Neki
Bio
Nothing here!
Badges
2 Years of Service
Being part of the Backloggd community for 2 years
Noticed
Gained 3+ followers
005
Total Games Played
000
Played in 2024
000
Games Backloggd
Recently Played See More
Recently Reviewed See More
Good:
World building was interesting and intriguing, made me want to find more about the world.
Instruction manual was gorgeous and the highlight of the entire game. The whole concept and execution was great and it really reminded me of old instructional manuals on SNES games.
Graphics is stylized in a very nice way and the overall aesthetic of the game was pleasant.
Neutral:
Did not care for the obtuse language of the game overall. I know it may be a big selling point for a lot of people but I think that a majority of gamers that are playing Tunic are never going to come close to solving the language without external help. In that way it only serves to act as a deterrence to explaining in game mechanics for the sake of world building. I think the player experience greatly suffers for this because there is a lot of neat mechanics that a player won't find because of the language.
Enjoyed the puzzle solving elements of the game but the instruction manual hints got way too vague for the puzzles that were needed for 100% completion and ending B. I think the puzzle difficulty before the end of the game was completely fine. I certainly don't mind having to think a little but a game that requires collaboration to solve puzzles is not a game that I'm interested in.
When the story got interesting with the Ziggurat and the Cathedral, the game basically ends right there. All that is left at that point is treasure hunting / fairy hunting through the same areas you've been through and I really wish the game built upon more of the interesting world it built. Souls games can get away with little in game story telling because a large part of the lore is built into the items and the item descriptions. Without that, Tunic provides you this interesting world with no real explanations and answers.
Negative:
Combat was not good. I don't think Tunic gained anything from having souls-like combat because the moveset of the player is so limited. A three hit combo and a parry and a stab out of a roll is your entire sword moveset. A lot of enemy encounters basically ended up being swing once and then roll backwards. It really didn't add anything to the experience. Not being able to sprint during lock-on is very annoying either, a lot of times I break lock-on specifically to sprint. The enemies not resetting aggro also means the game is forcing you into combat because the enemies will never stop chasing you unless you find a ladder.
Bosses were way too overturned and I think a lot of players are gonna struggle. The camera acts in such a strange way versus bosses when you're locked on because of the bosses constant movement. I don't think the game really gained anything from having difficult Souls-like bosses. The cathedral gauntlet especially is a point where a lot of players will consider either turning on no-fail mode or outright quitting because of how difficulty it can get. While yes, invincibility and stamina modes exist to help with the difficulty, there needs to exist better options for difficulty that is simply "never fail" and "extremely difficult."
The lighting and background of the game often obscures pathing and passages through out the game. While it is fun to find a secret passage obstructed by the view of the game the first few times, it basically forces the player to press up against each wall for the fear of missing out on a treasure chest behind a hidden passage. There needs to be better sign posting for a lot of the secret passages instead of asking the player to press up against every wall in a room in order to find a secret passage.
It was a fun romp, flawed but unique. I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to but it's definitely worth trying especially on Gamepass. I think it focused too much on the obtuse elements of a Souls game without finely crafting the experience around it and for that it suffers. It's a game where the designer vision took priority over the player experience. It's finely crafted but it's definitely not going to be a lot of people's cup of tea.
World building was interesting and intriguing, made me want to find more about the world.
Instruction manual was gorgeous and the highlight of the entire game. The whole concept and execution was great and it really reminded me of old instructional manuals on SNES games.
Graphics is stylized in a very nice way and the overall aesthetic of the game was pleasant.
Neutral:
Did not care for the obtuse language of the game overall. I know it may be a big selling point for a lot of people but I think that a majority of gamers that are playing Tunic are never going to come close to solving the language without external help. In that way it only serves to act as a deterrence to explaining in game mechanics for the sake of world building. I think the player experience greatly suffers for this because there is a lot of neat mechanics that a player won't find because of the language.
