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Thanks for the recommendations! I have Haak and stopped playing it for whatever reason after a couple hours, it sounds the most like what I should play next. I also have Astalon and Islets already, same boat as Haak but I didn't know Haak was exploration/secrets heavy, that's the part I like the most in these games. I've also got Bloodstained on the list to come back to. One of these days I will play long enough to break through the early castlevania game problem of "everything is kicking my rear end, including kicking it off the screen/jump I'm attempting"
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Aug 7, 2023 17:15
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Salt and sanctuary is definitely a metroidvania and I enjoyed it enough to complete it twice, it’s pretty engaging if you can acclimate to the comically bad character art
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Aug 7, 2023 17:32
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Salt & Sanctuary has probably one of the most satisfying weapon upgrade systems and I really liked the Dark Souls 1 style world exploration. Definitely up there for me for best 'vanias of recent years.
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Aug 7, 2023 18:17
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Haak was a lot of fun
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Aug 7, 2023 18:23
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No one ever talks about it, but I really loved Super Daryl Deluxe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IksYXujBEHw It legit has a bunch of mechanics I wish other games would crib, and the soundtrack is almost entirely bangers.
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Aug 8, 2023 05:41
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Can confirm that recent thread mentions Unsighted, Super Daryl Deluxe, and Astalon: Tears of the Earth are all kickass. Unsighted has great art, and a really good ability to either go the 'intended' way or go full sequence breaking - I got the "do the bosses backward" achievement my first time through, which I didn't even know was a thing until I did it. Super Daryl Deluxe is just a solid, goofy game with a lot of equippable abilities, and I sometimes listen to the theme song on Youtube even now. Astalon is a personal favorite of mine, a good shortish game with the exact right ratio of retro rudeness to modern sensibility, and the soundtrack also kicks rear end... plus there's a version of the soundtrack you can pay money for (just as, like, files, not in the game) with actually good, sick-sounding rock remixes.
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Aug 8, 2023 06:33
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I gave up on Super Daryl Deluxe midway through, and it looks like so did most people. Only 35.5% of players have the acheivement for completing the first tutorial and just 6.1% have completed the game.
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Aug 8, 2023 07:16
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Koburn posted:I gave up on Super Daryl Deluxe midway through, and it looks like so did most people. Only 35.5% of players have the acheivement for completing the first tutorial and just 6.1% have completed the game.
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Aug 8, 2023 08:30
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Martman posted:How does that compare to other games That's a bit low, but not crazy unusual numbers. It's not a metroidvania, but badass action RPG Astlibra has crazy high achievement numbers, with like 35% of all players beating the game, 30% beating hidden superbosses, and like 15% beating the game on Hell difficulty and collecting every item.
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Aug 8, 2023 08:45
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For the other 2 games John Lee mentioned: Unsighted: First acheivement: 70% Beat the game: 25.3% Astalon: First acheivement: 70.2% Beat the game: 48.1% edit: just realised I spelt achievement wrong all 3 times I wrote it lol Koburn fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Aug 8, 2023 |
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Aug 8, 2023 08:47
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Koburn posted:I gave up on Super Daryl Deluxe midway through, and it looks like so did most people. Only 35.5% of players have the acheivement for completing the first tutorial and just 6.1% have completed the game. There's a weird tone/jankiness to the writing and movement of Super Daryl Deluxe, I know it put me off and I didn't finish the tutorial.
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Aug 8, 2023 08:58
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Kurui Reiten posted:No one ever talks about it, but I really loved Super Daryl Deluxe. There is nothing quite like Super Daryl Deluxe, I do recommend it. It is sorta-kinda a Metroidvania but has a lot of side-scrolling beat-'em-up in the mix too. A lot of fun all around, including mechanics, art style, writing, the works.
