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Gumball Gumption posted:I'm playing Noctis now and so far it's literally a hollow knight reskin so uh yeah, not sure what's up. Good luck. I thought the same thing at first lol. It does have a traversal mechanic that makes the game pretty radically different once you get it around the second or third dungeon (depending on which order you do them in, it was my second dungeon). The platforming also gets way more difficult much, much sooner than Hollow Knight does. There's a few rooms that could be copy-pasted into the White Palace just from the first area you get to outside of the East Wall. It does feel/play extremely similarly, though, so it's been nice having that muscle memory to rely on when trying some of the trickier jumps and stuff. I do wish the map was a bit more interconnected, though. HK had a lot of areas that would loop back around to connect to another, previous area through a hidden wall or something similar. AN feels like one large disconnected map where your only way around is fast travel between thrones, and there's just not enough of them. I think it'd be a vast improvement if using a (minor item spoiler) teleportation potion would work like a Diablo Town Portal Scroll where you could teleport back to your portal if you wanted to. e: I'd also emphatically disagree with VBC about the art, the character models for the player character/enemies do look a bit like "Adventure Quest" but the backgrounds and scenes/settings are phenomenal. The first time reaching the area after the West Wall, I started sprinting to see what was past the first NPC, and then just kept mashing the dash button like a madman with a huge grin on my face. Then you get to the area west of that area and it somehow just keeps topping itself. Game's pretty. 
bawk fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jul 23, 2023 |
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Jul 23, 2023 22:05
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Oh yeah, I'm liking it and I don't mean that as a knock against the game. The controls just literally feel like Hollow Knight and if I swap between the two on my switch they feel almost identical. I think the jump in hollow knight lasts longer but they both have precision controls where you cancel movement the second you let go.
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Jul 23, 2023 22:20
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Going back and forth between the two I fully disagree. In addition I found AN to just be a better game and actually “fun”. I will admit I grade HK on a curve given it’s reputation. I do not feel it lives up to the hype at all. For an equal comparison, metroid dread not only lived up to the hype, but the hype undersold the game. That might not be how other folks consume games but I consume based on context. The context surrounding AN makes it worthy of S tier. Very little hype, went basically straight to bundle, and yet turned out to be one of the best metroidvanias.
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Jul 23, 2023 22:32
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Gumball Gumption posted:Oh yeah, I'm liking it and I don't mean that as a knock against the game. The controls just literally feel like Hollow Knight and if I swap between the two on my switch they feel almost identical. I think the jump in hollow knight lasts longer but they both have precision controls where you cancel movement the second you let go. The HK jump lets you hold it for way longer for sure, the jump in AN feels pretty small when I go back and forth between the two. The dash is also much wonkier in AN, you can't dash-cancel an attack away from an enemy. If you hold the stick away from an enemy and hit dash while mid-attack, you'll dash but you won't turn, so you'll dash straight into the enemy you're fighting. If you were doing dash-cancels in HK, you gotta unlearn it or else you're gonna take a lot of unnecessary damage. This also fucks me up when doing some of the tighter platforming sections, since the same thing applies to dashing in mid-air during platforming sections. You have to make sure you turn the stick, wait a quarter second, then hit dash. Otherwise you're just gonna dash the wrong way and land on spikes/lasers/etc. The pogo feels a lot more forgiving in AN, though. HK would sometimes bounce you around based on the angle you hit the enemy/spikes/etc. while AN only does straight up and down, no angle to speak of. This makes some of the precision pogo sections easier since you can hit the enemy or pogo-specific-floating-ball from the side/below it, and still end up pogoing above it. AN complicates this later when it introduces another verb into your arsenal that you have to use during platforming sections, so thank god it simplified the pogoing a bit or else I don't think it'd be possible to do some of the later sections.
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Jul 23, 2023 23:10
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I gave up on HK after I died to a boss that was far away from my last save point. I don't really have time for that kind of gameplay anymore in my life. It's not unique to hollow knight, Metroid Prime for GameCube did the same thing at least two times. Conversely Metroid Dread just respawns you right outside the bossroom if you die. If one of the namesakes of the genre is implementing this kind of quality of life feature then others in the genre should get on board from now on (yes I know HK came out before MD).