Enjoyed the puzzle solving elements of the game but the instruction manual hints got way too vague for the puzzles that were needed for 100% completion and ending B. I think the puzzle difficulty before the end of the game was completely fine. I certainly don't mind having to think a little but a game that requires collaboration to solve puzzles is not a game that I'm interested in.
When the story got interesting with the Ziggurat and the Cathedral, the game basically ends right there. All that is left at that point is treasure hunting / fairy hunting through the same areas you've been through and I really wish the game built upon more of the interesting world it built. Souls games can get away with little in game story telling because a large part of the lore is built into the items and the item descriptions. Without that, Tunic provides you this interesting world with no real explanations and answers.
Negative:
Combat was not good. I don't think Tunic gained anything from having souls-like combat because the moveset of the player is so limited. A three hit combo and a parry and a stab out of a roll is your entire sword moveset. A lot of enemy encounters basically ended up being swing once and then roll backwards. It really didn't add anything to the experience. Not being able to sprint during lock-on is very annoying either, a lot of times I break lock-on specifically to sprint. The enemies not resetting aggro also means the game is forcing you into combat because the enemies will never stop chasing you unless you find a ladder.
Bosses were way too overturned and I think a lot of players are gonna struggle. The camera acts in such a strange way versus bosses when you're locked on because of the bosses constant movement. I don't think the game really gained anything from having difficult Souls-like bosses. The cathedral gauntlet especially is a point where a lot of players will consider either turning on no-fail mode or outright quitting because of how difficulty it can get. While yes, invincibility and stamina modes exist to help with the difficulty, there needs to exist better options for difficulty that is simply "never fail" and "extremely difficult."
The lighting and background of the game often obscures pathing and passages through out the game. While it is fun to find a secret passage obstructed by the view of the game the first few times, it basically forces the player to press up against each wall for the fear of missing out on a treasure chest behind a hidden passage. There needs to be better sign posting for a lot of the secret passages instead of asking the player to press up against every wall in a room in order to find a secret passage.
It was a fun romp, flawed but unique. I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to but it's definitely worth trying especially on Gamepass. I think it focused too much on the obtuse elements of a Souls game without finely crafting the experience around it and for that it suffers. It's a game where the designer vision took priority over the player experience. It's finely crafted but it's definitely not going to be a lot of people's cup of tea.
Good:
Metroid's story has always been a bit nonsensical but the story formed in Dread is cohesive without being overbearing with forced cutscenes you can't skip. Samus as a character is perfectly characterized in this game without having to monologue her thoughts or speak any dialogue. Her actions and mannerisms in the cutscenes perfectly convey her attitude and line of thinking. She's cautious but also confident and acrobatic and an overall badass honestly.
Gameplay is fantastic. It's the best a 2D metroid has ever felt and the way Samus moves through the environment has never felt better. Sliding, wall jumping and overall traversal makes the game fun to navigate. The combat itself is responsive and quick and Samus does not feel sluggish at all. The bosses need to be defeated through quick reflexes and liberal use of QTEs and the bosses were very enjoyable to fight. The liberal checkpointing also resets you to the door right before the boss room so there is no run back or farming for resources needed to fight them again. The bosses can be hard but they are not punishing which makes them fun to engage with.
The artystyle can be divisive but I personally loved the 2.5D look of the game. Some of the environments were beautiful and pretty memorable to me. Samus' Dread Suit design is probably one of the best designs in the series and her upgraded suits are even better.
Dread does a great job of guiding the player without being over intrusive. It wants the players to get lost but it subtlety guides the players to the right way. The power up progression speaks volume to this design because there was several points in the game where I thought to myself, "Did I miss a power-up or is it designed like this?" when I was stuck at several points. In all those instances, the game was designed to make you feel lost but in reality you were still on the right path and I didn't accidently sequence break or soft lock the game but the game had tricked me into thinking I did.
Shinespark puzzles are great. Give more.
Neutral:
I didn't particularly care for ADAM as your 'companion' and I think the game would have been fine without him trying to give you hints and help.
