#or really difficult platformers/metroidvanias

[sergeifyodorov]

when hockey players have hobbies outside hockey it's always like, pop songs on the acoustic guitar or the same video games they've been playing since juniors or cooking something slightly fancier than eggs. learn to knit for god's sake

[askagamedev]

I’m currently developing a 2D Metroidvania game, and I’d like to hear your thoughts: What are the key elements that make a Metroidvania fun to play and challenging in a satisfying way? I'm especially interested in how to balance exploration, progression, and difficulty without frustrating the player.

This is a good question. The core element here that drives everything in a metroidvania is the intersection between the abilities the player gets and the level design. Everything a player does in a platformer follows three sequential steps:

The player sees a potential challenge or obstacle

The player considers what kind of tools/abilities she has at her disposal to overcome the obstacle

The player uses those tools to overcome the obstacle

As you've identified, a player needs exploration, progression, and difficulty. These effectively map to the three steps one to one - when the player encounters a new obstacle, that's the exploration. When she considers how to use the abilities and tools, that's the progression. When she has to actually perform the moves to overcome the obstacle, that's the difficulty. Once these three steps have been completed, you give the player a reward - open up a new part of the map, give a new item/ability, give more uses of an old item/ability, give more health, and so on. This is the core game loop for a metroidvania.

To do this, you need to design your levels to have a good spread of obstacles that allow for each of these three steps. Critical path rewards should be fairly easy to obtain - you want all players to be able to experience your game. Optional rewards should be harder to get - more difficult to see or overcome, but providing rewards there means you're communicating to the player that you saw and recognized their effort by rewarding it. Getting the hard-to-get secret whatever, even if it is only an achievement and/or cosmetic, feels really good.

Metroidvania games in particular need to place many obstacles and rewards in early areas of the game that are clearly visible from the critical path but not overcomable so as to encourage players to return to earlier areas and explore them after obtaining more skills/abilities/tools. An example would be the classic Legend of Zelda example of a heart container piece sitting out in the open in the overworld, but behind several rocks that are just too heavy to lift (at the moment). The player clearly sees the interesting reward (heart container piece!) and cannot obtain it (yet), so they make a mental note to come back later because they know something good is here. Pepper these visual hooks and rewards throughout your level design in order to draw a player to find new areas and new abilities.

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[cobcannonfan1997]

The real issue of calling games "metroidvanias" is not that it is a stupid name, it is that "metroidvania" as a genre does not exist. There are Castlevanias and there are Metroids and everyone's trying to make a Metroid because none of the game dev youtubers they watch as their only source of game design knowledge have ever played a castlevania game. (They've all only played Hollow Knight)

The only real similarity that Metroid and Castlevania have is that the old games had a map UI that looks almost the same if you ignore all the details beyond the map squares themselves. Castlevania is an action RPG franchise first and foremost with a focus on combat encounters and smaller tighter maps with a variety of weapons and where the actual progression is a minor element, whereas Metroid is almost solely focused on making the progression feel smooth and generally much more designed around the platforming challenge of it all and actually finding your way around. Finding your way around in castlevania isn't generally all the challenging, the challenge is mostly in the enemy encounters.

With indie metroidvanias, you'd think they would be taking more cues from a variety of sources and thus making it less clear-cut and adding meaning to the genre, but no it's all hollow knight or super metroid. When you say metroidvania those are the only games that people think of because, frankly, nobody has made another good one yet because they're all stuck on these two.

Hollow Knight DOES have good combat, however that does not make it a Castlevania. It doesn't have that sort of character customization that symphony of the night and the 'vanias after it did that I think is crucial for the vibe of those games. Neither do any of the other indie metroidvanias really, cause we're in an age where tightness in design is above all else. If you have like 30-40 weapons that act slightly different that makes things difficult to balance this enemy type to work exactly the way you want it to work for every player! If a player's moveset is smaller then by default it's going to be much easier to design things that are way tighter and impressive for that one exact moveset. God forbid there is a sequence break or, even worse, a bug that lets the player play the game in a way that is unintended by the developers.

In conclusion: Super Metroid gives you a wall jump that you're never required to use, people (read: youtubers) praise this as good design. If you did it today, those same people would call it bad design. And thus "metroidvanias" cannot afford to be inspired by neither Metroid nor Castlevania, because people just want Hollow Knight 2. Well I want a good version of Order of Ecclesia

[bitchfitch]

Tbh this is more me bitching about once again wasting money on a game I probably won't be able to finish due to cripple-itus but we're going to pretend it's a serious discussion on game design.

So to preface: my vision is fucked. Irrevocably. Like get discounts on insurance levels of fucked. But games, even very difficult ones still Often very doable and fun.

One of my favorite genres is "white dot goes on a combat platforming adventure" Ie metroidvania/soulslikes that either Are hollow knight or heavily inspired by hollow knight

And I just want to compare a Good white dot, against an extremely irritating white dot.

This is yi. He is an edgy cat boy. he is a good white dot.

No matter the amount of bullshit on screen or the background color, you can always quickly find the white dot that is Yi or his lil robe.

This Bo. They are a bad white dot. they look like they'd be a Good white dot, what with the really clear silhouette of their ears and strong red markings

This is Bo in the game.

Bo breaks the number 1 rule of being a white dot: they end up the same color as the background because neat light effects which do look Great, were more important than the ability to find you're guy while doing minute long don't touch the ground style parkour sessions.

Like Hollowknight and Nine Sols, Path of the teal lotus uses a lot of forground and back ground layers to create a very nice sense of depth. However the foreground layers frequently completely cover the lower half of Bo's body. often making them a light colored dot on a noisy light colored back ground.

The fact background and play ground elements are often the same color does not help. Nor does the fact the camera is . Bad. it just is. It zooms in and out in the middle of a screen making it extremely difficult to keep track of an already hard to follow character in a setting where. losing track of your guy means getting sent back to the beginning of a tedious boss fight or a prolonged parkour session (which to be clear, would be good if you could track your player character. not the bosses though. They are. bad. they need to attack faster, have more than 2 attacks, or at least have a fraction of the HP they do. so you're not just standing around waiting for them to decide to start up another attack to open a vulnerability window.)

And I'm just going to say it, Someone on the team knew the game had this issue. Because they gave you a fix that doesn't work. You can adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation. None of these fix the issue of Bo disappearing. The game is so blown out that no combination of settings produce a result where bo is consistently visible, and also you can tell whats background and what's something you can stand on.