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Jul 24, 2023 01:05
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My major tip for AN is to equip the charm that gives slowdown when you fire a teleportation arrow. Seems like a small thing, but for me some of the platforming would have been impossible without it.
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Jul 24, 2023 01:21
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If you're playing Aeterna Noctis, you'll unlock a gem called "Sorceror's Pact" which says that it'll automatically heal you whenever you have enough blood. I'd recommend not using this, or if you do use it, do not ever manually heal yourself. I just ran into a bug caused by doing exactly that, where I couldn't attack with any of my weapons at all. None of the face buttons would do anything at all. I had to unequip all my gems, then equip the Leech gem to get a little bit of blood back, and at that point I can attack again. I'm not sure if unequipping it/running out of blood will make that happen again. You can potentially softlock yourself if you're in a place where platforming requires one of your weapons to progress, as a lot of the later platforming segments do. If you just passed by a lantern, I think it can even be a softlock unless you've got another way to teleport/leave the area you're in, since you can only change gems at a throne. Otherwise you might need to find some way to get blood, too, since that might also be all it takes to get the weapons working again. Since some of the weapon attacks require blood before being used, I'm wondering if there's a bug where using the autoheal gem causes you to heal -> you still have blood left in a container -> you heal with that blood, which you're not supposed to actually have left, and healing with it pushes you into a 'negative' blood value -> your weapons that technically use "zero" blood now can't be used because you have less than 0 blood. e: goddamn the boss fights in this game are fun, I just fought what I'm guessing is an optional fight against a boss that's technically just a refight of the robot from the Crystal area and that took all of my health and a little creative application of weapons to get through. bawk fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Jul 24, 2023 |
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Jul 24, 2023 01:38
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Naar posted:Just finished Grime thanks to it being free on EGS, it was much better than I expected. I had absolutely no idea what was going on plot-wise apart from being a black hole person, and once I found the Curved Glaive (which scales off your Stamina stat and attacks faster the more you hit with it, eventually doing 500+ damage per hit deep into the combo) the rest of the weapons were pointless, but the platforming, boss fights and music were all great. The NG+ changes were very cool as well, all the enemies, including the bosses, get new attacks and there's an NG+ only boss. I was going resonance primary until I found the glaive. Yeah, great weapon, lots of fun.
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Jul 24, 2023 02:00
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Just got to the Abyss. I love this game
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Jul 24, 2023 07:17
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I think I'm gonna be trying out Grime next as well, since I picked it up as the Epic freebie. Speaking of which, anyone know what is up with Salt & Sacrifice? It was an Epic exclusive May 2022, IIRC - has there been any info on a potential Steam release? I played it through and enjoyed it, albeit not as much as the original. I think a lot of people were bounced off by the Monster Hunter -style changes instead of a one, big interjoined map.
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Jul 24, 2023 07:50
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Anyone played Haiku? Looks v v HK 'inspired' from screenshots
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Jul 24, 2023 10:03
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Fuligin posted:Anyone played Haiku? Looks v v HK 'inspired' from screenshots I played it, it was very good but also quite short and somewhat linear for a 'vania. It's also on the easier side, which is not always a bad thing. Definitely recommended though.
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Jul 24, 2023 10:20
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John Lee posted:Oh yeah, pal!? Well, Aeterna Noctis is on my wishlist, and I'm quite interested in it, so I will! If you game on PC good news! Aeterna Noctis is in a choose your own bundle: https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/diamond-collection-build-your-own-bundle Get it plus 2 other games for $15.
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Jul 26, 2023 01:38
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I just beat Aeterna Noctis's DLC bonus boss. Yesterday i tried dodging/blocking his crazy attacks for about an hour and never got his health numbers to hit the orange, today I had one of those galaxy brain moments: why bother dodging when I can make damage numbers bigger? If i can empty his health bar before he hits me 16 times, i win right? 5 tries later, I win!
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Jul 26, 2023 06:41
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bawk posted:I just beat Aeterna Noctis's DLC bonus boss. Yesterday i tried dodging/blocking his crazy attacks for about an hour and never got his health numbers to hit the orange, today I had one of those galaxy brain moments: why bother dodging when I can make damage numbers bigger? If i can empty his health bar before he hits me 16 times, i win right? This is basically what I did for this and the final boss. I got real sloppy at the end and just tanked hits after a while lol
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Jul 26, 2023 19:29
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I'm about an hour in to Teslagrad 2 and I'm impressed. The art and sound design are really strong, the movement feels good, and some of the movement abilities that I've unlocked are what I'd expect to get late in a lot of other games. The one part that's a little odd is that there's no life bar and the character just dies to anything, but it doesn't detract from the game IMO.
