|
Played through Moonscars over the last few days since it was free to download via Humble Choice membership. Pretty good game! Not a ton of exploration upgrades overall (only really notable traversal one is a mega dash), much of the exploration is gated between keys from boss encounters or roaming the map and unlocking shortcuts to backtrack as you go. There’s some Souls influence for sure (pick up bone powder to spend on upgrades as you go, lose it if you can’t recover your corpse; the aforementioned shortcut unlocks as you proceed) and there’s a bit of roguelike progress attached (each new save point you reach has a miniboss fight then you pick a new heavy secondary weapon for the next stretch; you also get to pick a few random upgrades as you kill enemies that you lose on death). Worth a look even if it’s a bit short. Reminded me a lot of Blasphemous, which I adore and Metroidvania fans really should check out if they haven’t already.
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2022 03:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:00 |
|
|
Blasphemous does have insta-kill spikes, yes. There’s also a weightiness to the main character that is integral to gameplay, it’s not like most games in the genre where the baseline for movement is “track and field star on meth” and escalates from there. I get it’s not a game for everyone and it took an hour or two for it to click for me on my first run but once it does it’s a fantastic experience, imo. It has excellent NG+ content and multiple ways to solve many quests, which is cool. Anyway, Moonscars isn’t quite that punishing in some regards. The spikes there aren’t instantly fatal to you but you can use them against enemies, which adds a fun tactical layer to combat, and you can move quite quickly in general. Tortolia fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Nov 2, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2022 13:03
|
|
|
Morpheus posted:Yeah the movement in Blasphemous is definitely the worst part. Like, in a genre where traversal, especially for backtracking to check new areas or whatever, is the thing that happens more than anything, making your walk a slow, plodding pace and your jumping heavy and ponderous can be a real drain. Especially with those install kill pits. You can unlock waypoint teleports later on; I think that was part of a series of bonuses that got added in during one of their (very good) patches.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2022 14:12
|
|
|
Morpheus posted:Coyote time This is exactly it. But yeah, the first month or two of Blasphemous didn’t have that (or the Switch launch client) and having come to it after that patch I can imagine how pixel perfect you had to be prior to that. lih posted:i like it a lot more than the first but it's going for a very different thing so i get why people who loved the first didn't like it as much. I don’t know if I liked AV2 more than the first but definitely appreciated that it was designed as a very different game and experience. The secrets were far more sensible to find than “hose down every surface with the scanning tool” at least. Tortolia fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Nov 2, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2022 16:08
|
|
|
A Sometimes Food posted:Ghost Song, one of the first kickstarter metroidvanias from way back in 2013 is finally releasing in a few hours. The demo from last year was pretty good, anyone getting it? Like Moonscars, it’s going to be free at launch for Humble Choice subscribers! I don’t know if I’ll get to it tonight (Deep Rock Galactic season 3 just dropped) but I’m going to give GS a try in the next few days for sure.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2022 13:48
|
|
|
cant cook creole bream posted:I tried it for a few hours. Seems solid, so far. There is a weirdly useless sprint upgrade which takes a second to warm up, drains your stamina, is barely faster than regular running and massively outclassed by repeated use of the dash, which you already have at that point. I hope that has further upgrades to make it at least a bit worthwhile. I've barely seen any story at this point. I’ve found doing a dash first basically puts you at full speed outright, but yeah, it’s pretty anemic so far. Ghost Song basically feels to me like if Hollow Knight skewed far on the Metroid side of the scale versus the Castlevania side. Bigger ranged weapon focus, similar movement style to an early Metroid, upgrades seem more modeled that way (including the doors you have to use missiles to blow open). It’s got major HK influence in terms of slotting your upgrades, charm style, though your power pool covers both your passives as well as your secondary weapon selections, so you have to decide how you want to focus. One nice touch is you can swap your equipped upgrades anywhere, but you have to shut your suit down first, so you also won’t be doing it in combat either. There’s limited Souls style leveling (three stat categories to choose from), though there’s consumables to raise each stat permanently hidden around. I’ve pushed the plot forward enough to have a specific quest to work on, though it’s very much “explore and get upgrades and figure out how to reach those map markers”. One thing it definitely has going for it is atmosphere. The sound design is extremely good and creepy as hell, which goes well with how the enemies have major Giger and/or Junji Ito vibes. So, while it starts (literally) slow before you get upgrades, it’s a promising framework and I’m definitely enjoying it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2022 01:48
