Sno

Okay, so i guess i'm not buying into the notion that Rogue Legacy is a thing that was trying to be wholly different from Castlevania, then. The similarity in attack arcs with the larger claymore weapons in the metroidvania Castlevanias is clearly evident to me, the side dashes are evocative of the back dash mechanic, the use of a sub weapon mechanic and even the kinds of sub weapons presented in the game are also a clear allusion to Castlevania. The pogo hop is even functionally identical to the dive kick in Iga's games! I can't see it as anything else than a game that wants to be a Castlevania roguelike, and i think it does it badly. I had huge problems with how it generates its levels and expects you to engage with them, it presents some fundamentally broken questions, rooms that tease rewards beyond challenges that have no reasonable answer. I also thought its bosses were simplistic damage sponges, but more generally there's that unpredictable knockback that makes it difficult to set up successive attacks, ambiguous and ill-defined hitboxes, and a lack of greater combat nuance like what is present in those later Castlevanias. (Rogue Legacy doesn't give you any animation cancels to play around with, for example.) Options for advanced mobility are absolutely a thing that's present in the metroidvania Castlevanias, double jumps and back dashes and slide kicks and dive kicks and super jump uppercuts and all sorts of weird mobility options in combat. It's heavier in its feel, for sure, and that's probably down to personal preference, admittedly. For my own part, I hated the loose feeling of Rogue Legacy's jumping mechanics. That's where Rogue Legacy finally broke for me and i decided that i kind of hated it. The way the game is structured does not reward skillful play, it rewards a grind. God dammit, i hate being so negative, i was trying to avoid taking another dump on Rogue Legacy. Griddlelol, bums me out to see that you've had a bad experience with SotN, i'd like to encourage sticking with it a bit more since it sounds like you're still really early into it, but i'm not sure that's going to change your mind based on what you've been saying.

I played enough of Ikaruga on the GC to be able to s-rank the early stages and 1cc the game, but in the years since, I've gone back to the game multiple times and never been able to get anywhere even remotely close to that. I think my love of that game has waned somewhat with the realization that it's virtually a rhythm game with how rigidly you have to adhere to your plotted route, and how prescribed-in-the-design that route can seem. Ikaruga is a beautiful and remarkable thing though, it's still a favorite. (I still use Ikaruga art as a desktop image!)

I was honestly a little shocked at how good the solo game in Splatoon is. I went into it assuming that it would have just been a lazy "throw it in" the way the 1v1 local mode is, but it's definitely not that. It's probably the part of that game that is the most unmistakably a product of Nintendo, it's so evocative of the 3D Mario games in its level design and how it employs the toolbox of mechanics at its disposal. Those bossfights were especially impressive, yeah. Wouldn't mind seeing an even more fleshed out solo mode in a Splatoon follow-up, ideally without them lazily repurposing multiplayer maps for some of the stages. (Or at least doing it in a more interesting way.)

This whole Castlevania conversation motivated me to dig up my copies of the DS games, and after messing around on old save files for a bit to refresh my memory on various details for the purposes of these conversations, i decided that i really actually needed to go and finally finish playing Order of Ecclesia. It was something i somehow had never really gotten around to doing before, and i still haven't done it quite yet either, because i started a new save and i'm probably less than half way through right now. I think Order of Ecclesia is a really terrific thing though, i'll probably stick some thoughts about it in this thread whenever i get done with it. One of the things that instantly stands out to me, though, is just how great it looks. I think it's one of the best-looking games on the original DS. (I love that early area where you're jumping across floating debris in an area where the water level constantly raises and lowers, while a polygonal scene in the background depicts a huge ship being tossed about in an intense storm.) People generally argue that the multi-directional whip sort of breaks Castlevania's old-school platforming action dynamics, and i'm inclined to agree, but it's still certainly a top-notch production. Man, and that soundtrack? Really hard to believe that the SNES sound chip produced . Speaking of Order of Ecclesia, that has a . I feel like maybe i should put together a few Castlevania posts in the music thread. I don't know if that's specifically a thing i said, but i don't like Rogue Legacy and i can probably buy into those sentiments. It's a game that clearly wants so much to be Castlevania, but can't quite square those ambitions with the nuance of its execution, it's very at odds with itself. It's kludgy and badly designed, and throughout it all, it faces you with locations and enemies that could not possibly have any less character than they already do. I could not believe the game was so glowingly received on Steam, i felt like i was crazy. Sensible, reasonable people like Rogue Legacy, i don't understand it. To each their own, i suppose. I thought it had good music though! So there's that.