Anyways Demos are an accessibility feature, and when they're not available don't be lazy like I was and just pirate it. If the devs aren't going to give you a way to check if their shit is busted or not, you'll just have to find one yourself.

Anyways anyways tldr absolutely Gorgeous game, Should've been a silent animated movie instead because it's nearly unplayable and the translators either did a Really bad job, or the writers just didn't get why the jokes they're copying were funny

[eldritch-elrics]

i got animal well as one of my christmas presents to myself, and i'm really enjoying it so far!

it's pretty much a perfect contrast to silent hill 2 remake, so i'm having a good time playing both concurrently. no story, no handholding, lots of movement. i always love being tossed into a game and challenged to figure it out as best i can. animal well not only creates a beautiful, spooky, atmospheric world - it also creates, through its gameplay, a sense that you're intruding into a system that is strange and haphazardly connected. take the functionally useless fast travel system (i'm five hours in... perhaps better fast travel will be introduced later?) or the countless unexplained items and mechanics (i love you weird eggs). works well thematically with its central motif of surreal wild animals.

it's just a great metroidvania too. the upgrades are VERY fun and unique. also, the platforming is more difficult than i expected? i mean, it's forgiving as far as platformers go, but the general "fuck around and find out" feel of it creates this fun/frustrating sense that i could softlock myself at any moment (even though i know i won't). it's kind of hard to explain, but it scratches a similar itch as hollow knight room randomizer for that reason.

i've tried not to learn too much about animal well, but i have heard that it's chock full of secrets, and that will be very fun...

[yzafre]

Finished Ender Magnolia, some final thoughts:

As I was approaching the half-way point of the game, I had this feeling of "the gameplay feels better in this one, but I don't think they're executing the narrative as well". And, having completed the game… yes, essentially.

It is a far more polished game, but the longer it went on the more I came to the conclusion that I just don't like it as much as Lilies (perhaps, even, because of the polish).

Before I go to far into my critique, I want to be clear: the game was fun. I had a lot of fun. But I also enjoy understanding and articulating why I do or do not enjoy things, and given this is a sequel game it was inviting comparisons.

I watched a retrospective on the original Spyro trilogy recently, comparing the originals and the remake, and there was a comment in there that struck me - that games of that time period had a particular charm due to developers… not fully knowing what they were doing, that is extremely difficult to replicate now-a-days, due to the growing skill of the industry. There weren't the rules and expectations there are now, and beginning developers were more willing to try things out and take risks.

In some ways, that applies to these two games. Magnolia is far more polished - not just from quality of life features, but from the flow of the game. And yet...

For example: let's talk about a core of the MetroidVania genre - movement upgrades and back-tracking.

Both Lilies and Magnolia have Big Movement Upgrades used to progress in new areas - swimming, wall hook, grapple. Standard fare - and this goes much smoother in Magnolia, due to the more detailed maps (which I am a fan of, to be clear).

However, in Magnolia those big upgrades are the only things you need for both progression and backtracking to pick up a small handful of extra collectibles. As I very clearly remember (from having to look it up in guides), Lilies relied on the extra movement affects on the minor abilities to preform some creative platforming to pick up some tricky hidden items. In Magnolia, I can only think of two pick-ups that require you to do that (and because it hadn't been used frequently throughout, I'd forgotten to consider my abilities' movement capabilities by that point, despite being excited to find those kinds of items when I went into the game).

It can be argued that this kind of obscure platforming is a bit janky, a bit of a mess, unapproachable… but it gave Lilies a very distinct flavor that was very memorable.

I do think Magnolia had some untapped potential, though, because it more tightly refined its movement abilities. While the Upper Stratum felt a bit anti-climactic as a final area, I did actually enjoy it. Particularly, I found the side-dash puzzle rooms were very fun to navigate. I feel like if they had more areas that extended your movement abilities into this kind of crafted puzzle, I would have been more affectionate towards the system.

Combat, I'll might give Magnolia props on. While it felt easier, I can't really say if it's because the game is actually easier, I understood it better from having played Lilies, or because parrying is powerful and I learned how to do that in Nine Sols. At minimum, sub attacks are no longer a limited resource which makes combat during traversal SO much nice. So so so much nicer. That trumps any concerns I may have... such as certain builds feeling very unbalanced.

What it comes to is that, objectively, Magnolia is better gameplay-wise. It's polished, it's clean. There was no where near the frustrations I remember from Lilies. It's nice not having to worry about limited attack numbers. Exploration has enough quality of life to keep you from getting frustrated. It's a slick, satisfying experience… but it's not particularly memorable, for exactly that reason.

Magnolia also felt much more linear than the first game, to me. Now, a MetroidVania can be more or less linear, depending on what it wants to do - but I think generally we expect less, unless something about the game's intention or design is served by it becoming more linear. Nine Sols, for example, was a very linear experience - but that was in service to the story it wanted to tell, which was gripping and moving.

Which leads us to my second disappointment with Magnolia. Because the longer it went on… the more its story seemed to spiral out of control. There is… quite a bit going on here, but I do not find it all to be well connected.

It started solid. Your very first point is trying to find Lilia. Good, cool. The next several encounters focus on how Homunculi are treated and thrown away - the question of what does and does not make a human, with a twist on the corruption theme through them going "mutant". The note that connected blighted humans and the creation of homonculi, as well, had some interesting parallels to, say, the immortal knights or the priestesses in the first game.

After that… well, you start meeting more people. And the NPCs are… they're not strong. None of them stuck with me, none of them got me attached. Even with your tuned Homonculi, while I liked the little dialogues at the respites in theory, in practice they were fairly bland.

Another issue with the NPCs is that they pretty quickly become irrelevant after whatever brief encounter you have with them. Where theoretically the NPCs should have made the world feel more vibrant and alive compared to Lilies, in the end they just felt like… bland set dressing.

Levy kept showing up in the WILDEST places, to the extent that I thought there had to be something up with them... nope.

Motley, seeing both Declan and Gilroy in his memory, I thought he'd talk to them when we encounter them as bosses - nope.

The most we get is the group that used to be on the Survey Team together occasionally - but they weren't used in the narrative quite enough for me to really understand their place in the past.

And that's really the issue with including the NPCs at large - they added them in, allowing for "happening now and to you" narrative... but then they didn't use them ENOUGH, clinging to the method of exposing the past used in Lilies, leaving the story in this very bland middle-area.

