You know, Inexistence holds a special place is my heart. My friend gifted me the original in order to watch me suffer. I had many issues with Inexistence 1, but hoped the remake would help alleviate some of the issues. The remake adds more content, fixes a lot of the cheese, especially around boss fights, but I still feel like it misses the mark.
The game says that the gameplay has been redesigned to be more dynamic, but it feels incredibly stiff. Attacking will lock you in place, completely halt your momentum. If you're in the air, it will give you a little boost upwards, making you have to delay your timing, which doesn't always work with fast moving targets such as bats. It is really hard to hit anything in this game in general.
Since the game stops you from moving when hitting things, you also have a dodge that you can use afterwards. The dodge will make you do a flip backwards, making you invincible for the duration. The problem is how incredibly inconsistent it is. Since it always sends you flying backwards, you will have moments where there is an enemy close to a ledge that refuses to move. When this happens you are forced to hit the enemy, dodge back and fall of the ledge, platform back up and repeat, it is incredibly tedious.
The dodge also does not work near slopes, which are fairly common in this game. You can either dodge off the slope, sending you flying incredibly far, which could result in you falling into a bottomless pit and have you die, you could dodge straight into an enemy that is off screen, or just have to platform your way back up. Now, this is not the main problem with slopes. If you fight an enemy near a slope, and you dodge into the slope, your dodge will be cancelled, and you will get hit.
Fighting on slopes is even worse. For a game with this many slopes, there has to be a way you can hit enemies below or above you. As it stands right now, your only way of dealing with enemies on slopes is going below them, and jump-hitting them. You can do that, or wait for enemies to slowly walk up towards you, before you fight them. Some enemies you straight up never want to fight on slopes, as their set jump pattern goes crazy on slopes, so you just wait. You will be forced to do this often, as you never want to jump to wards something off screen in this game.
Off screen things will hit you a lot. Enemies and icicles will fall on you, things will be thrown at you, all from off screen, and you can’t react to it. This isn't exclusive to things falling on you, for example platforming through a room of swinging axes, but you only see one axe at the time. After jumping over the first axe, the second one comes flying at you before you have any time to react. Obstacle and enemy cycles are also inconsistent, making it impossible to learn patterns in rooms. Enemies are also incredibly inconsistent. Some enemies will act out if they are on slopes, some enemies will find their ways into solid walls, some enemies will suddenly be able to slide while attacking, and there is no way you can be prepared for it.
To end everything about the combat, let's talk about bosses. The bosses have been changed a lot since the first game, and this is for the better. Bosses can now turn around, where in the previous game the bosses would just freeze up if you damage boosted behind them, and you could kill them for free. Bosses are now (for the most part) well telegraphed, and all of them feel fair. The issue is that most of them seem "too fair". The bosses in this game are incredibly easy, even on hard mode. If I were to ever struggle, without doing any farming, just playing normally, I had so many potions that I could just tank any boss in the game. Now, boss fights are maybe not the focus of the game, so let's get to exploring.
Even in the game tutorial you start to question how the rest of the game is going to play out. For example, you are prompted to hang on the ledge, and the sign tells you that you can drop down by pressing down. If you were to test this in the tutorial to get a feel for it, you would get punished by falling into spikes. Why? Introduce mechanics in a safe environment, then challenge the player.
It doesn't end here, the game is riddled with "leaps of faith" where you can’t see what's ahead of you. There were instances where I would hold left to go into another room, as soon as the room loads I just walk off the ledge and instantly die. Off screen things is the #1 reason I died in this game. Sometimes you will see an enemy jump down somewhere you have to go, but you have no way of checking where he is, so you have no choice but to jump and hope you don't land on it.
