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While I agree that the bulk of the variety comes from what weapons/skills you find I think in a run based game you'd still want randomization otherwise you could just book it straight to the exit.  Peak play then becomes about memorization rather than knowledge of the game's systems and your skill with them.  Granted you can just ignore enemies and run around looking for the exit if you really want (and that's probably what speedruns of the game will end up being), but I think knowing where everything is ahead of time removes a lot of the spontaneity as well.  I wouldn't discount the impact the combination of weapon, enemy type, and level layout have on encounters.  Most of the time it won't matter but every now and then it does and you're only going to get that with procedural generation.

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Double-dipped on the Switch because I was on holidays, and not regretted it for a second. The small screen makes some thing slightly hard to parse, but it's such a perfect pick up and play game. It really was great switching between Octopath and this.

 

I've not really missed my unlocks, I'm actually kind of happy to be getting more little rewards again this way.

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I binged on this game over the weekend. It's hard to find anything bad to say about the combat mechanics, they're implemented near flawlessly and I'm a big fan of the enemy designs in this game. After sinking quite a few hours into it I do have a few gripes though. First of all, I think for a roguelike (or "roguelite" I suppose) the impact the items you find have on your run is too small. Sure, sometimes I get a better weapon, sometimes a slightly worse one, but in basically every run I can force a certain playstyle, and I never find something that forces or encourages me to fundamentally switch up the way I play. Items like the Cursed Sword sort of do it, but it's an exception and still not that extreme of an item in my opinion.

 

I guess I wish there was either more randomness, or less. To me the appeal of the game is closer to something like Diablo than more traditional roguelikes, because the fun is simply in tearing through a level, collecting gear. This is why I think a different structure could've suited the game better. I would rather have had a persistent character with much deeper customisation options, than the current game where I feel like I'm repeating the same run each time, and the times I do beat the final boss on the same difficulty as before I'm not even rewarded for it. In fact, I'm better off not spending any gold at the end, because if I deplete it I start with zero gold the next run.

 

Another issue I have is that you need to unlock items in order to try them (although you can get locked items as rare drops), but if it turns out that an item is bad (many of them are) you’ve now diluted the pool of good items. So it’s a grind in which you end up poisoning the well. If I started over I would unlock items much more selectively, and I could get the best weapons on every run.

 

Finally, I’m not a fan of the bosses in the game. The three mid-game ones are fine I suppose, because you can breeze past them most of the time, making them a non-issue. However, they still have the same problem as the final boss, which is a damage cap. You can have a build that lets you rip through the entire game, but that gets completely negated by bosses. It favours low damage per shot, high rate of fire weapons over slower weapons. I mean, I can have a build where I one shot every enemy in the last area of the game (which can be fairly tough), and the last boss just shrugs it off. Another mechanical complaint I have is how each scroll you use scales the enemies. Not a fan of enemy scaling in any game.

 

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The complaint about lesser weapons poisoning the (weapon) well has been around since the game was in early access.  There have been several calls from the community for a way to lock out certain weapons so they won't drop but I feel like that's a double edged sword (pardon the pun).  If you can lock out all the stuff you don't want, then you can essentially just pick a power build and never deviate from it which defeats a lot of the point.  Personally I'm hoping they continue to weapon balance and make changes as needed.  They've done it with several weapons over the development of the game.  The wrenching whip for example started off really weak but it was modified to attack faster with a critical third hit and became one of my favorite weapons.

 

I also agree the bosses need a bit of work.  I'm not a huge fan of the small confined area since it's counter to every other part of the game (the exception being Conjunctivius, formerly known as the Watcher aka the big tentacled eyeball).  I also dislike how they completely negate most of the mutations which forces you to change everything just for one fight.  I disagree that their design favors faster, weaker weapons though.  The most effective methods are the tactics, mostly traps or grenades since they can be deployed without having to stop which allows you to spend time dodging since most of the boss difficulty lies in the fact that they never stop attacking.  Of course this means you need to plan ahead and put points into tactics, which can be a (very) effective build but less fun in my opinion.

 

Also agreed about enemy scaling.  Never a fan.

 

In other news I beat the Hand of the King last night.  I ended up scaling back to zero boss cells and using some speedrun tactics (double heavy turrets with bonus damage to flaming enemies and a weapon that spreads fire).  It was my first time going back to my early access save.  I had initially started a new one on the recommendation of the developers but after a while the thought of unlocking everything and grinding all those cells again felt too tedious considering I had already done it.  At this point I think I have 2 or 3 things left to unlock and I'll have 100%.

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On 28/06/2017 at 4:18 PM, gavku said:

Ak gotta jump back in. Saw them just tweet this

 

 

 

also I drew that mushie enemy ;)

 

 

 

 

That isn't accurate on the current version I am playing (after saying I might not have time, it is all I have played for the last 3 days).

 

I got to the Forgotten Sepulchre through a place called the Stilted something or other...

 

Man, things have been changing like crazy.

 

If I can I lean towards bear trap and turret combo, with either a shield and arrow combo, or a whip and ice blast.

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5 hours ago, twmac said:

 

That isn't accurate on the current version I am playing (after saying I might not have time, it is all I have played for the last 3 days).

 

I got to the Forgotten Sepulchre through a place called the Stilted something or other...

 

Man, things have been changing like crazy.

 

If I can I lean towards bear trap and turret combo, with either a shield and arrow combo, or a whip and ice blast.

 

The Stilt Village used to be called the Fog Fjord.  The level progression map changed quite a bit over the course of development.  The boss names all changed too (I still think of them by the old names and keep getting surprised when I see a different name pop up).

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Circling back regarding switch performance, it has been pretty much totally fine for me through to just before the second boss (as far as I've gotten). If it gets bad later I have no idea of course.

 

Once or twice I've noticed some minor slowdown, but nothing major (we're talking 40-50 frames instead of 60 for a few seconds) and quite rarely. I am pretty FPS-sensitive, so unless you are really tryharding this game I think switch performance is completely acceptable. 

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