Shenobi
2019
Not sure how to feel about this. I died a bunch and that doesn't necessarily make the game a bad one, but the movement is a mixed bag because the jump feels awful, swinging your weapon feels awful, combat in general feels awful.
...and yet the dodge roll feels absolutely magnificent and covers so much ground and requires no stamina, so it's MOSTLY a better way to cover ground than actually walking or jumping.
The game is a lot of dying, learning where shortcuts back to your current checkpoint are, opening them up, and then moving forward again (at least for what I've played) and the enemies sound, and music are just so uninspiring that I don't feel motivated to chase it further to see if it gets better.
Maybe another time. But that dodge roll does feel wonderful.
...and yet the dodge roll feels absolutely magnificent and covers so much ground and requires no stamina, so it's MOSTLY a better way to cover ground than actually walking or jumping.
The game is a lot of dying, learning where shortcuts back to your current checkpoint are, opening them up, and then moving forward again (at least for what I've played) and the enemies sound, and music are just so uninspiring that I don't feel motivated to chase it further to see if it gets better.
Maybe another time. But that dodge roll does feel wonderful.
2020
Not sure how to feel about this yet. Only played it for an hour, but I'm mildly frustrated with a couple of things that feel like bad design decisions.
1. The idea that you can build up combos by using melee and get free healing out of it is nice, but maybe don't make the command for healing the same as the interact command? The number of times I healed instead of interacting with something/someone or interacted with something instead of healing was significantly more than zero thus far.
2. There's a huge lack of consistency for when it's okay to drop off a ledge. Scripted falls that are long, I get it. But when you have a passage that ends with what looks like a chute and I can drop down it fine to continue my path, but also have another passage that has a drop at the end of the screen that counts as an instadeath, that's rather annoying -- especially when I carefully cleared my way through a boatload of enemies only to find myself killed because the rules for exploration aren't explicitly spelled out.
Seriously, how hard is it to give some kind of indication as to when it's either VERY SAFE or NOT SAFE to drop in an area? Doesn't even have to be both -- pick one and the other one is the natural opposite answer. Killing me because you let me drop down into several areas before but changed your mind this time doesn't fly with me.
I'll probably come back to this eventually, but I'm salty at the moment, so I'm in no rush to currently jump back into it. Also, the combat feels really dullsville, but that might just be the first hour speaking.
1. The idea that you can build up combos by using melee and get free healing out of it is nice, but maybe don't make the command for healing the same as the interact command? The number of times I healed instead of interacting with something/someone or interacted with something instead of healing was significantly more than zero thus far.
2. There's a huge lack of consistency for when it's okay to drop off a ledge. Scripted falls that are long, I get it. But when you have a passage that ends with what looks like a chute and I can drop down it fine to continue my path, but also have another passage that has a drop at the end of the screen that counts as an instadeath, that's rather annoying -- especially when I carefully cleared my way through a boatload of enemies only to find myself killed because the rules for exploration aren't explicitly spelled out.
Seriously, how hard is it to give some kind of indication as to when it's either VERY SAFE or NOT SAFE to drop in an area? Doesn't even have to be both -- pick one and the other one is the natural opposite answer. Killing me because you let me drop down into several areas before but changed your mind this time doesn't fly with me.
I'll probably come back to this eventually, but I'm salty at the moment, so I'm in no rush to currently jump back into it. Also, the combat feels really dullsville, but that might just be the first hour speaking.
2022
Eh, it's 5 AM and Steam says I've logged 149.2 hours on the game in the last two weeks. I'm just going to leave it at: it's an amazing game, even with its occasional issues.
Maybe I'll write more tomorrow, but I definitely feel like I got my money's worth and then some out of it. Also ends up somewhere on my list of favorite games of all-time easily, even with Radahn doing his worst Mario Kart Bowser impression.
Maybe I'll write more tomorrow, but I definitely feel like I got my money's worth and then some out of it. Also ends up somewhere on my list of favorite games of all-time easily, even with Radahn doing his worst Mario Kart Bowser impression.
2019
I haven't put much time into this yet, so I don't have a lot of formed thoughts, but I did want to gush about the design decisions for this game, because it could shape up to be an amazing Metroidvania.
