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I greatly enjoyed Ender Lillies and I'm glad we're getting a sequel. A couple of the bosses were in that sweet spot were they were difficult at first, but learning their patterns and trying new strategies made them very satisfying to defeat. The pro-spirits were of course the fart cloud and stronger fart cloud.
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Feb 22, 2024 05:08
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I beat Ender Lillies a few months ago and felt like I was the one getting melted retty frequently. Don't get me wrong I also wouldn't say it has a real dense enemy count and they went down just as fast as I did, but I think I was trying to perfect dodge all the time and speed through sections of the game and it really wants you to parry and take your time getting through different areas. I guess my advice to anyone who hasn't played it yet would be to parry more often. Most bosses took me several attempts but again I was trying to be as aggressive as possible and never stop moving and EL is not that type of metroidvania, wouldn't even compare it to Metroid 2 remake or Dread's parry/go fast style. But it's combat did pretty much always feel satisfying. Absolutely gorgeous game too. Every area was a treat to look at, all of the animations and every new enemy and boss looked fantastic, including all the really gross stuff later on. Fine story too, it very clearly saw Hollow Knight's success and decided to do the same souls like MV but also never feels like it's ripping anything off and does a good job being it's own thing the whole way through.
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Feb 23, 2024 01:58
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Hope Tortolia sees this to continue discussion Re: Blasphemous 2 Tortolia posted:Honestly I feel the same way and talked about it in the Metroidvania thread; there’s a lot to like gameplaywise but I feel there’s some pretty dramatic design missteps that you start to feel in the later game. I would absolutely do another NG+ run of the first game over the second at this time. Yeah I enjoyed blasphemous 2 well enough but it definitely feels off and it doesn't help that it's ultimately more of the same, it doesn't do too much that makes it more interesting over the first. There is some stuff they improved, like cut down the number of rosaries a little bit but then they added all the altar pieces and it's like 'oh god' And it's weird how the back half of the game kind of becomes incredibly linear. They literally won't pop up the next level until you finish the current level. I'd like to hear more about what else you thought were missteps late game. Ultimately no regrets about finishing it and doing 100%, but I'm not likely to revisit it.
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Feb 23, 2024 19:37
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Ineffiable posted:Hope Tortolia sees this to continue discussion Like you say, there’s definitely some improvements. I didn’t mind the death spikes in the first but didn’t miss the sequel not having them. The new weapon options were great (adored the censer) and I liked how the early game and exploration you had available to you did depend on your starter weapon choice, since the three weapon sets formed part of the core traversal and secret hunting sets. The controls and movement were snappier. Being able to equip both a quick prayer and a long cast ritual meant you actually got good use from that entire side of character development. But then there were things I felt were a huge step back. You touched on the sudden weird linearity of the back half of the game already. The fact that it didn’t matter how you chose to solve quests since you could buy the rewards from the other solution from a store for cheap anyway. The bosses and NPCs felt like thematic retreads mostly. The animated cutscenes, while nice quality on their own, felt like a tonal clash with the art style. And needing to effectively 100% the map to get the alternate/true ending was a bummer even as someone who likes to 100% metroidvanias, especially when the first game’s alternate routes weren’t entirely clear but didn’t turn into a wall hugging cherub scavenger hunt either. So yeah. Not a bad game by any means, but the areas where it falls down hurt the product markedly in my mind and make it something I’m far less inclined to revisit compared to the first. Two steps forward, two steps back.
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Feb 23, 2024 20:16
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Absolutely agree. Even though there are so many things blasphemous 2 does better (weapon choices for one) I still can't ultimately say it's actually better despite it being like a game 4 years newer. If you really loved blasphemous 1 and don't mind more of the same go ahead and get it. If you want something even just a little bit different, try another new game. Lord knows there's plenty of metroidvanias out there. Maybe ender lilies? I hope we don't have a similar conversation about ender lilies VS ender magnolias. You know what though, the blasphemous 2 boss fights were almost worth solely the price of admission/time spent. Ineffiable fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Feb 23, 2024 |
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Feb 23, 2024 20:30
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They were pretty solid even if uninspired designs compared to the first game, yeah. Honestly part of me wonders if development got behind and they had to really limit the focus on the back half of the game, because the first one opened up nicely past the first main objective and B2 narrowed appreciably instead. Edit: I think part of my challenge with B2 is I can look at the first game and how it evolved with the free DLCs; the QoL changes, the new features and content, even the full DLC alternate final ending route. They took a good but bumpy game and smoothed it out. I’m having a hard time looking at the second game and seeing how they could iterate the design out of the aforementioned problems they built into this time. Tortolia fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Feb 23, 2024 |
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Feb 23, 2024 20:33
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Blasphemous 2 is fine but it really genuinely feels like a game they didn't have any strong ideas for. Everything is competent and well done but in terms of tone, aesthetic and general feeling it feels like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas they hadn't used in B1 or just sort of there. B1 had this air of "what the gently caress" every time you found something or somewhere new and B2 is just "Oh, time to fight Evil PO, Lady Evil PO, Fat Evil PO, etc."
