2D Platformers / Metroidvanias

Just gave it a go. Played for about two hours. I was kind of having fun, in one of those "just one more attempt" ways. But the controls were a bit too finnicky for me. I hate platformers with difficult controls. If I gotta do long jumps to proceed, at least make my long jumps reliable.

That aside, it did feel like I had seen almost all of the map in the first area, but still couldn't understand where I was supposed to go. I had a vague idea, but like I said, it required one of those long jumps. Eugh.

Bleh. Old post reply at LTK

Well, I bounced hard off the Souls games until Elden Ring came along whereas Rain World was manageable for me, so as ever YMMV. I think I'm much more attuned to hard 2D games than hard 3D games.

Blasphemous - 7/10

I had a bad first impression of this when giving the demo a try, the name combined with the silly pixel gore made me think this was some wannabe edgelord game and I wrote it off. But thanks to the Steam sale, I thankfully gave it a more thorough try and it grew a lot on me. Theme and art are unique and the soundtrack is great, I could get really absorbed in the atmosphere.

The other reason I quit the demo early was combat which just felt super slow and clunky. Once I got a hang on it that grew on me too. Encounters that seemed frustrating at first became pretty easy once I just figured out what I'm supposed to do, and that's a theme throughout the game, frustration that mostly dissipates through understanding.

Sadly, the clunkiness remains and isn't helped by glitchiness. Hit detection is all over the place, my own and even enemies' attacks often feel like it's decided by dice throw if they connect. The most egregious example was a type of ghosts in an early area who shoot some sort of laser beam which hit you even if there's literally 2 metres distance between it and you. The other way around, I often just stood there in the middle of an enemy's huge weapon without anything happening.

Then there's the eating of button inputs. Often he would swing horizontally instead of upwards, and sometimes just not at all. Sometimes nothing happens when I press the slide button. The result being that I resorted to spamming the button for a single action to make sure it happens. Grabbing ledges is janky too and again feels downright random at times. It honestly didn't feel like a finished game.

The result being that it feels like most of any difficulty there is is caused by clunkiness, and that's not fun. Bosses that are often very simple only become a challenge through jank. I believe with tight and responsive controls this would be a pretty easy game, and that just doesn't feel right.

I wouldn't actually call it a metroidvania, sure it has some typical aspects like the open world and backtracking etc., but it lacks the core aspect of opening up pathways through means of new abilities like a double jump, wall jump or whatever. Character upgrades are all about getting stronger in combat through more powerful attacks, more health, more mana. New areas are made accessible simply through unlocks, the single exception being an item that makes you invulnerable to poisonous fog.

There's also (imo) an over-reliance on patterned environmental hazards like dripping acid, walls shooting fireballs, bells that hurt you if you're standing in front of them at the wrong time, and so on. That can make gameplay feel too oldschool and isn't great for backtracking because it adds so much waiting.

Overall, there was a lot to like and I still mostly enjoyed it, but it also felt like a missed opportunity because the clunkiness is holding it back. With the problems sorted out it might have been an 8.5, but as it is it's just too broken for that.


edit: just bought the soundtrack on Steam for just 2 euros though. It is outstanding.

I don't remember having those issues, especially with the controls. It is slow and clunky though. The frustration/understanding thing is the DS influence

Did you get the good ending?

No. Looked up the requirements and thought screw that I don't care.

This looks like it could be a fun take on the genre

I've abandoned Salt and Sanctuary. I didn't honestly expect to like it, but tried anyway because you never know, and it was cheap in the Steam sale. But after 90 minutes I gave up on it because there was just nothing I enjoyed or that even raised my interest. Everything just seemed to confirm that this game is not for me at all.

For everyone unfamiliar with it, it's the Dark Souls of platformers--in the literal sense, because it takes Dark Souls and places it in a 2D side-scrolling environment, I hesitate to even call it a platformer. I've never played Dark Souls myself (I did play Demons Souls and didn't like it at all), but I'll take the word of reviewers who claim it's blatantly, unapologetically Dark Souls. And they say it's amazing, so probably worth checking out if you're into that. I'm not and it doesn't look like I will ever be.

And just to emphasise, S&S is nothing like platformers with "Dark Souls influence"--compared to this, Blasphemous and Bloodstained feel like one and the same game. It's pretty much a different genre.

Fucking hell it sounds awful too! Those are the worst sound effects I've ever heard. My ears are bleeding.

I think it looks good, but I understand if some people don't like the art style, it's a bit weird maybe how they slammed a dark gothic look together with a more cartoonish style.

Alwa's Awakening (Steam) - 7.5/10

8-bit retro metroidvania; and by 8-bit I mean NES; and by NES I mean authentic with all the hardware limitations in mind--unlike e.g. Shovel Knight (I hate when people say Shovel Knight looks like a NES game. It does not.)--with the one big exception being that they opted for widescreen resolution. I spotted a few tiny other liberties, but they simply make sense from a technical standpoint and don't seem to be made with the intent to push beyond original hardware limitations. Overall it's so authentic that you could port this game to the NES without losing anything but the widescreen--which they actually did and I'll come to that shortly.

