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Koburn posted:More Afterimage opinions I finished Afterimage a few weeks ago and would second all of this. it was pretty funny to have voice actors giving their fullest to lines that make no sense at all (some real Symphony of the Night energy there), but it got less funny in the second half of the game when I had no main objective in the quest list and no idea where I was going or why. They would have been much better served sticking to chinese VA only and putting the english VA budget toward a better english translation, even if the english voice actors legitimately did a decent job with the incomprehensible lines they were given. Most of the endings made no sense at all and the ending cutscenes seemed to have nothing to do with...anything. the NPC quests were totally unparsable with no hints about where to continue them, and I had to look up the locations in a steam guide to complete half of them. Random peeve: I lost my mind at how many times Renee gets killed during dialogue, and it shouldn't even matter because she canonically comes back from the dead! it feels cheap and it doesn't even mean anything! I had a really great time with the first 15-20 hours. it's super chill, pleasant environments, easy to progress but with just enough friction that finding secrets feels rewarding, some beautiful artwork, and there's a sense of momentum propelling it even if the writing is definitely confusing. Most metroidvanias are starting to wrap themselves up by that 15-20 hour mark, and this tends to be the best size for them, since it keeps the world expansive enough for new abilities to feel meaningful as they open up more access but compact enough that you can remember how the world is laid out and every biome has a distinct identity. Afterimage went on for another 20 hours after that point. it's undoubtedly the most gigantic metroidvania I've ever played, but that isn't actually a good thing because it slowly and disappointingly unravels over that second half. it suffers from a lack of focus that drains all the impact from anything you do or find by the end. The talent tree is very boring and mostly consists of tiny 2% bonuses. There's a multitude of equipment pieces to find but they similarly only offer tiny percentage boosts that are hard to notice, and don't really open up different playstyles. The stat bonuses themselves are confusing (how does "final damage" differ from "main weapon attack" and "normal attack"?) Magic is extremely limited and you can usually only cast a couple spells between checkpoints, so all the varied spellbooks and equipment that adds 5% magic damage or whatever isn't exciting. The great artwork inevitably gets stretched too thin as they have to fill an absurd number of giant biomes with art, so a lot of areas have background assets scaled to the point that they're blurry or they're missing a lot of the detail that early areas had. To the game's credit they legitimately don't reuse enemies or do palette swaps almost at all, so every biome has a unique set of 4-5 enemies that don't show up anywhere else. But there's so many biomes and they're so large that they inevitably lose a lot of distinction anyway, with the metroidvania upgrades themselves showing up very sparsely at points that felt pretty random to me. speaking of those upgrades, I had a lot of cases where the controls for chaining different movement abilities in midair just...wouldn't work for any apparent reason or would sometimes need a second button press to trigger, which was really annoying during platforming later in the game. The super jump in particular was really mercurial. the difficulty was very confusing. 80% of the game was really chill and I didn't die once in those first 15 hours, 19% of it would be hard if I didn't cheese it with overpowered stuff (mostly the scythe throw and the afterimage that lets you jizz infinite spells for a few seconds when you run out of MP), and 1% of it felt quite hard even with those options, mainly just two bosses that felt out of place and comprised over half of my ~20 total deaths. But those bosses were hard in ways that felt much more annoying than satisfying, with some bullshit like screen-wide seemingly unavoidable attacks they did at low health that you were apparently just expected to tank, and more importantly they just felt out of place with how much of a nice easy vibe the rest of the game had. I'd rather they stuck to something tough throughout the whole game like Blasphemous or just stayed chill the whole way. Anyway it's clear that a ton of talent went into the game and all of the ingredients are there to be one of the absolute best metroidvanias around, but they sadly just spread it too thin and would have had a much better game if they'd kept it to a much more focused size that was maybe half as big. I still think the game is pretty good on the average and I wouldn't recommend against it, but I can't get over just how enthusiastic I felt about those first few areas compared to how confused and disengaged I felt by the end. bummer.