Your central mechanic is the ability to see the near future, so enemies have their attacks and movements telegraphed about a second before the action happens, so you have time to react and plan a response appropriately. You also have a limited ability to rewind time (even if you Game Over in order to avoid the Game Over sticking) in the event that you make critical mistakes (whether getting hit or landing on spikes or whatnot).
That's all cool and very useful, but I want to talk about the Time Tree. There's these points you find while exploring that basically serve as checkpoints and are points of memory in your existence. As you make progress through the game, you may encounter areas where you can't make further progress but need to return to a previous exploration point.
But this isn't fast traveling between locations, but rather between time periods when going to a location. Returning to a previous location on the time tree means returning to a point in your memory. Some power-ups you find while exploring are permanently tied to your being because you learn about them from possible "future" scenarios and they're instructional in nature, so you basically get said power-up permanently even if you move elsewhere on the timeline. Some that are physical (like a health increase) are reliant on you going back down the path you previously explored in order to acquire those power-ups again.
After you're essentially through the tutorial of how the mechanics work, you learn that the reality of the game is that you have a limited time in which to explore the world or you lose the game. But through the ability to go back to a previous point in time from the future you explored, you can basically work your way down to a location, figure out the value of the path you took, and decide if you want to just keep your power-ups and go back or maybe do something more permanent and physically trek back before creating a new memory/save at a previous memory point that you passed earlier. The game keeps track of your most recent memories at each point and follows the timeline splits through all of them and lets you travel back to any particular one you've made at any point, even ones that might have ultimately lead to a dead end.
It creates an extra layer of complexity while keeping everything you explore familiar so that backtracking specifically is for the purposes of time management (and occasionally checking a new path you opened up), and I really kinda dig that.
Also, kinda loving the soundtrack.
That's all I've got for awhile, since this is probably going to be sitting on the backlog until post-Elden Ring.
Your central mechanic is the ability to see the near future, so enemies have their attacks and movements telegraphed about a second before the action happens, so you have time to react and plan a response appropriately. You also have a limited ability to rewind time (even if you Game Over in order to avoid the Game Over sticking) in the event that you make critical mistakes (whether getting hit or landing on spikes or whatnot).
That's all cool and very useful, but I want to talk about the Time Tree. There's these points you find while exploring that basically serve as checkpoints and are points of memory in your existence. As you make progress through the game, you may encounter areas where you can't make further progress but need to return to a previous exploration point.
But this isn't fast traveling between locations, but rather between time periods when going to a location. Returning to a previous location on the time tree means returning to a point in your memory. Some power-ups you find while exploring are permanently tied to your being because you learn about them from possible "future" scenarios and they're instructional in nature, so you basically get said power-up permanently even if you move elsewhere on the timeline. Some that are physical (like a health increase) are reliant on you going back down the path you previously explored in order to acquire those power-ups again.
After you're essentially through the tutorial of how the mechanics work, you learn that the reality of the game is that you have a limited time in which to explore the world or you lose the game. But through the ability to go back to a previous point in time from the future you explored, you can basically work your way down to a location, figure out the value of the path you took, and decide if you want to just keep your power-ups and go back or maybe do something more permanent and physically trek back before creating a new memory/save at a previous memory point that you passed earlier. The game keeps track of your most recent memories at each point and follows the timeline splits through all of them and lets you travel back to any particular one you've made at any point, even ones that might have ultimately lead to a dead end.
It creates an extra layer of complexity while keeping everything you explore familiar so that backtracking specifically is for the purposes of time management (and occasionally checking a new path you opened up), and I really kinda dig that.
Also, kinda loving the soundtrack.
That's all I've got for awhile, since this is probably going to be sitting on the backlog until post-Elden Ring.
2016
Seemed like an alright game for the most part. I liked the idea of having your head disconnect and having its own behaviors available (such as attacking or vacuuming off other heads so you can take over another body). Not a big fan of the aiming system where you rebound your laser shots in order to hit other enemies, but not a deal-breaker.
The deal-breaker was when I went to go shut off a shield for a satellite, snuck by a red guard and used my shield to slip past a laser on the other side of the guard to get into the control panel for the satellite. Worked fine, got inside and shut the satellite shield down, then came back out to find a minor issue.
