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Super Meat Boy very much emphasizes momentum, as does N++ in the precision platformer genre. For ones with more Celeste-style emphasis on chaining discrete maneuvers, there's Dustforce and the Jumper series. Or, just more Celeste - the excellent Strawberry Jam modpack come out earlier this year and about 3/5s of it are very reasonable coming from the base game. Aeterna Noctis and Lone Fungus are two heavily Hollow Knight inspired metroidvanias with lots of Celeste style platforming sections I liked a lot, though other parts of both games, especially the combat, have issues.
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Oct 9, 2023 12:46
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loose-fish posted:Having just finished Blasphemous 2 I'm looking for something else along the lines of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night VVVVVV Iconoclasts Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Oct 9, 2023 |
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Oct 9, 2023 13:05
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Very confused at disliking Shovel Knight because of the momentum-based gameplay, it has very rigid movement! But also, try the one of the better Igavanias maybe? Symphony of the Night or Aria of Sorrow would be good launching off points
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Oct 9, 2023 13:10
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loose-fish posted:Having just finished Blasphemous 2 I'm looking for something else along the lines of Infernax: Basically "what if we remade Simon's Quest but good and also cartoonishly gory" The Knight Witch: A harder recommend, it's a kind of a twin-stick bullet hell metroidvania that I really liked but didn't get a lot of notice, you can immediately tell from gameplay videos if it will be your thing HAAK: Sits somewhere comfortably between Hollow Knight and The Messenger. You play as a cyber-ninja with a grappling hook and hacking powers Yoku's Island Express: Pinball-based metroidvania that is surprisingly good and well-made. Very cute, too Nine Years of Shadows: Doesn't break any new ground but it sure is pretty Aeterna Noctis: Very high-effort Hollow Knight-like. The difficulty gets fairly extreme but combat and platforming are smooth as butter
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Oct 9, 2023 13:14
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Hwurmp posted:Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
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Oct 9, 2023 13:25
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loose-fish posted:Having just finished Blasphemous 2 I'm looking for something else along the lines of Here are some games I've enjoyed in the Metroidvania/puzzle platformer/exploration vein, excluding the ones already mentioned (obviously Super Meat Boy is fantastic and should be played, ditto with VVVVVV) A Pixel Story - I've always carried a torch for this game even though nobody seemed to actually play it when it came out. Bright and colourful and fun to look at with heaps of charm. It has the "start off in 8-bit graphics, progress through the generations" gimmick that a million games have since done, but was still fairly novel at the time. It's a puzzle platformer in the "die over and over until you succeed" mould, and has some extremely difficult challenge rooms. The game encourages you to be completionist and has heaps of extra bits and pieces to collect. It is slightly janky to control until you get used to it. Ghost 1.0 - More of an action/exploration game, you infiltrate a space station and blast your way through, upgrading your weapons etc as you go. The interesting mechanic here is that you can possess enemies at any time, using them to take out their allies or otherwise assist you. It has a simple but fun story as well. Catmaze - Metroidvania which is fairly heavy on the exploration side of things, but comes together quite nicely. There are some pretty challenging boss fights in it. The setting is fairly unique, based on Slavic mythology. Escape Goat and Escape Goat 2 - Puzzle platformers in the Celeste mould where you expect to die a bunch of times until you finally succeed. Escape Goat 2 in particular has a bunch of secrets which are really cool to find. Knytt Underground - The gold standard in terms of just having a massive, atmospheric world to explore and fill out the map, along with light puzzle elements. No combat to speak of but you do need to avoid some monsters. The story is kind of dumb, but it mostly just stays out of the way and lets you explore. The game seems like it's going to be really short since it has three "chapters" and you can complete the first two in around an hour, but the third chapter is where the game actually starts for real. Alwa's Legacy - Puzzle platformer with light Metroidvania elements, very pretty to look at and heaps of secrets to find. Timespinner - Solid Metroidvania with pretty good combat. Has a few elements that remind me of The Messenger in terms of being able to visit the same areas in two different time periods and actions in one can affect the other. The story/dialogue gets a bit painful at times. If you're interested in games which are less Metroidvanias or puzzle platformers, and more story-driven 2D action platformers with a focus on exploration and collecting upgrades, I can strongly recommend Iconoclasts and Cave Story, and to a lesser extent, Phaoroh Rebirth and Owlboy. cmndstab fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Oct 9, 2023 |
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Oct 9, 2023 13:31
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Pierzak posted:Does it have an "unfuck skeletons/zombies" mod? The slimey garbage look like absolute trash that's in the game only because Konami told them not to use Castlevania monsters. turn on your monitor
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Oct 9, 2023 13:40
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I forgot one Vision Soft Reset: A bit on the shorter side but has a neat gimmick - you have 20 minutes until the planet explodes, but you're a time traveling psychic robot so every save point creates a branching timeline you can revisit, and you retain new abilities and any information you've obtained.