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Jul 27, 2023 02:50
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That was the main thing that annoyed me about the first one, bosses went on way too long for 'you literally die to anything' to be remotely fun.
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Jul 28, 2023 12:01
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I only ever got about halfway through teslagrad because the bosses were such enjoyment drains lol
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Jul 28, 2023 12:42
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Sakurazuka posted:That was the main thing that annoyed me about the first one, bosses went on way too long for 'you literally die to anything' to be remotely fun. There's a mechanic that lets you take a few hits during boss fights. You're still fragile but it's not as bad as always dying in one hit.
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Jul 29, 2023 16:05
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Got to 106.4% in Aeterna Noctis with the only thing left to collect being some treasure chests, got everything else. Never left Noctis mode. Love that game, even if it gets super easy by the end due to powerup combosRaylax posted:I only ever got about halfway through teslagrad because the bosses were such enjoyment drains lol I played Teslagrad for a little under a couple hours, really enjoyed how it let me just go explore anywhere, then I missed one jump kinda up high by a tree and landed behind three jumping puzzles i just solved with no shortcuts. It's in time out and probably getting refunded—somebody already made the quintessential game out of that frustration so nobody else ever had to include it again, this dev missed the memo I almost passed on Astlibra because it looked like a turn-based JRPG with light metroidvania elements* and im very glad I tried it out. It's light enough on the JRPG elements while still giving me an inventory full of items that i can mash together to make other items. Plus you learn skills from mastering equipment like from FFT. But it's all a real-time action metroidvania! I love it  * I swear I will finish you some day, Monster Sanctuary bawk fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jul 29, 2023 |
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Jul 29, 2023 17:25
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bawk posted:I almost passed on Astlibra because it looked like a turn-based JRPG with light metroidvania elements* and im very glad I tried it out. It's light enough on the JRPG elements while still giving me an inventory full of items that i can mash together to make other items. Plus you learn skills from mastering equipment like from FFT. But it's all a real-time action metroidvania! I love it Hey thanks for the heads up on this one, never heard of it but it sounds right up my ally.
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Jul 30, 2023 01:11
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It's a lot less meteoidvania than first glance, it starts off seeming like you're going to be returning to earlier areas more often than you really are. Mostly still fun though! PseudoRegalia also launched yesterday, claims to be a couple-hour 3D platformer 5th-console-gen-styled metroidvania style game. Giving it a try right now E: PseudoRegalia definitely nails the aesthetic of "some game for a nintendo 64/dreamcast era console that I found between the cushions of a couch we picked up from a rummage sale" but in the half hour I played it, it doesn't seem like there's a map at all which is absolutely brutal. I cannot keep any of this poo poo straight in my head without a map bawk fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jul 30, 2023 |
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Jul 30, 2023 05:03
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Been breezing through a replay of Blasphemous, which I haven't played since release so I'm seeing all the dlc for the first time. They uh, sure aren't loving around with the Bosses that unlock the true ending huh? I have the tier 7 sword and I'm barely plinking away at their health while they shred me. Is there a recommended rosary bead setup for them?
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Jul 31, 2023 20:14
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Uh, I'm not sure about the DLC areas, but I got the original 'good' ending by accidentally clowning on every boss. First run near the 1.0 release I did the whole 'git gud with the sword' thing, and for my second (successful) run I told myself I'd focus more on spells, and so for bosses I'd equip all the +spell dmg stuff and use the most expensive spell which shoots a huge vertical ray into the sky. It jaw-droppingly took around 40% of a bosses hp off per cast, at least. I, uh, may not have learnt how to fight the final few bosses 'properly'.
