A cosmic injustice that, with the exception of The Ninja Warriors: Once Again, seemingly every ninja game of the past few years has been the most deeply middling experience possible. Was holding out hope for this one, especially when the demo included so many nods to Shinobi 3, but this thing just does not come together.
Might be one of the standout examples of poor balancing doing a disservice to the rest of the game; I’ve become increasingly aware of how nerdy of a concern it is, the kind of questioning of “dominant strategies” that probably only matters to a fraction of players, but so many of the unlockable weapons and abilities can delete boss health bars so quickly that you don’t even have a chance to see their movesets, undercutting what should be the highlights of the experience- with only the final boss providing a fight I had to learn or respect at all. (And this is without mentioning the fact that you can avoid or tank most enemy attacks in the stages themselves.)
It’s the kind of title where you really have to stack up the challenge run modifiers to get a glimpse of the good that’s in here, which mainly entails swearing off most of facets of its progression system, and at that point, it just begs the question as to why you wouldn’t just cut your losses and play one of the many games that inspired it instead. If you’re in the mood for this, you’d probably get way more out of Hagane or Shinobi or one of the thousands of Megaman games- and all titles you could play without a mountain of caveats. Most disappointingly, it does little to explore any new territory with these ideas, with a less ambitious structure and none of the environmental changes that Megaman X had, and a smaller toolkit than Hagane and Shinobi let players mess around with, Moonrider coming off as the most superficial combination of all these elements.
The devs at Joymasher are doing themselves a disservice by staying so comfortably in the shadows of those past titles, something especially felt in a game whose story stresses the importance of questioning tradition and breaking away from the confines of the old world. I don’t know if setting off on an original path would necessarily address some of the mechanical issues present here, but I'd much rather see make something new that could inspire the next generation of players and developers, instead of constantly comparing their work against the landmark titles of the past.
(Liked all the stuff with the flesh gods- do more of that!)
Might be one of the standout examples of poor balancing doing a disservice to the rest of the game; I’ve become increasingly aware of how nerdy of a concern it is, the kind of questioning of “dominant strategies” that probably only matters to a fraction of players, but so many of the unlockable weapons and abilities can delete boss health bars so quickly that you don’t even have a chance to see their movesets, undercutting what should be the highlights of the experience- with only the final boss providing a fight I had to learn or respect at all. (And this is without mentioning the fact that you can avoid or tank most enemy attacks in the stages themselves.)
It’s the kind of title where you really have to stack up the challenge run modifiers to get a glimpse of the good that’s in here, which mainly entails swearing off most of facets of its progression system, and at that point, it just begs the question as to why you wouldn’t just cut your losses and play one of the many games that inspired it instead. If you’re in the mood for this, you’d probably get way more out of Hagane or Shinobi or one of the thousands of Megaman games- and all titles you could play without a mountain of caveats. Most disappointingly, it does little to explore any new territory with these ideas, with a less ambitious structure and none of the environmental changes that Megaman X had, and a smaller toolkit than Hagane and Shinobi let players mess around with, Moonrider coming off as the most superficial combination of all these elements.
The devs at Joymasher are doing themselves a disservice by staying so comfortably in the shadows of those past titles, something especially felt in a game whose story stresses the importance of questioning tradition and breaking away from the confines of the old world. I don’t know if setting off on an original path would necessarily address some of the mechanical issues present here, but I'd much rather see make something new that could inspire the next generation of players and developers, instead of constantly comparing their work against the landmark titles of the past.
(Liked all the stuff with the flesh gods- do more of that!)
2 Comments
Totally agree- still listening to Asura's Fleet, even after putting the game down.
Buo
1 year ago