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I was on a bit of a metroidvania kick last year, but I think that kinda stalled out after playing Dread. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet the game that invented most of the key bits of the genre and may be the first metroidvania game.
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Oct 1, 2022 04:39
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ExcessBLarg! posted:If folks agree to call OG Zelda a Metroidvania, like, fine, but that's certainly an expansion of the genre relative to what it's been traditionally. I mean we could've called it Melda or Zeldroid all the way back in 1987. "Traditionally" the term originated from talking about just the Castlevania franchise and trying to refer to the more open-world, exploration-based Castlevanias like Symphony of the Night following the formula of Metroid, as opposed to the rest of the franchise that was more the standard linear for platformers. They were figuring out what was different about those Castlevanias from the other Castlevanias, and figured that they were more like Metroid. And I think that it's worth noting that most of those aspects that make Metroidvanias special were invented before Metroid, by Zelda. It's the organic exploration with upgrades that steadily open up more over time as you get items to overcome obstacles. And it's a lot easier to revisit the original Zelda than it is to revisit the original Metroid. Plebian Parasite posted:What's the best upgrade in a Metroidvania? The best abilities are the ones that you can use in regular gameplay as opposed to being context-sensitive to just one spot to open one door.
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Oct 2, 2022 17:43
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King of Solomon posted:This is just me, but I don't think Ender Lilies is particularly good. It's mediocre at best. How many games have a good grappling hook though? I feel like that's one of the upgrades I often see that can only be used at specific predetermined points. I think one of the only games I've seen that give you a freeform grapple is Environmental Station Alpha.
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Oct 3, 2022 18:22
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Yeah, Arkham Asylum had pretty fantastic pacing to keep you from wearing out with plenty of quiet time between big moments, and a nice varied mix of gameplay, but that's the number one thing you lose when going to a totally open world. Arkham City even tries to stop you from staying focused and on-task because the sidequests really do their best to distract you from getting on with the main mission.
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Oct 29, 2022 06:46
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Hollow Knight is a cool world and a fun game, and there's some nice art that provokes emotion part of which being how viscerally uncomfortable Deepnest is. Gameplay challenge is a mixed bag because it's fun, but it also means that you can get stuck at a tougher boss, and if you're not in good condition at the moment like if you're sick, you just can't play. If it's been a long time since you last played, you kinda have to get back in the groove before you get the challenge. As opposed to Shovel Knight, which I regularly plow through when I'm feeling down. For some reason, with platformers where you have ranged weapons, I just can never play the games derived from Megaman right, but I do enjoy all the games derived from Metroid. I don't really know what it is that one clicks better than the other.
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Nov 7, 2022 21:14
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No Dignity posted:Come on man, Diablo and the Cyberdemon are both demons and that's about it. Hollow Knight is literally a nameless wander exploring the desicated ruins of an old kingdom, gradually uncovering how the world fell to ruin and claiming the Lordsouls to unseal the lock placed on final boss that will lead to a resolution of the stagnating status quo. You even have a cast of quirky NPCs with their own agendas and quests travelling through the land whose stories you can intersect with and a Firelink style hub where the last few sane survivors have conregated to form a small community and base of operations for the player. It is practically a bugsona Dark Souls fic Much like how Bug Fables is a bugsona version of Paper Mario. I am all in favor of more bugsona games.
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Nov 8, 2022 00:11
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Mostly it's Hollow Knight's tone and having basically the same setup as most every From Software game (and a few elements that make it more specific to Dark Souls as opposed to like Lost Kingdoms or King's Field), but there's some aspect of thinking critically about melee combat that makes people think of Dark Souls. A lot of the way NPCs work resemble some in Dark Souls, but the only direct parallel is Siegmeyer. And one of the things that's fairly unique about Dark Souls is how it will take moments to really depict the sad beauty of a ruined world, and that's something that Hollow Knight leans into even stronger and sadder. The game is very pretty, and the way that every save point is a bench is really calming. It really takes full advantage of 2D animation for every character, and every screenshot looks fantastic.    I think at around the midgame where you get the dreamnail the game starts to go in a different direction aesthetically from Dark Souls, but it still has some heavy Dark Souls themes to it, and the aesthetic is deep enough in the game's DNA that it goes back to the original gamejam game before it was even made into a sidescroller, Hungry Knight.