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Feb 23, 2024 20:42
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At the end of the day I don't regret playing blasphemous 2. It was fun but just won't be as memorable. It is definitely going to feel very samey especially given I played blasphemous 1 less than a year ago (played it last October, so that's actually like 4 months difference.) Given the game releases upcoming, it's gonna be a while before I play another metroidvania but I think ender magnolias is a day one purchase for me.
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Feb 23, 2024 20:57
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I got the good ending in Ultros. At times it was extremely tedious and frustrating, at other times I felt like a brilliant botanical wizard. I don’t think it’s a very good game but at times it’s an interesting one. Usually I like to 100% my MV naps but I’m calling it quits here. I’d have to string the living network to yet more farflung areas. I’m missing multiple upgrades, I think. Surely they can’t matter much.
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Feb 24, 2024 01:33
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ExcessBLarg! posted:Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown: Is there enough ingots and coins to do all the upgrades at the forge, or do I have to be judicious about it?
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Feb 24, 2024 21:31
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Yeah there's definitely enough to max out everything in the game if you find all the crafting items, biggest issue is having to grind up enough regular money lol
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Feb 24, 2024 22:32
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Its taking a lot of willpower to wait until prince drops on steam deck. I bought Grime instead so I hope its good
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Feb 25, 2024 02:30
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Fuligin posted:Its taking a lot of willpower to wait until prince drops on steam deck. I bought Grime instead so I hope its good I rather liked it but it’s divisive and I can understand why. Aesthetic is fantastic though.
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Feb 25, 2024 03:03
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Yeah, Grime is one of those ones where if you dislike it you're going to really dislike it.
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Feb 25, 2024 03:33
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There's now a Steam page for Ender Magnolia. It's going to be an early access title starting March 25thquote:Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
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Feb 27, 2024 00:18
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Eehh, this is going to be one to wait on, I don't think I want to play a metroidvania that's unfinished. It may suit survival games but kind of an odd choice here?
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Feb 27, 2024 08:29
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I've never purchased an EA game and I never shall
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Feb 27, 2024 08:38
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They patched Prince of Persia to fix the bugged chest so I can resume recommending the game!
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Feb 27, 2024 08:41
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I'm not an EA fan in general but I understand the pitch for big strategy games with tons of moving parts or MP games that need balancing... but an MV? Like you find a path to a new area. . . you can't reach it. . .are you missing an ability, or is the game just unfinished?
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Feb 27, 2024 16:05
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I'm playing Ultros and I have absolutely no idea what's going on. So is this actually a roguelite? Do I have to buy my upgrades over and over again? Am I being bamboozled? I'm just in the beginning, had the world reset once. It's very, very confusing, not because of the art style, but because the game throws SO MANY mechanics at me and I have no idea which of them are good or useful, and then you can unlock even more right away. e: It's cruel to give me a double jump and then take it away immediately TeaJay fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Feb 27, 2024 |
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Feb 27, 2024 16:26
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They did early access for ender lilies and the game turned out great.
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Feb 27, 2024 16:48
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TeaJay posted:Eehh, this is going to be one to wait on, I don't think I want to play a metroidvania that's unfinished. It may suit survival games but kind of an odd choice here? Ender Lilies literally did the exact same thing.
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Feb 27, 2024 17:00
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Yeah, I had absolutely no recollection that happened, but that's likely because I only played EL in October 2021 when the proper launch was in June. But again, I don't mind waiting a bit, I'd rather get a full story and exploration on the first go, I rarely return to metroidvanias unless they are absolute classics like SOTN or Super Metroid. Played the new ones once and that's mostly it.
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Feb 27, 2024 17:25
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EA obviously worked out well for them then since I loved the final product, but I'll just wait until Magnolia is fully complete and hit it then.
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Feb 27, 2024 18:34
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I'll probably buy it in EA to avoid the price increase but I won't play it until it hits 1.0.
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Feb 27, 2024 18:55
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Barudak posted:They patched Prince of Persia to fix the bugged chest so I can resume recommending the game! They also fixed the parrot sidequest. I just sort of finished the game. I completed the map, but when I saw the final boss I just felt like I was done with the game and just did not feel like fighting him fairly. Before even trying it out I dropped all difficulty sliders and just wailed on him. That was fun in it's own way. I enjoyed the game and actually found the bossfights kind of fun. They were less of a mandatory annoying roadblick than in some other games. Elden Ring was awful with regards to bosses.