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Aug 8, 2023 09:52
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I started Grime yesterday. So far it's been fun, it seems like the parry mechanic (absord/repel) is a lot more prominent here than in some other games. Found a glaive in the second area and went around getting some points into STR and DEX to actually use it. First boss was a bit technical, I checked to see if people were getting stuck on it and sure enough there were talks about it. e: I guess I spoke a bit too soon, since now I've been stuck on the second boss for about an hour. I don't know if it's the difficulty spike or just me, but drat. TeaJay fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Aug 8, 2023 |
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Aug 8, 2023 09:54
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TeaJay posted:I started Grime yesterday. So far it's been fun, it seems like the parry mechanic (absord/repel) is a lot more prominent here than in some other games. Found a glaive in the second area and went around getting some points into STR and DEX to actually use it. First boss was a bit technical, I checked to see if people were getting stuck on it and sure enough there were talks about it. It's a very hard game and damage is high. I don't know at what point you get them but there are traits you can unlock that cause you to leave a damage-causing shadow when you dodge which can be nice supplemental damage, and there's one entirely dedicated to widening the parry window if you are whiffing those. Another option is to avoid attacking with weapon and purely just use stamina to dodge and parry and see if you can work out the timings and such; many bosses have very abusable patterns if you do 1-2 parries in a row. I also just spent the first few bosses using resonance lanterns so I could build up a massive explosion charge on bosses and basically one shot them, so some of the parry timings on those I never really learned. Edit: don't hesitate to try things, the respec pearls are pretty abundant; I'm pretty sure I'm approaching endgame and have like 20 of them and could buy more. Tortolia fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Aug 8, 2023 |
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Aug 8, 2023 14:14
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Continuing to work through the Rain World Downpour, this time revisiting the Hunter campaign to pick a few achievements. While like 99% of the Downpour changes and additions are excellent, letting Slugpups spawn in the Hunter game is an act of sadism impressive for even this game. Sorry, little darling, this campaign doesn't have a "go home" ending, so you get to starve while Daddy jumps into a hole to meet Buddha. Also I triggerd the double enemy spawns gltich while going for the starvation achievement, and boy howdy does that make the Subterranean spicy.
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Aug 8, 2023 15:36
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I’m trying to get into Grime but something about the art style or graphics is just not working for me. I’m getting an early 360 arcade feel from in, and not in the good way. The mechanics also feel really slow but I think that has to do with the floaty animations than the controls itself. None of the hits or parries feel weighty enough. Everything feels like wet sloppy steaks slowly smacking each other. Compared to Blasphemous where all the hits sounded and felt visceral. I’ll keep trying it but man the first impression is not good.
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Aug 8, 2023 15:43
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Unfortunately I'm not really feeling Grime either. Graphics are fine, a bit boring and samey so far. My biggest gripes in this current area so far include really long backtracking sections and environmental hazards you can't (?) do anything about (talking about those red spikes) and which screw you over during a fight with other mobs. I think I read some comments about frustration around Nerveroot and how the devs made it a bit easier to navigate, and I wouldn't be surprised this is where a lot of players just quit the game. I was kinda excited to finally find an NPC who upgrades my weapons, so combat would feel a bit easier, but then I just start a new area and the mobs' health is scaled accordingly higher. It's kind of a thing many devs miss, since there needs to be a time in the game where your progress - especially if you go out of your way or grind a bit - needs to feel like you're a bit better than the mobs you're fighting. Then ramp up the difficulty and you'll have the need to upgrade again. Or at least that's how I feel, sometimes in games you also get this kind of feeling that you're barely making it throughout the whole game. But, I mean, why are you spending time and effort upgrading your stuff if you don't feel like you're doing better against mobs? Other than that the game is brutally difficult. You only get one heal, which is a Heal-Over-Time, for a fight and that's it. I dunno if it gets better later on. But if you take damage, good luck. I'm currently fighting this mini-boss (Flowerheart) and I just can't get him even halfway. He has an attack where he throws boulders in the air which you can parry or dodge, but at the same time throws a horizontal boulder at you which is incredibly hard for me to see with the grass on the arena. Again, maybe it's me, but I have cleared some pretty tough 'vanias, this just somehow is not clicking at all. And about that stat respec - it requires 5 thingies and I only have found 2, one of which I spent while re-speccing traits.