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Oct 9, 2023 13:43
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Wow, lot's of recommendations, thanks everyone! That will definitely take me some time to dig through everything. Infernax, HAAK, and Aeterna Noctis already look very interesting and Ori with improved combat sounds great as well. I also already own Super Meat Boy and VVVVVV from some bundles but never played them. I've played SotN and some of the GBA Igavanias and I think I'm done with those unless there's anything revolutionary in Bloodstained.
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Oct 9, 2023 14:28
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idrismakesgames posted:Looking to get into a roguelike (not lite), love StS, Hades and Dead Cells. But have honestly been finding myself more interested in the graphical simple more complex and deep games like dwarf fortress these days. Tangledeep was my intro into trad-roguelikes. Breezy SNES graphics, a fun multi class system, a couple huge optional mechanics, 2 more levels of progressing difficulty, a ton of unlocks and rule customization.
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Oct 9, 2023 14:34
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VVVVVV is really good. It makes fantastic use of its minimalistic controls. Another series unmentioned so far is Guacamelee, though I haven't played 2 yet. It's pretty linear as far as the genre goes, and combat heavy. Combat move double up as mobility for platforming sections, and it's cliché Mexico/Wrestling themed, which is rather unusual as far as gaming goes. Loved the first game, really need to play the sequel at some point.
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Oct 9, 2023 14:36
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Sunblaze is an excellent Celeste-inspired platformer that deserves more attention than it gets.
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Oct 9, 2023 15:12
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I've always had interesting recommendations from this thread based my my piss poor, extremely vague descriptions, so here goes. I got starfield the other day (having little experience of Bethesda games beyond not really getting into Skyrim) and while from the couple of hours I've played it's ok if not exactly grabbing me, one thing kinda bugs me. You're supposed to be this rookie miner, but right from the start you're able to wipe out whole base of pirates without breaking a sweat, which doesn't really chime with the character. It got me thinking about how I enjoy games where you start at the bottom and work your way up in a way that's broadly "realistic", especially if it works within the story. The main one I was thinking of was kingdom come: deliverance, where I found it tough but still enjoyable to start with in terms of the game mechanics, being a challenge but where the mechanics all seem to be intuitive (like the combat, or where you do things to get good at a thing for instance) and it makes sense for the character to barely know how to fight or read, and that's reflected in the gameplay. I liked that the sense of progression in terms of abilities and skills broadly fits both with you (the player) learning and getting better at the game mechanics and you (the character) learning and developing within the world/story, and, obviously to a limited extent, it did feel like you're playing as just a normal person rather than a chosen one or a mighty hero or whatever. Other things in this vein which I love, though less story driven or quite so neat in terms of story progress and learning the game fitting together, are things like football manager or crusader kings, where you can (by choice) start with essentially nothing and make a game of working your way up. It helps that in both these there's also a vague sense of character development, in that you're playing as a specific character (one person in football manager, even if the "character" element there is minimal, or a series of named and defined characters in crusader kings). I'm looking for something like this rather than Civ or RTSes or grand strategy games where you're more of an guiding intelligence than a specific person. It's not exactly that I want a hard game, because I don't think I'm very good at hard games, but I'd like something that's a challenge at the start while being intuitive and fun enough to get over the initial difficulties without having to invest lots of time and effort to really get to grips with the game and to understand how to play it. I've tried playing guild 3 (from what people had said in this thread I think), and while it seems like exactly what I want, I'm finding it a real chore to get into and the mechanics aren't intuitive to me so I keep losing interest before I figure out how to do anything. And the sort of open world things that I generally like such as GTA or Red Dead or Sleeping Dogs don't have that same sense of starting small as a normal person. In all those games you can basically do most things and are pretty good at fighting or doing criminal stuff or whatever right from the start, even if the games themselves have a narrative based around starting at the bottom of the criminal ladder. Progress always feels like it's being held behind completing a specific mission rather than organic. I've explained this really badly, but I definitely know what I'm looking for, even if I can't really describe it. The type of game is less important than the vibe I think Niric fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 23:45
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Niric posted:I've always had interesting recommendations from this thread based my my piss poor, extremely vague descriptions, so here goes. Stardew Valley Dying Light 1 X4: Foundations, maybe
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Oct 10, 2023 23:51
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If you can deal with the jank, the game you are describing is Kenshi.
