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Medullah posted:Any standouts? Kandria is a very good game and definitely metroidvania-adjacent but it doesn't have the ability gating that a lot of people (including me) consider to be the defining aspect of the genre. Everything's open to you from the beginning of the game. ultrafilter fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Mar 4, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 19:29
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Tevi is good, Rain World is not a metroidvania and you have an equal chance of it being your favourite game ever or loathing it with a passion with little in between.
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Mar 4, 2024 19:41
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Rain World suffers from not really being like many other games and so being hard to describe. It's a platformer in an open world, so sure, it's a metroidvania. I loving guess.
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Mar 4, 2024 20:35
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What's the map situation like in Rain World? Metroid-vania-y?
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Mar 4, 2024 20:55
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3 of the 4 Shantae games are part of this sale, and I've heard good things about the series... Shantae: Risky's Revenge - Director's Cut is $4.99 USD Shantae And The Pirate's Curse is $9.99 USD Shantae: Half-Genie Hero is $6.99 USD Those are Shantae 2, 3, and 4, respectivly. It seems that 1 never made it to PC, so it's only on GBC, Switch, and PS4 & 5. Shantae 5, Shantae And The Seven Sirens is on PC, but not on sale (30bux USD), and Shantae 6, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution will be released for GBA later this year, and then Switch, PS4/5, and Windows ports will happen some time after.
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Mar 4, 2024 22:10
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On The Internet posted:What's the map situation like in Rain World? Metroid-vania-y? It's kinda hard to read. Here's the in-game map of (part of) the starting area, as a sample:  The half-visible areas in the background are part of the same area.
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Mar 4, 2024 22:21
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Kheldarn posted:3 of the 4 Shantae games are part of this sale, and I've heard good things about the series... All of the Shantae games are good, but how good they are varies, and how metroidvania-y they are also varies. Half-Genie Hero is my favorite by a comfortable margin, but it is also level-based, not open-world. I was a bit disappointed in Seven Sirens.
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Mar 4, 2024 22:24
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On the metroidvania scale Shantae are Wonderboy games. Apart from the one that's Megaman X.
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Mar 4, 2024 23:38
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I really bounced off Rain World, and that's saying something. It's aggressively obtuse and cuddly with its controls.
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Mar 5, 2024 00:01
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Nostalgamus posted:It's kinda hard to read. Here's the in-game map of (part of) the starting area, as a sample: No grid map? No deal. 
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Mar 5, 2024 02:55
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Probably worth mentioning this months humble bundle has Afterimage in it.
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Mar 5, 2024 21:04
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Rain World felt like a psyop. Absolutely hated it. I'd recommend Phoenotopia: Awakening with the caveat that it's not really a metroidvania. Its lineage is way closer to Zelda 2 with side view 2d areas connected by a top down 2d overworld. It can also be more difficult than people are typically looking for in the genre. But it is a massive game with tons of puzzles and secrets to discover. New equipment opens up a variety of new routes over the course of the game too. There's also a pleasant downtempo vibe to exploring and just wandering around to chat with people. I bought it a while back on a lark during a sale and it ended up being one of my surprise favorites of the year. I'm also a big fan of Rusted Moss but that's a much more difficult recommend because it's actually really difficult. It's got a pretty unique aesthetic and the bungee grappling mechanic has a lot of nuance that's explored on a pretty well paced curve. Some of the platforming can be fiendishly difficult but satisfying once you've gotten the hang of the mechanics. But I think it's worth checking out if you don't mind a challenge and are interested in seeing something that doesn't hew so close to the genre formula.
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Mar 5, 2024 21:51
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Finally getting into Lone Fungus and it's really interesting. I just wish there weren't so many pointless corridors with nothing to do but avoid craptons of enemies in them. It feels like the map could be shrunk to like half the size without losing any of the actually interesting spots. Also sometimes the way it handles momentum feels like it's cheating to make certain challenges work. Like it takes inspiration from Celeste, but Celeste manages to build up such consistent rules that you always know exactly how stuff is gonna work... I definitely don't feel that way in this game
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Mar 6, 2024 01:21
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welp I beat Lone Fungus. some fun stuff but really held back by those complaints I had last post. Would definitely try the next game by this creator but I felt burned out despite getting all the ladybugs, mindshrooms, health and sword upgrades in less than 10 hours. the world felt very crudely thrown together with a ton of filler areas and overall was just not memorable or particularly interesting, which is a pretty huge issue in these games
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Mar 6, 2024 14:04
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Played 9 Years of Shadows. It was pretty bleh. The music, art, sprite work are all 10/10 and there are so many neat gameplay ideas and the bosses are fun to fight so I wanted to love it. But the game just works against itself in so many ways. The central gameplay mechanic is your health bar is also your ammo bar, but all that means is you never shoot your gun and exclusively wack things with your axe, because the only way to refill your health is to run out of ammo and then refilling it from 0. The story and characters are also painfully dull and generic despite the designs. The castle is also just really empty. There’s nothing to really find by exploring except health upgrades. The non bosses are all pallet swaps that don’t really move. The enemies have color coded weaknesses that you can’t take advantage of because 90% of the game takes place in one of 3 versions of a room that only allows you to wear one color of armor, which are meaningless anyway because they all have identical move sets. I straight up quit playing at the last boss because the last area removes your ability to refill your ammo/health you’ve been using all game. Instead you can only just sit and wait for it to slowly fill up after letting it sit at zero for awhile while the boss takes potshots at you and you have no health/ammo for your endgame only abilities. I said “this isn’t fun this is bullshit I’m not wasting my time on this” and put down the game. Seriously I would have given the game a much better rating if not for that finale.