I certainly didn't mean to put forward the notion that SotN is a bad game, but i can understand why it wouldn't click with somebody. It's a massive and ambitious thing that doesn't always feel cohesive or sensible.

Unrelated, but Evo also starts on the 17th. (For the unawares, that's the Evolution Championship Series, a huge yearly multi-game competition for fighting game fans.) Lots of fun livestreams in the near future. Oh my god, i need this in my life.

I think SOTN has a really terrific OST, so the notion that the music in that game is terrible is not something i can really abide by. The music in the entire series is generally very upbeat and anachronistic to its theming, but SOTN is kind of the least that of any Castlevania game, much of the music in its soundtrack is very ambient and eerie. The UI is terrible though, it absolutely is. Nothing is presented in the way you'd naturally expect it to be. It's clinging to Castlevania's confusing "hearts = ammo" metaphor as every Castlevania game does, but SOTN does it in a way that seems to rotate everything's visual presentation off by just enough to be incredibly off-putting. It's super weird and none of the other "igavanias" have this problem. Also, no, Castlevania was always super cheesy. It's a garish hodge-podge of myths and legends that alternates between pretty-boy protagonists and hulking schwarzenegger-esque heroes, and it's always set to some manner of rock and roll-infused soundtrack. It also takes itself seriously and has an elaborate and labyrinthine continuity. (Well, not entirely seriously, there's a wee bit of wink and nod going on.) It's kind of great. (It's great!) SOTN is worth trying, at least. I still think it's a really great game, but i definitely wouldn't put it in the same league as Super Metroid, and i don't think it's as great as the Sorrow games either. It's something of a flawed gem. Super Castlevania is part of the earlier half of the Castlevania series that fans generally refer to as "classicvania", they're mostly linear action games. Super Castlevania is generally fairly well regarded, fun and technically impressive, though it's often derisively cited as the easiest of the original games. (When it comes to people identifying the best "classicvania", i see people usually identify either the original Castlevania or Rondo of Blood, which Symphony of the Night is actually a direct sequel to, despite the totally different genre.) I'd really encourage probably giving Aria of Sorrow a shot, and if that doesn't click, Castlevania is maybe not for you. (Which i'm frankly surprised by, since you cited Rogue Legacy as a thing you really enjoyed.) Protip: Abuse the back step and the landing animation from a jump to cancel out of recovery animations on attacks for faster attacks! I don't remember if that works in SotN, it probably does, and i know it works in the Sorrow games.