I'm still on the other side of the laser, that guard is still alive, and although I can block the laser with my shield, I have to get by the guard or take its head off in a very narrow area. Basically, blocking the laser puts me in close proximity to the guard, who swats me backwards...into the laser. The laser kills you immediately, and you respawn in the room in the same spot you came in from -- next to the laser. Tried vacuuming his head off, got swatted. Tried using the shield and just dashing with my smash attack past him, got swatted. Tried smashing directly into him after shielding, got swatted. Died about a dozen times or so and figured it just wasn't worth the hassle. Technically my fault for trying to be sneaky, but that is quite a bug.
The deal-breaker was when I went to go shut off a shield for a satellite, snuck by a red guard and used my shield to slip past a laser on the other side of the guard to get into the control panel for the satellite. Worked fine, got inside and shut the satellite shield down, then came back out to find a minor issue.
I'm still on the other side of the laser, that guard is still alive, and although I can block the laser with my shield, I have to get by the guard or take its head off in a very narrow area. Basically, blocking the laser puts me in close proximity to the guard, who swats me backwards...into the laser. The laser kills you immediately, and you respawn in the room in the same spot you came in from -- next to the laser. Tried vacuuming his head off, got swatted. Tried using the shield and just dashing with my smash attack past him, got swatted. Tried smashing directly into him after shielding, got swatted. Died about a dozen times or so and figured it just wasn't worth the hassle. Technically my fault for trying to be sneaky, but that is quite a bug.
This review contains spoilers
Short, short answer: When it's fun, it's really fun. When it's obnoxious, it's really obnoxious.
Longer answer: Well, let's break it down piece-by-piece.
Visually, the game is a mixed bag. Occasionally solid visuals get marred by horrible jagging and outlines (especially with characters), textures popping in and out that can sometimes happen so fast and repeatedly that it looks like a clinical in how to induce an inadvertent seizure, and the oft-mentioned draw distance problem coming into play, usually in the form of mons or other things you're specifically looking for not showing up until you're right on them. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it's always a fun time when you're crouching in a cave and can see white light pouring through the seams of textures that don't quite touch the ground properly (or worse in some cases).
The game is fine as audio goes. Cues for alpha mons, some fun area music, subdued music when crouching in tall grass -- it's all pretty nice. If I had one concern, it's a question of why music sometimes just isn't present in an area at all. My wife and I have both had points where we'd be moving around for long periods of time with no area music playing, only to have it start up all of the sudden out of nowhere.
Technical issues, I only ran into a few.
At one point, the game started lagging a lot, so I saved, only to have it crash about ten seconds later. Nothing intensive, was just walking out of Galaxy Hall and heading over to the item box.
Another issue is that turn order in combat sometimes doesn't care about said order anymore when you're facing multiple pokemon at once. I can't speak to any specifics, but I definitely had a fairly fast mon that was significantly higher in level than the three mons it was up against sit there through five actions after using an Agile attack that -- at least according to the turn counter -- suggested it should only have to wait through three actions. Had a few situations like this, but I can only speculate on some aspects of it and it largely doesn't make sense to me in the case of the example I cited.
USEFUL TECHNICAL ISSUE FOR PLAYERS WANTING TO GAME THE SYSTEM -- Was doing some trading with my wife to test the usual mons to see if they'd evolve on trades with or without items, and noticed something very peculiar. Essentially, mons that you traded to someone and had traded back to you counted as another new mon in your research list for the purposes of catching mons.
Having trouble with Request 17 wanting you to fill out a Cherrim entry completely? Get someone to evolve a Cherubi and trade it back and forth until you're done. Especially useful since they're (at least for us) a pain to find and Petal Dance -- the move it asks to see for research purposes -- isn't learned until near level 50.
Basically, if you have a friend and are willing to commit to back-and-forths for trades, you can knock out some of the more frustrating mons pretty easily to get your Research Level 10 quotas.
Regarding gameplay, the game really manages to feel both fun and irritating for me depending on any given moment. I actually enjoyed the sneaking around to catch mons far more than I thought I would, and battling is mostly fine.