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Oct 11, 2023 00:02
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X4 is definitely that although the learning curve and navigating the Ui are both pretty punishing. Gothic 1 and 2 Morrowind Dishonored, sort of Mount and Blade Feels like the zero to hero gameplay has gone out of fashion Eric the Mauve posted:If you can deal with the jank, the game you are describing is Kenshi. Also definitely this
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Oct 11, 2023 00:09
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Niric posted:I've always had interesting recommendations from this thread based my my piss poor, extremely vague descriptions, so here goes. Hadean Lands starts with you making cleaning solutions and ends with you making incredibly powerful alchemic potions. It's also one of the best Metroidbranias. Really captures the experience of going from janitor to master alchemist. Many, many Choice of Games CYOAs follow this structure but check out -Choice of Magics -Choice of Rebels In a similar vein, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
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Oct 11, 2023 00:17
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You can draw the comparison with a lot of RPGs, but that sort of growth sounds like what I enjoy about Wizardry style dungeon crawlers specifically. You start the game as a party of level 1 weaklings who are practically naked. Fights are deadly, revival is expensive, your mages can only cast a couple spells before running dry, and you're stumbling around blind in this massive maze. But then as you go on you find chests and get better gear piece by piece, you characters level up and get more health, your mages get more and better spells. You map out the dungeon and instead of being this intimidating unknown it becomes a familiar place - you find shortcuts, you've got your comfortable routes you take every time. Those encounters on floor 2 that were so hard the first time you fought them become manageable, and then easy, and then they're barely even a speedbump. By the endgame your party is a whirlwind of death, you have enough healing to stay in the dungeon for ages, and you've got detailed maps of all the dungeon's secrets. Since it's all about mapping out a single large dungeon over multiple trips you get more of a sense of your own progression than in a traditional jrpg, where you're constantly going to new places and fighting new enemies with minimal backtracking. Maybe check out Dungeon Encounters or one of the japanese Wizardry?
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Oct 11, 2023 00:35
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fez_machine posted:Hadean Lands starts with you making cleaning solutions and ends with you making incredibly powerful alchemic potions. It's also one of the best Metroidbranias. Really captures the experience of going from janitor to master alchemist. -I Was A Teenage Exocolonist -Long Live The Queen -Fallen London
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Oct 11, 2023 03:30
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Niric posted:I've always had interesting recommendations from this thread based my my piss poor, extremely vague descriptions, so here goes. Listing basically a bunch of RPGs, Dungeon Crawlers, Survival games, and so on for that 'zero to hero with you legit being a zero at the start' appeal: Underrail Kenshi Outward Morrowind Subnautica Brigand Oaxaca Fear & Hunger Neo Scavenger Caves of Qud Pathologic 2 Fallout 1+2 Legend of Grimrock 1+2 Wizardry 8 Elex Diablo 1 Dark Souls series and similar soulslikes (The Surge, etc) There are some games like Dungeon Siege that I needed to stop myself from recommending despite me thinking they fit: even though you do start as a humble farmer hitting goblins with a pitchfork, you become quite capable rather quickly, as do many other games like Titan Quest and Grim Dawn and the like. In a way there are some games like Doom Eternal, Devil May Cry and other action games that really require you to get good at becoming a dealer of death: they don't just give you the power fantasy, you earn it through practice. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 04:05
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Snake Maze posted:You can draw the comparison with a lot of RPGs, but that sort of growth sounds like what I enjoy about Wizardry style dungeon crawlers specifically. You start the game as a party of level 1 weaklings who are practically naked. Fights are deadly, revival is expensive, your mages can only cast a couple spells before running dry, and you're stumbling around blind in this massive maze. But then as you go on you find chests and get better gear piece by piece, you characters level up and get more health, your mages get more and better spells. You map out the dungeon and instead of being this intimidating unknown it becomes a familiar place - you find shortcuts, you've got your comfortable routes you take every time. Those encounters on floor 2 that were so hard the first time you fought them become manageable, and then easy, and then they're barely even a speedbump. By the endgame your party is a whirlwind of death, you have enough healing to stay in the dungeon for ages, and you've got detailed maps of all the dungeon's secrets.  Dungeon Crawlers imo are so great because there's such a huge emphasis on like, dungeon design, interesting loot, and building your party to be strong enough to handle all threats. Some of my favorite modern ones include Grimrock 1 + 2, the Etrian Odyssey series, and Starcrawlers. I've also heard good stuff about Experience Inc dungeon crawlers, though I haven't played any of them. People keep mentioning Stranger of Sword City and Undernauts and I really need to get around to trying one.