The in-game map itself is great but it can get cluttered and I really wish there was better filtering icons options.
Teleporters create a better streamlined design but it also creates somewhat of a disconnect in the gameworld.
Music is hit and miss for me. There are some really good tracks but the sound design of Samus constantly running/shooting along with enemy sounds can often drown out the ambience and music.
While Dread does a good job of guiding the player to the critical path, it does to to the detriment of back-tracking. Often times you'll be locked specific areas of the map without being able to explore backwards. I understand the intent and I certainly didn't mind it at times but there can be a case to be made that people playing Metroid games want to be even more lost and Dread simply doesn't allow it at some points.
I really hated EMMIs at the beginning because of the one hit death mechanics but the generous checkpointing has made me somewhat neutral on them. Treating the EMMI sections more like fast-paced escape areas rather than stealth sections also made me less frustrated but I hope they can better refine this if they wish to continue using this concept in the future.
Negative:
The control scheme is quite a handful. Too many actions need to be mapped on the Switch controller and sometimes there isn't room or buttons get shared. Shinespark being on L3 makes it awkward to use consistently and slide/morph both triggering from the same button is also awkward. The lack of customizable remapping is also a problem.
Difficulty options are definitely needed. Dread is probably the hardest 2D metroid to date and it's certainly going to deter people from playing it or finishing it. Bosses are really no longer a war of attrition where you spam missiles into them and try to kill them before they kill you. Bosses can easily kill you in less than 5 hits in this game. Some people are fine with this, others aren't. More options is always better.
Post game stuff. I really wish Metroid had any sort of post game content. Samus by the end of the game is so powerful and it's extremely fun to utilize her entire toolkit but there is realistically only one enemy left to fight by the time you reach that point. Give us boss rushes, more puzzles, something more to do.
Load times are atrocious. Not much more to say but at least the load screens look awesome.
Overall, it was definitely one of my favourite games of this year. I'd honestly recommend Dread to anyone looking to get into the Metroid series as long as you're okay with a difficulty game (by Nintendo standards).
Metroid's story has always been a bit nonsensical but the story formed in Dread is cohesive without being overbearing with forced cutscenes you can't skip. Samus as a character is perfectly characterized in this game without having to monologue her thoughts or speak any dialogue. Her actions and mannerisms in the cutscenes perfectly convey her attitude and line of thinking. She's cautious but also confident and acrobatic and an overall badass honestly.
Gameplay is fantastic. It's the best a 2D metroid has ever felt and the way Samus moves through the environment has never felt better. Sliding, wall jumping and overall traversal makes the game fun to navigate. The combat itself is responsive and quick and Samus does not feel sluggish at all. The bosses need to be defeated through quick reflexes and liberal use of QTEs and the bosses were very enjoyable to fight. The liberal checkpointing also resets you to the door right before the boss room so there is no run back or farming for resources needed to fight them again. The bosses can be hard but they are not punishing which makes them fun to engage with.
The artystyle can be divisive but I personally loved the 2.5D look of the game. Some of the environments were beautiful and pretty memorable to me. Samus' Dread Suit design is probably one of the best designs in the series and her upgraded suits are even better.
Dread does a great job of guiding the player without being over intrusive. It wants the players to get lost but it subtlety guides the players to the right way. The power up progression speaks volume to this design because there was several points in the game where I thought to myself, "Did I miss a power-up or is it designed like this?" when I was stuck at several points. In all those instances, the game was designed to make you feel lost but in reality you were still on the right path and I didn't accidently sequence break or soft lock the game but the game had tricked me into thinking I did.
Shinespark puzzles are great. Give more.
Neutral:
I didn't particularly care for ADAM as your 'companion' and I think the game would have been fine without him trying to give you hints and help.
The in-game map itself is great but it can get cluttered and I really wish there was better filtering icons options.
Teleporters create a better streamlined design but it also creates somewhat of a disconnect in the gameworld.
Music is hit and miss for me. There are some really good tracks but the sound design of Samus constantly running/shooting along with enemy sounds can often drown out the ambience and music.
