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Commander Keene posted:Holy Water is the Metal Blade of the first Castlevania. Yeah, the other subweapons can be useful at times, too, but Holy Water kills everything, so why would you use anything else?  .Lazaruise posted:This popped up randomly on my youtube recommendations and I recognized your name from the old mega man Gameboy games. I am enjoying this thoroughly and you made me sign back into SA after a few months of not really being here to tell you that. Keep it up friend.  .Glazius posted:Those conveyors are just 1 and done? I wonder if they were just tested in development and taken out of other places they might have been used. Speaking of: I had some editing issues (basically got done completely in a new program I tried, then at the VERY END it was like "sike, you can't actually export this in any kind of acceptable quality unless you buy the full version!!") so I had to redo everything. Hope it's okay now. I'm posting this while it renders so I can get a new update post and also a fresh page!
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May 27, 2018 23:38
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| # ? May 8, 2024 10:03 |
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 Stage Thoughts I accidentally erased these, so this is the redone version. Hope I don't miss any super cool observation I had the first time...
Music Castle #2 [Stage Map] Original Sin [Dracula's Castle Part 1] Pretty rocking. Really like what the composer did with the bass. The actual melody suffers a little because of the heavy focus on that, but it does have a lot of drive to it! Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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May 28, 2018 00:43
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My gut feeling is that the leather whip is a lot worse than you might think: not only does it do less damage, but it also has shorter range. I think the range could be an absolute killer to less-experienced players given Chillstopher's general lack of movement speed and manoeuverability, moreso if they don't know about wall chicken.
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May 28, 2018 00:49
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Simply Simon posted:I have always pretended that Dracula's Castle is called Castlevania, and I'm pretty sure that's not actually the case It is, but it's an English-localization-only thing, so it only appears in games if the translators of that particular game remember to throw it in. I don't know exactly how it's referred to in every Japanese game, but Dracula 2: The Curse Seal calls it "Castle Dracula", at least.
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May 28, 2018 01:15
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That boss is intense, wow. Also you are correct, Drac's castle is indeed Castlevania.
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May 28, 2018 01:15
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Well I'm glad that I won't have lore nerds hounding me then  .Crazy Achmed posted:My gut feeling is that the leather whip is a lot worse than you might think: not only does it do less damage, but it also has shorter range. I think the range could be an absolute killer to less-experienced players given Chillstopher's general lack of movement speed and manoeuverability, moreso if they don't know about wall chicken. The only problem is Punaguchis which remove it, but even so, at least from what I've seen, those aren't numerous, evilly placed or paired with other enemies enough that it becomes a serious problem. The meanest placement of them is probably in Cloud Castle, where they are after the whip upgrade on the way to the boss, meaning that if you get hit in the pre-boss corridor, you'll have to fight the boss with the leather whip. That would suck, but it's rather trivial to avoid the 'guchis, and the boss is probably the easiest of the four anyway.
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May 28, 2018 09:32
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I liked that boss. It was more a dodge-the-damage puzzle but once you were past the difficult part it worked out well.
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May 29, 2018 05:41
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Yeah but it's also basically all but game over the moment you fall behind and that isn't even particularly clear at any point during the fight. The idea is not bad but the sheer size of the boss and the size limitations of the gameboy screen means this was either destined to fail or they needed to do some major rejiggering on the boss's size.
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May 29, 2018 08:22
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Hey guys, sorry about the long wait. Had too many fun things happen in real life, but now that my fun is over I can go back to this nonsense  .So I just recorded the next episode. For almost the last hour. And it got me to use save states. Please nobody complain about the Castlevania 1 boss anymore...and wish me a good hand with editing.
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Jun 4, 2018 20:52
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Simply Simon posted:Hey guys, sorry about the long wait. Had too many fun things happen in real life, but now that my fun is over I can go back to this nonsense 
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Jun 5, 2018 21:51
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 The picture strongly suggests that this is the last stage...guess we'll have to amend a second Wily skull for the next level? Spoilers there's a next level. Stage Thoughts Yeesh.