No, it definitely doesn't. I would argue that many of the GBA and DS games that followed in its wake have better worlds and better mechanical foundations. SotN has a real shotgun approach to its design, there's a lot of stuff in there that kind of doesn't fit and feels weird and maybe broken. It's certainly an impressive and memorable game though, but it's perhaps best looked at as a thing of its time, something that looked at Metroid as a way to reinvigorate a stagnant franchise, and ambitiously tried to be everything its inspiration was and more. That said, i think most fans would say that the Sorrow duology are the actual best Igarashi games. Dawn of Sorrow especially, despite suffering from some gimmick obligation as an early DS game while also sporting a seriously unfortunate bland anime aesthetic for its character portraits, has probably the largest and most interestingly designed world in an Igarashi Castlevania, as well as some really great and engaging systems. (Iga has spoken about probably looking to the Sorrow games as a foundation for the mechanics in Bloodstained.) Portrait of Ruin is also pretty great, it tries some pretty weird and crazy things with its mechanics, but suffers from the same bland anime art as Dawn and also some fairly bland environments. The scope of the game may have been a little overly ambitious, it's very large and maybe stretched a bit thin. Order of Ecclesia, on the other hand, is a beautiful and laser-focused late-cycle DS game with maybe the most refined action in the entire 2d series, but it's jarringly difficult for those used to only the metroidvanias in the series and also has a fairly simple and straightforward world layout as it's sort of trying to bridge "classicvania" and "metroidvania". The GBA games, Aria of Sorrow aside, are generally thought of as less accomplished than the DS games. (Igarashi claims to have not even been involved with Circle of the Moon, though it's actually generally better liked than the first GBA game he definitely was involved with, Harmony of Dissonance.) While all the GBA games are available on Wii U Virtual Console, none of the DS games are, and who knows if they'll show up given how Konami has been lately. (Which honestly really sucks, Dawn of Sorrow is the one i want to recommend.) Also, keep in mind that Iga's games also have a long tradition of bonus worlds and unlockable scenarios with entirely different mechanics, they're rarely over when they initially seem to be over.

Here's Satoru Iwata making an appearance on Game Center CX to talk about himself and Balloon Fight and generally be very human.

He was such a unique entity in the gaming industry as a corporate leader who had worked his way up from inside the company, he worked on those early Kirby games, and even Earthbound. So much of what he did at Nintendo seemed informed by that, from his Iwata Asks interviews to a broad unwillingness to let individual development teams bear the weight for Nintendo's struggles as a company. (He had spoken about wanting the teams to feel secure in their jobs so they could be creative in a safe environment.) Totally a one of a kind dude.

There's a pretty big gap between the late high-rank weapons and early g-rank weapons, so you're going to have to settle for small optimizations for a while, probably. One thing you can probably do is figure out how to get some good skill buffs off of your armor, if you haven't already. Mix some pieces, slot some gems, get a better talisman, etc. Yup, it's a huge game, took a long time to get to g-rank. The group i was playing with sort of lost cohesion during early g-rank though, so i think i'm probably done.

Clearing up a few details on Splatoon: 1 - The game is largely built around a couple of public playlists, you can't do local matches or private online matches, the most you can do is join a friend's matchmaking party. (Or play a super watered down 1v1 local mode.) 2 - People everywhere kind of stopped talking about it really quick, but the single-player game is very good, it sort of ends up feeling like a bit of a spiritual successor to Super Mario Sunshine. 3 - Splatfest, the thing that happened on July 4th, was structured as a big "Cats vs Dogs" faction metagame. (Cats lost, boo.) The game's hub location is reorganized to look like a concert, different music plays everywhere in the game, and there's night variants for all the maps and battles are fought with glow-in-the-dark ink. Players who contribute more or belong to the winning faction earn unique items that can be used to upgrade or reroll the buffs on equipment. The community generally also just got super into it, there was tons of incredible artwork and gentle ribbing happening in the miiverse posts that populate the hub. The next splatfest starts on the 17th at 9pm pacific, will go for 24 hours, and the voting booth is already in the hub. (The theme this time is "Rollercoasters vs Waterslides".) Splatoon is awesome, people should play it.

I played Her Story through to 100% completion and i'm kind of on the fence about it. It's a particularly interesting experiment in non-linear narrative, there must have been quite a complicated script process to give rise to the subtle gating that occurs, though the structure of it wore thin pretty quickly and the whole thing ultimately left me feeling pretty unfulfilled. The presented narrative is so ambiguous and unreliable that you have virtually nothing concrete to take away from it upon conclusion, and i'm not even talking about the things that are being popularly debated about its story. It gives up virtually nothing, and though it then implies that this may be its intent, that doesn't make it satisfying. Certainly didn't hate it though, it's consistently surprising and it's well worth looking at for anybody who's curious, it's just more interesting than rewarding, perhaps? Still, I at least feel like i got a worthwhile amount of value out of it.