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Oct 11, 2023 04:44
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FutureCop posted:that 'zero to hero with you legit being a zero at the start' appeal FutureCop posted:many other games like Titan Quest and Grim Dawn and the like. Pierzak fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 11:46
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Pierzak posted:This is very much my thing so I'll just latch on and steal the list for myself, thanks. Hmm, it's a bit tricky. Yes, the isometric hack-and-slash ARPG genre has loads of 'zero to hero' appeal with tons of games like Path of Exile, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Torchlight, DFO, Last Epoch, Lost Ark, Wolcen, Victor Vran, Warhammer Inquisitor Martyr, Chronicon, Slormancer, Adventures of Van Helsing, and the obvious Diablo series. It can be fun and addictive to build up your character into a god with gear, skills, and experience. However, as Niric put it, a lot of these games can end up feeling more like 'hero to hero' games: take Path of Exile as an example, where while you do start out as a weak shipwrecked husk, it is very superficial as it quickly becomes you cleaving through hordes as effortlessly as a lawnmower cuts through grass within minutes. There just isn't a legit sense of mortality, weakness and danger to make the journey enthralling and really feel like you start from zero as it could. Yes, in some cases where it's available and it doesn't just make gameplay annoying and tedious, you can play on an extreme hardcore permadeath difficulty, but that mostly feels like a bandaid fix. Not to be all fuddy-duddy, but you can mostly find a lot more legit 'zero to hero' in older games. For example, while Fallout 3+4 have you start out quite proficient and able to blast raiders away in VATS, Fallout 1+2 have you start out in a world so hostile you might not even make it out of the tutorial cave/temple alive after being slain by rats. This was the reason I listed Diablo 1 specifically and not the others (maybe Diablo 2 would be ok?), and considered games like Dungeon Siege and others like the Ys series and Xanadu Next and so on. Me focusing so much on the iso looty hacky-slashy genre might be missing what Niric was going for, though, as they do largely trend towards being very character stat/gear-driven instead of a combination of player skill and character gear/stats. FutureCop fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 17:39
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If you're open to JRPGs, Heroines of Swords & Spells does the zero to hero thing really well. Instead of just being underpowered at the beginning, the protagonists are genuinely incompetent at what they do and completely incapable of working as a team. You'll have to spend some time early on figuring out which of the quests you can even handle with the tools at your disposal, and you'll never get to the point where any combat is really easy, but by the end of the story there is some genuine heroism on display. The game's also filled with Russian humor, so if that's your thing it's very entertaining.
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Oct 11, 2023 17:44
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Kingdom come deliverance does the zero to hero thing really well as well.
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Oct 11, 2023 17:49
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Baldur’s Gate 1+2 are probably the biggest disparity between starting tone and finale I’ve seen. You start alone in the woods with your guardian murdered and so weak that the usual advice given for how to beat the first mandatory fight is to run away and let the guards handle it, while the ending has you throttling gods. Another completely different style of game is the Naked Brutality starting scenario of Rimworld. You wake up from anesthesia crash landing on a planet without a single supply, and have to build your colony up to the ability to hold off a giant seige while powering up the engines on an spaceship.
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Oct 11, 2023 17:57
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Piranha Bytes games (Gothic, Risen, Elex) do this whole thing better than anyone imo. Gothic literally starts with bullies at the work camp picking on you and stealing your lunch money
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Oct 11, 2023 18:03
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FutureCop posted:zero to hero Pierzak fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 19:01
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Pierzak posted:You mixed two separate comments of mine. I was looking for more games like TQ/GD, while zero to hero is welcome (and I'll be checking the other suggestions for sure, thanks a bunch) but at that point I only meant great hack-and-slashes in that style (02H definitely not being mandatory), if you know some without 02H I'll gladly take them. Ah yeah, sorry, I tried to be a little too clever/efficient in fielding both questions simultaneously by still listing a bunch of ARPGs that fit either category: everything listed in the post should definitely be good recommendations (well, some more than others) in general for nice grindy isometric hack-and-slashes like TQ/GD. If I was to add anymore recs that are slightly more rare, maybe Children of Morta, Book of Demons, Darksiders Genesis, and Shadows Awakening? FutureCop fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Oct 11, 2023 |
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Oct 11, 2023 19:50
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Eric the Mauve posted:If you can deal with the jank, the game you are describing is Kenshi. It's this op. Kenshi offers a lot but you just have to know how to open it up and grab it.