Now for the boss. Soleiyu is obviously loving hard, and merrily crosses the line to bullshit a few times, I think. It's not a terrible encounter - my semi-comparison to the first game's atrocious final boss is a little uncalled for - but I do think they ask a bit much of the player. It gave me a lot of trouble already, I cannot imagine how daunting this fight must feel for someone playing this on an actual Gameboy with little to no experience in other platformers. The key point that makes it feel so over the line is that I see no other way of winning consistently (you prooobably can damage race him if you get lucky) than to manipulate his AI. He'll always whip when he gets close to you, whichs stops him in place, and that's the only way to make him stand still long enough so the knives fall harmlessly behind you instead of you getting trapped between him and them. I might well miss a different loop than the one I ended up doing where you force him to do the same thing over and over and therefore get your openings to cross from left to right over and over, but...that'd still be manipulating him. I think that having a boss become easier, even trivial if you realize that his behaviour is completely based on your position relative to him is perfectly fine; not every player will have the discipline to even pull that off, and the fight will probably FEEL like it's random and frantic for almost every casual player. An example of an excellent manipulatable fight is Zero from MMX2. The problem here is that it feels absolutely necessary to do this kind of manipulation, and you can't even get it consistent (at least I can't); Soleiyu might jump forward or back, up on the platform or down with no real rhyme or reason. Exploiting his whip-happiness seems the one thing you can always do, and they probably did account for that by making the whip hitbox mercifully tight so you can't get hit from a different plane; with the one problem being that you can't hit him either. Apart from the knives, therefore, this does feel like a fight against yourself, and such duels are usually pretty good. In this case, it misses the mark a little because you have gently caress-all for movement options, and while Soleiyu doesn't either, I don't see him getting knocked back from anything and Christopher sure as hell can't just magic up infinite semi-homing knives. Speaking of which: obviously, as you cannot just jump and weave through those at will, they also have to be manipulated into falling where you are not, adding another element to this hell dance. Overall, it's simply a little too much to ask for. You can develop a working strategy incorporating Holy Water (which is thankfully given to you every time) which involves a lot of patience and not jumping at the wrong moment (i.e. directly into the knives' path), but the fight being drawn-out due to Soleiyu's unpredictable behaviour means that you just have more chances to gently caress up. Hence my final Dark Souls comparison: I feel like I did understand at the end what I had to do, the problem was not making too many mistakes in the span of a very frantic minute or two. That's usually how bosses in the Souls games work for me as well, and finally putting together that string of "little enough gently caress-ups" feels amazing and bestows a great sense of accomplishment. Really wish that didn't come at the tail end of a possible repeat of the same 5-minute-stretch of level each time you die twice; the limited lives given are not at all enough for you to learn the very, very complicated fight in time, so I think the rapid-fire repetition the save state gave me was absolutely vital. Otherwise each attempt has an undercurrent of panic because you really don't want to gently caress up and have to replay the rope room, and that hinders the learning process quite badly, at least for me. I'd have been almost perfectly fine with this level (the fight is still a bit too much on its own) if the checkpoint was right before Soleiyu. Music Passepied [Dracula's Castle Part 2] [I corrected the spelling to the actual French dance, which I had to google] Soleiyu's Room Faith [Talking to Soleiyu] Chromatische Phantasie [Soleiyu Battle] I got sick of the stage music after a while tbh. That's a bit coloured by my experience however, so take that with a grain of salt. I see now however that it's just a 1-minute-loop, that might have something to do with it... The chromatic fantasy (in German) - that's the music motif, not the colour thing, by the way - is a very interesting battle theme which I greatly enjoyed when I didn't get absorbed in the rhythm of whipping. It's quite restrained in its complete focus on a single-track melody, and I feel like playing this on piano would be fuckin' dope. Wonder if there's non-8-bit-remixes? not-edit-while-waiting-for-the-video-upload: of course there is! I knew this was Bach as gently caress. another edit:  this is such a dope sprite
Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Jun 6, 2018 |
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Jun 6, 2018 12:41
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Because edit isn't a new post, I accidentally erased the stage thoughts from the last update. I redid them just now, but if someone has them cached or something (I am brilliant with computers you see), I'd be happy to restore the original text. If not, it's not a big deal I think. Also, this was a lot of work to edit and I hope I managed to make it watchable. I tried showing my process of learning the boss, keeping in my key steps in understanding how it works (aka where I actually say something) while otherwise just cutting to the deaths. Do you think I could improve this (especially if the next boss is equally tough)? Were you bored at any point?
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Jun 6, 2018 13:00
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That Soleiyu sprite needs a shrug animation. That is all.
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Jun 6, 2018 14:30
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They probably expected you to have the high ground above him the whole fight and you throw water on him. It didn't look like he could ever hit you unless he jumps on a platform.