|
|
|
ExcessBLarg! posted:Stat leveling always gives me choice paralysis. Unless you know the game expects you to max out all stats then it's not so bad. Honestly it’s really just what you want to focus on. There’s “better ranged weapons”, “more HP and better physical attacks” or “more weapon energy and stamina and boost a few special weapons”. It really doesn’t seem like there’s a wrong answer, plus the fact there’s consumable stat boosts means there’s effectively a stat baseline they work around. It’s just more important you level anything as you go since that bumps your ability power cap. But if you want to shoot good, level gunpower. If you want to really smack things better (especially once your gun heats up), level vigor. If you want to just have more resources, you level resolve. It’s not like a Souls game where you can accidentally specialize in something you don’t want to use.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2022 02:54
|
|
|
Ghost Song followup: as well as all the usual Metroid style traversal options, there is indeed a “increase move speed” power augment you can equip. It’s not massive but is noticeable. Rather enjoying it, some nice side stories are popping up as I go. Worth being thorough about talking to NPCs.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2022 01:16
|
|
|
Yeah, there were a few Hollow Knight bosses I had to pivot and go full out glass cannon, but for the most part I was able to do a more all around build including heals and was just fine. I’ve seen videos of people doing stuff including heavy spell use that I didn’t even come close to trying that worked. This worked for all content in the game and dlcs (including Nightmare King Grimm). The only content I didn’t complete was the Godmaster stuff, because beyond the cursory “look, we hosed with the arena this time” rematches it was obviously designed for a tier of HK power gamer/speedrunner I am not and knew that forcing myself to try to do it would sour me on a game I loved. Having some options that are less efficient or obsoleted by later upgrades (that either require sidequest completion or were patched in via DLC) doesn’t really equate to traps in my book, especially when HK just lets you swap charms at save points anyway. Re: Ghost Song - I agree the basic blaster is kind of anemic, I’m killing a non trivial amount of enemies using gimmick weapon mods anyway (speaking of HK, summoning a shitload of angry insects works in GS too…). I’m actually Resolve primary for energy/stamina and a particular equippable weapon for the melee slot I just snagged is making me think that may have been a very good idea. But most of my nanogel is being used for barter right now so most of my upgrades have actually been the hidden consumables. Sadly those bumps don’t raise your power cap. Tortolia fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Nov 7, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2022 15:11
|
|
|
I think there’s largely a few aspects to a game’s design that make me draw Souls comparisons. 1) Extremely dangerous combat, particularly if healing options are limited and leave you vulnerable while you do them. 2) Loss of money and particularly exp on death, particularly if it’s gone for good if you fail a corpse run. 3) Prominent unlockable shortcuts built into map design - as a function of the map design itself and less so “you got the double jump now you can directly go up to that platform and skip the long way around”. 4) Storytelling via inference and item descriptions/lore and not cutscenes or verbal plot dumps. 5) Character death having some sort of tangible influence on the world state. It’s certainly a descriptor that’s abused a lot, but some games in the metroidvania space do have these vibes as a result. Moonscars in particular really hit these points for me lately; the currency loss on death, the map design relying mostly on unlockable gates and elevators to ease progress on later visits, the combat lethality. Probably most significantly, the fact that death basically made the world a far more dangerous yet rewarding place to exist in by triggering the Moonhunger world state; you got more currency and could find hidden items, but far more lethal versions of enemies could spawn in place of their normal variants. (Much like undead state in DeSo, this could be reverted via consumables or killing bosses).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2022 04:34
|
|
|
This conversation is mainly making me want to replay HK, which is still probably my favorite game in the genre. But I get how some aspects of it turn people off.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2022 13:42
|
|
|
Mercury_Storm posted:Sounds like Ghost Song needs a few balancing or bug fix patches? Also is it like the Metroid games where you're able to take a bunch of hits while exploring and it doesn't really matter? I haven’t seen any bugs, but a few people mentioned steam achievements and I’m playing via the Humble client, so could be some weirdness there. But yeah, the balance itself is not overly tuned well and there’s some definite cheese options. You can take some hits while exploring but there’s not a lot of health sitting around unlike how you could often farm respawning enemies for health in Metroid. To go back to the Souls thing, though, enemies don’t respawn until you rest at a save point, so it’s more about overall resource management. It’s generally not an issue if you use your tools well and keep an eye on the environment for dormant enemies that will aggro you.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2022 14:06