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Aug 8, 2023 16:44
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Regarding healing options: 1) you find optional enemies/bosses you can fight that expand the number of breath gauge bars you have max (number per use remains fixed) 2) a separate set of enemies you find give you a reusable healing consumable for every 3 you kill (recharge at monoliths) 3) a prey trait that lets you charge your breath heal up to 150% power 4) successful absorbs always heal, but there is a prey trait that gives you a few seconds of lifesteal if you repel an enemy, which works well since generally you have an opening on bosses when you do 5) a prey trait causes enemies to drop clouds of breath you can pick up if you kill them with your weapon and not an absorb 6) there’s consumables to fill your breath gauge Probably some other prey traits specifically pertaining to health/breath, but there’s also a lot of defensive ones like reducing damage taken if you miss your parry timing and such. Early game GRIME is a bit immobile and rocket taggy with bosses but it does open up quite a bit and there’s actually a pretty impressive variety of weapons. I wouldn’t fault anyone for bouncing off it though.
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Aug 8, 2023 17:10
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I would fully recommend anybody that feels "stuck" after beating the Feaster's Lair area to immediately continue the story, which tells you to get a flower but before getting that, it takes you to the Servant's Path east of the guy who upgrades your weapons. Servants are the enemy which give the trait that increases how much healing the Breath heal does. Combined with the trait that lets you press and hold the heal button for 150% or 200% healing, you can heal huge health bars very quickly. There's also only 5 stats, and some weapons do scale off of the non-dex/str stats. Even Force and Health can be scaling stats. Read through your traits and equipment, you might have enough of one stat to make a different weapon better that requires a minor stat bump to wield. And you get so many Motley Pearl's from exploring, so make sure you look everywhere you can. Armor also has no defense value, only stat boosts. Health boosting armor is common and very good in early game, and the traits it will add bonuses to can matter as well. Having a +30% to a trait you only put 1 hunt point into is like having 1-3 extra levels in that trait. And parry everything. If it's not red or green, parry it. There's one trait that adds bonus damage to absorbed projectiles, and another trait that deals damage to enemies on successful deflects (parries when enemies have grey health, so cant absorb them) they can absolutely trivialize some boss fights E: and also, some bosses are not meant to be fought yet. The flower boss does give a good movement ability, but I beat it in late game. The only boss you should fight is the Giant of Eyes in Childbed. His ability is the power to warp between monoliths. VERY useful. It's a tough fight, but I beat it using an upgraded Finger Sword with most of my stats put into the purple stat. Just dodge through everything you can't parry, but parry everything you can bawk fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Aug 8, 2023 |
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Aug 8, 2023 18:14
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Tortolia posted:Early game GRIME is a bit immobile and rocket taggy with bosses but it does open up quite a bit and there’s actually a pretty impressive variety of weapons. I wouldn’t fault anyone for bouncing off it though. Does the combat ever “feel” better? Like the combat in the early hours is “fine” but the lack of meaningful feedback when I hit something or parry sucks all the joy out of fighting baddies. Hitting someone with a hammer should not feel like hitting them with a wet rag.
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Aug 8, 2023 19:15
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virtualboyCOLOR posted:Does the combat ever “feel” better? The general weightiness of combat animations largely remains consistent, though it’s possible some weapons have more or different hit feedback. I’m using the glaive which basically lets you blender things when you get some swing momentum and it sounds like I’m carving stone with a hammer and chisel but there’s no stunlock animations like you might see in a pixel game.
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Aug 8, 2023 19:23
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I'm in Toothland now and even the basic movement to get anywhere is basically platforming puzzles using the pull mechanic. You have to use the R stick to pull out a platform and do this mid-air to another platform to get high enough to proceed (and fast enough to get on the original one). And this is the intended route, it's not even some super difficult optional section (or so I assume). Another fun thing in this area are the crabs who have such erratic attack patterns I can never tell which attack they're about to do, making it difficult to parry, so I just run away from them now. There's something about Grime that keeps me playing despite the game actively trying to convince me to stop.
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Aug 8, 2023 19:24
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I’m pretty sure the double jump I just got is the *last* movement upgrade. Stuff like the pull mechanic and slingshotting and hovering is much earlier in the ability progression. Pull is very multifaceted and actually key to fighting a lot of enemies or bosses relatively safely, mind you. It’s not just traversal/puzzle based.
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Aug 8, 2023 19:31
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Yeah, I mean, it might again come down to me being bad, but I don't remember any recent 'vanias having me 1) raise a platform by jumping and pulling down in mid-air 2) again to raise the platform higher 3) then dash off the platform 4) do the pull again in mid-air meaning I'll hover a bit and 5) get some air juggle to reach another platform. And again, that was the intended route! Or I just made some very minor sequence break. The Jawcrab fight was probably the best boss fight so far, every attack he did was very well telegraphed and had ample time to do parrys. I'm guessing the actual area boss has some kind of gimmick (please no pulling, I'm so bad at it) and we'll see if I ever get past that one. Also I haven't managed to find the map for Feaster's lair, I'll probably have to look to see where it could be. Missing ol' Cornifer here to hum and give a bit of a hint for the map!