The nostalgia retro charm here is immense, the soundtrack is a delight (and again, entirely within NES hardware limitations) and player animations are just adorable. Simply climbing ladders or pushing blocks around put a smile on my face because it just looks so cute and the soundtrack is so fittingly cheerful. Big thumbs up for all the love and attention to detail on display.

Considering all that, it pains me a little to give it such a low score (although it's the same score I'm giving Hollow Knight, so go figure). It goes for pretty basic gameplay, which fits the general theme and is great for a relaxed session of play. The pace is slow, enemies are as rudimentary as it gets, the few environmental puzzles there are are hardly brain teasers, challenge is few and far between. That causes problems for its open world metroidvania structure, as you're backtracking a lot through rooms that mostly feel pretty empty. There's little challenge and hardly any "combat" to keep your attention, so a lot of it feels like mere traversal more than actively playing--the main source of entertainment there is enjoying the soundtrack, but I constantly kept wishing for more.

Some games (Castlevania, Bloodstained, Blasphemous, Hollow Knight) mitigate backtracking issues by rewarding you for killing more enemies so time is never fully wasted even while you're not finding where you need to go. Some games (Super Metroid, Axiom Verge) don't but their enemy encounters keep just enough of your attention to remain somewhat entertaining. Sadly, Alwa's Awakening has neither rewards nor engaging enemy encounters, which combined with the slow pace adds up to an experience that can feel a little boring at times.

There's still enough to love and enjoy in this game, but that is holding it back in my opinion.


Alwa's Awakening 8-bit edition (NES) - 8/10

So they recently released an actual NES port of the game and I absolutely admire this level of dedication. There's been a physical release limited to 5000 units, an actual 4 Mbit NES cartridge with full packaging and goodies like an authentic manual, mini poster and whatnot. This is amazing. What I got is the ROM file that you can purchase on Steam as DLC for the main game.

And it really shows how authentic the game is. Lack of widescreen aside, this version is pretty much identical without any cuts made. There are a few typical NES things like some inevitable sprite flicker (pretty rarely though!) and sound effects interrupting the soundtrack, but remarkably I haven't encountered any slowdown throughout the entire game. Considering how many original NES games made by companies like Capcom and Konami crawled down to a halt in many places, this really shows it's made by experts. It's a very pretty NES game at that, and how many original NES games had an actual automap? It's definitely one of the better if not best games in that system's library, being surpassed only perhaps by its top titles like SMB3 or the Mega Man games.

Now while I usually welcome the move to widescreen in retro games, in this case the reduced NES resolution actually works in the game's favour: as horizontal room size is decreased by 36% (without sacrificing any content, mind--the rooms are all the same, they're just stretched horizontally in the original), slow traversal is suddenly less of an issue. The problem with not a lot going on remains, but shortening traversal time is a clear improvement. It also adds another level in the end, but it's fairly linear and not as challenging as the final castle that precedes it, so it feels more like some bonus content than a thorough expansion of the main game. Doesn't hurt though, which is good.

Overall, this is the definitive version of the game.


Alwa's Legacy (Steam) - 7/10

The 16-bit sequel. It addresses the original's slow backtracking issues, most notably by increasing your movement speed from walking to jogging. Also you can use collectibles to turn save points into fast travel points, which is really neat. You can purchase some nice little upgrades to your spells. Generally quite a few welcome little gameplay improvements.

Sadly, I don't think the move to 16-bit worked in its favour. Awakening hit NES nostalgia on the head and it really stood out; Legacy has higher detail and more animation, and while it certainly looks nice it also looks like hundreds of other pixel art games. I don't find the animation as cute as in Awakening and even the soundtrack isn't quite as good in my opinion. Which is a shame because even when traversing empty rooms the soundtrack alone was a source of entertainment, not so much in this one.

That would all be fine, and gameplay improvements should make it more enjoyable. But the improvements are still not enough to make gameplay very engaging. "Puzzles" aren't any more interesting and enemy encounters aren't improved enough to be really entertaining.

Overall, while Awakening feels flawed but special, Legacy feels more like "it's fine I guess". Awakening sure had a more lasting impact in my brain and will be the one I might revisit in the future.

Pleasant and laid back describes it well, only when I got lost and searched around the entire map for stretches of time, it felt a little too laid back for my liking sometimes. Wouldn't have been an issue if it'd been bad because it was like 3 euros or so in the Steam sale.

To be honest, once is enough. There's a lot of variables at play, and you will likely replay it a number of times if you're a fan, but you only unlock harder difficulties after your initial victory and those are likely to be out of reach to all but the most hardcore fans.

I got as far as the final boss, died in seconds and decided I couldn't be arsed

Does anyone have any tips for beating Hand of the King in Dead Cells?

The other bosses are absolute jokes - out of umpteen deaths so far, *one* has been to a boss, and all the rest were to trash mobs - but HotK is a major difficulty spike.