Anyways, as we go on, more things are added onto the "things the game seems us to want to care about" list:

Finding Lilia

The treatment of the Homunculi (early on, assumed to be a major theme for the game)

Uncovering your/Nola's past

The Blight/Fumes in the kingdom, and how its affecting the

humans and homunculi

Whatever's going on with Gilroy

The Millius/Frost feud

Whatever's going on with Abelia????

And this is where Magnolia fails compared to Lilies.

In Lilies, you get little scraps of information, little vignettes of different character's views of the world, of how everything went down. They had different personal tragedies (which were very poignant), but they also all contributed to the Singular Picture you were trying to put together of how this all happened, while also contributing to the themes of despair, desperation, the balance of selflessness and selfishness in love, and most of all it's question about sacrifice that Lilies was building up.

Magnolia does not satisfactorily bring its various plot threads together.

The biggest sin, I think is that most of them have nothing to do with the choice you make at the beginning of the game. What does people's treatment of Homunculi have to do with whether you move to maintain the Parasol, or destroy it? You'll deal with the blight as well, true, but I never fully understood the impact of it on the land.

The Frosts, and Abelia especially - who have most to do with the Ancients/Priestesses brought over from the first game - honestly contribute nothing by the end. They have little to nothing to do with the actual end-game. And it did genuinely seem like an interesting thread! But when it was never meaningfully looped back into the main narrative and/or theme...

Even Lilia, the very first goal you're introduced to is functionally nothing more than a maguffin. She has no narrative weight.

Even in the final ending - you want to save Lilia from her suffering, but I never fully felt what Lilia's suffering meant, or why it happened. I don't really feel the weight of the choice we're making.

There were so many interesting threads and potential themes, but by leaving them scattered and failing to fully commit to anything, I was just left feeling... unsatisfied.

Not to mention the pacing is off - I didn't realize I was at the endgame till I was stumbling into the Final Boss. The land of Origin - the magical land everyone talks about and contains the things you need to get ending B - is honestly very easy and underwhelming. And what you have to do to get that ending….

Getting ending C in Lilies felt like effort. Like you really had to put in the work, puzzle together all the details of what happened, how we got here, and what need to be done to change it. It felt like you earned it. This game…. kinda just felt like it handed it to you, honestly. It was significantly less satisfying.

((That being said, the true ending final boss was quite fun, even if I did stick with what felt like a slightly cheesy double-pressure+hp while attacking+lots of parrying method.))

To be clear: Ender Magnolia is a good game, it's very solid. Not quite at the level I would put Hollow Knight or Nine Sols on, but it's good. Movement felt good, exploring was fun, and it was absolutely gorgeous.

It's just that it doesn't have all the unique quirks Lilies had to make it memorable to make up for the ways that it's kind of average, and that hurts it in my estimation.

[nullmale]

what is the gameplay of rainworld like? the look of it/vibe seems right up my alley but ive had a hard time parsing what it is you actually Do to know if id like playing it or if i should watch someone else play it. please tell me about game you like

Rain world is mechanically an exploration platformer : ] I've seen its layout style compared to that of metroidvanias and I somewhat agree but the key difference is that the slugcat doesn't really have upgrade progression the way a metroidvania would. Its main points of contention from critics are that 1. Its movement system is very unique and difficult to get the hang of for some, despite on the surface being an extremely simple combo of arrow keys, about three other "active" controls, and one button to view the map (people don't like that this doesn't pause the game!) 2. It explains EXTREMELY little of its premise or goals to the player and looking for guides kind of spoils the crux of the game all in one go, so to people who don't actively enjoy its gameplay it can feel extremely aimless and boring.

Without spoiling ANYTHING, I'll explain that Rain World and its DLC are split into a number of campaigns with different slugcats that have unique mechanics, different difficulty levels, and story goals with their own versions of the map based on what timeframe the campaign takes place in. With the Watcher, there are now nine story campaigns and one secret joke campaign : ] Rain World is extremely lore heavy but you don't NEED to be chronicling lore to play! The basic premise makes itself clear enough as you play imo.

A lot of reviewers did not finish the game because it was too difficult for them, though I'd argue there is a major difference in the average rw player experience vs that of someone who plays games to review them for a living; A reviewer ideally needs to finish games quickly to review them, Rain World does not accommodate this style of gameplay very well. I will agree that vanilla Rain World has a few QoL issues, I personally had to stop playing until the release of downpour so I could access accessibility features(shaking screens cause me severe panic attacks, for some reason). BUT, if something isn't working out for you, there's either an existing feature to help you:

Ooooor there's a huge amount of QoL and accessibility mods (Unshaded Citadel for people who struggle with that region's low-light environment, SBCameraScroll for people who want a centered moving camera rather than Rain World's static screens, Image Sharpener, Improved Input Config, Music Announcements, Death Counter, etc etc etc) and a frankly absurd amount of customization and content mods. So in that respect the game is easier to get into than ever.

PERSONALLY. I think that while watching someone else play it isn't a bad choice, it's a very quiet and atmospheric game which I am glad I played myself over watching someone else play. The difficulty is very high and sometimes you can get stuck on progression or turned around and that might not be extremely fun to watch someone else play. Comes down to preference I think. I will say it will at minimum not do any harm to watch someone play long enough to decide if you'd rather play yourself, but start with a base game campaign (Survivor's campaign is ideal), downpour and the watcher assume you've played the base game campaigns already and might be harder to understand : ]

I hope this helped sorry I typed so much. I love my game. Yay

[corvidgames]

#20 Animal Well

Animal well is a beautifully animated pixel adventure, and the only metroidvania I’ve ever played and beaten.

I have, in no uncertain terms, an absolutely horrendous sense of direction, and even then, wandering around the map and getting lost the entire time, I still had a great time getting to explore new environments and see more of the art that makes Animal Well stand out. Its colour pallet is vibrant and bright whilst remaining just muted enough to not be hard on the eyes, and the simplistic character design of the player character allows for a real appreciation of everything around them.

Enemies were varied and unique… even if the dogs drove me up the wall every time I had to deal with them… and the boss puzzles were all individual enough to feel memorable without straying from anything too difficult to figure out. At times, I will admit, the environmental clues to puzzles can be a little obtuse, but with enough trial and error everything was possible in the end without too much stress. My subpar platforming skills made the P. flame and final boss quite difficult, but that made it all the more satisfying when I finally got a perfect run to out-path them.