Battles feel really binary, as it seems like mons are built in a stacked manner against a player who might bring mons that should be strong against them to the battle. A lot of strategy is out the window because certain things just aren't relevant anymore -- status effects are temporary (and gone after battle), setups (both field-based and stat-based) are temporary during the battle, and you will occasionally be forced into battles against multiple mons at once with no ability to hit all mons present (as far as I know).
I'm not sure to the full extent of which AI behaves in this manner, but some mons specifically formulate their turn AFTER you've dealt damage -- in the case of one particular legendary in the postgame, it would heal itself right after a hit would reduce it to red bar levels WITHOUT FAIL. Trying to balance your attacks to get it into the red so you can catch it? Better stack yourself up with a second free turn because you're going to need it (or in my case, just get tired of it and throw a ball while it was in the yellow and get lucky).
Wasn't fond of the bosses for the most part. My wife said that they're there to test your understanding of the mechanics of the game, but I feel like it's just another "thing" that they wanted to try out, as per the standard in Pokemon games. You never sneak around or try and catch the bosses, nor do you even really actively engage them with your own mons -- instead, you're required to play an arena dodging game for a bit until the mon either does something that stuns it and allows you to engage it with a mon, or it gets tired of going through its cycle of moves and lets you throw a mon then. Yeah, you're throwing stuff at it to weaken it the whole time, but that's not something you do in the wild with normal mons, either. And the reward for beating a given boss with a mon is to have a few extra seconds to throw more stuff at the boss.
Some of the patterns do result in a fun time (second boss for me, specifically), but it mostly just feels like a chore. I died to the third boss once because dodging out of the way resulted in me clipping against invisible walls because of the way the terrain is set up for the fight, so that's an added bonus!
If you are having trouble with them, you are given the option to restart the fight or even restart the fight with your current progress against that boss counted in the restart. Nice option to have for people having trouble, I guess.
Having an invisible stamina bar for your dash/sprint/run move seems weird, but since there isn't any stamina required for dodging, you can always dodge roll forward whenever your sprint runs out because it's slightly faster than your normal movement and a few seconds will recharge your invisible stamina bar.
There's some weird design decisions, like giving the player the option to drown after they've acquired the water mount -- if you're using a mount and hit the water, you automatically call the water mount...but if you just jump into the water, you have to choose to call the water mount or drown and get sent back to shore. This also applies to the flying mount allowing you to switch to a non-flier in mid-air and drop (potentially to your death) if you want to. Kind of weird that they allow it, but in a way, it did allow me to realize that you could use the climbing mount to move up a wall, let go, fly to rise higher, then cling to the wall and switch again to move up the wall slightly faster. Beyond that, still seems like some weird decisions.
I don't mind there not being any breeding or (as far as I know) player battling in the game, but it does kinda put a damper on my desire to push beyond just collecting all the mons up and through postgame.
I did like some of the design decisions for alternate forms for some mons (which I will not mention here, regardless of the spoiler warning). I did end up using a couple of them through the end and postgame sections because I kinda grew attached to them. STILL WAITING ON SOME NEW EEVEELUTIONS, CAN'T WAIT FOR 2037 WHEN THEY FINALLY GIVE US A NEW ONE.
So yeah, essentially...when I'm not fighting bosses (outside of the second one) or just occasionally getting ganked in a goofy way in combat, it's a pretty alright time. I think I died three times in total? Once to the third boss, once to the endgame boss, and once to trying to be a good Samaritan by trying to get someone's bag they dropped and falling off an invisible-walled cliff because they dropped their bag in an area I wasn't normally able to access because of incorrect mounts, but it didn't stop me from walking/sprinting/jumping up awkward textures until I was too high to save myself from falling. Whoops!
Can't imagine getting this on sale unless you get lucky with one of those rare 30% sales that happen like twice a year, so I'd say it's worth getting full price if Pokemon is your bag, but if you think you can hold off, keep an eye out for one of those rare sales and just wishlist it. It's fun enough, the lore they try to throw out there is interesting (at times), and you get some new forms of several mons that make for some more interesting team chemistry if that's your bag.