While Dread does a good job of guiding the player to the critical path, it does to to the detriment of back-tracking. Often times you'll be locked specific areas of the map without being able to explore backwards. I understand the intent and I certainly didn't mind it at times but there can be a case to be made that people playing Metroid games want to be even more lost and Dread simply doesn't allow it at some points.
I really hated EMMIs at the beginning because of the one hit death mechanics but the generous checkpointing has made me somewhat neutral on them. Treating the EMMI sections more like fast-paced escape areas rather than stealth sections also made me less frustrated but I hope they can better refine this if they wish to continue using this concept in the future.
Negative:
The control scheme is quite a handful. Too many actions need to be mapped on the Switch controller and sometimes there isn't room or buttons get shared. Shinespark being on L3 makes it awkward to use consistently and slide/morph both triggering from the same button is also awkward. The lack of customizable remapping is also a problem.
Difficulty options are definitely needed. Dread is probably the hardest 2D metroid to date and it's certainly going to deter people from playing it or finishing it. Bosses are really no longer a war of attrition where you spam missiles into them and try to kill them before they kill you. Bosses can easily kill you in less than 5 hits in this game. Some people are fine with this, others aren't. More options is always better.
Post game stuff. I really wish Metroid had any sort of post game content. Samus by the end of the game is so powerful and it's extremely fun to utilize her entire toolkit but there is realistically only one enemy left to fight by the time you reach that point. Give us boss rushes, more puzzles, something more to do.
Load times are atrocious. Not much more to say but at least the load screens look awesome.
Overall, it was definitely one of my favourite games of this year. I'd honestly recommend Dread to anyone looking to get into the Metroid series as long as you're okay with a difficulty game (by Nintendo standards).
This review contains spoilers
Good:
Combat felt good for most of the game. Parrying is satisfying and the feedback of hitting stunning enemies is great. There is a lot of weapon variety to choose from and evading/parry feels responsive.
Glad to see a gay female lead in a relationship. Hard enough finding female leads let alone gay ones so I'm glad for the diversity.
I'm a fan of the visual design and the spritework is cool beans
I liked the puzzle stuff and most of them felt pretty fair.
Traversal feels good once you have most of the abilities.
Chip system / cog system was fun to tweak and mess around with, it was a good use of customization
Map was pretty detailed and I didn't have any problems navigating it
Neutral
The NPCs were cool but I never really felt attached to them. There is one or two side quests in the game. I should have just let them die instead of trying to save so many.
Stamina system made the game feel worse. I know it's a balancing issue but you should really start with more. It never gets better late game without stamina cog spam or lots of green chips
Sword felt much better than Axe due to the fact of how much faster it was but this is a personal issue
Needed a manual save. I understand that it probably auto-saves to prevent save scumming but let me manually save for my sanity. if you're just going to just checkpoint me back to a terminal just let me save at that point.
They build up the bosses to be super cool and I thought they were but they provide zero context to their backstories. You're supposed to feel bad or dismayed that you're destroying them but they don't give you enough background info to actually care. I think you see one boss in a flashback and that's it.
Negative
The timers, possibly my biggest gripe with the game. The timers is like the anti-thesis of metroidvanias (especially with puzzle elements). I basically felt like I had to speed through the game constantly and not explore every nook and cranny because I was under a time pressure. It really clashes ideologically with what people want to do in a metroidvania and I personally did not care for it at all. The timer needed to be laxed a little bit because some of the NPCs just straight up die very early in the game if you don't use the game mechanics to save them. Also if you're going to include somewhat challenging puzzles in the game, the game shouldn't be timed or make the game lapse slower or lapse not at all in dungeons. In the optional dungeon, I think I spent probably an hour doing the puzzles. My solution was to pause the game and re-create the puzzles in on a website so I could think about them and solve them without worrying about the timer ticking down me because at that point me and several NPCs were at 24 hours or less. When I spend more time on a website trying to play your game than actually in your game, that's a design problem. I love puzzles but not under the time constraints of the game. I know you can tell me to play on Explorer difficulty but that completely undermines the game design because it's clearly intended that Meteor Dust is a limited commodity and used to make difficult decisions. Without it then the dust is basically a glorified friendship increaser to get different perks from all the NPCs.