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Mar 8, 2024 02:00
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galagazombie posted:Played 9 Years of Shadows. It was pretty bleh. The music, art, sprite work are all 10/10 and there are so many neat gameplay ideas and the bosses are fun to fight so I wanted to love it. But the game just works against itself in so many ways. The central gameplay mechanic is your health bar is also your ammo bar, but all that means is you never shoot your gun and exclusively wack things with your axe, because the only way to refill your health is to run out of ammo and then refilling it from 0. The story and characters are also painfully dull and generic despite the designs. The castle is also just really empty. There’s nothing to really find by exploring except health upgrades. The non bosses are all pallet swaps that don’t really move. The enemies have color coded weaknesses that you can’t take advantage of because 90% of the game takes place in one of 3 versions of a room that only allows you to wear one color of armor, which are meaningless anyway because they all have identical move sets. I straight up quit playing at the last boss because the last area removes your ability to refill your ammo/health you’ve been using all game. Instead you can only just sit and wait for it to slowly fill up after letting it sit at zero for awhile while the boss takes potshots at you and you have no health/ammo for your endgame only abilities. I said “this isn’t fun this is bullshit I’m not wasting my time on this” and put down the game. Seriously I would have given the game a much better rating if not for that finale. You would have gotten the bad ending anyway. Unlock the insane white armor so you constantly Regen health, it turns the whole final sequence into the Hyper Beam from Super Metroid.
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Mar 8, 2024 06:07
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Fuzz posted:You would have gotten the bad ending anyway. Unlock the insane white armor so you constantly Regen health, it turns the whole final sequence into the Hyper Beam from Super Metroid. Wait I did have the white armor, or do you mean there’s an upgraded white armor I missed?
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Mar 8, 2024 06:25
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galagazombie posted:Wait I did have the white armor, or do you mean there’s an upgraded white armor I missed? The smith guy upgrades it with the bits you get from finishing all the npc sidequests.
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Mar 8, 2024 08:28
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I got the final upgrade and the last boss was still bullshit? I also quit after that, tired of the games many flaws. The chess boss was cool though. No more multiple stage bosses please!
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Mar 8, 2024 08:58
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I did enjoy it enough (or perhaps am stubborn enough) to beat the final boss but I do fundamentally agree that completely changing what has until that point been the signature mechanic of the game is perhaps not the most amazing idea.
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Mar 8, 2024 09:29
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Rusted Moss was super cool, but getting the Rocket Launcher about 90 minutes in felt like it broke the game. Using that for jumping basically totally destroyed most platforming challenges, it would be like finding the Space Jump in Metroid a random "slightly off the beaten path" room. And then as a result I never even fully learned some of the grappling hook mechanics (specifically what the upgrade even does) until the very final time trial challenge thingy. At one point I also apparently randomly guessed a password by hitting some bells for like 30 seconds, lol I'm down for sequence breaking and stuff, it's just just that I didn't even mean to do that, I thought I was exploring normally. But then I found that item and my sense of progression was right out the window. I do think I'll look at some speed runs because the movement mechanics are fantastic. Really a lot of great stuff, solid 8/10 at least, I just wish they were a little more thoughtful about gating your exploration.
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Mar 8, 2024 12:39
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Best advice for Rusted Moss. There's a laboratory area near the end of the game. Do everything you want to do in that area BEFORE you finish the objective there or something permanent and very bad happens that makes it a lot less fun to navigate after that. I learnt this the hard way.
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Mar 8, 2024 15:42
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I didn’t think the last part of 9 years of shadows was that hard in isolation, it took me a few tries, but it was extremely jarring in context next to the very easy rest of the game and however the devs meant it to feel, it didn’t land. it’s really weird that it presents the white armor as gaining your ultimate game-trivializing level of power like the screw attack in metroid or whatever, except it rugpulls the near-immortality you’ve had for the rest of the game at the same time so you actually feel incredibly weak at the end, which is not how a metroidvania should go.