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Nov 8, 2022 01:12
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A weird thing about Dark Souls is that a lot of the unique aspects that people focus on when they get frustrated are in plenty of other games as well, just Dark Souls developed unique mechanics about it to more directly integrate into the gameplay process. Like there's a whole system with healing being an active process that takes time, but the alternative system that other games use is pausing and going into a menu to heal, which is less integrated into the process. Making healing an active mechanic, especially one that you can recharge, makes it a much more active decision. Of course, I much prefer the part of gameplay where you're exploring an area and managing your own health against attrition rather than the boss fights. The approach to death they have is also unique because the alternative that most games use is just restarting you at the previous checkpoint with all your progress erased as if it never happened, maybe decreasing some life counter. Dark Souls tries to turn death into something else to think about more actively. How well they manage to change the way people's look on death can be hit or miss though. You get to keep the items that you picked up after death, but that means much less in a game that relies less on inventory like Hollow Knight.
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Nov 8, 2022 18:46
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Steamworld Dig 2 is a Metroidvania specifically because the gimmick of the Steamworld series is to make every game fit into a different genre. I think Wuppo also counts, although it can be exceptionally shallow for what people want from a Metroidvania. It's very little. Yoku's Island was annoying at times, and probably I don't generally enjoy pinball much, but the sheer novelty and zaniness of the premise and setting make up for it. It only really gets frustrating when trying to get all the collectables, which I feel weirdly more compelled to try 100%ing medtroidvanias than other games.
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Nov 9, 2022 04:26
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I think one of the biggest advantages Metroidvanias have (or maybe even another defining feature) is that the way they work where you're supposed to just organically feel your way around the area to figure out where you can go and where you can't mean that they need much less artifice like cutscenes and dialogue to guide you. Maybe metroidvanias can't work if they put in too much artifice to distract the player even. It seems very important to how they work for the player to have a lot of control and not be overruled . Which may also be why it took a while for the genre to really coalesce into something and take off. Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night were masterpieces of their days, but what made them work were things that videogames were moving away from with the development of other genres to fit the new developing technology. More games wanted to play around in the new possibilities of 3D rather than be limited to 2D. It took a long time to really be able to handle big fully integrated worlds in 3D, so there had to be separate worlds and levels and a lot of excuses for low draw distance. And if you really want to show off the new tech, it's easier to do with finely sculpted cutscenes and setpieces rather than risk the player wandering around and breaking something. It took the lower specs and functionality of the GameBoy Advance and later the less resources of the budding indie scene for the genre to really get established as a thing that was here for good, and then eventually inspire the AAA developers to try returning to their roots for their major titles with more player freedom and less artifice. Either way, it's a real nice feeling with these games to be able to pick up and play without much getting in the way of actually getting to the gameplay and have the freedom to poke around on my own.
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Nov 13, 2022 05:56
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I've returned to Hollow Knight to try psyching myself up to finish it, and I forgot that on top of borrowing heavily thematically and mechanically from Dark Souls and Metroidvania (heavier on the Metroid than the Vania with the organic areas and a number of the enemies), there's also a lot of Miyazaki influence. Some of the designs, and obviously the quality animation probably has some thoughts of it, but much more in the music. It's an odd choice to have this ruined kingdom where a number of areas are still full of life, but it works. It's like how the story and setting may be so bleak, but the artstyle is so cute. In some ways, the more upbeat parts of the game may be some of the most mature? Like some of the more serious or sad areas feel kinda like something people would be fascinated with in adolescence, but the people that can put on a smile in times of most duress seems like a thing adults would be more focused on. Most of the NPCs seem to have happy ends as well, and there's maybe three functional societies still hanging around Hollownest, mostly unconcerned with the downfall of the kingdom at large.