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Feb 27, 2024 21:24
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Fuligin posted:Its taking a lot of willpower to wait until prince drops on steam deck. I bought Grime instead so I hope its good I really liked Grime. The end is very cool and they added some dlc semi recently. Highly recommend finishing it even if it means ignoring 100%ing everything (which I did) Edit: I'm playing Souldiers. It's fun. It has parts I dislike and some annoying side quests that are near pixel perfect 2 minute races that caused me to abandon attempting doing all the cheevos. Although it requires 4 playthroughs so that also helped me not want to 100%. Still it's fun. I'm near the end
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Feb 27, 2024 21:26
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Finishing up Blasphemous and I’ve been loving it. How’s Afterimage? It looks interesting but I never hear people talk about it?
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Feb 28, 2024 09:01
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nemesis_hub posted:Finishing up Blasphemous and I’ve been loving it. How’s Afterimage? It looks interesting but I never hear people talk about it? It is big big big, pretty fun and the story is incomprehensible. I really liked the exploration
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Feb 28, 2024 09:39
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nemesis_hub posted:Finishing up Blasphemous and I’ve been loving it. How’s Afterimage? It looks interesting but I never hear people talk about it? My impression of it after a couple of hours is not very positive. The controls feel pretty floaty and and imprecise, combat is so far trivially easy (in large part because caused by bosses just doing no damage) but on the other hand the controls would probably not stand up to actually challengeng combat. The areas are ridiculously big, I can see some ymmv on this one but they are bigger than they are interesting and usually your reward for exploring is a chest with a couple of potions which you'll never need because see above. In terms of writing you have a cliche supremely annoying fairy companion. The art is like, good in terms of still images? But doesn't really animate well (which also contributes to lackluster playfeel). But like, having voiced all those complaints, it's not like actively terrible or anything, it's decently likely I'll still finish it?
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Feb 28, 2024 11:09
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I've been playing Ultros the last few days but eventually I had to call it quits. I think I'm somewhere in the final couple areas of the game, but there are things that make it impossibly frustrating to play and I can't take anymore. Clocked in 8 ½ hours but now I'm quitting. (spoilers galore) The last straw was a ball juggling minigame in area Pantheon of the Stars where you have to air juggle a ball three times and then kick it into your opponents goal. The catch is, it's very difficult and your opponent will reset the progress (need three hits + goal) when they touch it. You have all kinds of attacks but none which can safely aim the ball, you just kinda have to hope it goes in the right direction. But really this is just one minigame, but for me just a point of simply having absolutely no fun and no will to go on. The other area I can access at this moment - the refinery - is filled with traps and dead ends and I can't find any way through there either. But rather the bigger thing is that there's a lack of direction concerning everything I do. Even for a metroidvania, it's INCREDIBLY confusing. The graphics certainly won't help, making you wonder which item is in the foregound and which is not. A lot of my gaming time I've had to spend just wandering around looking for some direction to stumble to. In this genre exploration cannot be this obtuse. It completely takes away all the fun from the game if you're constantly wandering around similar looking corridors trying to find something that is new. Combat almost seems like an afterthought. The attacks you have are pretty simple and basically you'll just do the same dodge through the enemy - backstab - hit combo every time. Or at least I did, perhaps someone is very good at air juggling enemies. You certainly don't need to, I basically just ran past everything since at no point I was in the danger of running out of food items (seeds is another story). Maybe Ultros would've been better as some kind of point and click adventure game in a weird alien space ship with gardening? Just recently I was stuck with black fuzzy walls, having no way to go through. Sometimes earlier in the game your robot buddy (that gives you double jump) will handle it for you. Sometimes it doesn't. Then all of a sudden I get near the wall and the friendly NPC drops from the ceiling and says "Oh, I'll take care of that for you". Thanks, I guess. Sometimes you're given upgrades which do nothing. Again making you wonder if you're doing it properly. Early game you lose your abilities when you start a new "cycle". This is also quite frustrating even though later you get 'em back pretty quickly, but it still leads to a lot of unwanted backtracking. There's a mechanic of planting different plants which have their own function, but you never know which of them might be useful, and you may not always have all available, so you may reach a spot you can't get to and are left wondering "Am I supposed to get there now with a different item? Am I doing something wrong?" The plants' description only shows you their function the first time you find them. I don't know what kind of superbrain you have to be to be able to figure out all the network connections. I'm guessing none of that stuff is even mandatory in terms of beating the game. But they certainly throw that stuff very hard on you and since the network will open those red doors, you feel it's important. I still don't know if it actually is. The game has a lot of neat ideas but in my opinion it combines them as a complete mess which is very confusing to try to figure out. It certainly has an unique look. I'd wager a lot of people saw the demo, tried it, then bought the game and somewhere around early-mid game bounced off hard, like I did. It was not what I expected and in a bad way which left me disappointed and frustrated.  My eyes were bleeding in the end too. (less so after I took off some of the more annoying effects like chromatic aberration and constant blur in screen transition) TeaJay fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 29, 2024 13:32
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I'm thinking of giving it up after 30 minutes. Some games I just feel no compulsion to return too after the first play sesh.