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Jun 20, 2023 04:43
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bawk posted:Afterimage is loving long. I popped the achievement for beating all bosses (it doesn't seem to count the extra final boss you fight against otherrenee because I haven't beat that yet) but I think I've tapped out a lot of the content. I have a very small handful of places left to find and most area completion percentages are between 85-90%. The very last powerup I found is the knockoff power from Hollow Knight, which you use to find (among other things) a pretty dang good Hollow Knight accessory. I looked it up online when I was done with everything else and didn’t see any way to open that door, nor the fire one in the unmapped area you can only reach using the boatman. they felt like unused chekov’s guns to me.
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Jul 10, 2023 20:06
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I’m excited to go back to catholic hell and play as The Penitent One (TPO) in the sequel to blasphemovs
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Jul 11, 2023 21:49
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Manager Hoyden posted:"El Penitente" is so much cooler though. Always play in Spanish. I hope they launch with spanish VA this time instead of needing to record it after launch. IIRC english VA was a crowdfunding goal for the original game so they were obligated to do it and didn’t have the resources to add spanish until after they got sales or something. although I thought most of the english VA was fine, with the (hilarious) exception of crisanta, who they improved in the same update that added spanish.
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Jul 11, 2023 22:02
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I don't think bloodstain mechanics have added anything to a game I've played except for the series they came from. at best I just don't notice them because I'm not dying, at worst they're obnoxious. don't think much would be lost if every game stopped copying them. Ender lilies preserves the world state when you die so all the rooms you explored and items you found are still complete, but doesn't have any bloodstain mechanic either. made the game feel pretty chill.
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Jul 16, 2023 21:26
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AnotherGamer posted:In addition to the other gameplay negatives that've already been said about Hollow Knight, I also hated the lack of boss heathbars considering how long you need to chip away at some of them even with all the up-to-date weapon upgrades. This was a big thing that made me drop aeterna noctis. I hit a wall on three different bosses in the second half of the game, two of which were especially miserable to fight, but I had no sense of how close I was to actually winning. am I getting through 90% and just need to push a little further, or am I barely hitting 50%? Felt bad because I thought the rest of the game was really good
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Jul 17, 2023 15:18
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bawk posted:Souldier's Fire Temple is full of floating/roaming fireball enemies that are invulnerable 90% of the time and if you get stuck between two of them, they will juggle you until your health bar finally empties or you manage to get a dash in that doesn't take you directly into another one of the fireballs. Getting wombo combo'd by a couple of those things after just beating their stupid-rear end instakill "escape sequence" through a rising lava level really made me question if I wanted to beat the game. Then I reached the poison swamp level. I actually liked the poison swamp, wasn’t a fan of a lot of the game’s soundtrack but I liked the vibes of that one What class did you pick? I played wizard and it really felt like the correct choice, I can’t imagine how infuriating the game must be as scout. when I finished the game and looked up a video of the boss fights as scout, I understood every negative review the game got from people who picked that class (and it’s even the first one in the list)
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Jul 17, 2023 17:05
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Ender lilies has a good map and some of the best overall QOL of any of these games I’ve played. it shows exactly what rooms still have secrets to find, how many exits you haven’t found and roughly where they are, and a rough (but not overly cluttered) idea of the area’s structure. combined with easy fast travel it was really pleasant to 100%. been thinking about replaying it and I never replay games these days.
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Jul 17, 2023 19:17
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bawk posted:So to get back to Metroidvanias, I started up Aeterna Noctis today to give it a try. I started playing a ton of Metroidvanias earlier this year by beating Hollow Knight first, since I'd never played it before and Silksong seems like it'll be coming out some time soon. Out of all the games I've played/beaten since then (Axiom Verge 1 & 2, Ori 1 & 2, Blasphemous, Metroid: Dread, SteamWorld Dig 2, Transiruby, Afterimage, Souldiers) Aeterna Noctis is the only one that feels almost the same as playing Hollow Knight again. The very first thing's it's teaching me are "you can jump higher by holding A or shorthop by barely tapping it, your movement lets you turn and stop on a dime (both in the air or on the ground), you can down-attack in midair to pogo off both enemies and certain obstacles" Aeterna noctis definitely has some really precise controls and earns the right to have platforming as hard as it does. but I didn’t regret playing on the difficulty with easier room layouts, because it’s a metroidvania and I don’t want to have to do egregiously hard platforming every single time I backtrack for secrets.