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Mar 8, 2024 17:13
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16 hours later I finished Ultros, what a fascinatingly weird little game. Got a bit tedious in the back half futzing about with plants but I had fun overall largely due to how refreshingly different it was. Trying to connect the shamans in the last 3 zones is around when I started to sour on it, between the variety of possible paths that wind up ending in rooms/hallways that simply cannot have plants, needing to constantly reset to make fed creatures generate planting zones/get more of the actually useful seeds AKA staccati, it got rather repetitive.
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Mar 10, 2024 06:50
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Quick question, I procrastinated on the sale so I'm probably going with the first answer, is any of the Rabi Ribi DLC worth it? Tevi coming out reminded me I never played Rabi Ribi and I'm looking to grab it now since it doesn't seem to go on sale that often. I notice the Super UPRPRC edition has both of the dlcs that seem to be content in it but brings the total to twice as much as the base game.
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Mar 11, 2024 14:00
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The two content DLCs are basically more of the base game so it really depends on how much you like it. OTOH one's free and the other is $3 so it's not like you're out much if you end up not that wild about it.
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Mar 11, 2024 14:09
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ultrafilter posted:The two content DLCs are basically more of the base game so it really depends on how much you like it. OTOH one's free and the other is $3 so it's not like you're out much if you end up not that wild about it. Oh I guess "Cocoa Mode and Before Next Adventure" is primarily the second playable character, and not so much a bunch more game? Yeah I don't usually play these twice in a row so that can probably wait for next sale. -edit Also, I just finished Vernal Edge, which isn't in that Metroidvania sale but IS on sale for $8.50 at Fanatical and that game seems very underrated. The pacing is about right at 13 hours or so, the juggle-heavy combat has a nice 2D Devil May Cry sort of feel, and the movement upgrades are very fun and make backtracking through a lot of areas pretty great. Plus the writing is okay and the character portraits are incredible at times, I love the sort of Final Fantasy Tactics adjacent character style, and I would never have expected to see literacy as an upgrade in a Metroidvania but that's a fun use of the "memory implant" explanation for the upgrades. My only complaints are that some areas are too labyrinthine, and they especially tend to be the ones that also don't have a map, the music is pretty mid, and there's a few areas that don't have music for effect that go on way too long for areas that don't have music. Definitely looking forward to whatever they do next. Captain France fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 17:28
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Crossposting from the new releases thread: Rebel Transmute quote:Battle your way through a living planet in Rebel Transmute, a sprawling 2D action-exploration epic! Embody Moon Mikono as you explore, reprogram your abilities, duel twisted sci-fi experiments, rebel against colonizers, and search for your long lost mother. 100% out of 4. 10% launch discount and it's bundled with Haiku the Robot.
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Mar 11, 2024 19:39
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I just finished Islets. After a miserable time with Ultros, I wanted to play a 'vania that was more on the fun side. Islets was perfect for that, not too challenging but a few bosses gave me a bit of trouble, nothing too serious though. And you can usually always run in to the boss fight from a save point, no corpse runs here. Finished in a bit over 8 hours with 100% map completion and all 60 upgrades. I really liked the smoothness of mobility and abilities, you can chain jumps, double jumps, rolls, wall climb etc. together really well and feel like you're always moving swiftly. A bit of a surprise was that whenever you fight in your airship, the combat is a bullet hell shooter. I completely suck at those but the game is pretty lenient and those parts aren't too tough either. It has a Ghibli-esque aesthetic that looks really soothing. I believe it was made by a single dev and his brother makes the music. Their upcoming 2024 game Crypt Custodian looks pretty fun too, and if it's similar quality than Islets, it's a sure buy for me.  
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Mar 11, 2024 22:43
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They also did SHEEPO, which is well worth checking out.
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Mar 12, 2024 00:01
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I just finished up Rusted Moss after 15 hours and my god what a fantastic game with tons of rewarding gameplay that has some gnarly rough edges in the optional content. The final climbing challenge in particular really highlighted a bunch of flaws and had me agitated but was still a compelling experience. I wound up cheesing the true final boss with bullet erasure trinkets because I don't know how else it's even possible. I got 100% but absolutely want to go back some day and explore all the sequence breaking related things! Very few games offer that option or are fun enough that I want to try. My hands absolutely hate me for it though, twinstick precision grappling platformer is too much. Going to jump into Rebel Transmute next. Backed it on Kickstarter and been waiting years for it to come out.
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Mar 13, 2024 08:19
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Swilo posted:Going to jump into Rebel Transmute next. Backed it on Kickstarter and been waiting years for it to come out.