Longer answer: Well, let's break it down piece-by-piece.
Visually, the game is a mixed bag. Occasionally solid visuals get marred by horrible jagging and outlines (especially with characters), textures popping in and out that can sometimes happen so fast and repeatedly that it looks like a clinical in how to induce an inadvertent seizure, and the oft-mentioned draw distance problem coming into play, usually in the form of mons or other things you're specifically looking for not showing up until you're right on them. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it's always a fun time when you're crouching in a cave and can see white light pouring through the seams of textures that don't quite touch the ground properly (or worse in some cases).
The game is fine as audio goes. Cues for alpha mons, some fun area music, subdued music when crouching in tall grass -- it's all pretty nice. If I had one concern, it's a question of why music sometimes just isn't present in an area at all. My wife and I have both had points where we'd be moving around for long periods of time with no area music playing, only to have it start up all of the sudden out of nowhere.
Technical issues, I only ran into a few.
At one point, the game started lagging a lot, so I saved, only to have it crash about ten seconds later. Nothing intensive, was just walking out of Galaxy Hall and heading over to the item box.
Another issue is that turn order in combat sometimes doesn't care about said order anymore when you're facing multiple pokemon at once. I can't speak to any specifics, but I definitely had a fairly fast mon that was significantly higher in level than the three mons it was up against sit there through five actions after using an Agile attack that -- at least according to the turn counter -- suggested it should only have to wait through three actions. Had a few situations like this, but I can only speculate on some aspects of it and it largely doesn't make sense to me in the case of the example I cited.
USEFUL TECHNICAL ISSUE FOR PLAYERS WANTING TO GAME THE SYSTEM -- Was doing some trading with my wife to test the usual mons to see if they'd evolve on trades with or without items, and noticed something very peculiar. Essentially, mons that you traded to someone and had traded back to you counted as another new mon in your research list for the purposes of catching mons.
Having trouble with Request 17 wanting you to fill out a Cherrim entry completely? Get someone to evolve a Cherubi and trade it back and forth until you're done. Especially useful since they're (at least for us) a pain to find and Petal Dance -- the move it asks to see for research purposes -- isn't learned until near level 50.
Basically, if you have a friend and are willing to commit to back-and-forths for trades, you can knock out some of the more frustrating mons pretty easily to get your Research Level 10 quotas.
Regarding gameplay, the game really manages to feel both fun and irritating for me depending on any given moment. I actually enjoyed the sneaking around to catch mons far more than I thought I would, and battling is mostly fine.
Battles feel really binary, as it seems like mons are built in a stacked manner against a player who might bring mons that should be strong against them to the battle. A lot of strategy is out the window because certain things just aren't relevant anymore -- status effects are temporary (and gone after battle), setups (both field-based and stat-based) are temporary during the battle, and you will occasionally be forced into battles against multiple mons at once with no ability to hit all mons present (as far as I know).
I'm not sure to the full extent of which AI behaves in this manner, but some mons specifically formulate their turn AFTER you've dealt damage -- in the case of one particular legendary in the postgame, it would heal itself right after a hit would reduce it to red bar levels WITHOUT FAIL. Trying to balance your attacks to get it into the red so you can catch it? Better stack yourself up with a second free turn because you're going to need it (or in my case, just get tired of it and throw a ball while it was in the yellow and get lucky).
Wasn't fond of the bosses for the most part. My wife said that they're there to test your understanding of the mechanics of the game, but I feel like it's just another "thing" that they wanted to try out, as per the standard in Pokemon games. You never sneak around or try and catch the bosses, nor do you even really actively engage them with your own mons -- instead, you're required to play an arena dodging game for a bit until the mon either does something that stuns it and allows you to engage it with a mon, or it gets tired of going through its cycle of moves and lets you throw a mon then. Yeah, you're throwing stuff at it to weaken it the whole time, but that's not something you do in the wild with normal mons, either. And the reward for beating a given boss with a mon is to have a few extra seconds to throw more stuff at the boss.
Some of the patterns do result in a fun time (second boss for me, specifically), but it mostly just feels like a chore. I died to the third boss once because dodging out of the way resulted in me clipping against invisible walls because of the way the terrain is set up for the fight, so that's an added bonus!