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Nov 18, 2022 07:48
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Velius posted:This is the thread for games with plots like, and I paraphrase, edit: spoiler alert! You are a super galactic bounty hunter who has to go to a planet and kill Space Pirates and get super powerful and one of them is a big brain and then the planet blows up then you lose those super powers and go fight space pirates and one of them is a big brain and an alien decides you’re it’s mom and then it dies and you get it’s dna in you somehow and get super powerful and kill the brain then the planet explodes (again) then lose that powers and do this again a few times while a stupid robot voice calls you Lady. So I’m not really sure what your rants are about - axiom verge is hardly sillier than any other ones. Thanks for the insightful contributions to the thread though! That's the plot of four games put together. But yeah, a lot of metroidvania plots get pretty silly if you look at the plot directly, but most of the meat of the games doesn't have much plot at all.
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Nov 29, 2022 02:50
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avoraciopoctules posted:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1872680/The_Knight_Witch/ It looks neat, but if the character flies all the time, then it's not really a platformer like I'm used to with these games, and I'm not a fan of the number of projectiles I'm seeing. The card system is certainly something. Makes me think of Lost Kingdoms. It's certainly trying some interesting things and looks very pretty, I just think that it's probably not gonna be my speed. There's a demo if anyone's interested.
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Dec 1, 2022 07:07
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I got the first Axiom Verge on sale and and I've been playing through it. I get the feeling I'm something like 75% through since I'm in the phase where actual plot developments start and where to go next for the next gets unclear, so you really have to just scour everywhere. It's okay, but I think overall nothing special. I got the sense from reviews when it came out that it was significant mainly for being a new Metroidvania at a time when there hadn't been one for a while and the genre hadn't taken off in the indie scene yet rather than being particularly unique or significant. It definitely wants to be more on the Metroid side of things than the Vania, but it seems to more broadly want to homage the whole NES and SNES era, but with muddier, grosser graphics. At least after the first area it turns away from the flesh aesthetic. That actually made me kinda sick. The glitching stuff is kind of interesting, and there's one actually novel traversal mechanic, but I think probably the most innovative mechanic is the way that the low health beeping fades out after a little while so that it's not as annoying. The level layout isn't very good, and makes me appreciate how other games have more thought to their structure with main pathways to branch off of rather than just everything kinda laid out at random. When backtracking, there's not really any upgrades to get around faster or easier. The game also gives you a wide array of weapons, which suffers from there seldom being any reason to ever use more than one or two weapons, and also the weapon switching system is really bad on a controller. Aesthetically, there's some interesting designs, but it's very much just trying to be wild and crazy videogame stuff rather than looking like anything specific (except when it's trying to be gross). The plot is barely there, but what is there sounds dumb. Not super dumb, which might've been more fun, just a standard amount of dumb.
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Dec 21, 2022 01:46
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I think from what I've heard from analyses of Jordan Peterson's actual prose is that he usually does his best to be mostly vapid and not really say anything, and it's just from context with other stuff and what he says in public that it really goes bad.
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Dec 26, 2022 05:53
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Alternatively, Jedi Fallen Order, which has some kind of Metroid Prime exploration vibes, and much less body horror. I guess an issue with 3D games trying to have a Metroidvania feel is that while in 2D you can just feel out all of the spaces in the area by using a version of the "hand on the wall" trick, a fully 3D area has too much space to have that kind of intimacy with all boundaries. Axiom Verge 1 really makes you wander through the entire world every time you find an upgrade to figure out where the next progression is and the way that one of the few mobility upgrades is going through walls means that while that's a cool unique ability, it's a lot less intuitive to find the newly opened area. I think I got into striking range of the end, but when I hit a boss fight that's basically Mother Brain but a different angle and more bullet hell, I think I'm gonna move on from that.
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Jan 2, 2023 18:48
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Serephina posted:4) Likewise, Is Metroid: Samus Returns (2017) playable on PC? I loved all 2d Metroids (Fusion being the lowest point imo?) and have just heard of this title from wikipedia. It's Nintendo, so your only PC option is emulation and :files:, and alternatively you could check out AM2R or emulate the original Metroid 2.