The weapon mapping in this game is terrible. Why give me all these cool weapons and restrict it to two weapons. Let me map the traversal items to different keys, there is an abundance of keys on controller and keyboard that would have let me use one of my items hookshot instead of just taking up a weapon slot. By the end of the game I didn't even use ranged weapons because I'd rather have quick traversal and not go into my menu constantly. A quick switch or anything, going into menus to switch your one weapon is some weird game design that belongs in like SNES Zelda games, not in a 2021 metroidvania.
I loved the bosses but the idea of increased difficulty of a boss in Unsighted is to add more and more annoying adds. Make more engaging mechanics, don't spam adds that require me to parry constantly to kill them. The optional dungeon boss was the worst offender of this. I'd rather deal with mechanics like bullet hell then having to deal with adds that keep on spawning. (thank god they eventually stop spawning if you kill enough)
The game is fun combat-wise at 2-3 enemies max and when one enemy isn't constantly spamming attack. There is some late game enemy packs where one enemy will constantly spam attacks and while you parry them, the other enemies just attack you and lock you down in a parry/clash war.
While the art is great, the way the game is drawn and animated means there is definitely some depth perception problems where I can't tell if I'm in the background or foreground. This isn't an issue while doing combat but more so when you have to do puzzles or wall jumps. This is especially evident when the game tries to convey any sense of height and you really can't tell how tall things are.
I hate tutorials but the game really needed to do an extensive guide on how to do long jump, wall jump and throwing items at the beginning of the game and not at the end. Not to mention there is a secret technique where you can instantly increase your stamina to max by double-tapping dash when you're tired that I never saw in game and only saw because it was mentioned somewhere on a guide I looked at later.
ENDING SPOILERS START HERE
This one is spoilers so (best ending spoilers) The true ending completely undermines the whole premise of the timers and permanent in the death of the game. You go back in time to day 1 and all the NPCs + Alma revert to their day 1 timers. The true ending basically extends all the timers and restores the NPCs in an attempt to let the player do what they want (like a pseudo-post game) but it does not feel good at all. I spend the whole game trying to save all the NPCs and getting the best ending just completely undermines the message and design of the game. If you're going to do that you mine as well just not have made a timer, just leave the timer on Alma to put some sense of dread into the player.. Not to mention there was no way a normal person could find all the required items for the best ending because it uses a lot of secret walls that you can pass through but they appear solid in the game.
ENDING SPOILERS END
If you don't mind the timed aspect of the game or don't care about trying to save every NPC, I think the game would be more enjoyable for you but it was my real complaint for the game.
Combat felt good for most of the game. Parrying is satisfying and the feedback of hitting stunning enemies is great. There is a lot of weapon variety to choose from and evading/parry feels responsive.
Glad to see a gay female lead in a relationship. Hard enough finding female leads let alone gay ones so I'm glad for the diversity.
I'm a fan of the visual design and the spritework is cool beans
I liked the puzzle stuff and most of them felt pretty fair.
Traversal feels good once you have most of the abilities.
Chip system / cog system was fun to tweak and mess around with, it was a good use of customization
Map was pretty detailed and I didn't have any problems navigating it
Neutral
The NPCs were cool but I never really felt attached to them. There is one or two side quests in the game. I should have just let them die instead of trying to save so many.
Stamina system made the game feel worse. I know it's a balancing issue but you should really start with more. It never gets better late game without stamina cog spam or lots of green chips
Sword felt much better than Axe due to the fact of how much faster it was but this is a personal issue
Needed a manual save. I understand that it probably auto-saves to prevent save scumming but let me manually save for my sanity. if you're just going to just checkpoint me back to a terminal just let me save at that point.