The music was also good! Nothing too standout to distract from exploration but fitting enough to the world that you don’t really notice it until you start paying attention specifically for it.

The less you know about the game going in, the better, as half of Animal Well’s appeal comes from going in blind, so I don’t recommend looking too far before you begin. Getting lost in discovering the world as you run around is the most satisfying part of the whole game, at least in my opinion. It’s definitely worth a try!

Date of completion: 31/08/2024

Genre: Metroidvania

Time to beat: 9hrs 51min

Level of completion: Main story + some side content

Trophies/Gamerscore: 13/21 (I plan on hopefully going back to get the platinum for this later when I feel up for a collectathon)

1-100 rating: 75%

Platform: PlayStation 5

[maryaustria]

top 5 metroidvanias? (no metroid or vania allowed)

:)

5. Kung Fu Panda (DS)

This is a half serious, half joking pick really. I am not joking about being a metroidvania though. For some unknown reason they decided to make the DS version of this game a proper metroidvania. It follows the plot normally (with a bit of stuff added to fill in some gaps obviously) where you mostly run around the world and play as po. You get new movement/combat abilities by rescuing the furious five.

I can't actually speak on how good it is, since I mostly played this as a child. It wasn't too hard though, which is to be expected from a licensed game. I mostly put it on here since it was one of if not the first metroidvania I ever played. It was very enjoyable though from what I remember. Can't say if it's worth checking out nowadays, since it IS a DS game and you play it exclusively with the touchscreen. Honestly it's on this list for the most part since I have some nostalgia for it and because it helped me discover this genre that I love so much.

4. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Does it count as cheating if I pick this one lol. It's the spirutal succesor to the igavania style of metroidvanias. It plays most similar to symphony of the night with the castles structure and it's movement, while taking the "magic" system from the aria/dawn of sorrow games with the shards just being the souls. The variety in weapons and shards is pretty good too. I also like the cosmetics and costumization you can add to miriam :). The only thing I can say I dislike is that end game grind is pretty dragging. Also sometimes it feels a bit too difficult out of nowhere.

Can't really speak much for the story and characters much though. They are fine, but nothing outstanding to me. The bosses are pretty fun though design wise.

3. Axiom Verge

This one is cheating again. This one is more inspired by the original metroid than the igavanias. Just looking over it you can tell that it takes a lot of it's visual design by the earliest metroid. It's level structure is also heavily inspired from metroid, with it's high pillar like rooms and it only consisting of alien looking caves.

The atmosphere in the game is great too. It feels isolating wandering the endless caverns of this alien world. You never met any nonhostile life forms either. Just these massive machines that I wouldn't really describe as the greatest company and even when you meet them, their encounters are far between you going around this world.

The story is pretty great too. It gets a bit complicated with it's terminology, but I could still follow it. Granted I've played through this game a bunch of times, so that might help.

The weapons are fun as well. None of them really feel like straight up upgrades (for the most part lol), and some of them are used as progression too. The upgrades feel very fun as well, but for progression and for traversal.

2. Timespinner

This is just a solid metroidvania all the way through. Most of it is inspired by the igavania type of games (like a lot of indie metroidvanias are), but that honestly is never really an issue to me since those type of games are really fun. The weapons, magic and the familars are all fun to use and to find. The level feels fun to explore and never really gets tiresome to explore.

My favorite part of the game are the character and the story. It feels engaging to get to know the characters and their motivations. It's also nice to do all the quests for the characters you meet since they are all likeable. The main character is likeable too and it's fun to hear what she has to say. It's been a while since I played it I should replay it some time.

1. Pseudoregalia

The only 3D metroidvania on the list and one of the few that isn't heavily inspired by either metroid or castlevania. This one is all about it's schmoovement. The moveset of the main character is so fun and the more moves you aquire the more complex stuff you can do. It's fun to run around the map and use your skills to try to get to different points on the map. The map itself is fun to explore and wander around in as well. It's fun to get lost in the map and slowly get a mental map of the whole place.

They added a bunch of stuff in some later patches that I'm unfamiliar with, since I mostly played on launch. I heard they added a map and time trials, but I can't speak much on it. If you want more in depth review I recommend the one by NitroRad. I watched it after playing it and I agree with all of his points.

The only bad part I can say is that I missed out on the Sybil plushy :(

[lord-shitbox]

oh okay wait gen q cus I've had a few ppl recommend hollow knight to me before but I've avoided it cus it's a platformer. as a fellow platformer... non-enjoyer?? what sets it apart from other platformers that makes it fun when a lot aren't??

um! honestly im not really sure... I quite like how the knight moves around and i got very used to it, I guess. my first playthrough frustrated me IMMENSELY but because it's one set world, when you've beat it all once you know how to get through everything and successive playthroughs are way easier.

It's a metroidvania so a lot of platforming challenges get easier if you fight an extra boss beforehand and such, and the platforming aspect of it isnt the main focus of the game so pretty much every challenge involves you weaving through obstacles to get to some shiny item and then hitting a switch that opens a bypass door or shuts all the obstacles off, so that challenge is done and gone for the rest of your time in that savefile. which is great imo. the world is 2d platforming but aside from the little challenges embedded into the world the platforming isnt meant to be super difficult

Also, if you fall into spikes or something the game usually sets you down on the platform right before that rather than all the way at the beginning of the challenge, unless you died and are coming back from a respawn point. sometimes the challenge is short enough that it doesnt do that but for the most part it does & i like that

from what i've heard from other players the big frustrating part of hk isn't the platforming but the bosses, because hk boss fights require you to memorize all their attack patterns & be able to dodge consistently throughout the whole fight. tanking does not work very well in hk. these things are the main focus of the game, i'd say— i recommend watching a boss fight playthrough to see if the combat style seems like something youd enjoy or not.

The game itself doesn't have cheats or accessibility features that make it easier to play, but ive heard there are infinite health & money mods if you're after story and soundtrack enjoyment alone ((hk has very good story and soundtrack imo!!))

Honestly with hollow knight i think i can attribute a lot of my enjoyment to sheer "got good" — i am one of the lucky ones who Figured it All Out and now theres one pesky little steam achievement in between me and perfect game status. but uh. i think hk is enough of a not-platformer for me to have enjoyed it !!