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Aug 8, 2023 19:48
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TeaJay posted:Yeah, I mean, it might again come down to me being bad, but I don't remember any recent 'vanias having me The game absolutely has you do mid-air pulls to adjust platforms/ladders/etc to get around, you’re not sequence breaking by doing so; it’s why you get a mild timeslow/slowfall effect. (One thing worth noting is if you’re holding onto/standing on said piece of terrain as it snaps back into position and you jump at the right time you get launched from the momentum.) The map beacons have purple light streamers moving towards them when you’re close, so it’s a similar enough effect to seeing scraps of paper or hearing humming in HK.
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Aug 8, 2023 19:56
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Grime also has that one Bastard Area like HK does where you'll get the map way later than you first walk in (Childbed) You're pretty well on top of the Feaster boss right now, but it might be worth finding the map. I agree the movement is a bit precise, especially when dealing with the teeth. Kinda like how Aeterna Noctis only expects you to get more familiar with the Crystal Arrow for later platforming, Grime is gonna have you learning to pull objects a lot before the end. You don't have to pull a boss every time the prompt comes up, and you don't have to land attacks after every pull. Pulling a boss usually interrupts an attack, and can force some bosses to follow-up a pull with easier to deflect melee combos. There's one boss in particular later that i remember you would pull, then it would do two melee strikes, and if you deflect both it'll get stunned and leave you wide open to do a full charge heal and/or get some damage in. If you miss that pull, it would launch an annoying projectile attack, but if you were already far away then rushing in to land the pull would more than likely just cause you to dash into a projectile instead of simply avoiding it from a distance.
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Aug 8, 2023 20:19
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Playing more of Grime and I just can’t see the appeal. I fought something called a desert watcher or guardian and the game may as well have been muted. The windup sounds had zero oomph, which was annoying considering the battle field allowed the boss to leave the screen and I could barely hear that he was about to attack. The boss animation was just as bad. The stiffest animation since early PS1 days but yet had stupid amounts of frames of animation. Worse…that game is easy. For something that advertises itself as an “unforgiving action rpg” the bosses have some of the most telegraphed that would make Nintendo blush. In fact, the overall sound design is incredibly hollow. I haven’t heard this much unnecessary reverb since the Super Nintendo. It’s like the sound designer bought a bunch of Eventide VSTs and used them all for every spindle sound effect. Rocks hitting rocks shouldn’t sound like still river in an underground tunnel. Animations feel….automated. It’s like the animator added 3 key points and let the software tween everything in between. The controls are perfectly fine but they don’t “feel” fine because every animation has more frames unnecessary frames since the first prince of Persia without any of the care. I can platform just fine but then I feel I have to wait for my character to finish “getting their balance”. It gets tiring. Not to mention it is just a completely ugly game. It looks worse that the first Bloodstained trailer by a mile. Incredibly muted colors and poor textures I haven’t seen since a 2005 360 era game. Even the areas that have color seem to crank up the desaturation as much as the sound cranked up the reverb. The story so far is less than passable. All the dialogue reads like an AI generated script that was trained on dark soul knockoffs. I’m trying to see what everyone was raving about but this game, for me, is just awful so far. If this was a student project I’d say it was a great attempt. But for something that costs more than Hollow Knight…..nah. virtualboyCOLOR fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Aug 9, 2023 |
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Aug 9, 2023 05:06
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I mean, YMMV obviously, I haven't found Grime to be overly easy - as you can probably tell from my progress posts - but it has a lot of small frustrating things. Right now I'd place it somewhere around the middle on my vania list. If you nabbed it free from Epic, it's worth a try, at least. A friend asked my opinion on it, and since I watched his frustrated streams of Ender Lilies and Blasphemous earlier, I told him to stay away from this one, because it would have him pull out his hair in frustration. I still kept going, though, managed to beat the Desert Watcher and find a few new areas. I did look at the map at some point and realized there's like a dozen hidden paths in Feaster's lair I simply did not find and one of them hides another boss. Whoops. Pull is still so finicky especially in boss battles - I wonder if I'm doing it somehow wrong since it's a while from the tutorial. When the yellow circle appears, I turn the R stick to that direction to prime the pull and then quickly pull the opposite direction. Like a 1-2 motion on the stick. If I'm meant to press the stick instead, it'll take me even longer to pull it off. Enemies at Yr Den hit like a truck, and it's highly annoying trying to fight one of those guys who look like Arlong from One Piece with a ton of health and breakbars when they 1- or 2-shot me. Even the fang dogs were more vicious there. I did make it out with a Curved glaive which has a requirement of 20 Force, so I guess I'll be pumping that one next. TeaJay fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Aug 9, 2023 |
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Aug 9, 2023 11:56
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You just have to flick the stick toward the yellow circle to pull, no fancy moves required. You don't even need to fine-tune the aim that much, it's pretty good about locking on to points as long as its pointed in the general direction.