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Feb 29, 2024 16:20
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TeaJay posted:I've been playing Ultros the last few days but eventually I had to call it quits. I think I'm somewhere in the final couple areas of the game, but there are things that make it impossibly frustrating to play and I can't take anymore. Clocked in 8 ½ hours but now I'm quitting. (spoilers galore) I don't disagree with any of this, but fwiw: That dumb minigame (which you need to beat several times btw) - You can charge attack stun the opponent - You can usually hit it twice with the jump spin attack - If you uppercut (attack + up), the ball always goes up and behind you. I got the hang of it and could beat it quickly after a first very frustrating attempt. Fuzzy walls, broken either by: 1. The swirly umbilical cord line from the shaman to the core 2. The living network I also thought it had something to do with the robot, from a memory early in the game, but then I second guessed myself and wondered if it was just because of #1 and I had assumed it was the robot since I just got it. I don't know, confusing in any case. All the robot abilities do things except the first one, which only works after you beat the game. You only need to connect everything (the shamans) for the true ending, yeah. For the 1st ending I still think you need to make a few connections? Unsure. I think the core problems of the game are a) the combat/movement/platforming design range from mediocre to bad and b) it wants to be one of those mysterious games where you piece together how things work from contextual clues rather than the game telling you, and to its credit this occasionally succeeds quite well, but overall it's not smart enough to pull this off the way other games do and ends up tedious and frustrating.
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Feb 29, 2024 17:57
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Just picked up The Mummy Demastered and it sure feels like the enemy behaviour + placement is very hateful. Bats zip by knocking you down that also shoots fireballs and realigns with your horizontal plane on the next sweep through is a common, plentiful enemy that takes more than like a couple of shots to kill?
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Mar 1, 2024 02:36
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I enjoyed the Mummy Demastered when it came out but overall I do think the game's balance is a bit off. The enemy respawn rate is quite high. Most Metroidvanias (at least, ones that don't adopt Souls mechanics) don't respawn enemies unless you re-enter a room, or sometimes you have to go two rooms away, but that's not the case here. I also didn't like how health doesn't refill outside of getting a (limited) health kit. I would've preferred health kit rooms could still refill your health even if you've already gotten the kit. Because of this, you're encouraged to farm health from scrub enemies (which, "fourtunately" respawn immediately anyways). I assume the design intent here is for players to die frequently so they can encounter the player zombie mechanic. Bosses are bullet sponges, which I'm fine with since the game does feel a bit Contra/run-and-gun, but others I think found the bosses a bit boring. All that said, I do think it's worth playing. Some of the level set pieces are pretty cool, the pixel graphics are great, and it has a bangin' soundtrack.
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Mar 1, 2024 03:33
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I thought Mummy Demastered was too punishing, I didn't like it and didn't get far. Way too annoying to progress.
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Mar 1, 2024 11:13
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Artelier posted:Just picked up The Mummy Demastered and it sure feels like the enemy behaviour + placement is very hateful. Bats zip by knocking you down that also shoots fireballs and realigns with your horizontal plane on the next sweep through is a common, plentiful enemy that takes more than like a couple of shots to kill? lol it was worse when it came out, they toned the constantly spawning enemies down in a patch, also originally the health drops gave back like 1 or 5 health so the only way to regain lost health was to sit there grinding forever
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Mar 1, 2024 11:17
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guppy posted:I thought Mummy Demastered was too punishing, I didn't like it and didn't get far. Way too annoying to progress. 
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Mar 1, 2024 11:39
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Sakurazuka posted:lol it was worse when it came out, they toned the constantly spawning enemies down in a patch, also originally the health drops gave back like 1 or 5 health so the only way to regain lost health was to sit there grinding forever  -- Thanks for the responses everyone! I heard good things about this game here and there in the past so I think I was a little shocked at just how punishing it is. I've since put an hour into the game and I'm not sure if I'll finish it but I'm making decent, if slow, progress. The art and the music really is carrying the game hard for me.
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Mar 1, 2024 12:26
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I finished it post patch and only lost like two or three guys iirc, I think you definitely have to be more methodical than Contra + Castlevania would suggest though.
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Mar 1, 2024 12:31
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