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Jul 20, 2023 20:32
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Salt and sanctuary is definitely a metroidvania and I enjoyed it enough to complete it twice, it’s pretty engaging if you can acclimate to the comically bad character art
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Aug 7, 2023 17:32
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Grime's pretty solid, some nice background artwork and mechanics though I did find some of the fights really frustrating and haven't felt enticed enough to go back and see the DLC. I still need to see the rest of the blasphemous DLC before the sequel comes out, I only did the first one where they added those three NG+ modes and the NG+ exclusive boss fights.
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Aug 10, 2023 07:33
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ultrafilter posted:Have you considered playing games that you like without worrying about whether they're good or bad? then how will we get more posts repeatedly making GBS threads on animations from a tiny dev team?
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Aug 10, 2023 17:10
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time for HANDS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-cnb4y44WQ
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Aug 25, 2023 22:47
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I heard death's gambit was unfinished and bad when it first came out. Is it worth playing now?
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Sep 9, 2023 21:29
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Afterimage contains 20 hours of good content. it is 40 hours long.
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Sep 12, 2023 03:38
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highly frontloaded. the rest isn't outright garbage or anything like that for the most part, it just loses all of its momentum over the second half as the polish goes down over time, the story goes from confusing to incomprehensible, the difficulty gets really inconsistent, and very little of it has any memorable impact by the end. Afterimage doesn't suck and you will definitely get your money's worth somewhere out of that entire package, but it's hard not to be disappointed at how diluted the game becomes next to what an absolutely banger game it could have been if the devs had set stricter limits on themselves. I wrote more about the specifics here.
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Sep 12, 2023 05:04
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I enjoyed basically everything about AN on the difficulty with easier platforming and thought it was going to be an absolute hidden gem I couldn't wait to recommend, until I got to three awful bosses in the second half that killed all the momentum to the point I never finished it. some of their RNG attack patterns felt like they could overlap in a way that there was no way to avoid damage other than using the invincibility shield, which is only repeatedly usable if you equip an optional modifier gem, so it felt like that couldn't have been the intent. The fact that you can't change gems at the boss checkpoints themselves and have to backtrack to much more distant checkpoints to change them made it obnoxious to actually try different things for the bosses. Heath posted:I really want to get into Blasphemous but I've fallen hard off of it because of the instant-kill spikes. Those shouldn't be in a MV style game. Blasphemous 2 got rid of spikes being instant kills and it's one of the best changes it made.
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Sep 17, 2023 20:20
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Dying adds 20% guilt and getting your fragment only restores 18% per death so you'll have to pay for confession eventually no matter what
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Nov 24, 2023 23:01
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Fuzz posted:Oh so it still does the same bullshit as 1 where you get continually penalized for dying, making successive attempts harder. Great to see that bit of utterly lovely design is still there, easy pass. there's no consequences for guilt before 20% so you have to die 10 times before picking up your fragment isn't enough to keep you at the lowest tier. it's obnoxious to have to go use the confessor but it's usually a total of like 90 seconds to go there and back.
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Nov 25, 2023 09:44
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Most of the AI has no real answer to the scythe throw and it trivializes all but a few bosses.
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Dec 1, 2023 18:06
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Afterimage had like 6 different damage types and I never found a reason to pay attention to any of them or noticed a status effect on an enemy once
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Dec 10, 2023 08:02
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I really liked the vibes in momodora reverie under the moonlight so I hope the new one feels similar.
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Jan 11, 2024 21:56
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There's a sequel to aeterna noctis announced called Aeterna Lucis. I hope some things are different from the first game because I really enjoyed it until the second half when some of the bosses had so many frustrating issues that I quit.
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Jan 13, 2024 22:30
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Does the new momodora have no hit boss rewards?