[ixcaliber]

Games of the month - June 2023

This month my hyperfocus went towards watching as many movies as possible, so it’s a pretty breezy games of the month

1. Haiku, The Robot

Neat little metroidvania about a little robot. It’s cute it’s pretty fun. My two big complaints would be

1) it felt pretty linear. i don’t doubt that there were probably other ways to get to locations than the ways that i took but the experience of playing it it really felt like each upgrade allowed me access to one new path which would lead me to the next upgrade and so on and so on.

2) i like boss fights better when each enemy has a little name pop up. the designs were cool and did some interesting stuff sometimes. i just wish i didn’t have to think of them in terms of like ‘the car battery one’, ‘the tv one’ etc. It makes them feel less memorable.

Otherwise perfectly fine metroidvania.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Chronologically this is when I finished Tears of the Kingdom but I’m not ready to tear into that just yet so lets move on to

3. Life After Magic

This is a free game available through steam or through itch.io. It’s a visual novel where you control Akiko, a former magical girl who has somewhat drifted through life after the big bad that she and her magical girl team fought against has been defeated. With y2k approaching something is wrong and it’s up to you to bring your girls back together and face one more threat.

Hey. I love this game. There’s a good chance this is pretty high up my games of the year list, if not at the very top. I love the girls. I love the trans and nonbinary inclusion. I love the homages to sailor moon, yu-gi-oh and probably some other stuff that I didn’t even get. I love the way the game plays with nostalgia and the way this narrative reaches a head. If you’re like one of the two or three people reading this I absolutely recommend you get and play this one.

4. Monuments To Guilt

This is a digital museum dedicated to hostile design as featured in the Jacob Gellar video Games That Aren’t Games. Throughout you can see a number of benches designed to be uncomfortable, off-putting or otherwise just inaccessible to homeless people and disabled people. It’s a short experience and it is interesting to see this insidious aspect of design presented in the prestigious format of a museum and to see it talked about openly. It’s an interesting little experience.

5. Down In Bermuda

Fun and simple puzzle game. It’s the kind of think that would be approachable for kids, simple puzzle concepts like pipe dreams kind of puzzles, hidden object puzzles, no towers of hanoi to speak of but lots of puzzles that feel like they’re in the public domain so to speak. Nothing too difficult and taxing.

6. Lone Fungus

Another metroidvania from the recent humble metroidvania bundle. This game is okay. I like the cute little aesthetic and the basic movement is fun. The big big Big criticism I have of this game is that so much of the side content is like these nether gates or these ladybird rooms. The first time you go in these you get a little popup or something to tell you just how completely optional they are and they would have to be. The difficulty of platforming going from the actual game to these challenges is a fucking sheer cliff wall both in terms of reaction speed needed and in terms of the sheer length of time you need to platform perfectly.

At one point in the game I got a new skill ability and accessed a little tutorial move about how to use it and it started talking about using it to propel yourself quickly by doing this one kind of dash into it and for the life of me I could not get it to activate properly. I felt like I was attempting to perform some complex speedrun tech and the inputs I had to do were like spread across four different buttons which all needed to be hit so quickly in succession. Impossible. This was about the time I gave up on exploration altogether.

And like... it’s a metroidvania. For me at least that exploration is the point of the video game. If you’ve put me off of doing it I don’t really know what I’m getting out of the experience any more.

Also frustrating is that the final (fourth of four) sword upgrades is locked behind completing every single one of the ladybird rooms. And like, if you’re good enough to manage that you’re not going to need the piddling 2 extra damage that the upgrade can offer. Overall it really felt like so much of the stuff you can find that’s optional is not worth it.

There’s like a relic system (like charms in hollow knight) but the way it costs out the various relics you can only really wear three at a time, probably only two if you want to use any of the useful ones.

And just as a minor nitpick on top of everything else, all the bosses are bigger versions of regular enemies that you fight in the area leading up to the boss. It’s not inherently negative when you do something like this in a game but when it’s every boss fight then it makes them less memorable and less interesting.

Also there’s like two ways to end the game, some npcs tell you to do things the proper way while there’s a couple who indicate this secret back route and imply that everyone else is lying to you. The thing is that like I finished the game and I would still have no idea how I’m supposed to escape through the backroute exit. The way the npcs frame it is like a skipping out on your responsibility to complete the tasks set to you for the rest of the game, but like if it’s weirdly more difficult than those tasks then something isn’t adding up.

I had a lot of complaints about this one. It’s fine if you put yourself into the right mindset, as I said up top the basic movement is pretty fun and the designs are cute. Difficult to recommend it if you like to experience this kind of game in the way that I prefer to though.

7. Growing Up

This is a weird one to describe. It’s a game, as the name implies, about growing up. The game’s like broken up into different aspects. During each turn you get the opportunity to learn new skills; you start as a baby and have to learn skills such as talking and walking but soon you’re in school and your skills become more academic focused. At the end of a turn you schedule these tasks, completing each one a specific number of times can master it which will give you bonuses to your attributes and knowledge points to help facilitate learning new skills.

It’s a very mechanically focused game. Maybe I’m being a little too in depth with my explanation. Okay lets try again.

Each turn has like three major components. Learning skills. Scheduling tasks and exploring the brain map. The brain map is like a little minigame where you move along a randomly generated kind of sphere grid sort of upgrade tree, trying to optimize the attribute gains and bonuses with the limited amount of brain points you have. Since you do it once a turn each turn it’s like ‘okay what do I want to focus on this turn’ and you might always try to grab the thing that upgrades the amount of brain points you can have at any given time, but also skew towards knowledge points if you want to learn something new. It does encourage you to be thinking ahead towards your goals and as you play through the game new kinds of tile are unlocked which add dramatically to the complexity of this minigame and how you play it.

I think this game is very good mechanically. I really enjoyed the loop of learning skills, mastering skills, playing the brain map to try to optimize my ability to learn new skills.

The weakness in the game is the way the narrative is delivered. Which isn’t to say the narrative is bad. In my playthrough I got to befriend some good girls and then date and eventually in the epilogue marry my best friend Alicia.

(Also something of a sidenote but should mention that I got this from the humble pride bundle. It’s great that it does allow for gay and lesbian romances but it doesn’t seem to facilitate playing a transgender or nonbinary character. I’d love to see something added to facilitate that in a patch or free dlc.

(At the birth of your character you’re given the option to pick gender or to let fate decide. If you choose to pick you get to pick male or female. I wouldn’t want non-binary or transgender options added here, but like when you get to an age where you’re going to school to have some pop up or prompt that asks you if you feel comfortable in your gender or something like that and that sets you off along a path of transition. Or to have it opt in, an object you can unlock that allows you to schedule ‘self reflection’ or something that can lead you to a path to transition.