They build up the bosses to be super cool and I thought they were but they provide zero context to their backstories. You're supposed to feel bad or dismayed that you're destroying them but they don't give you enough background info to actually care. I think you see one boss in a flashback and that's it.
Negative
The timers, possibly my biggest gripe with the game. The timers is like the anti-thesis of metroidvanias (especially with puzzle elements). I basically felt like I had to speed through the game constantly and not explore every nook and cranny because I was under a time pressure. It really clashes ideologically with what people want to do in a metroidvania and I personally did not care for it at all. The timer needed to be laxed a little bit because some of the NPCs just straight up die very early in the game if you don't use the game mechanics to save them. Also if you're going to include somewhat challenging puzzles in the game, the game shouldn't be timed or make the game lapse slower or lapse not at all in dungeons. In the optional dungeon, I think I spent probably an hour doing the puzzles. My solution was to pause the game and re-create the puzzles in on a website so I could think about them and solve them without worrying about the timer ticking down me because at that point me and several NPCs were at 24 hours or less. When I spend more time on a website trying to play your game than actually in your game, that's a design problem. I love puzzles but not under the time constraints of the game. I know you can tell me to play on Explorer difficulty but that completely undermines the game design because it's clearly intended that Meteor Dust is a limited commodity and used to make difficult decisions. Without it then the dust is basically a glorified friendship increaser to get different perks from all the NPCs.
The weapon mapping in this game is terrible. Why give me all these cool weapons and restrict it to two weapons. Let me map the traversal items to different keys, there is an abundance of keys on controller and keyboard that would have let me use one of my items hookshot instead of just taking up a weapon slot. By the end of the game I didn't even use ranged weapons because I'd rather have quick traversal and not go into my menu constantly. A quick switch or anything, going into menus to switch your one weapon is some weird game design that belongs in like SNES Zelda games, not in a 2021 metroidvania.
I loved the bosses but the idea of increased difficulty of a boss in Unsighted is to add more and more annoying adds. Make more engaging mechanics, don't spam adds that require me to parry constantly to kill them. The optional dungeon boss was the worst offender of this. I'd rather deal with mechanics like bullet hell then having to deal with adds that keep on spawning. (thank god they eventually stop spawning if you kill enough)
The game is fun combat-wise at 2-3 enemies max and when one enemy isn't constantly spamming attack. There is some late game enemy packs where one enemy will constantly spam attacks and while you parry them, the other enemies just attack you and lock you down in a parry/clash war.
While the art is great, the way the game is drawn and animated means there is definitely some depth perception problems where I can't tell if I'm in the background or foreground. This isn't an issue while doing combat but more so when you have to do puzzles or wall jumps. This is especially evident when the game tries to convey any sense of height and you really can't tell how tall things are.
I hate tutorials but the game really needed to do an extensive guide on how to do long jump, wall jump and throwing items at the beginning of the game and not at the end. Not to mention there is a secret technique where you can instantly increase your stamina to max by double-tapping dash when you're tired that I never saw in game and only saw because it was mentioned somewhere on a guide I looked at later.
ENDING SPOILERS START HERE
This one is spoilers so (best ending spoilers) The true ending completely undermines the whole premise of the timers and permanent in the death of the game. You go back in time to day 1 and all the NPCs + Alma revert to their day 1 timers. The true ending basically extends all the timers and restores the NPCs in an attempt to let the player do what they want (like a pseudo-post game) but it does not feel good at all. I spend the whole game trying to save all the NPCs and getting the best ending just completely undermines the message and design of the game. If you're going to do that you mine as well just not have made a timer, just leave the timer on Alma to put some sense of dread into the player.. Not to mention there was no way a normal person could find all the required items for the best ending because it uses a lot of secret walls that you can pass through but they appear solid in the game.
ENDING SPOILERS END
If you don't mind the timed aspect of the game or don't care about trying to save every NPC, I think the game would be more enjoyable for you but it was my real complaint for the game.