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Oct 11, 2023 20:35
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Hack and slash with a zero to hero narrative? Say no more: https://store.steampowered.com/app/987400/Disneys_Hercules
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Oct 11, 2023 20:39
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The jank and the grinding were a bit much for me, but Kenshi is nearly unique in featuring a big, populated, open world that does not give a poo poo about you whatsoever. There is no Main Quest. There is no Final Boss. You are in absolutely no way The Protagonist.
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Oct 11, 2023 22:07
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I would never in a million years touch Kenshi but it is endlessly fascinating to me. Charlatan Wonder just put out his complete video of his long struggle to conquer it and it is a truly amazing journey. He goes from crawling around to desert getting his limbs endlessly broken/hacked off and being beaten by cops for trying to get help to amassing the biggest warband around and (somewhat unintentionally) fully re-enacting the battle against Luca Blight to complete his final victory.
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Oct 11, 2023 22:16
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I loving hated Kenshi but I deeply respect it nonetheless
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Oct 11, 2023 23:49
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yeah kenshi is walking so that some other future game I'd actually have fun with can run.
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Oct 12, 2023 00:42
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doctorfrog posted:yeah kenshi is walking so that some other future game I'd actually have fun with can run. And that game is kenshi 2
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Oct 12, 2023 00:43
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Thanks for the recommendations everyone. I wasn't clear, but I'm interested more in real world/quasi realistic settings, and pretty much any fantasy game I've tried rubs me the wrong way. Part of the fun of the zero to hero thing to me is when there's something grounded about the whole experience (however that's defined in the game) and when there's a sense of normality or I guess plausibility, so dungeon crawling to get better stats to do more dungeon crawling isn't really what I'm interested in. I should've mentioned I've played mount and blade and kinda liked it, and it definitely touches on the kind of rags to riches in vaguely grounded setting that I have in mind Kenshi does looks super interesting from what everyone has said, but jank and grinding are possible deal breakers depending on the level of each, especially if it makes it a pain in the arse to figure out how to play. This description definitely has a lot in common with the kind of vibe I'm looking for, though I'd happily take on something with a main story Eric the Mauve posted:The jank and the grinding were a bit much for me, but Kenshi is nearly unique in featuring a big, populated, open world that does not give a poo poo about you whatsoever. There is no Main Quest. There is no Final Boss. You are in absolutely no way The Protagonist. Ditto this, even if the game/setting itself doesn't really seem like my kind of thing fez_machine posted:Hadean Lands starts with you making cleaning solutions and ends with you making incredibly powerful alchemic potions. It's also one of the best Metroidbranias. Really captures the experience of going from janitor to master alchemist.
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Oct 12, 2023 01:19
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Niric posted:Thanks for the recommendations everyone. I wasn't clear, but I'm interested more in real world/quasi realistic settings, and pretty much any fantasy game I've tried rubs me the wrong way. Part of the fun of the zero to hero thing to me is when there's something grounded about the whole experience (however that's defined in the game) and when there's a sense of normality or I guess plausibility, so dungeon crawling to get better stats to do more dungeon crawling isn't really what I'm interested in. Friends of Ringo Ishikawa, maybe
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Oct 12, 2023 01:20
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Niric posted:Thanks for the recommendations everyone. I wasn't clear, but I'm interested more in real world/quasi realistic settings, and pretty much any fantasy game I've tried rubs me the wrong way. Part of the fun of the zero to hero thing to me is when there's something grounded about the whole experience (however that's defined in the game) and when there's a sense of normality or I guess plausibility, so dungeon crawling to get better stats to do more dungeon crawling isn't really what I'm interested in. At the risk of stating the obvious have you tried simulator games like house flipper or farming simulator?
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Oct 12, 2023 01:35
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Niric posted:Thanks for the recommendations everyone. I wasn't clear, but I'm interested more in real world/quasi realistic settings, and pretty much any fantasy game I've tried rubs me the wrong way. Part of the fun of the zero to hero thing to me is when there's something grounded about the whole experience (however that's defined in the game) and when there's a sense of normality or I guess plausibility, so dungeon crawling to get better stats to do more dungeon crawling isn't really what I'm interested in. Kingdom come deliverance.
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Oct 12, 2023 03:57
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