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Jun 6, 2018 22:09
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Scalding Coffee posted:They probably expected you to have the high ground above him the whole fight and you throw water on him. It didn't look like he could ever hit you unless he jumps on a platform. It's actually quite rare to have a fight of that era which you cannot cheese in an obvious way and just have to be GOOD at. Every Mega Man for example has, like, one boss which demands more than pulling of a pattern or really easy manipulation. Let's take MM3: - Snake: always moves the exact same way - Needle: quite tough but you can manipulate him into using the head spike - Gemini: shoots when you shoot (so you have control), then jumps when you shoot (same again), and shoots out lasers in fixed intervals (pattern) - Spark: see Snake - Magnet: always jumps the same way, just alternates attacks afterwards (50%, both have an easy tactic to avoid them) - Hard: the fists are crazy hard to dodge...unless you make them go offscreen, which you can with smart positioning - Top: lol - Shadow: this is the one boss where you need very quick reaction and skill. He can jump twice or three times (randomly), can shoot shuriken or slide (randomly) which both require different jump/slide timings to dodge, and his jump height randomly varies as well. No manipulation, no pattern, it's just balls-hard and sliiiightly unfair because of that.
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Jun 6, 2018 22:17
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Waaait, is there no password available after that boss? That stage was a significant but decent ramp up in difficulty, but drat the boss is going to have made a lot of kids just put the game away back in the day, surely. Can you duck his whip and counterattack the knees?
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Jun 7, 2018 14:15
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Crazy Achmed posted:Waaait, is there no password available after that boss? That stage was a significant but decent ramp up in difficulty, but drat the boss is going to have made a lot of kids just put the game away back in the day, surely. Also, I just beat the game! Woo! That final boss is some serious horseshit I tell you what. I'll have to put a big "SKIP TO WINNING RUN HERE" disclaimer at the start because hoo boy that path to figuring out how it works was an arduous one.
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Jun 7, 2018 21:49
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 balls Stage Thoughts The background is metal as gently caress. ... I think I said most of what I wanted to say in the video; there was ample time for that, after all. This boss is garbage because there is no strategy to it, no action and no thought. You follow an exact pattern which you have to memorize every single step of, or you die. It's like a rhythm game where after three strikes, you're out. Pretty much the polar opposite of Soleiyu who has absolutely no pattern, so no memorization, but who has to be manipulated carefully in order for you to have a chance to succeed; those are two perfect example of how not to do bosses, though I do vastly prefer Soleiyu to Dracula, even if the boy took me longer. It's better to have an overdemanding boss where you are actively engaged, have to think on the fly and react to what he's doing than this ludicrously constricting nonsense where you have to actively spend half an hour just to learn exactly what to do. Music Road of Enemy #2 [Before Dracula] Sons of Satan [Dracula Battle] Union [Ending] The End of the Day [Staff Roll] I was a bit down on Drac's boss music because everything irritated me, but in retrospect, it's half of a good song. The left-to-right scales in the second part are amazing, but the intro is grating and the GB sound chip doesn't do it any favors. Seeing as you'll mostly hear that while you die in confused agony very early, my impression should be understandable. The ending is overly sentimental and does nothing for me (especially not after this pos boss). It's also weirdly sad even though we utterly crushed Dracula for a second time. Maybe it's because the text crawl for some reason demands Soleiyu to immediately start fighting again which is bullshit; if Dracula is so load-bearing (like his minion bosses as well) that the entire castle crumbles, his "armies" should be dust now. Just...let us have a victory, game. I know that many endings from that era were like "but is the threat TRULY over??? Find out in the sequel!!" but I don't think Soleiyu got a sequel game so gently caress it! Whatever! My headcanon is that Christopher can now allow himself to develop a dad bod, become Chillstopher again, and Soleiyu just does the same. The staff roll is nice .Final thoughts that I forgot to express in the video: it's amazing how much of a step up this game is compared to the first Adventure, I cannot stress this enough. For the updates to the engine alone it should be commended, but they also managed to make some quite fine looking stages that are good fun to play as well, so big kudos for that. It's a huge shame that the bosses go from trivial to unreasonable to quickly - there's only two that for me hit the mark in difficulty, and that is Rock Castle's crazy two-phase laser sword armor monster and the bonerdragon. At least most of them are inventive, and the presentation is top-notch for sure. The biggest flaw aside from the two elephants in the room is for me that they went back to wallchicken from the perfectly fine hearts-in-candles of the first game. Making the only way to heal into missable secrets is, for me, a big design misstep to begin with, but making them so hard to find that I only managed for a single one in the entire game is completely unreasonable. I mean, I obviously didn't need it; the stages aren't punishing enough for someone of my skills. But one always has to consider that this game wasn't designed for noted let's player of retro platformers Simon, it was made for kids with an actual Gameboy in hand. Having a struggling kid be denied the very basic element of recovery just because they didn't hit literally all the walls enough is just cruel. In the NES titles, you at least have a big screen where you can have some suspiciously empty corners or nooks underneath staircases where your secret sense will immediately start tingling. There's no such luxury here; my one finding basically boiled down to "I guess I can reach and whip this corner with some