I understand that that might be a lot of work though, as there are a lot of characters in the game and making custom conversations for each of them to acknowledge your transition might be quite time consuming)

The other thing I wanted to point out in regard to it being on the humble pride bundle is at the beginning you can pick your parents. I picked to have two moms. The game allows this and is fine with it. There is however an unintended consequence.

Very early on, when you’re still a baby, I learned how to speak and got this cutscene where one of my mom was encouraging me to say ‘Mommy’ as my first word. And so I did and then my other mom was disappointed that I hadn’t said her name first. Maybe this is a one off oversight, because later in the game when I started dating my girlfriend she did acknowledge that we were both girls, but here at least they’ve not disallowed you to have gay parents but they haven’t made any specific accommodations for it.)

So the way that the narrative works is that the game is sort of presented in a semi-roguelike kind of fashion. It tells you up front that every life is unique and I think what it means is that at each stage of your life it will introduce one new character from like a stock set of characters. I met Jake at like primary school, Alicia at high school and Felicity at like college or something. All the schools were using american terms for the school levels so idk.

You get choices in each of these relationships that can branch them into slightly different directions (i think) but like your control over that interaction is minimal. If I’d been given the option I would never have spoken to Jake again. Not because he did anything wrong but just because I would prefer to be talking to girls. But the way the game is set up these events just sort of happen intermittently as you play and aren’t really informed by any of your decisions in the actual game you’re playing.

And your relationship with your parents is limited to occasionally they’ll give you a goal that you can complete to get a special currency you can turn in for some rewards. They don’t really have characters or expectations or preferences for you. Neither of my moms had like a desire to see me do really well at sports for example.

The other weirdest part is how okay at some point in the game you get two bars to manage. Happiness is your own enjoyment. Get it high enough and you’re relaxed and can schedule extra activities, get it too low and you’re stressed and you can’t learn new skills. And there is parental proudness or something. Get that high enough and you can get perks from them and I don’t know what happens when it gets toward the lower end.

Each activity you can do has some effect on both these meters. Studying will decrease happiness but increase parental proudness. Playing games will do the inverse. In addition to your main academic skills you have stuff like sports that you can gradually gain access to. And they reduce happiness but increase parental proudness. I learned how to start along a creative writing course and that reduces happiness but increases parental proudness. Hell I fucking learned magic (partially because I really liked the magician NPC Daz) and that does the same; decreases happiness but increases parental proudness.

I guess I can see it from a balance point of view but it feels so weird to be playing as a character with no passion. Nothing that they try to do makes them happy. I really feel like you should be allowed to find, or develop an interest. Like when your character is unhappy because they’ve been practicing their magic tricks for too long clearly something is wrong, right?

The overall vibe I get from this game is... you know those posts that circulate on here sometimes where it’s like “If you’re hacking the rules of dnd to do what you want then something is wrong. The mechanics are supposed to lead to the storytelling and if they don’t then you should be playing a different ttrpg where the mechanics do support the kind of narrative you want to tell/experience.”

The mechanics are good, the narrative is sometimes fairly interesting. They are essentially entirely seperate from one another and that’s a shame.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

(some brief spoilers i suppose)

i don’t fucking know man.

its good. its undeniably a good game. better in some ways than breath of the wild, maybe a little too padded out. i never felt a great compulsion to fully explore the depths. It was neat that they were there but they felt so empty. Just large open stretches dotted with huge monsters I don’t want to fight and sometimes I’ll follow a treasure map down there and it’ll lead me to a colliseum full of lynels and I’ll be kerbstomped so hard that it drains my will to continue playing.

That’s how I felt towards the end. The game does the same thing as breath of the wild where the longer you play the more silver enemies it spawns in and though its more managable with the introduction of sages I never found myself wanting to engage in combat.

I genuinely do feel like the silver enemies ruin my experience of the game. I feel like I’m making progress, getting stronger, feeling more capable of dealing with threats. Now that I have my sages with me sometimes I’ll actively seek out a combat encounter and not hate it. There’s this sweet spot where that’s all true for a little bit, and then silver monsters start showing up and my enthusiasm ebbs dramatically. I never killed a single lynel in this game. By the time I felt that maybe I was good enough to start fighting them they’d started spawning in silver versions. 

All that said ascend is such a good ability that it sort of changed how my brain worked a little bit. Playing games immediately afterwards I would just keep thinking ‘oh i can just ascend up there’ and having to remind myself that no most video games do not allow this.

I think I had so much to say about Zelda. About how it feels like too much, about how sometimes you’ll just find yourself caught in a thing of not really accomplishing anything and come off feeling miserable, about the one afternoon where I spent literally hours in a pirate cave trying to solve a puzzle that didn’t exist. I think I’ve just exhausted all that in my brain and all my brain has left to offer is ‘just give me a fucking accessibility menu, let me turn down the damage and the health and turn what is a very good game that I sort of resent into an experience I’d actually like to play’.

[sylvanas-girlkisser]

So! Today I beat Convergence (The new League game starring Ekko). I have a lot of thoughts about the story, so that goes below the cut - or really its just "did it have to be so mediocre?" said with a lot of words.

As for the gameplay: it's fine. It fails to deliver on the exploration aspects of a metroidvania, but if you ignore that branding and approach it as 2d platformer instead, it's pretty decent.

It delivers well mechanically on what Ekko is like as a character. By essentially giving you rewinds, instead of hit points, fights all feel like the absolutely iconic "seconds" trailer: Rewind, adapt, rewind again, until you get it just right.

When the game is at its best, you feel absolutely untouchable, jumping and dashing around Zaun, beating people 4 times your size at lightning speed.

However, there are some absolutely Celeste level difficult platforming sections (especially once you unlock the air dash), except for Jinx and Warvick, every boss gets brought out at least twice, and most of the gadgets are just not that exciting.

Now as for the story: is it really so much to ask for, to have an actual character arch? Like I know its not gonna be on the level of Arcane, but between this, and Ruined King, it almost feels like there is some mandate from Riot Games, that the spinoff games aren't allowed to change the status quo.

Okay let's take it from the top:

One: Is future Ekko supposed to be the worst version of Ekko? The current Ekko taken to his natural extreme? Or his mentor/older brother in time travel? These are 3 very different characterizations, and you cannot keep swapping back and forth between them.