|
|
|
If you just want to see the side stories and exploration in Ghost Song and not get overly bogged down in the nuances of combat, make liberal use of the special weapon that launches eggs. You shoot them like grenades (so you can aim them up, down or offscreen), they hatch into invulnerable stinging bugs that attack enemies for like 10s, and do a surprising amount of damage for how minor their power and energy costs are. I’ve beaten multiple bosses just launching swarms of bugs at range and running away if the boss actually approaches.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2022 17:18
|
|
|
Finished Ghost Song, looked up the other ending on Youtube since I must have missed a trigger or two for it, confirmed what made sense to me on an intuitive level about one of the big mysteries of the game. I think I wanted to like it more than I actually did. Competently made, good aesthetics/sound design, plot is explained well enough if you do some exploration and sidequesting, it just never quite comes together all that cohesively. Certainly not the worst game the genre's ever seen, but I don't know if I'd go out of my way to play it compared to other games in the space.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2022 00:29
|
|
|
Atmosphere is probably the biggest strength of Ghost Song.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2022 05:07
|
|
|
Morpheus posted:Part of me really wants to get Deaths Gambit Afterlife in this sale but another part of me is wondering if I'm a little burnt out from metroidvanias lately and I'm just going to play it for like an hour then put it down. I know the sale is over but I put a few hours into it when they did the big expansion/revamp of the game. Felt solid enough but I put it down and I can’t recall why - I do mean to take another crack at it at some point. It’s definitely a game that takes the Souls inspiration very seriously, all the way down to picking from a half dozen or so character backgrounds that not only dictate starting stats and gear but iirc actually change how you get special attack energy as you go. Edit: I do distinctly remember that if nothing else Matt Mercer definitely sounded like he was having fun voicing Death, who is tangibly roaming around the game world in some amusing ways. Tortolia fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Dec 1, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2022 05:33
|
|
|
So on my holiday flights I started a replay of The Messenger to kill some time because I was too sleep deprived to start a new RPG, and now I've already put six or seven hours into it again. Fantastic and underappreciated game with some really fun map design, entertaining writing, great gameplay and a top tier soundtrack. I always feel like it's a game that tends to remain under the radar but it's on the holiday steam sale and absolutely worth a look.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2022 17:28
|
|
|
Yeah, if there was some sort of controversy about it I totally missed that. I rather liked the expanded map in the second part of the game due to the gimmicks but since the areas are largely linear it is a bit less prone to the kind of expanded traversal options a lot of the games in the genre get.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2022 20:25
|
|
|
So I finished my Messenger replay and didn't actually see anything attributed to Peterson. Either it got patched out, or it's hidden behind some set of dialogue triggers I didn't complete, and I went ahead and exhausted all the chats and did 100% afaik. Interesting to note it was in there at some point though. Game's good. Cerepol posted:The soundtrack by rainbowdragoneyes is incredible tho. Someone on YT did a bunch of uploads where they layered the 8 and 16 bit versions of the tracks together and they're loving outstanding. Search for "Messenger ost 24-bit" or the like.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2022 07:27
|
|
|
For PlayStation owners, Axiom Verge 2 is one of the January PS+ free games. Well worth playing.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2023 18:14
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted: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. That’s why I liked AV2 more than the first game, though I can absolutely understand why it might be the opposite for some folks. Trying to find where to go next - or hunting for secrets - felt a bit too much like a chore in the first game, which I otherwise rather enjoyed. By contrast, once I started getting some of the movement abilities in AV2 I found myself being able to look at the maps, go “I bet something’s hiding over there”, and often was rewarded for making those connections. Also, while it wasn’t like AV2 had overly difficult bosses, I did like that the option was there to just go “nah gently caress off” and ignore them.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 04:25
|
|
|