Bottomless pits kill you instantly, which would be fine, but sometimes the game wants you to jump into these pits to progress. The game does nothing to differentiate death pits from normal pits that lead to new rooms. This makes it so every time you encounter a pit, you have to check the and consider if there might be a room there or not. What makes it worse, is that the map does not accurately show where in the room the entrance is. This is another problem you must face throughout the entire game. You see that there is a room next to the room you're in, but the position isn't accurate on the map, you know it's towards the top right on the room, but there's nothing there. So you keep hugging walls and checking things until you find it, and the more it happens the more tired you get of it. The map design also has little to no landmarks, especially in the cave-like areas. This makes it difficult to navigate when you're looking through areas already explored for something you missed. This leads to you running circles in areas you've already been in, unsure if you missed something like an alternate path or hidden area.
Abilities are also something that doesn’t really make sense to me? Magic feels tacked on, and doesn't add much to the game. It's there seemingly for no reason? You are required to push two buttons using magic throughout the game. Once to teach you that magic can in fact push buttons, and one more time towards the end of the game. Both of these buttons could have easily just been hit with a sword instead, if the game allowed you to do so. Throughout most of the game, you don't have any abilities other than magic, but if you keep playing you will eventually get a double jump. For some reason you get the double jump in the underwater area, where you can already jump infinitely. I don't get it? There is almost no need for the double jump in that area. With that said, the double jump is handy, but a bit unneeded, it adds very little to the core gameplay. This is however the most useful skill you get.
You get "Super Magic", which is useless in combat compared to normal magic, and is only there to let you break a couple of rocks.
Super Jump, which allows you to jump as high as you want, which is only needed a couple of times, and not very fun to use as you cannot use it while having any momentum.
Super Speed which lets you run, it is only needed once in the game, I forgot about it after that.
I get that this is supposed to me a metroidvania, and that new abilities help you unlock the world and explore more, but this game doesn't hit that spot. It feels like a linear platformer with a few branching paths, then you hit a wall and need an ability. They might as well just hide a key in a side-room, which is already done multiple times in the game.
Im hitting the stream review character limit, so I will end it by saying that instead of tacking on gimmicks and extra mechanics, the core gameplay should have been improved on first. I get that this wanted to be close to the original, but the original was not a good template. The core of this game is better than the original, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
More content will not help if the base is not right. Core gameplay first, everything else has to come second.
The game says that the gameplay has been redesigned to be more dynamic, but it feels incredibly stiff. Attacking will lock you in place, completely halt your momentum. If you're in the air, it will give you a little boost upwards, making you have to delay your timing, which doesn't always work with fast moving targets such as bats. It is really hard to hit anything in this game in general.
Since the game stops you from moving when hitting things, you also have a dodge that you can use afterwards. The dodge will make you do a flip backwards, making you invincible for the duration. The problem is how incredibly inconsistent it is. Since it always sends you flying backwards, you will have moments where there is an enemy close to a ledge that refuses to move. When this happens you are forced to hit the enemy, dodge back and fall of the ledge, platform back up and repeat, it is incredibly tedious.
The dodge also does not work near slopes, which are fairly common in this game. You can either dodge off the slope, sending you flying incredibly far, which could result in you falling into a bottomless pit and have you die, you could dodge straight into an enemy that is off screen, or just have to platform your way back up. Now, this is not the main problem with slopes. If you fight an enemy near a slope, and you dodge into the slope, your dodge will be cancelled, and you will get hit.
Fighting on slopes is even worse. For a game with this many slopes, there has to be a way you can hit enemies below or above you. As it stands right now, your only way of dealing with enemies on slopes is going below them, and jump-hitting them. You can do that, or wait for enemies to slowly walk up towards you, before you fight them. Some enemies you straight up never want to fight on slopes, as their set jump pattern goes crazy on slopes, so you just wait. You will be forced to do this often, as you never want to jump to wards something off screen in this game.