Two: What is it Ekko is supposed to learn in this story? Is it that you cannot save everyone all the time, or is it the necessity of finding the good solution rather than picking the lesser evil? Is his problem that he's a control freak or that he doesn't think things through?

Three: You cannot both sides did bad things your way out of the Piltover and Zaun conflict. Piltover is both directly responsible for, and directly benefitting from the state Zaun is in! Did Benjamin Netanyahu write this shit???

Fourth: Did you seriously have to name Redd's shitty boyfriend Chad? Were you afraid the player wouldn't otherwise get that this vaguely dorito shaped man who spends his entire screentime belittling Redd isn't a particularly good match for her? I'm not even against Ekko having a love interest outside of Jinx, but why dear sweet Sappho did you make the boy who shattered time a nice guy™ ?

Lastly: Pour one out for the wasted potential of a Camille - Ekko team up. Like, when you think about it, these two are basically each other's polar opposite. Ekko is young and idealistic, with a family that love him but can't provide for him. Camille is old and jaded, from a wealthy family that see her as little more than a tool to maintain their power.

Ekko is Zaun's protector, Camille is Piltover's. Ekko fights because he loves his city and the people in it. Camille had the love of her life, and her very ability to love, taken away so they wouldn't distract her from her duty.

[empyrean-demise]

Niche Kin Appreciation Challenge: Day 10

[Plain text: Niche Kin Appreciation Challenge: Day 10 /End ID]

Share a piece of media that relates to/reminds you of your kin

[Plain Text: Share a piece of media that relates to/reminds you of your kin /End ID]

Worldless is a pretty obvious one! It is a 2D turn-based Metroidvania that takes place in a newborn universe. It's absolutely gorgeous and can be really difficult at times!

Plus it's 45% off now!

(Credits to @wizardsfang for the prompt list)

[19thperson]

19th's Steam Next Fest Impressions Feb 2025 Edition - Day 7

Day 0/Day 1/Day 2/Day 3/Day 4/Day 5/Day 6

Pastel Parade

Rhythm Heaven like with a cute puyo puyo/pop n music art style.

While there's not much of a plot to speak of, just girls doing various things that happen to be rhythm minigames, I do like that there is a connecting thread between them. I also like that the menu is a world map, and there's stuff to examine and get amusing interactions between levels.

One of the better rhythm heaven clones in that it's willing to play tricky with the rhythm early. Having those half notes, delays, and syncopation is what makes these engaging, and I've seen some games try to ease into them too slowly.

One of the minigames needs slightly better tutorializaiton though. A band minigame where there's two different patterns, and a bridge pattern between it. The two patterns are easy to follow, but they just assumed you'd pick up the bridge pattern by ear. and I didn't.

Cute and good.

Video Hole: Episode II

(Ignore the release date in the video. it was pushed back)

It's… difficult to talk About this demo without the context of Video Hole 1. It's kinda working on direct knowledge, to the point where I felt like I needed to replay the first one to regain some plot details. Didn't, and got the gist, but still.

I guess I should start with describing video hole 1's "trick." Just looking at its trailer, you see it sets itself up as pure comedy adventure with wacky characters working at a dead end video store. It then takes those comic archetypes and infuses them with unexpectedly nuanced character writing. There's a couple lines in the first one that cut way too close to home.

I've gotten gut punched again with this demo.

I will say however that the game doesn't "abandon" its comedic premises. There's levity at even when it tries for heavy. Hell the segment of the game in the demo swings for horror but has a goofy as hell monster design.

Play Video Hole Episode 1 and then play Video Hole Episode 2 The Demo and then play Video Hole Episode 2 the full release. The first one is only 4 dollars.

Tails of Fate

Soulsy Metroidvania. Youve got fountains that save your game and refill limited heals. You got a dodge roll. You got broody ruins. You got boss battles with ostentatious names and entrances.

Now I kinda messed up this demo. There was a point where I found the overworld, and could have explored that more, but immediately turned around "I wanna finish the ruins dungeon first."

Finishing the ruins dungeon ended the run.

The gimmicks that set this apart seem to be the overworld (which I didn't explore) and character swapping (which if it was in the demo, I didn't get, possibly due to skipping the overworld exploration.)

I did like what I played. combat and platforming felt right and responsive. Pixel art was gorgeous. Music was appropriately moody. So far doing everything right.

A bit irked by the limited ammo system, where you use either time or your dodge roll (with a hefty cooldown) to refill the ammo, but that's on me. I was using the weapon that buffed me in exchange for the ammo limitation instead of the unlimited ammo weapon they give me at the start for free.

AI Confidential

I didn't finish this demo. I was either super stuck, or I somehow broke puzzle progression.

you play as a robot repairman. And there's a lot going for this game. The robot designs and animations are really expressive. And it's willing to balance multiple tones well. You enter the house of an influencer on vacation. His dogsitter robot's camera is broken. the robot itself seems comically gittery, but the nerves start racheting up when you realize 1) the dog is nowhere to be found 2) he has big gaps in his memory he can't explain.

I couldn't resolve it but it doesn't…sound like whatever happened is good.

The downsides are: 1) the game has a dialogue wheel, but you're not choosing words. You're choosing emojis. A lot of "I did not mean to say that" events. 2) No way to skip dialogue. If you accidentally retrigger something, better sit tight 3) Maybe it's just me and my possibly broken puzzle progression but, needs a hint system.

4) while I appreciated its tone and visual design, it's dialogue is kinda iffy. It's the kind of writing where everyone but the protagonist is a caricature while he's the long suffering playing along. It makes sense for the exageratted cartoony robots but I feel like I needed some contrast. the only human character you interact with is the client who is every joke about Popular Influencers and just as much of a thin joke.

Of course these frustrations could be minor, and just me amplifying them from the frustration of getting stuck. Need some time away to revisit and make sure.

Paper Animal Adventure

Paper Mario styled Mystery Dungeon game.

The king, Sir Bearington, has disappeared, bringing despair across the kingdom. Our heroes quest find him. Also something about the loop and sealing the timelines but the guy who told us this is being coy.

The game has a similar shape to classic mystery dungeon games, going through floors and a grid based combat system that's mostly you running face first into the enemy. The gimmick is that none of it is turn based. Instead it works something more like an active battle time system. your attacks instead work on a cooldown, one that fills faster if you keep moving. As you use your standard attack, you build hype, which allows for special moves. Partners aren't passive followers but someone you switch to on the fly, so you're balancing two sets of health and cooldowns. Enemy attacks are varied, normally covering multiple spaces, with "!" symbols on spaces that are about to become dangerous, so the spacing game feels fair.