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Aug 1, 2023 01:16
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Naar posted:Just finished Grime thanks to it being free on EGS, it was much better than I expected. I had absolutely no idea what was going on plot-wise apart from being a black hole person, and once I found the Curved Glaive (which scales off your Stamina stat and attacks faster the more you hit with it, eventually doing 500+ damage per hit deep into the combo) the rest of the weapons were pointless, but the platforming, boss fights and music were all great. The NG+ changes were very cool as well, all the enemies, including the bosses, get new attacks and there's an NG+ only boss. I started this yesterday thanks to this post, and holy poo poo is this game atmospheric. I've got my volume cranked while playing. I've beaten 3 bosses (first boss, moms, and stag) and the battle system clicks really, really well. I am happy it forces you to start by parrying *only* before you get a weapon, because it's insane the amount of poo poo you can parry and damage the boss at the same time. I beat moms Phase 1 by the skin of my teeth just dodging and panicking, but the game finally clicked in Phase 2 and after nearly dying l, I didn't get hit once and never swung my weapon once. Just parried all attacks. 
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Aug 2, 2023 18:47
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I also appreciate one of the traits you can get gives you temporary lifesteal when you absorb a shielded part of the enemy’s health bar; not only does it generally give you an opening to attack, damage is high enough that any extra restoration you can do is handy.
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Aug 3, 2023 03:55
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Grime is pretty cool, and the free DLC thingies feel like organic parts of the game. Especially with you being able to get fast travel relatively early now, instead of literally the last thing in the game.
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Aug 3, 2023 06:18
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Some good Metroidvanias in the new fanatical bundle. Both Teslagrads and Owlboy are in there. Patch Quest has the tag but I don't know anything about that game. https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/platinum-collection-build-your-own-bundle
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Aug 3, 2023 19:17
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FrumpleOrz posted:Patch Quest has the tag but I don't know anything about that game. It's as much of a metroidvania as Dead Cells is.
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Aug 3, 2023 20:04
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Teslagrad 2 must have sold poorly to be bundled this quickly. I didn't consider buying it without a discount as the only thing I remember from the first game is strongly disliking the fight against the last boss. Also one of their other games had a nasty save corruption bug. and please don't believe the hype on Patch Quest, it's extremely repetitive. The negative reviews are 100% right on this one.
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Aug 3, 2023 21:10
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Finished up the other Rain World characters. Artificer: Basically infinite access to explosives (cost one food each), plus resistance to explosive damage which lets you use them in close combat without killing yourself. You also get a double jump with controllable direction, and an innate AoE stun/shockwave. To compensate for this, Scavengers hate you and actively hunt you down. You're powerful enough that you can reasonably defend yourself against that, but it's still a firm reminder of why staying on their good side is preferable. Lots of fun, not too hard. Spearmaster: Can generate an infinite amount of spears for free. Can't eat, only gets food from hitting living things with spears. Worst food restriction by far - the other characters that have to eat big creatures get 3-6 food pips per kill, Spearmaster only gets 1-2 (nothing after the target is dead). Monster Kelp is one of the best things to encounter, since they take mutiple hits before dying and are incapable of dodging. Interesting, but kind of awkard. Rivulet:  Gotta go fast. Basically the regular Survivor except significantly faster, and with a breath timer long enough that you'll basically never drown. Gets shorter time before the rain begins, but the speed boost more than makes up for that. Besides, you do not give poo poo if a room floods.Awesome. Easily the best character in the game. The only disadvantage is that it is hard to go back to any character with regular movement speed afterwards. Saint: Rain replaced with snow, with a whole new set of mechanics to go with that. Has an innate grappling hook, with far better control than the worms other character can use for that purpose. Can only eat fruit and vegetables, no batflies or baby centipedes. This varies between unnoticeable or crippling depending on the region you are in. You goal is to visit enough Echoes to raise your max karma to 10, at which point you unlock flight and the strongest attack in the game. Has a separate final area where you need that to survive, really OP until then (and arguably also there). The new world mechanics take some getting used to, but otherwise not too hard to deal with. I'm not going to try the secret character, as that one just sounds miserable. Oh, and I've found the monster that really does creep me out. Stowaways.
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Aug 3, 2023 21:35
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unpronounceable posted:Have you tried UNSIGHTED? Since you liked Hyper Light Drifter, I think it's worth checking out since the combat has a similar feel. Thanks for this recommendation. I just beat it and had a lot of fun. I wasn’t able to save everyone (and even sacrificed a few people) but I was able to save mostly everyone and enjoyed the gameplay a lot. I skipped all the cutscenes because they went on for far too long so in my head the game was about a robo-lesbian adventure to save your partner from a mental crisis and I don’t care if that isn’t the case. It was a lot of fun and highly recommend to others. The time mechanic is not as intrusive as I worried about as I hosed around exploring and stills manage to only lose like 5 people (including 2 I sacrificed).