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Aug 9, 2023 13:15
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SkeletonHero posted:You just have to flick the stick toward the yellow circle to pull, no fancy moves required. You don't even need to fine-tune the aim that much, it's pretty good about locking on to points as long as its pointed in the general direction. Yeah, since they expect you to use Pull both in a rapid platforming context and as a timing sensitive interrupt in boss fights, you just flick and release, you don’t need to “pull” the stick backwards. Think of it like a grappling hook in a platformer (which is effectively a later upgrade to it). TeaJay posted:Enemies at Yr Den hit like a truck, and it's highly annoying trying to fight one of those guys who look like Arlong from One Piece with a ton of health and breakbars when they 1- or 2-shot me. Even the fang dogs were more vicious there. I did make it out with a Curved glaive which has a requirement of 20 Force, so I guess I'll be pumping that one next. Glaive is my favorite weapon. It swings faster the more times you use it without moving, and after the first three hits each subsequent hit gets a damage multiplier, so a brief attack window suddenly has you hitting for 100/150/200/250/300/etc. I don’t find much use for the special but that’s because I have my dash traited to leave damaging clones behind where I was, so rather than do a slow leap back, I just zoom away from a hit I can’t absorb.
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Aug 9, 2023 14:04
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The glaive also let's you do a slow jump forward as well. Still not very useful though. It's an insanely good weapon because Force is an incredible stat to juice, having a huge force bar just means more attacks and more dodges, but the ability on top of it also makes every boost to Force even better. With the hunt trait for increasing Force regen and total force to get more attacks in, as well as the armor sets with bonuses to Force and force-related abilities, you turn into a goddamn monster by the end game. Which you are, story-wise, of course. Its easily worth a respec when you get enough Pearl's and totally changes the game if you're having issues E: I still wanna play around with the purple lantern + drill looking weapon that the assistant sells, though. Boosting the hell out of Resonance to maximize absorb/deflect damage while also adding/exploding debuff stacks on enemies must turn bosses into a joke. It's just also easy to press X -> win with the curved glaive 
bawk fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Aug 9, 2023 |
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Aug 9, 2023 14:43
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bawk posted:E: I still wanna play around with the purple lantern + drill looking weapon that the assistant sells, though. Boosting the hell out of Resonance to maximize absorb/deflect damage while also adding/exploding debuff stacks on enemies must turn bosses into a joke. It's just also easy to press X -> win with the curved glaive Until I got the glaive and enough Force to use it, I did double lanterns on bosses; the purple one to debuff resonance resistance for damage via dodge, and to amplify the damage of the red lantern explosions. A few early bosses basically died outright or phase pushed from a max debuff max explosion proc. It can be a bit tricky to keep the respective stacks from falling off while still having enough energy to dodge things, but resonance debuffing is a valid strategy for sure assuming you can keep a bit of pressure up.