I would argue that AV2 is standalone storywise purely from a “we did science and oops things got out of hand” perspective - the old classic “Our experiment had unforeseen consequences and we’re trapped somewhere hostile now” thing. It has some connections into a broader lore for the AV universe but more in the nudge nudge wink wink sense.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 18:55
|
|
|
Morpheus posted:Played an hour or two of Axiom Verge 2 tonight. It isn't quite grabbing me but I'm willing to play a little more. Just got the power that let me blow up walls, and I'm thinking maybe I just dislike that whole area in general. I would give it until you unlock the very obvious core traversal power, it really makes the game gel IMO.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2023 05:28
|
|
|
If you youtube search for Messenger "24 bit" remixes, someone took every song in the game and layered both the 8 and 16-bit tracks together. They're awesome.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2023 05:02
|
|
|
Blasphemous at launch had much stricter jumping/platforming requirements. At first the moment you reached a platform edge while running you’d plummet. They patched it a few months later by giving you the ability to jump on air for a few frames as you ran off a platform, meaning you didn’t have to be as frame perfect to land tricky jumps. This didn’t make it easy, but it made it flow a lot better. So if you played it in the first few months and just couldn’t abide some of the tricky platforming/climbing segments that was addressed. This doesn’t even get into all the additions from the free DLCs, like amazing Spanish voice acting, new bosses, and even a divergent and significantly different endgame. Blasphemous is probably my favorite non-Hollow Knight game in the genre in the last decade so seeing what looks like more - with added mobility tricks - is fantastic. I fully expect the damage numbers will be a toggle since they do kind of take you out of the atmosphere. (Edit: thinking about it I would actually expect the numbers to be tied to one of the equippable relics you can slot on your rosary, which would be completely optional. It would fit with some of the effects you could use in the first game like showing enemy health bars.) Tortolia fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Apr 20, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2023 04:14
|
|
|
Picked Death's Gambit: Afterlife back up (had stopped partway through my first run) and beat it tonight. Not the best game in the genre, but pretty solid overall. The game definitely wears its Souls influences on its sleeve (starting class/item selection, relatively analogous stat/growth mechanics, a NPC that will pick off the other characters in your sanctuary if you let him, etc), but it eventually develops and moves in some unexpected directions. Definitely has some interesting misdirects and wrinkles and plays with the fourth wall pretty well. Also Matthew Mercer has a good time with their portrayal of Death. Not the best game in the genre, but has some neat layers to it and is worth a look if you can handle difficult and weighty combat.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2023 03:24
|
|
|
LeninVS posted:Deaths gambit and Valdis story are two of my favorite janky vania games . I highly recommend them to everyone I also discovered just now while looking at the other endings that there's a hidden cutscene for sequence breaking speed runners where the main villain stops you, swears at you for doing it, and boots you backwards progress-wise. Appropriately enough the trigger for this can also be skipped
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2023 04:12
|
|
|
Played through Timespinner. Cute game, not amazing. Really did hit the "what if Chrono Trigger had a metroidvania spinoff" vibes though and they nailed the SNES aesthetic. Worth a look if you want a largely simple MV to relax with. Then I started on GRIME, since it seemed interesting and is actually free on Amazon Games now (their replacement for Twitch free games I suppose). Talk about a tonal and aesthetic 180. Very cool so far and creepy as all hell. Digging the character building and how the absorb mechanic plays into combat.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2023 13:59
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ7V4RLC4Nw August 24th.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2023 19:29
|
|
|
Blasphemous absolutely makes you feel amazing when you wreck enemies; the blocks feel way more visceral than you’d expect for a 2D metroidvania title.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2023 04:40
|
|
|
bawk posted:I don't think I'm doing things in the "right" order lol Honestly the game basically follows a two act structure (not getting into some of the alternate scenarios you can trigger in NG+ cycles) and you can tackle the bosses and areas in each act however you please. It’s cool like that. King of Solomon posted:This is the thing that always confuses me with Blasphemous. Why do people call it a Metroidvania when it lacks the core, defining feature of the genre? You get new movement and exploration abilities, they’re just not the kind of “launch yourself around like you’re doing parkour on meth” types that people often expect. Hell, the “make blood platforms appear to reach new areas” relic is basically cribbed from Castlevania 2 where you couldn’t access some areas without Dracula’s eyeball to reveal hidden platforms.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2023 14:25