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Aug 3, 2023 23:53
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Nostalgamus posted:Finished up the other Rain World characters. Oh, hey, someone else playing through the DLC! Haven't gotten around to the Saint yet, but mostly agree with your thoughts. I'm a little less hot on Artificer, and I didn't care for Spearmaster, but Gourmand and Rivulet were both a ton of fun. Gourmand in particular feels very at home with the core game characters. I feel like its crafting skill in particular would almost make more sense as a Survivor ability.
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Aug 4, 2023 00:12
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Loved the Artificer's endgame area, felt like a big action movie gunfight, just wild to experience in Rain World of all games. saw this dumb mod the other day, really made me want to play through Artificer again 
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Aug 4, 2023 02:35
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Tempted by both Teslagrads and Rain World...
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Aug 4, 2023 17:05
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Any thoughts on 9 Years of Shadows? I haven't seen much about it yet.
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Aug 7, 2023 14:33
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ExcessBLarg! posted:Any thoughts on 9 Years of Shadows? I haven't seen much about it yet. Solid but basic.
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Aug 7, 2023 14:37
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Played through Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth and The Last Case of Benedict Fox this weekend. Deedlit felt like a bite-sized GBA castlevania title, good for what it was doing but not much meat on it (less than the GBA titles, even.) There are secret rooms to find, but if you missed a room it generally wasn't worth going back for. It could be an HP or MP up, but usually it was just a weapon with much worse stats than whatever you're currently rolling with, or an offensive spell (all offensive spells seemed objectively worse than just using health/mana potions). If you S Rank the shooting gallery when you find it, you're also set for 95% of the game because it gives you the second best bow, pack some Mana potions and you have a cheese strat for any boss that takes more than 2 attempts to melee. Music is all bangers Benedict Fox had some neat puzzles (everything to do with the numbering system seemed pretty neat) and the combat was surprisingly fun. You can get by with just spamming the knife button, but there's smoke bombs and stun darts as well as a recharging gun and cthulhu-tentacle-grab-and-slam attacks. You don't have to engage with any of those parts of combat, but I liked the variety you played with. Movement felt god-awful and it was buggy as hell, but the animations were amusing. Voice acting seemed majorly off, both the volume equalization between different character VOs and the performances themselves, but the music/atmosphere was pretty awesome. Then started Vernal Edge last night, love the PSX aesthetic and the movement feels pretty good. Not HK/AN good, but flying around the screen smacking enemies into each other is very satisfying and I've nabbed a few powerups by abusing the extra frames of height/distance you get from attacking in mid-air, so it's all good in my eyes. E: I gotta say, having played Hollow Knight, Aeterna Noctis, Afterimage, Grime, and a few other really really big/tough metroidvania titles this year, these smaller games don't quite hit the same. I might give Salt & Sanctuary a try, even though it seems more 2D Soulslike than anything metroid or vania. I got a bit cocky over how good I am at platforming though. Having finished some of the tougher platforming sections in these games lately, I downloaded Celeste to see how much harder the platforming is in comparison. 68 deaths in world 1 lol bawk fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 7, 2023 15:36
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ExcessBLarg! posted:Any thoughts on 9 Years of Shadows? I haven't seen much about it yet. I put several hours into it. It's pretty but didn't do anything for me mechanically, unfortunately. I stopped playing it because I just never felt interested in firing it up. bawk posted:Played through Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth and The Last Case of Benedict Fox this weekend. I do not like Salt & Sanctuary at all. You're right that it's more Souls-like, but IMO it doesn't have any of the precision that makes the mean difficulty work. Plenty of other people like it, though, so what do I know. A few recommendations that are... not unknown, but have gotten somewhat less attention than the big games, in case you've missed them:
None of these are truly unknown, but some of them are smaller titles and maybe one of them will be new to you. guppy fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 7, 2023 16:19
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EDIT: Accidental double post
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Aug 7, 2023 17:08
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