decoration on it, maybe". You could argue that because of my skills, I never felt huge pressure to look for the chicken, but whenever I was low on health and searched actively, I couldn't find it. Fortunately, and that has to be praised, apart from one terrible instance the checkpointing is incredibly generous so death is cheap and you'll always get another whip upgrade afterwards. Even a Game Over doesn't make you replay the entire stage, proving that they could have just abolished the lives system in general - hell, unless I'm missing all the secrets (I probably do), there aren't even any extra lives in the game, unless you count point-based ones which I think I got occasionally. I never noticed because I never checked, this is how useless even in this old-rear end game they are. The one thing that weirds me out in regards to checkpointing is how the password system works; as far as I can tell, you only get one if you deliberately select it after a Game Over. So if you finally beat a stage as a kid and are super happy, you can't just save; no, you have to go into another stage (because you can't replay levels), and die until you get a Game Over to finally be able to make your progress permanent. That's a super weird decision and I absolutely do not get it. And I think that covers it all. Goodbye Christopher, you earned the right to chill now! Enjoy it much like I "enjoyed" and then actually enjoyed your two games.
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Jun 8, 2018 10:28
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I gotta admit, I don't know why you found either of those bosses, especially Drac, so difficult. The orb thing is super predictable.
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Jun 8, 2018 23:50
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Corporeal punishment sounds like flagellation, which you have the instruments in hand for it. There is no fun way to fight bosses with an Ashtar (Ninja Gaiden 2) pattern. That they gave you immunity when the eyes close in on him, is a small mercy.
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Jun 9, 2018 01:28
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You'd have had an easier time had you remembered that the second attack has a safe spot on the lower right platform. That's the one you initially discovered, but for some reason you kept trying to use a much more dangerous one at the left edge on the rightmost platform instead, and took a lot of unnecessary hits by being slightly off with your positioning. But yeah - not great design for a boss, but "difficult" isn't really the word. The fight is 100% about figuring out the different safe spots and then just utilizing them. Give Fortress of Fear a try one day, that entire game is about patterns and safe spots.
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Jun 9, 2018 02:07
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Discendo Vox posted:I gotta admit, I don't know why you found either of those bosses, especially Drac, so difficult. The orb thing is super predictable. Calculating curved trajectories like that in your head is actually pretty hard, especially when you've also got to navigate a slow-rear end character with a giant hitbox and find a safe spot he can stand in when there's a limited number of places he can even be.
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Jun 9, 2018 02:18
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Dabir posted:Calculating curved trajectories like that in your head is actually pretty hard, especially when you've also got to navigate a slow-rear end character with a giant hitbox and find a safe spot he can stand in when there's a limited number of places he can even be. Adamant posted:You'd have had an easier time had you remembered that the second attack has a safe spot on the lower right platform. That's the one you initially discovered, but for some reason you kept trying to use a much more dangerous one at the left edge on the rightmost platform instead, and took a lot of unnecessary hits by being slightly off with your positioning. 2) Well, it was difficult for me to figure out . But I agree, it's probably not the right word. Though that goes into an age-old debate of what "real" difficulty (and/or challenge) is, and what "fake" difficulty is. I think the biggest consensus is that the latter is definitely when pure RNG is involved where you really have no chance of reacting, but when things like memorization are involved as in the present case, the border really starts to blur; is you having to memorize the boss exactly maybe simply part of the intended design, the learning curve the challenge, and the difficulty lies in you figuring it out slower/faster/not at all?I tend to approach every game I play with the idea in mind that someone made them to be beaten (I don't play score attack games that have no win condition), and I try to figure out the "intended" way to do so because for me that's part of the fun. Therefore, "difficulty" is something I'd define as a deliberately chosen obstacle by the designer which the player has to overcome. Figuring out how the boss works was that obstacle, and I disagree with the choice that it wasn't possible on reaction alone, but that might overall just be me - I know plenty of people who really like memorization-based gameplay, for them this might be a good fight and actually hit a sweet spot of "difficulty" - because figuring out the pattern is exactly the kind of challenge they desire, the obstacle they enjoy to overcome. 3) Sounds like I'd hate it then  Discendo Vox posted:I gotta admit, I don't know why you found either of those bosses, especially Drac, so difficult. The orb thing is super predictable. And again, I don't know what you mean with "predictable". You could argue that once you've seen him use them in a certain position once, you know where they'll be going from there, but that's memorization again and not, in fact, prediction. If you mean that you can blindly gauge where the attack will go before having seen him use it at all, I strongly disagree, I don't think that this is possible for a normal player; maybe for someone schooled in bullet hell games where bullet patterns are the name of the game (I hate those). If you are further assuming that being able to tell "oh the orbs will go here and here and here" would automatically lead to you being able to maneouver Christopher into a position where he's safe, then I'll feel free to laugh at you and encourage you to try it. You saw the password in the video .