Off screen things will hit you a lot. Enemies and icicles will fall on you, things will be thrown at you, all from off screen, and you can’t react to it. This isn't exclusive to things falling on you, for example platforming through a room of swinging axes, but you only see one axe at the time. After jumping over the first axe, the second one comes flying at you before you have any time to react. Obstacle and enemy cycles are also inconsistent, making it impossible to learn patterns in rooms. Enemies are also incredibly inconsistent. Some enemies will act out if they are on slopes, some enemies will find their ways into solid walls, some enemies will suddenly be able to slide while attacking, and there is no way you can be prepared for it.
To end everything about the combat, let's talk about bosses. The bosses have been changed a lot since the first game, and this is for the better. Bosses can now turn around, where in the previous game the bosses would just freeze up if you damage boosted behind them, and you could kill them for free. Bosses are now (for the most part) well telegraphed, and all of them feel fair. The issue is that most of them seem "too fair". The bosses in this game are incredibly easy, even on hard mode. If I were to ever struggle, without doing any farming, just playing normally, I had so many potions that I could just tank any boss in the game. Now, boss fights are maybe not the focus of the game, so let's get to exploring.
Even in the game tutorial you start to question how the rest of the game is going to play out. For example, you are prompted to hang on the ledge, and the sign tells you that you can drop down by pressing down. If you were to test this in the tutorial to get a feel for it, you would get punished by falling into spikes. Why? Introduce mechanics in a safe environment, then challenge the player.
It doesn't end here, the game is riddled with "leaps of faith" where you can’t see what's ahead of you. There were instances where I would hold left to go into another room, as soon as the room loads I just walk off the ledge and instantly die. Off screen things is the #1 reason I died in this game. Sometimes you will see an enemy jump down somewhere you have to go, but you have no way of checking where he is, so you have no choice but to jump and hope you don't land on it.
Bottomless pits kill you instantly, which would be fine, but sometimes the game wants you to jump into these pits to progress. The game does nothing to differentiate death pits from normal pits that lead to new rooms. This makes it so every time you encounter a pit, you have to check the and consider if there might be a room there or not. What makes it worse, is that the map does not accurately show where in the room the entrance is. This is another problem you must face throughout the entire game. You see that there is a room next to the room you're in, but the position isn't accurate on the map, you know it's towards the top right on the room, but there's nothing there. So you keep hugging walls and checking things until you find it, and the more it happens the more tired you get of it. The map design also has little to no landmarks, especially in the cave-like areas. This makes it difficult to navigate when you're looking through areas already explored for something you missed. This leads to you running circles in areas you've already been in, unsure if you missed something like an alternate path or hidden area.
Abilities are also something that doesn’t really make sense to me? Magic feels tacked on, and doesn't add much to the game. It's there seemingly for no reason? You are required to push two buttons using magic throughout the game. Once to teach you that magic can in fact push buttons, and one more time towards the end of the game. Both of these buttons could have easily just been hit with a sword instead, if the game allowed you to do so. Throughout most of the game, you don't have any abilities other than magic, but if you keep playing you will eventually get a double jump. For some reason you get the double jump in the underwater area, where you can already jump infinitely. I don't get it? There is almost no need for the double jump in that area. With that said, the double jump is handy, but a bit unneeded, it adds very little to the core gameplay. This is however the most useful skill you get.
You get "Super Magic", which is useless in combat compared to normal magic, and is only there to let you break a couple of rocks.
Super Jump, which allows you to jump as high as you want, which is only needed a couple of times, and not very fun to use as you cannot use it while having any momentum.
Super Speed which lets you run, it is only needed once in the game, I forgot about it after that.
I get that this is supposed to me a metroidvania, and that new abilities help you unlock the world and explore more, but this game doesn't hit that spot. It feels like a linear platformer with a few branching paths, then you hit a wall and need an ability. They might as well just hide a key in a side-room, which is already done multiple times in the game.
Im hitting the stream review character limit, so I will end it by saying that instead of tacking on gimmicks and extra mechanics, the core gameplay should have been improved on first. I get that this wanted to be close to the original, but the original was not a good template. The core of this game is better than the original, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
More content will not help if the base is not right. Core gameplay first, everything else has to come second.