There's an online system but it mostly seems to be "leave tresures for other players." Not sure if anything more substantial.

My main complaint is that I wish it had a hub town. Right now it's just "go to the roguelite-ish branching level map, then go to the floor, repeat."

Metro Gravity

You know between this and Pseudoregalia I'm wondering if "3d metroidvania in castle starring woman with huge ass" is going to be a subgenre. Asstroidvania.

Platformer where any surface can be the floor, and gravity can be manipulated.

I am of torn opinions of "this game is really impressive" and "this game gives me a headache."

The puzzle stuff is interesting. You have a "beam" ability that creates a column of gravitational pull, and you use it to move around objects. And that isn't even talking about how regular transversal is puzzle-like. The various angles you can look at stuff from gives a whole new possible layer of metroidvania secret hiding.

The combat is… entirely cromulent. Honestly think you didn't need combat because traversal is interesting enough in this game. But it's there. I do like how the attack and parry noises match up with the background music.

The music and vibes in general are also fantastic. A low stress lofi sort of deal.

I don't have much more to say that looking at footage won't say. Didn't finish it yet, may go back to it. This game took a lot out of me mentally, and I've downed 44 demos this past week and I'm a bit short circuited now.

[acceeeeeesxable]

Entering the games industry.

If I was to enter the games design industry I would definitely gravitate more towards the Level design aspect rather than any Artistic jobs. The two games that really sparked this interest in level design for me are The last of us Part 2 and Hollow Knight.

The last of us part two really impresses me due to how open the world feels and how real it feels while still managing to keep you in the confines of a linear space and level and guide you to where you need to go on this long journey.

Hollow knight impressed me due to the metroidvania aspects. This was my first experience with this genre of game and I was amazed at how old areas and levels would continuously expand throughout the game when unlocking new abilities. It did a great job at making the levels feel full and complete both when exploring them with no upgrades, and when fully kitted out. This was very crucial for a game with as much backtracking as hollow knight as it made it not feel like a hassle or a chore to return to these places and instead a fresh and new challenge with new routes to explore and places to reach.

The skills that I would need to laser focus on to be able to get into this role would be guiding the player in a way that feels natural to the world. I saw outrage last year due to the new Final Fantasy VII chapter guiding the player on where to go using yellow paint.

Using bright yellow paint is a surprisingly common practice in games and in generally frowned upon as a method of guidance due to it being immersion breaking and clashing with the world that the creators have built. This is what I would aim to avoid when creating levels in the future and instead I look to games like the last of us which guide you using more subtle methods like camera positioning or the framing of a scene. For example the lead up to the hospital as Ellie as seen below. The game uses many techniques to guide you, like the water flow leading directly there, and there always being a gap in the trees so you never loose sight of the goalpost, even when taking subtle detours.

I think my interest and passion for this area of games design actually started when Mario Maker 2 released for the Switch in 2019. This game and the first entry where both a huge part of my life however I always found myself struggling to make any levels that where challenging enough to be fun, or easy enough to be completed.

Finding that balance was quite difficult for me until I was taught the rules of level gimmicks. For example if my level was using the 'swinging claw' Item (which had Mario build momentum by swinging from side to side before jumping off using the momentum to shoot forward.) I would go in with the mindset that the player had no knowledge of this item. This meant beginning the level without any immediate threats or challenges, and instead letting the player experiment without risk with the item, maybe challenging them to reach a higher platform or collect some coins. Then as the level goes on you can slowly increase the difficulty that the player can overcome using the knowledge they have gained by using the claws previously to avoid spikes, bounce from enemys ect..

Using this strategy I saw a significant increase on the amount of clears on my levels in addition to an increase in the amount of attempt players where willing to give it before giving up. Finding this balance and putting it into practice I found to be extremely satisfying and I even still use this same method now, which I previously used in my 2D platformer project.

[maximuswolf]

Games with the same feeling as Hollow Knight (but maybe a little less punishing)

Games with the same feeling as Hollow Knight (but maybe a little less punishing) Following popular demand on this post I made, I ended up playing Hollow Knight first (and then Celeste and Tunic after, which I may write a separate follow up post to talk about). All 3 were absolutely amazing in their own ways, but I can’t really stop my mind from going back to Hollow Knight now. I actually tried a speedrun playthrough in between sessions of Celeste too (because I could only stomach 1 level in that game at a time before being exhausted), and I’m almost tempted to try it yet again. The art style, ambience, precise controls, combat, platforming, customization, and storytelling were all superb. But I know I’ll run into the same problem I did on both my main playthrough and speedrun - that I just don’t have the mechanical skill or patience to really get through the difficult DLC stuff, and I’ll get frustrated (details below if you’re interested). So I’m looking for other games with a similar look and feel, and even a difficulty level rivalling the main game of Hollow Knight. I was considering Nine Sols, or maybe a hard-run of Ori and the Will of the Wisps (I’ve beaten that before) but I’m wondering if there are other recommendations. My preferred platform for indie games and/or platformers/metroidvanias is the Switch, but if needed I also have a PS5 and PC. Details on where I got stuck in Hollow Knight:Basically, if it was just the main game, I 100% finished it besides some speedrun achievements. Here’s what I DNF’d on:- I did finish the Grimm Troop DLC, but took the easy ending route for the sake of moving on with my life. I can maybe finish Nightmare King Grimm with enough practice, but it was about 2 hours of feeling I was making no progress so I gave up. - I only beat the White Defender 2 of 5 times, and Grey Prince Zote 4 of 10 times. Once they started doing more than 1 health per hit, it was just too much for me. - I barely touched the Godholm stuff. I’m just not a fan of boss rushes (or any rush for that matter) without checkpoints in between fights, so I didn’t want to dive in. I hate spending 15 minutes fighting easier bosses just to get to the ending and having to start over if I lose (or hours in the case of the final pantheon). Not to mention all the crippling conditions you have to do to really complete it all the way; I think I read somewhere that only like 2% of players have ever done that, and I just do not think I have the mechanical skill to do it. The solo boss fights were interesting, but with 40+ of them and two versions of each, it would have felt more of a chore than fun. Submitted January 15, 2025 at 11:00AM by Aqua_Tot https://ift.tt/xphmWKa via /r/gaming