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Mar 14, 2024 01:07
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About 4 hours in and it's a grab bag of all the big names in the genre. Looks like Metroid, sounds like Environmental Station Alpha, story like Axiom Verge, combat like Hollow Knight. I'm still waiting for it to do something original or memorable but it at least hasn't offended me, though the early bosses have been fairly bland. It just plonked some quest markers on my map before I had to stop and they're super far away so it certainly won't be a short game.
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Mar 14, 2024 10:05
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Rebel Transmute trip report: 16 hours and finished the game. Wound up with 99% completion and no idea what's missing because I've been everywhere and done everything  The dev has been putting out patches daily that mess with progress and items so I'm not going to worry about it, and it doesn't sound like anything would happen anyway.Overall a very good game but it's in a bit of rough shape right now. Lots of bugs like clipping into or through geometry, dropped inputs, phantom collision detection, framerate stutter, rooms on the map not filling in, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. Nothing that will ruin the experience outright, but definitely noticeable in the more precise sections. I wasn't even trying to break anything, it's just obviously lacking polish in some aspects. Like most other games it is painfully stingy with how many augments (this game's version of a charm/badge/perk/etc) you can equip at a time, and most are way too situational to be fun or have some terrible downside. I found a ton that were uninteresting or practically useless, a handful that were required for platforming puzzles, and a few that I left on permanently once I found enough capacity upgrades. The movement started to feel like Mega Man X after obtaining the air dash, very smooth and fun to execute. There were plenty of platforming puzzles utilizing all the movement abilities it gives you which is always nice to see, though the rewards were often another augment I'd never touch or some money I didn't need. It did start to feel like its own thing and had some cool interactions between the abilities, like activating a super swim and extending it between bodies of water via bouncing. It did not, however, show off or tutorialize or mention some of this stuff exists; you're just expected to work it out while struggling to reach an item or area. It was very strange because they do go out of their way to explain most of the basic moveset as you acquire them in the first half. Progress was very open-ended; this is not a linear game. It felt like there were multiple routes available through the mid-game and you will get lost frequently and backtrack to all your pins and unexplored rooms trying to figure it out. I stumbled across two bosses "early" that I had no hope of defeating and was never sure if I accidentally sequence broke or it's intended that you retreat and try your luck elsewhere. I'm still not sure if I ever sequence broke or what the designed route is because the game's version of a high jump is absurdly overpowered. It's also got something comparable to infinite bomb jumping that could really get you lost and possibly softlocked. The plot was very meh. I'd dislike it more except it didn't crop up very often and all the conversations are rather short and easily skipped. The basic premise is evil space capitalism a la Weyland-Yutani from Aliens sprinkled with pro-union sentiments. The ending was quite abrupt and left many unanswered questions and some unresolved threads.
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Mar 17, 2024 09:55
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Grime has some charm but geez it is ugly. and apparently I already made a vendor of unique armor disappear by killing a boss?? i don't see how this improves the experience at all
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Mar 18, 2024 13:47
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If I recall those pieces can be obtained later on anyway, but unless the set bonus on the armor was something that really fits the build you’re going for then it doesn’t matter overly much.
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Mar 18, 2024 13:52
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May 9th. https://store.steampowered.com/app/813230/ANIMAL_WELL/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhB6dLh9nn4
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Mar 18, 2024 13:58
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Tortolia posted:If I recall those pieces can be obtained later on anyway, but unless the set bonus on the armor was something that really fits the build you’re going for then it doesn’t matter overly much. Martman fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Mar 18, 2024 |
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Mar 18, 2024 14:03
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I’ve been playing Afterimage (it’s great!). I couldn’t figure out how to get past the misty waters and it turns out there’s some kind of bug tied to triggers you don’t hit if you bounce off enemies to sequence break into some areas early. I only realized it now because I went looking online to understand what I was missing. I’m basically done the rest of the game outside of the areas accessible via the power I would get there. Now to figure out if I can recover the save in some way. If not, I’ll probably just drop it and consider it beaten.
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Mar 18, 2024 16:53
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Okay I'm vibing with Grime now. It's much more Igavania than I was expecting; I'm definitely more of a Metroid person, but this is still really fun to find broken builds and just abuse the hell out of enemies. I found the "recover 4/8/12/16/20% HP per parry" ability and I dunno it might just flat out be too strong. It's kinda goofy how much it changes the game. The boss fights are pretty fun but so far they're a lot easier than random encounters where some exploding poo poo might take almost all of my health bar. Collecting abilities by mastering the parry timings on all the enemies is a really great idea; in a Castlevania game you might have RNG drops but this is just way better. And the hunt points being tied to unique enemies is a pretty cool way to gate the upgrades. I still think a lot of it is kind of ugly, but I'm impressed by the commitment to the aesthetic. After a while the music and just, strangeness of the vibes is getting genuinely unsettling and I have to stop playing.
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Mar 19, 2024 16:27
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