|
|
|
GRIME is the weekly free title on Epic Games Store.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2023 19:44
|
|
|
I’m sorry the NPCs address your player character a few times
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2023 21:54
|
|
|
The Spanish audio track was universally well regarded and the first game was a big enough success that they didn’t have to crowdfund the sequel, so I’d be extremely surprised if they didn’t have it in the original release of 2.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2023 22:10
|
|
|
Manager Hoyden posted:I mean there's minimal story, and then there's Blasphemous. I can't think of a single metroidvania with less exposition or dialogue, and only a handful of games in other genres. It’s not apparent at first but eventually you realize The Miracle isn’t a big mystery or plot device - it’s just the background setting. For as fancy as it sounds it’s as pertinent to the proceedings as someone complaining that it’s gonna storm soon because their knee aches - it just is.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2023 22:39
|
|
|
Hollow Knight’s platforming and mobility is incredible when you get a feel for what they’re going for. The Path of Pain was outstanding content. I disliked the final DLC because it leaned too hard into the boss gauntlet aspect of things but not having the patience to refine my gameplan for obvious optional challenge mode content isn’t a game problem, it just was designed for fans who leaned hard into that side of things.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2023 03:08
|
|
|
bawk posted:You also have the third choice of giving the NPC in Dirtmouth a rancid egg so he can just bring the shade there instead. That way if you're just exploring in the rear end-end of nowhere, die to a spike, and don't particularly feel like going all the way there, you can still recover all that geo. Blapshemous similarly has these statues that let you pay currency to undo a Regret, so if you died stupidly in a pit someplace you can choose to pay a small chunk of cash to get your mana bar back. Most games with a bloodstain/corpse mechanic in recent years have something like this, an option to spend a fairly common consumable or currency to get it back if the potential loss is too great. It’s fine imo.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2023 18:34
|
|
|
sudonim posted:Is a game mechanic good if the developers put in a way to pay your way around it? I like The Messenger too for that. It’s good to give the player options if you’re going to implement a corpse run mechanic at all. The genre can definitely be a little less slavishly beholden to Souls concepts, but the idea of adding a risk/reward type mechanic to death is not inherently bad.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2023 23:11
|
|
|
GRIME has a neat “not getting this for free” map mechanic where you have to find crystal pillars in each region to enable the permanent map logging, but: A) the pillar makes an audible hum that gets louder as you approach it, B) similarly when close enough you can see little visual streamers pointing you in the direction, and C) whether or not you’ve found the crystal on that section yet, the map tracks all your recent movements via a little line of dots, so you can see what route(s) you’ve been taking so there’s less risk of getting lost trying to figure out the path you took if you get killed or turned around. GRIME in general is full of those “not handed to you, but not overly arduous to handle” design decisions, which is part of why it’s really good.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2023 15:00
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:00 |
|
|
Yes but you have to actually remember where you’ve been until you find a bench or a map merchant and doesn’t instantly autofill the grid, so it fails at being a map There’s a lot of arguments being made that something not being the most automated/simplistic form they can possibly take means that they are bad, rather than having merit for being more involved in some way. That’s a pretty simplistic view, but it’s valid so long as it isn’t being argued that anything more complex is a bad mechanic (which is unfortunately also happening). nrook posted:The answer is that it’s easy to build up a wall in one’s own head, defining some skills as “the real game” and others as “bad friction that should be mitigated through better quality-of-life features.” But of course this distinction is something players bring to games; it’s not something that exists in the game itself. If you aspire to hold opinions worth mentioning, you must free yourself from these petty rules and understand games on their own terms. This is actually happening right now in Street Fighter 6. There are a lot of people complaining about the new Modern control scheme, and how it’s bad for the game, or scrubby, or whatever other invective they want to spit towards it. Sajam noted that in large part this is coming from people who have internalized the view that “being good at fighting games” means “can execute special move inputs” and not being able to properly manage and react to the twenty other concurrent things happening in a match any given moment. Tortolia fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Jul 17, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2023 19:05
|
|