I loved the Dark Forces games growing up, curious to see how they'll hold up for somebody going in without prior experience. I would be shocked if games like Quake or Unreal don't still click, but those Dark Forces games may not have aged as well as i'd hope.

Maybe i'll figure out Moray Towers the way i finally got a handle on Arowana Mall, but i suspect it could just end up being a bad map for me like Rig and Port are. The rollers i was playing against though, they were all over those walls. Flying out at me from weird angles just all over the place. It was like a horror movie. I've generally stuck to shooters and blasters, but mostly shooters. (The luna blaster is ridiculous though.) I started out maining the aerospray same as you, though i prefer the splash-o-matic to it now for its consistent accuracy, but overall i've shifted over to the .96 gal and the dual squelcher. I'd like to pick up the chargers, but i'm a bad sniper, i'm always a bad sniper. Rollers, on the other hand, given how prevalent they already are, i don't want to add to that. That's just boring. The bunny-hopping is near-constant at high ranks, blasters and rollers do it basically nonstop. It's probably going to be a wall for a lot of people who aren't willing to play with the motion controls, not being able to jump and aim on the stick at the same time. (Nintendo clearly does not appreciate the wisdom of bumper jumper control schemes.) Shooters, however, can mostly get away with not leaning on it as a tactic since they feel the aim penalty pretty harshly, but it's something to keep in mind as a possibility for close ranges, it can be used throw yourself or others pretty off. (As for chargers, i'm not sure if you can even jump while charging.) It's not that hard to do, i find. I just... I keep forgetting to do it when it matters, i get lazy. I'm lazy. Also, muscle memory and all that. Another near constant at high ranks? The dynamo roller. I think that thing needs a nerf, it's probably the dominant weapon in the game, it has range that feels like it exceeds the longest-range shooters, has a massively wide arc, and one-hit-kills everything in that arc. It's insane. Theoretically it's balanced by its long firing delay, but it's only slightly longer than the time-to-kill on better shooters, putting you in kind of a "land every hit perfectly or get destroyed" situation. Except not even really then, they'll still get out their attack because of the lag delay and the best you can really hope for is either catching them completely off guard or nabbing a simultaneous kill. So the thing that theoretically balances the dynamo roller doesn't really effectively balance it in real world conditions, and things that work against other rollers, being conscious of where they're likely to try and camp or flank from and abusing well placed grenades or a range advantage, don't work against the dynamo roller because the thing covers so much ground with a single shot. I have been in so many games where dynamo rollers have had 20+ kills in games where mostly everybody else is sitting around 7. You see amazingly good players run a lot of different weapons, but the best dynamo rollers are consistent in a completely unreal way. There's also some vaguely exploitative hijinx happening with chargers getting faster kills off of attack buffs, but i'm willing to concede to them a rare advantage for the time being, because there's just not enough of them to really worry about it. Anyways, i'm probably still just a bit salty from those Moray Towers matches. Damn those rollers.

I hate the new map. It is a paradise for rollers and my personal hell. Same day as Evo. It's like they're trying to pick bad times for it.

Shit, in my defense, i hadn't looked at the video recently. Still, i can't believe it didn't click that the clip of it driving was CG, it's so obvious. You motivated me to dig into it more, i could find precisely zero footage of the Kuratas actually being mobile, and while they have apparently "sold" multiple Kuratas "starter kits", it seems as though they may have delivered on none of them as of yet. Very interesting.

You're making it sound like you're used to newer platformers with more restrictive and natural physics models and aren't used to continued and immediate response throughout the full arc of the jump. Is that in the ballpark?