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Jun 9, 2018 10:07
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Dabir posted:Calculating curved trajectories like that in your head is actually pretty hard, especially when you've also got to navigate a slow-rear end character with a giant hitbox and find a safe spot he can stand in when there's a limited number of places he can even be. For this specific attack type I conceptualize it as a straight diagonal attack alternating spaces at sequential arcs...which...well, that makes it sound worse. But what it means is there's always an open space a set distance x and y relative to the enemy- sort of like the positions a knight can move to in chess. I find this boss pretty easy (I've played through this game) because the room is laid out so that for all but one of the positions you can stand a little way back and duck and be fine. I think I've realized the crux of the problem, though- the rotation before the attack makes it seem like the arc varies, when it doesn't. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jun 9, 2018 |
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Jun 9, 2018 17:58
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Crazy Achmed posted:Waaait, is there no password available after that boss? That stage was a significant but decent ramp up in difficulty, but drat the boss is going to have made a lot of kids just put the game away back in the day, surely. This game never gives you passwords after finishing a level, only when you die. Bosses act as checkpoints so yeah, there is a password after the boss.
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Jun 9, 2018 18:30
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Simply Simon posted:3) Sounds like I'd hate it then Yeah, I didn't mean to imply Fortress of Fear was a good game - if anything, it's a great example of how not to make games. It's just an interesting example of a game where every single boss is basically that Dracula fight.
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Jun 9, 2018 19:01
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Scalding Coffee posted:There is no fun way to fight bosses with an Ashtar (Ninja Gaiden 2) pattern. That they gave you immunity when the eyes close in on him, is a small mercy. Maybe that's what I'm remembering instead, but I thought there was a Castlevania or Symphony of the Night boss with that exact pattern as well?
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Jun 9, 2018 19:58
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Well, at least they were slightly merciful and Dracula didn't have an immediate second form. I think that might have been too big an ask, considering the tiny screen. Congrats on another one in the bag.
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Jun 25, 2018 04:26
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Hi guys, just wanted to give the thread some closure (not yet literal) in case anyone was still hoping for me to do an extra, informative post-commentary LP: it's not gonna happen. I was initially thinking it might be neat to see the Game Boy Colour version, but as I found out it looks like utter dogshit and I'd be hard-pressed not to complain about the palette choices in every video. Apart from that, I feel like I showed most things off naturally except for one extra split path in Crystal Castle (I looked up maps to be sure that there weren't any more secret areas and it doesn't look like it). Of course, the health drop locations could be documented but just for that, I don't feel like it. The game is fun especially compared to the first, but not that good to demand that kind of effort tbh. I watched a speedrun by the way, and apart from confirming that all the health items the runner uses after tanking damage are in completely moronic places (think "inside the first step of a raised platform" or "an unmarked corner in the middle of a hallway"), I could also see the ideal speed skill tactic for Soleiyu and Drac: throw axes perfectly until you can just tank him for the former, and do exactly what I did for the latter. So yeah, if someone wants to use this as a guide, they can, mission accomplished. I have therefore requested archiving for this thread. Still interested in doing the third GB game blind, as someone specifically wanted me to do - I had a lot of real life fun (and work) until now, but it should be a good time to do another bite-sized LP. Unless Legends is a super long nightmare - we'll see . I'll post here once it starts so you don't miss it!
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Jul 2, 2018 13:52
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I lost track of this thread during GDQ but just want to say thanks for the LP, it was enjoyable to watch.
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Jul 2, 2018 17:01
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Hey ho, this thread isn't archived yet which is usually when I close it, but I think I'll do it regardless after this announcement: Castlevania Legends Let's Play is up! Get hype for the final installment of the Game Boy series (but not too hype, please)!
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Oct 1, 2018 10:23
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