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Jan 14, 2024 06:01
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Guessing I’m around halfway through momodora 5, and it’s been chill and enjoyable enough, but it feels kinda sparse compared to momodora 4. the game’s definitely bigger but not necessarily in a good way. it mostly feels like there’s just more rooms in each area but they aren’t filled with more interesting content, and the mechanics are just as basic as before so there isn’t anything more to do in those rooms. I dunno, it’s just not hitting the same vibes as RUTM which knew exactly how big it should be to hit the high notes and then finish up while it was ahead.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:44
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Finished momodora moonlit farewell and yeah, my impression didn't change much by the end. it's solidly okay and felt polished enough, but it didn't get much of emotional reaction out of me compared to reverie under the moonlight. The spritework is definitely nicer and more detailed, and the soundtrack is good. The game's a couple hours longer but there isn't much interesting filling that extra time. you can heal tank your way through most of the boss fights and it's so hard to see what they're doing behind the hit effects that I ended up doing this basically by accident. not only is it quite easy in general, but you even keep all your map progress and the items you picked up when you die, so there's basically no tension to any of it. Nothing wrong with an easier game (RUTM is quite easy as well), but I think you need to have some amount of friction in a metroidvania to make it feel rewarding to find the secrets and upgrades. I finished with twice as much money as it takes to buy everything in the game and so I wasn't sure what the existence of money even added to the game. it's somewhat less dour than momodora RUTM, but I think that game's strong melancholy vibes are one of the most memorable parts of it and one reason it still stands out as one of my favorite metroidvanias. Overall I wouldn't recommend against moonlit farewell but I couldn't give a very strong recommendation for it either with how many strong releases there have been to work through in the last year. But if anyone has still slept on momodora reverie under the moonlight then let me add one more recommendation to check it out, it's only $10 and very compact (4-6 hours) so it's not a big time investment, but the vibes are just excellent. Moonlit farewell left me kinda hungry for more metroidvania so I immediately bought 9 years of shadows.
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Jan 16, 2024 07:15
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Owl Inspector posted:Moonlit farewell left me kinda hungry for more metroidvania so I immediately bought 9 years of shadows. well, this one is also quite mid. The character art and soundtrack are very good, and I wish the soundtrack was for sale somewhere because it deserves more recognition, but the metroidvania elements are really uninspiring. it took me 8 hours to 101%, and it was some of the flattest-feeling 8 hours I've ever experienced in the genre. most of the movement upgrades are so contextual that they don't feel much like upgrades, and combat doesn't change almost at all where you don't really feel any more powerful as you progress with most of the enemies feeling like they exist as an obligation more than as interesting obstacles. 95% of it is absolutely trivial, and the last 5% only poses any challenge because of the uh, interesting decision to massively nerf you at the very end of the game, which I guess is unique for a metroidvania but doesn't exactly feel good. 9 years of shadows isn't bad but there's not enough there to recommend.
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Jan 19, 2024 05:43
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I wouldn't recommend it. it's too big for its own good with endless similar hallways that don't have polished artwork and don't have anything interesting to find. you'll find a whole lot of items on the ground that just turn out to be 5 throwing knives or whatever. in the first quarter of the game I found a spell that was so overpowered it trivialized 90% of the remaining content by itself, which made finding other spells not very exciting. The 2D art is high quality, but the player model is 3D that doesn't blend in very well which makes the art clash with itself, and I personally really dislike the edgy gore and meat monster part of the aesthetic. it was the first game that made me realize metroidvanias really benefit from keeping their scope limited because when they get too big you just lose that connection with the world. it was patched a number of times since I finished it so it may be better now, but I think a lot of what made it feel anemic is sort of unpatchable.
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Jan 26, 2024 08:23
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The EMMIs lost a lot of the effect by being restricted to clearly delineated zones unlike the SA-X which felt like it could come after you anywhere (its appearances were all scripted but when you were exploring a new area, every room you entered felt like it could be there). also the fact that you do get to destroy them individually while the SA-X is a single unkillable monster hunting you throughout the whole game, which makes the final showdown with it feel more impactful.