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Jan 29, 2023 17:38
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Item Getter posted:Do any games in this genre make enemies in previously visited areas eventually stop spawning? It kind of seems like a common issue with these games that you eventually get tired of fighting the same groups of enemies every time while backtracking looking for items and such. Or a passive ability to make weaker enemies stop appearing like some JRPGs with random encounters have. Late-game super powered abilities like Screw Attack that trivialize most enemies aren't exactly the same thing since they still require a minimal level of engagement. Part of the idea of putting extensive backtracking in the game is to use going through old areas as a way to extend the amount of gameplay without having to make entirely new areas, so ideally it'd be fun to go through old areas after a while of being away. It does get particularly annoying towards the Castlevania end of things though, where they really like making transit through long hallways into a war of attrition, a marathon through a gauntlet. I think there are some games where earlier areas get all the old enemies killed by story events leaving them spookily quiet, but I don't remember specifically which ones. Often it's the other way around where lategame enemies pop up in old areas to refresh things. Sakurazuka posted:The closest I can think of are the Souls style ones where everything stays dead until you hit a bonfire equivalent. Technically in Dark Souls if you go far enough away from an area where you killed some enemies, they will respawn without you resting at a bonfire, but the fact that the game is hard and the world puts so many areas closer together with shortcuts makes it hard to notice.
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Feb 22, 2023 16:10
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I found SteamWorld Dig 1 pretty fun, but of course it's not a full-on exploration game. You just go down further and further hunting for more resources. There are a couple of plot points that you might like before jumping into Steamworld Dig 2: TWIST: Actually 2 games came before Steamworld Dig 2, and the series originated as DS game with SteamWorld Tower Defense that I don't think you can even play anymore. That details the story of the development of Steambots that were originally built by humans to mine and protect their gold, but at some point that went awry because they wouldn't let humans who had grown lazy and indolent access any of the gold that they had been entrusted with. SteamWorld Tower Defense depicts their war against the humans as they try to attack the Steambots to get the gold. By the time of SteamWorld Dig, all humans had gone underground and lived as mutated "shiners". SteamWorld Dig is about Rusty inheriting his uncle's mine and digging and finding some strange technology to upgrade himself, and when he dug down far enough, he found Vectron, an abandoned world of devices powered by a mysterious force of "electricity", and an ancient supercomputer at the center of it all that had absorbed Rusty's uncle and lured Rusty there because it needed a steambot with a "powerful heart" to takeover and usher in a new age. Rusty killed Voltbot, but the final scene implies maybe he was tainted by Vectron technology? It's ambiguous. The game series has weird goal of being a new different genre for each game, and the one they're doing next is a game about managing a mine and workers. Ciaphas posted:steamworld dig 2 was great. i wish the ending wasn't such a downer though Not as down as you'd think. Not like Steambots need air to breathe.
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Feb 28, 2023 03:41
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Char posted:I'm a bit under the weather, I didn't want to follow up on text-heavy games, so I tried ticking a checkbox on my "ancient games backlog" - I started Super Metroid. What in particular didn't you like about the controls? I feel like there's something about 2D platformer shooting that just works better for me if it's descended from Metroid instead of Megaman, and I'm not sure what. I think the last few times I played Super Metroid here was a weird thing where I had to swap some buttons around because it didn't quite feel right to me otherwise. Luckily that's not even an emulator-only thing, the original game has a way to swap button binding (pretty unusual for a SNES game too). Other than that there's the whole issue with shinesparking that I never can do right, but you're probably not up to that yet.
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Mar 2, 2023 21:48
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BurningBeard posted:Yo goons. I’m looking for a new game to play that I don’t have to overthink and metroidvanias are probably my best bet while still being deep enough to play around with. So in the interest of that what would you guys recommend say from the last five-seven years? There's not really that many specifically combat-light metroidvanias. I guess Wuppo or Yoku's Island Express, but those don't exactly have tight controls (and considering how Yoku's Island Express). VVVVVV might be your jam, but it has a very specific kind of platforming and a world without that much detail. La Mulana is more exploration-focused than combat, but it's very hard, and the final boss is also very hard. I've also heard things about Toki Tori 2, but I don't really know anything about that. If you split up what you were looking for between exploration and platforming, I'd say on the exploration side, there's A Short Hike and Subnautica. On the platforming side, Shovel Knight. I also often feel the want to recommend some old online free games I played like Clarence's Big Chance and Redder (which you could also pay money for if you wanted).
