posted:I just beat the West Wall boss (same as the East Wall boss) and I don't think you're wrong about this, I think bosses might be locked into a pattern before finally dying. I had this boss on red health, and not just-newly-red, it had been red for a few scythe hits. It finally did the attack where it stays on the bottom of the screen, so I tried to damage-rush it and even with over 50% crit rate with the ability that does an additional hit on crit, it wouldn't die and I got killed by one of the shadow projectiles. Two attempts later, I hit it far fewer times (and not with the scythe, even) during the pattern where its on the side wall, and after the pattern finished, it finally played the death cutscene. I think if a boss has an attack that doesn't end until X number of times through its attack patterns, it might not die until its back at "resting" position or something Yeah. There was a mechanical style boss that I clearly recall died after doing it's attack animation. I didn't deliver the final blow or anything either. It just died lol. Its fine, just strange. It was clearly a passion project from the devs and they put a lot of care into it so I can give it a pass for hiccups like this. A little jank adds a lot of charm.
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Jul 22, 2023 17:22
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I'm getting really over the inconsistent healing in AN, though. Same thing existing in Hollow Knight was also a pain in the rear end. If you're going to make your game difficult, I'm cool with that, but if your healing options are "you can only heal with these extremely limited health potions or fill up this meter by hitting enemies" then you can gently caress right off. Afterimage did this better, because you could go stock up on an infinite number of health potions, but you were limited on how many kinds/how many individual potions you could take with you, as well as the regular guaranteed heals after a checkpoint. That game took it to an extreme where you could have 13 free heals + four d-pad directions to fill with different types of health potions, but AN and HK have the seesaw balanced on the completely other end. Aeterna Noctis copied HK's heal wholesale, warts and all, and it's absolutely one of the worst mechanics from HK in hindsight. If I want to go into a boss fight (this Beholder in the Dream Palace is kicking my rear end) then give me my loving heals. I shouldn't have to go on a smoke break to let my heal meter recharge before attempting a boss again. I am consistently one hit away from killing it, and dying on the very last phase, because the last bouncy ball section goes on for an eternity and the patterns they bounce around in are brutal to the point of being unfair. I've tried moving around, sticking to every corner, using the invincibility shield the game gives you, this boss is just Chip Damage: The Fight and eight health pips doesn't seem like enough! e:i just lost a perfect run because I went hitless into the last phase, got juggled by the bouncy balls, made it out the other side with a couple health pips left, and this motherfucker insta-teleports away and restarts the damage phase. On second thought, if you're going to make a bonus boss this bullshit, put a loving checkpoint next to it. 
bawk fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 17:45
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The Beholder boss fight is the worst boss fight in the game. I just stocked up on heart pieces and auto fill blood gem and just brute forced my way to completing it. Luckily no boss fight (save for a stationary mechanical style boss) reaches that level of frustration.
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Jul 22, 2023 18:04
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I think the most common opinion I've heard from friends on Aeterna noctis was that it has good controls, looks good, but is way too hard and kinda overstays its welcome with the sheer length and huge maps. I do want to try it out myself, but I'm already a bit wary on the difficulty (unless there's a way to tone it down). When I played Lone Fungus, they at least knew had the right idea to make the precision platforming puzzles almost completely optional and something that completionists could do (or if you are into that sort of thing). To comment on the earlier discussion; I think the best games of the genre in question I've played have been Super Metroid, SOTN and Hollow Knight, each kinda representing an era. Don't think anything has come close as of yet, although I have liked a lot of modern indie options (I even liked Bloodstained despite the funky graphics - any game with a cooking mini-game piques my interest) TeaJay fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 18:41
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virtualboyCOLOR posted:You should play Aeterna Noctis if you haven't yet. It is really good Oh yeah, pal!? Well, Aeterna Noctis is on my wishlist, and I'm quite interested in it, so I will! But not for some time, because I'm undergoing financial difficulties and a lot of good games are coming out soon, and I'll probably be blowing my money on Pikmin 4 next month, which I don't think is a Metroidvania, even though the gameplay pattern (find new Pikmin, now you are capable of a new type of door-opening or area traversal, find new Pikmin or tool, etc.) bears some similarities!
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Jul 22, 2023 18:45
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TeaJay posted:I think the most common opinion I've heard from friends on Aeterna noctis was that it has good controls, looks good, but is way too hard and kinda overstays its welcome with the sheer length and huge maps. The “overstay it’s welcome” I can see because the maps are loving huge. “Too hard” is kind of odd. The game gives you plenty of tools to overcome any challenge. Plus it’s VERY generous with checkpoints. After every difficult section there is always a checkpoint to get you back in quickly. To give you an idea about how generous it is, I have purposely died when I had one health point left just to get back to full health and it didn’t set me back at all. Now if someone isn’t good at platformers or haven’t touched one in forever…I guess I could see that. John Lee posted:Oh yeah, pal!? Well, Aeterna Noctis is on my wishlist, and I'm quite interested in it, so I will! drat it was just in a bundle back in May, which is how I got it. Not sure if you play on PC, but if you do, I’d recommend going to isthereanydeal.com and setting up an alert. That way you know when it’s at the right price point or in a bundle.
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Jul 22, 2023 18:58
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Yeah I'm gonna have to give it a go myself at some point. For me personally, I found that the older I get, the more I appreciate games that have fair fights and less tolerance for hair-pulling difficulty I have. Better yet if there are some mechanics to adjust difficulty - cases in point Tunic and Chained Echoes, even if not in this genre, but I doubt I could've been able to finish either if you could not adjust on the fly. I don't remember off-hand how many 'vanias offer this kind of settings, but there usually is something to make things easier if you so desire. Still think that the most satisfying gaming moment of recent years is beating the true ending boss in Hollow Knight, I remember my palms sweating going up, up, up, getting those final hits in... For example, I earlier talked about Lone Fungus, where the end fight was tough, but satisfying, since there was no bullshit moments, and the boss had pretty good patterns and tells. Ender Lilies was pretty tough at times, but of course in that game using the right spirits might make all the difference. Vigil: The longest night had some rough bosses, but I think the only game I played seriously and had to quit is Dark Devotion, although more like a roguelite than a 'vania.
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Jul 22, 2023 19:08
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I would say even Noctis mode is pretty fair, with the occasional screen that makes me say "oh this is bullshit" before figuring out the moving parts well enough to complete the puzzle platforming. I wish it had better, faster healing still. I'm typing this up while waiting for my health refill to auto regen lol. I'm still powering through but at any moment I pause the game, it reminds me that there is another difficulty option in case I get too frustrated and want to dip down to easy mode for a little while. I have no clue if it lets you immediately ramp it back up afterwards though I did end up beating the beholder boss, it got easier to dodge everything besides the second to last attack, and then in the last attack when it's vulnerable I just made a point to activate my arrow early so I could insta-kill him. Then the rest of the place was by far the coolest dungeon, it has a great gimmick and interesting puzzles. I just need to come back for the bell puzzle because I cheated and found out I need 3 arrows to do it, don't have that many yet.
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Jul 22, 2023 20:40
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Wait until you get to the mario galaxy area. The game is just full of fun areas.
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Jul 22, 2023 20:42
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