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Aug 9, 2023 15:32
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I'm getting pretty close to the end of Vernal Edge and despite not having one contiguous world map, it's really good as a metroidvania. Each floating island world has a bunch of secret items that can only be found through careful application of the different jump attacks/movement abilities, and generally rewards it pretty well. The combat in this game is difficult, though, because so much of the game's combat relies on landing charge attacks and combo finishers to break through the poise points each enemy has. When you get through all of the poise points, they are briefly stunned, but you can extend this stunned duration by air juggling them/knocking them into other enemies. It's the kind of combat where you absolutely cannot dodge around/hold block until an opening, you have to be aggressive with your attacks to land combos while also dodging through attacks and block/riposte to quickly eat through poise meters, or else enemies will chain stun you into oblivion. I beat two secret/optional bosses last night (I think they were Fae, a fox samurai/ninja from Round 2 of the Battle Tower, and Sen, a demon mage) who could easily 4-shot me even with the 15%+ defense buff. Your only healing in the game comes from filling up a Pulse meter by doing flurries of regular attacks, marking an enemy with a Pulse symbol using Y, and then doing a Pulse Attack which (cant be cancelled, so you have to commit to the whole combo). If a boss has 7 poise orbs, and you do 7 charge attacks, you won't have built up any of the Pulse energy required to launch the combo. It's actually better to mash attack and block whatever attacks you can to instantly counter them, which builds meter (through mashing attack) and breaks poise (from the counters) That all being said, I got a bunch of upgrades out of order because I could chain together wall jumps, dashes, and charge attacks to get juuuuust enough height to clear a few jumps that feel like they required some of the later abilities. It's kinda like a metroidvania if you could only fast travel between the major areas instead of running the map every time. I think when I finish this I'm gonna give Grime NG+ a shot, maybe burn some pearls to respec my character into a Resonance build and see how far I can get using just absorbs and deflects.
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Aug 9, 2023 20:39
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Speaking of GRIME NG+, I just finished the base game. I still feel it's a great game (especially seeing in the credits that it was a team of seven people, one of which was just the composer - who did fantastic work, I must say), but I understand much like Blasphemous anyone who would bounce off it, given its difficulty curve, unforgiving bosses, and the general weight of combat. But just like most of the other bosses in the lategame, once I got a sense of the patterns and rules of the boss, I was able to take out the final boss in about a dozen tries, because it's difficult but ultimately fair. Worth a look for sure especially if you got it from the recent Epic or Amazon Games giveaways, but buying it on sale would be reasonable as well as long as you have a sense if you enjoy games that fall in that particular corner of the genre.
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Aug 9, 2023 23:46
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I take it back, I can't in good conscience recommend Vernal Edge. Or at the very least, if you get to the final boss, you can just wrap it up there and say you beat him, then go watch an ending credits or something. You get exactly one "attack up" item in the game, a memory that boosts your attack power by 15% at the cost of receiving 10% more damage. You can stack this with a power-up that gives you 15% more defense at the cost of dealing 10% less damage, so the two cancel each other out and give a slight boost. That's it. The final boss is a two-phase fight, but there's absolutely not a single loving reason why it should be a two-phase fight. You start the fight with the final boss, and it's a head-and-two-floating-hands fight where you dodge a few attacks while building up meter and dealing damage to the main head. There's a few lovely patterns, the timing is inconsistent, and the tracking on you is bullshit, but overall it's still easily doable. When you beat the first phase of the final boss fight, you start the second phase, which is a straight-up duel. It's the worst-designed final boss in a video game that I've encountered in years. We've got multiple attacks that have 15-20 second long, uninterruptable gauntlets of damage. We've got unblockable hard-to-dodge explosion damage. There's attacks that are supposed to come out with certain timing, but because the game occasionally throws a little bit of slowdown for dramatic flair, the timing to block gets hosed up. There's projectile attacks you can't dash through, can't block, and have to literally run to the corner of the screen to dodge. You can block attacks, but you can't riposte them, or else you'll take damage. I'm willing to bet that you can get hit 5 times in the entire fight if you don't heal. If you do heal, it's going to take 2 heals to counteract 1 hit from the boss. When you heal, you have to perform an uncancellable combo in order to heal. You're not going to heal. You're going to get hit again during the combo. You deal absolutely gently caress-all for damage. It feels like doing a broken sword Dark Souls run. The "Poise" mechanic the game has been beating you over the head with is gone. You do not get to interrupt the final boss and air-juggle him, you have to memorize all the attack patterns and execute every movement perfectly or else you'll die after a handful of hits with no time to