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Apr 15, 2023 18:30
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It's one of those projects that somebody was working on for a long, long time, and presumably lost the thread of what they were doing a couple times along the way. It took like 8 years to make.
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Apr 16, 2023 22:30
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I never got around to playing AM2R, I'm surprised how into it people are. I had heard how it was a more linear game as opposed to normal Metroid style. There's also a video essay by the Game Maker's Toolkit guy who makes the argument that the jank of the original Metroid 2 gives it a kind of survival horror feel, that ends up lost when the remakes give you lots of quality of life improvements, or even badass action movie moments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WkEoYvlUF0 Although if you're not worrying about capturing the vibe of the original, the changes don't matter as much as creating a new fun experience. I get the impression that Samus Returns wants to be outright revisionist about making Samus into a bold, fearless hero.
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Jul 7, 2023 16:42
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The way people look at Super Metroid is always a little confusing to me because the sequence-breaking was largely not an intentional part of the game, so on modern games with thorough bug-testing, there's normally not going to be very much you can mess around with. But Castlevania having a lot less mobility or mobility upgrades compared to Metroid means that there's less systems to even begin to use to screw around with things.
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Jul 13, 2023 16:53
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It'd certainly be neat if more games planned for sequence breaks, but it seems like it's hard for games to plan for that, and more often you'll just see games where there's a nonlinear path of progression. I think a lot of Nintendo sequence breaks and exploits come more from the games being designed from the ground up by designing systems for the players to be mobile, and that giving players a bunch of tools to use in ways that designers did not intend (as well as some bugs from the games being early and experimental). Which I think not a lot of games these days are designed from the ground up around just giving the player a bunch of options for moving around, so you often lack that sort of toolset to even begin to experiment. Swilo posted:More games need to be Metroid sci-fi/horror run-and-gun, I'm kind of burnt out on gothic/fantasy melee adventures.
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Jul 13, 2023 20:01
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I guess if art, music, and the feelings that they evoke do not count as part of the game, that's a point that you can try to make. But it still seems totally wrong.Anora posted:Like the invincible dash is so far into the game The second area? unattended spaghetti posted:Sleeping Dogs may not be a metroidvania but it is real good. It's the best GTA.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:00
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I think it's interesting for games to feel the freedom to tinker around with base mechanics instead of feeling a need to stay married to conventions for the sake of comfort. Especially in a genre that is often defined by evoking horror at times. Causing the player a bit of discomfort from the lack of information in a new area or trying to bait them out into handicapping themselves for the sake of a little more fighting power are easy ways of doing that. It can also add to the feeling of triumph when you overcome these things. It's always important to be able to question convention to be able to build more complex experiences, because otherwise you leave out half the experience of the game in the development process. There's plenty of interesting things that you can do by messing around with the backend. I also think it's interesting to hunt for Cornifer when you see some map scraps or hear his humming, and it's satisfying to see him at the end after you've bought all his maps. I think the most interesting way the mechanic is used is with the Fog Canyon, which is in the middle of the world map and accessible early on, but Cornifer is in a spot you can't get without a lategame upgrade, so it's left for a long time as just a mysterious corridor that most players wouldn't be bold enough to fully explore. A softer and more subtle way of gating off areas.