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Jan 29, 2024 18:18
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I prefer prime 2 for a few reasons and the prime 1 remaster made me very hungry for a prime 2 remaster Was the prime 1 remaster successful at all? feels like they really bet against it by just releasing it out of nowhere with no hype. makes me worried they won’t bother with a prime 2 remaster.
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Jan 31, 2024 17:15
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Beam ammo was good and sanctuary fortress ruled.
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Feb 1, 2024 04:26
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Medullah posted:How difficult is it? I have been looking for a casual Steam Deck Metroidvania, I started Blashphemous and while I like it I'm not a big fan of Souls like Metroidvanias. I love Bloodstained so something around that level of challenge is what I'm looking for. Easy to medium. a couple bosses took me a few tries, but I beat most of them on the first try and dying doesn’t make you lose anything besides booting you back to checkpoint (you keep all your exp/map progress) so it’s easy to make steady progress through the rest of it. it’s really good overall, one of my favorites.
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Feb 21, 2024 22:52
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Most of the spirits that don’t have infinite uses can be cast instantly, and you get frequent enough refills on them that there’s really no reason not to throw spirits like Siegrid at normal enemies while you’re hitting them with your infinite use spirit. they stagger/die quickly enough if you do this. also the first few spirits you get are viable for the whole game if you upgrade them.
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Feb 21, 2024 23:20
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They did early access for ender lilies and the game turned out great.
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Feb 27, 2024 16:48
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Medullah posted:For me a big part of Metroidvanias and 3rd person adventure games like God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn is just the exploration and puzzle solving. I'm less enthused about challenging combat, so the Souls format of "beat your head against the wall against the same boss repeatedly" just isn't fun for me anymore. yeah, I've enjoyed a few metroidvanias that are fairly difficult like blasphemous but I really don't think difficulty or gameplay is the most important part of this genre, it's presentation and vibes. the gameplay just needs to have enough friction to make finding secrets engaging while also not being frustrating enough to take away from the exploration. running back to the same brick wall boss for 45 minutes doesn't add anything to the experience.
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Mar 4, 2024 03:21
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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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I’ve played 3-5: Momodora 3: extremely basic and short, it wasn’t bad but I can barely remember it. you aren’t missing much if you skip it (also not a metroidvania) Momodora reverie under the moonlight: play this one. it’s quite compact for a metroidvania but it really nails the vibes. It’s just really evocative and one of my favorites in the genre. Game’s easy but you get a unique reward from each boss for no-hitting them which adds some challenge if you want to go for that. Momodora moonlit farewell: eh. It’s bigger than RUTM but doesn’t have anything more interesting to fill that extra space with, it’s kinda just “more rooms,” and I didn’t find it very memorable or interesting by comparison. the no-hit rewards are gone so the fact that it’s so easy means there isn’t much to care about from exploration. wouldn’t say you should avoid it, but but wouldn’t give it a strong rec either
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Apr 24, 2024 17:47
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really strong first impressions of animal well. the sound design of the background ambiance is great.
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May 10, 2024 07:03
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I keep seeing weird stuff in the background of various rooms and having to leave map markers until I learn more. game's got a great vibe.
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May 12, 2024 01:23
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The 7th Guest posted:e: btw AW is not a "go in blind" game like Inscryption/Outer Wilds imo so I don't think stuff like what i just said needs to be spoilered eh, there's a lot of cool moments of discovery that would definitely be lessened if you didn't learn them yourself organically, but yeah I wouldn't say they're on the same level as outer wilds or tunic. moosferatu posted:Seems like I must be the only one who'd never heard of this Dunkey guy before. Certainly makes me less interested it's a genuinely good game regardless of what you think of the youtuber. you're doing yourself a disservice if you think you'd like it but skip it solely because he published it. it is definitely pricey for the size, but I'd rather pay extra for a short but satisfying game than pay $0 on a F2P game I could play for hundreds of hours but makes me feel nothing.
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May 12, 2024 20:37
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