There are videos out there of the Kuratas driving around and it is quite fast and seemingly quite agile. "Suidobashi Industries" definitely seems like it has the advantage going into this thing, especially with how top heavy the Mk2 seems. The videos of the Mk2 coming out of the maker faire where it made an appearance made the thing seem alarmingly unsteady. There's apparently around 175k worth of work and material in the Mk2 as of so far, but it's an incomplete project, and smart speculation is they're using this duel as a way to drum up additional investors so they can finish their work on it before the event happens next year, while Suidobashi already has several years of experience making and allegedly selling the Kuratas. (Apparently with a price tag of around 1.35 million usd.) They're both obviously mostly for show right now though, it'll be interesting to see what evolves over the next year for when these machines are expected to perform in that competition. I know it's just going to be like five minutes of these things awkwardly flailing about until somebody's engine dies, but i can't help but geek out. I love that they're both so obviously inspired by fictional mechas. The Mk2 is clearly going for a Battletech thing, and the Kuratas is said to be inspired by Armored Trooper Votoms designs.

Have you played any of the GBA/DS Casltevania games yet? Or SOTN? Given how much of an influence they are on Rogue Legacy, it seems like you should. I don't quite follow, the control response in that game is basically immediate in every circumstance, there aren't really any animations that should ever cause any issue. Or are you asserting that there's some hitbox/sprite dissonance?

A Special Charge Up in a main slot honestly probably gets you more meter on average, but Tenacity's drip feed sort of edges it out in situations where your team is struggling. Since it's the only mechanic in the game that kind of buffers you against having a bad team, i sort of like having it for that reason. (Of course, if you yourself are struggling and dying repeatedly, it's instead Special Saver that is useful. It is what will get you out of those situations where it's hard to build up enough meter for game-changing plays because your opponents have momentum and are overwhelming your team with quickly refreshed supers.) Also, i'm B+ now, hurrah.

Not really in the scope of apocalyptic autonomous robot news, but i can't resist posting about a goddamned real world giant robot duel: I am positively giddy.

I've already seen some people deconstructing and criticizing how the math used in determining the winner was handled, the Cats are salty about still losing after taking the victories lead on a numbers disadvantage. People don't think popularity should be a deciding factor, but Nintendo probably also need a balancing factor against people just grinding out wins all day. It was fun though, and I already used my rewards to roll a build i'm pretty happy with: Tenacity, Ninja Squid, and Ink Resistance as the mains. (Yes, it's definitely a tryhard build.) 1 Quick Respawn, 3 Special Charge Ups, 1 Special Saver, 1 Ink Saver (Main), 1 Swim Speed Up, and 2 Ink Recovery Ups as the subs. I leveled up some 1 and 2 star gear with brands that were going to more or less give me what i want, and It turned out about as close to perfect for my purposes as i could hope for. I'd probably want to lose some of the special charge ups for some ink saver (sub) skills, but i'm wary of doing any more rerolls, i already used most of my snails on this. Also, i played some Tower Control. That mode is super fun, you definitely want one guy on the tower and a few guys on the ground around it so everybody doesn't get splatted by a single grenade, but the way the maps complicate that by having the tower take weird paths out across gaps in the map on Arowana and Saltspray is rad as hell.

I don't really agree that it succeeds in hitting that retro feel at all, but i've already argued at length in other threads that Rogue Legacy feels considerably worse to play than a lot of the old games it's trying to emulate, so i won't do that again here. Kind of hated playing that game though.

That's really interesting, huh. I could also see the no-nostalgia-for-2d thing happening if somebody grew up primarily on PC games or something. (Though, even there, i grew up playing Commander Keen.) Me, i had a gameboy at a really young age and like... Metroid 2 was a formative experience for me. I've always felt that there are certain things that 2D games are just really good at doing. Like the way 2d games have a crisp, instantly readable spacial awareness. It's why good 3d platformers are so rare, while it seems to be hard to make a truly bad 2d one. But what you're saying about the 3D mario stuff, it's curious to me how much of that is potentially just what gets ingrained into us as kids.