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Jul 17, 2023 20:23
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Serephina posted:If Zelda1 wasn't a 2d metroidvania (lol), then DS isn't a 3d one. It was though. The whole question of whether keys count for the whole Metroidvania formula is understandable; mobility upgrades are the more fun and more organic way of opening up paths. Some upgrades do sometimes seem to be just glorified keys because they can only be activated or useful in specific contexts, which takes a lot of the fun out of them. But the original Legend of Zelda has more than just keys. There's the stepladder which can cross gaps, the raft that can take you on the water, the candle and magic rod that can burn down bushes, and the power bracelet. Those are all necessary for finding other dungeons out on the overworld, so areas you may have once visited you now have new ways to explore. Fuzz posted:Arkham Asylum (sequels not as much) is the quintessential example of a 3D Metroidvania aside from the Prime series itself. It definitely follows the formula of a Metroidvania, but I always feel like it lacks a bit of the vibe from how you can end up following the critical path of the game so tightly without ever wandering around. If you're not paying attention and stuck in detective mode, you may even miss the fact that you're revisiting areas that change over time. But the fact that I can just get really in the zone while playing Arkham Asylum just speaks to the appeal and quality of the game's other mechanics. Some people also make a big deal over non-linearity being necessary for a proper Metroidvania, although that's less common, and many famous games that evoke Metroidvanias end up fairly linear when you pull back to look at them.
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Nov 21, 2023 18:42
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I guess the way 3D games developed, there may have been a bit of convergent evolution towards the metroidvania model in other genres. It wasn't really until the mid-2000s that people started circling back around to Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night to say that they were something special and different, and then I think it was the indie sphere copying those games' style independently to solidify it as a genre. In that time, 3D games developed their own collectathon format that was dominant for a while that used a lot of the same idea of upgrading your character's abilities. With 3D platformers, traversal was the fun part, so when upgrading traversal is a thing, locking content behind those upgrades will be a thing. The games in the legacy of Doom already had a history of elaborate levels to explore with keys to find. 3D Zelda reproduced the main gameplay formula of Link to the Past, which is very Metroidvaniash even if it isn't considered such. 3D games at large did eventually leave those gameplay types behind as platformers fell from prominence and were replaced by open worlds and shooters and action games that didn't worry about traversal in the same way. And then there was the indie Metroidvania boom, and now anything that goes back to focusing on 3D platforming with spiraling worlds and traversal upgrades, people see Metroidvania in that. Dark Souls is the only one I think clearly has a Castlevania influence, things like Arkham Asylum and Jedi: Fallen Order I think are less clear (Fallen Order kinda gives me collectathon platformer vibes because he has a little buddy backpack).
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Nov 22, 2023 00:05
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Kurui Reiten posted:Igavanias are not Dark Souls-esque. They were always designed to be fairly breezy combat-wise. Trying to ape their design, while replacing the low stakes combat and varied arsenal, doesn't quite work because those are vital parts of the formula. I would actually contest that. While you can definitely get to the point where combat becomes trivial with the leveling system, and definitely the games are easier than classic Castlevania, Symphony of the Night is actually fairly difficult to begin with. The way the game works, you'll get stuck maybe once or twice and then rapidly level enough that most of the enemies in the area are no longer an issue, and then it can be smooth sailing until the late game when enemies get a bunch of insta-kill attacks, but I think you're still likely to get stuck. The main challenge of Castelvania isn't really individual enemies or platform challenges, it's attrition. That's why there are so many long corridors full of enemies that you have to steadily keep beating, because if you slip up a few times, there goes a big chunk of health. Metroid 1 had a similar kind of endurance challenge, because all the corridors were so very long. Dark Souls does evoke some of that, especially with the beginning levels, where most enemies aren't very powerful, but if you don't manage them you'll quickly get overwhelmed. The games even sprinkle early enemies around lategame areas to remind you how powerful you've gotten, although the games have their own ethos about preventing players from getting too far ahead of the difficulty curve.
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Nov 22, 2023 16:51
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The power fantasy aspect of Metroid comes from overcoming the challenges. You are wandering around a hostile world that Does Not like you wandering around through it. That's been part of the series from the start, since the first Metroid was designed around a world that steadily wears you down as you fight through the depths. Metroid 2 was big into jump scares. Metroid Fusion came up with the idea of a horrible threat stalking the player, which I think was pretty obvious as a major feature of Dread from the name. I've seen better stealth sections and I've seen much, much worse. After having finished it, it's a little funny remembering how frustrating it could get, and how there's an incredibly incredibly hard quicktime event that I could do like 5% of the time. It's a shame that the EMMIs aren't really that important to the plot though, they're just some robots.