heal. When you die (because you will die), you'll start over at the first phase of the boss fight again. You have to fight the head-and-two-floating-hands fight all over again. It takes me about 2-3 minutes every time. This isn't like a normal two-phase fight where doing well in the first phase makes the second phase easier because you have more healing/more spells saved. The game refills your health, mana, and Pulse (healing attacks) meter at the beginning of Phase 2. You have to fight Phase 1 again every time, despite it never affecting the outcome of the second phase. It literally only wastes your time. And the cherry on top is that every time you die, there's a 5 second unskippable "GAME OVER" screen. Every time you start Phase 2, there's 5 seconds of unskippable lovely voice-acted dialogue. Every time you fight and die to Phase 2, the fight is bookended by two of the most infuriating things to put up with in bad game design when you're trying to retry the boss fight, not even counting the Phase 1 fighting requiring you to waste a few minutes beating it again before you can try Phase 2 again. It's just so, so loving bad. It retroactively takes the rest of this game down to a C for me, I'm probably never gonna play it again once I've finally thrown in the towel here. e: okay, posting curse just needed to be broken. I think there's something bugged with the damage taken/damage given abilities, because I took off the "receive less damage 15%/deal 10% less damage" in order to glass-cannon this fight, and I could tank more hits. And the 20 second long impossible-to-dodge combo is the midway point of the fight, so you technically enter Phase 3, which does have the Poise mechanic again. Then the fight is way easier, I can land a few specific combos, air-juggle him and the fight is over in 10 seconds. bawk fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 04:50
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Another day of Grime, another miserable experience. Fought 2 more bosses that also basically had no sound like the previous bosses. Looked up youtube videos to see if there’s just something wrong with my game and unfortunately the game just has the worst sound design. Everything sounds like wet noodles hitting rocks. Every weapon has the most unsatisfying “hit” sound like an anti-doom super shotgun. Often times there is no music and the game lets you bask in the empty void of poorly selected ambient sounds ran through 25 reverb effects. The animations of the bosses are embarrassingly bad. The flower boss has two stone gollums that have a few canned key frames and then a million frames of the most boring automated tween animations. I’m at a loss because there isn’t anything wrong with the gameplay. I think the right thumb flick power is unique and adds some neat gimmicks (like being able to use the platforms to launch yourself). The run ability though is the laziest garbage. You look like you are walking through syrup. I have never played a game that fumbled so hard on the graphics and sound design that it actively makes the game miserable to play. So far, would not recommend, even free.
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Aug 10, 2023 05:29
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virtualboyCOLOR posted:Another day of Grime, another miserable experience. Fought 2 more bosses that also basically had no sound like the previous bosses. Looked up youtube videos to see if there’s just something wrong with my game and unfortunately the game just has the worst sound design. So stop playing it.
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Aug 10, 2023 05:31
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Can’t do that. I subscribe to the “you can’t articulate why you believe a game is bad unless you play until the end” line of thought. Plus people recommended it so maybe it gets better? And honestly the gameplay is good. The parry mechanic is well done and adds a lot of reward for getting it right. The game is also easy enough for a casual play through. It’s just everything else is so bland. The game should be taught on how NOT to do sound design for games. I would even go as far to say that it is openly hostile to those with accessibility issues. Sounds cues are very important to the visually impaired (or anyone dealing with a lot of particles on the screen) and Grime provides essentially zero feedback to the user. The flower boss with the two gollums are a great example because the attacks are only proceeded by quiet, similar sounding grunts. If one were relying on sound to help distinguish attacks, they would be frustrated with this game. virtualboyCOLOR fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 05:48
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I stopped playing Grime mostly because the gameplay was basically platforming puzzles lined with enemies throwing unblockable projectiles at you from off screen (Carved palace) and that was such a chore to get by. I made it to the boss there and killed her, and it was a fun fight, but I just didn't have any fun progressing the sections between bosses. So I thought I would spare myself and my friends the ranting about platforming. Next up will likely be Blasphemous 2, then. High hopes for that one.
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Aug 10, 2023 07:17
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Grime's pretty solid, some nice background artwork and mechanics though I did find some of the fights really frustrating and haven't felt enticed enough to go back and see the DLC. I still need to see the rest of the blasphemous DLC before the sequel comes out, I only did the first one where they added those three NG+ modes and the NG+ exclusive boss fights.
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Aug 10, 2023 07:33
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