not enough people mention how much of a treat this game is if you're a big fan of Castlevania
it's amusing how much trouble Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon does to invent its own versions of all the iconography when Vampire Survivors just borrows everything, bibles are bibles still, holy water is Santa Water, etc, but also goes through a lot of trouble to make sure every enemy and character still have their own flavor
and I'd love to see this developer make a game with all the Vampire Survivors iconography they've implemented but just make a Castlevania clone this time, make a Classicvania or Metroidvania-styled game with all these interesting takes on the old favorites, and make it tough as nails to prove wrong all the people who say that you "don't know how" to make a hard game, and you can make it a bit roguey still like Dead Cells or something if you're trying to justify it as still being distinct from Castlevania
I do think there are certainly moments of challenge in Vampire Survivors, maybe I'm just not good at multitasking but I can't completely tune out while playing this
There are bosses and enemies that restrict your movement like memorably the one you fight while fleeing from rising water
And it's not just "walk in a direction", there are weapons you can fire in a direction of your choosing, therefore aim does matter a lot of the time, this game is stripped-down but there's a reason people keep making the comparison to twin-stick shooters
Skip the slot machine animations with the circle button, you don't want the game to jerk you off that much, it's a bit much already even if you skip them
On Steam Deck I force a 1920x1200 resolution because the sort of downscaling that results in is easier on the pixel art than what appears to be uneven nearest-neighbor scaling by default for 1280x800
have they ever said why the game only uses a 16:10 resolution? maybe for playfield legibility as opposed to 16:9? it befits the Steam Deck perfectly but results in awkward black bars for everything else
Decent game for like 20 hours or so, idk if I'll continue it now that I've mostly ran out of new maps, enjoy in moderation and it's better on a handheld where it doesn't feel like it's sucking away time because you're sneaking in a couple games
by the way, you diskhorse fiends have gotta calm the fuck down, I don't know what it is about this game that brings such intense emotional responses out of people, maybe it's their latent bigotry towards Italians...

And where the fuck is Bisconte Draculó? You seriously telling me you never get to fight the guy on the cover?
rated 4 stars for Schedule IV

Reviewed on Nov 16, 2022


Comments