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Jan 29, 2024 06:34
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You can deal with it, you're just getting fussy about the tools you have access to.
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Jan 29, 2024 07:12
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Dread is way more open than Fusion and doesn't lock you out of doing a last scouring around for upgrades and pickups for the endgame. Fusion's model of having all the other modules of the space station locked off until authorized really felt more annoying. Although I didn't mind the exposition dumps from ADAM as much when they weren't fully voiced. I think some people have a mental image of Super Metroid being a lot more open because of the way that glitches and exploits allow for more sequence breaking. Reportedly it didn't do too well over in Japan and they didn't respond well to the barebones openness, so that's why Metroid took a long break for the whole N64/GBC era. There's a lot of push and pull with open world games where freedom is nice, but without structure you can just get lost and confused or bored from the lack of reinforcement. Mobility upgrades are meaningless if new areas don't make them useful, and it gives you more of a feeling of progression if areas are locked out until later. It even allows for games to construct more of a story.
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Jan 29, 2024 20:10
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Yeah, I understand there are probably people out there who are all about the boss fights (god knows there are lots of those people with Dark Souls), but I'm more about the exploration and platforming and maybe getting into the right rhythm to deal with individual enemies rather than one big fight. People say they like bossfights as like a final exam of the skills involved with playing the game, but so often it feels like just a whole separate game mode.
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Feb 2, 2024 05:55
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Most obviously, the Castlevania GBA collection from Iga hisself. There's not very many games outside the Castlevania series that follow in the path of giving the player a leveling system to eventually overpower everything just through brute force, especially with the influence of Dark Souls and retro styles finding the challenges of older games. Maybe you'd appreciate the grind of Dave the Diver.
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Feb 12, 2024 02:31
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I was playing through some old games, and I got hit by a surprise Metroidvania: Wario Land 3. Seriously, every level you get a treasure that plays into unlocking something new, unlocking new locations or altering the landscape of older locations so you constantly go back to them to unlock new treasures, and there's even a lot of ability upgrades (which actually are mostly just Wario's abilities he had from Wario Land 2, but sliced up into little bits for you to gradually unlock). This game was made by the same people who made Metroid 1 and 2, so there's a clear line of taking the ideas to use for a puzzle platformer instead. ...and it's not very good. Like it's okay, sure, but it kinda drags out a long time, and the puzzle platforming gets frustrating at times, wandering around areas that you don't have the upgrades for yet. The innovation where Wario has no health and can't die, only get knocked back, means that there's a whole lot of challenges that knock you way back if you fail them, so you have to repeat them all over again. I enjoyed Wario Land 2 more, because on top of having more abilities, I just liked the world design more, Areas can look more like purposeful settings if they're not designed entirely around four parallel puzzle platforming segments, and the cutscenes telling the story of Wario getting robbed and having to get his money back are more interesting to me. Wario Land 3 has nonsensical cutscenes about how the world changes when you get treasures, but that gets old over time. The whole forked level paths is more interesting to me as well.
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Feb 21, 2024 06:43
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 00:09 |
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Mechanically, the combat is entirely unlike Dark Souls because it's a sidescrolling platformer without RPG stats. In some respects that can make it harder because you can't just go level up or switch weapons to change the way you're taking on a boss, but you're dashing and jumping and slashing and pogoing so it's a very different kind of combat. It is disingenuous to say the game is unlike Dark Souls because it takes very heavily from the vibe and overall premise as a game about exploring a ruined kingdom full of the animate corpses of the former denizens who all respawn when you rest at It is a hard game at times, but I think it's a very worthwhile experience even if you only get halfway through the game. The perception of difficulty isn't helped by the fact that it's filled with optional extra-intense challenges for the people who want that. There's gotta be like 20 optional bosses.
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Mar 3, 2024 19:56
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