If you are having trouble with them, you are given the option to restart the fight or even restart the fight with your current progress against that boss counted in the restart. Nice option to have for people having trouble, I guess.
Having an invisible stamina bar for your dash/sprint/run move seems weird, but since there isn't any stamina required for dodging, you can always dodge roll forward whenever your sprint runs out because it's slightly faster than your normal movement and a few seconds will recharge your invisible stamina bar.
There's some weird design decisions, like giving the player the option to drown after they've acquired the water mount -- if you're using a mount and hit the water, you automatically call the water mount...but if you just jump into the water, you have to choose to call the water mount or drown and get sent back to shore. This also applies to the flying mount allowing you to switch to a non-flier in mid-air and drop (potentially to your death) if you want to. Kind of weird that they allow it, but in a way, it did allow me to realize that you could use the climbing mount to move up a wall, let go, fly to rise higher, then cling to the wall and switch again to move up the wall slightly faster. Beyond that, still seems like some weird decisions.
I don't mind there not being any breeding or (as far as I know) player battling in the game, but it does kinda put a damper on my desire to push beyond just collecting all the mons up and through postgame.
I did like some of the design decisions for alternate forms for some mons (which I will not mention here, regardless of the spoiler warning). I did end up using a couple of them through the end and postgame sections because I kinda grew attached to them. STILL WAITING ON SOME NEW EEVEELUTIONS, CAN'T WAIT FOR 2037 WHEN THEY FINALLY GIVE US A NEW ONE.
So yeah, essentially...when I'm not fighting bosses (outside of the second one) or just occasionally getting ganked in a goofy way in combat, it's a pretty alright time. I think I died three times in total? Once to the third boss, once to the endgame boss, and once to trying to be a good Samaritan by trying to get someone's bag they dropped and falling off an invisible-walled cliff because they dropped their bag in an area I wasn't normally able to access because of incorrect mounts, but it didn't stop me from walking/sprinting/jumping up awkward textures until I was too high to save myself from falling. Whoops!
Can't imagine getting this on sale unless you get lucky with one of those rare 30% sales that happen like twice a year, so I'd say it's worth getting full price if Pokemon is your bag, but if you think you can hold off, keep an eye out for one of those rare sales and just wishlist it. It's fun enough, the lore they try to throw out there is interesting (at times), and you get some new forms of several mons that make for some more interesting team chemistry if that's your bag.
As far as the games in the series go, kinda enjoyed this one a lot more than I thought I would. Felt like a story dealing with military characters wasn't going to resonate well with me (especially given how very pointedly they try and make your initial interactions between characters awkward for one-another), but it kinda drew me in as the game progressed.
I still hate QTEs to death, House of Ashes at least made me feel like stealth and action moments were important, even if you could feel out the pattern of when the QTEs were coming (especially in the final stand-off of the game).
It doesn't win any awards for me and sometimes characters had a bit of that creepy uncanny valley look to them (Rebecca more than anyone else), but it was fun and probably the best DPA game in the series (if you don't count Until Dawn, which the series doesn't seem to do, either).
Get it on sale, as it's about six to seven hours if you are being careful and trying to find collectables (I collected all frames and 43/50 secrets). There is replayability as always because of different storyline potentials and achievements/trophies, so it's worth it simply on the principle of treating it like going to the movies -- this is largely just an interactive movie that runs about 3-4 times as long as your typical movie, priced at about 2-3 times the cost of a movie, with extra reasons to go back and "watch" it again. If nothing else, get a friend to come over and watch them play through it and see how much their choices differ.
I'd say it's a reasonable deal at 30% off, a steal at 50%.
I still hate QTEs to death, House of Ashes at least made me feel like stealth and action moments were important, even if you could feel out the pattern of when the QTEs were coming (especially in the final stand-off of the game).
It doesn't win any awards for me and sometimes characters had a bit of that creepy uncanny valley look to them (Rebecca more than anyone else), but it was fun and probably the best DPA game in the series (if you don't count Until Dawn, which the series doesn't seem to do, either).
Get it on sale, as it's about six to seven hours if you are being careful and trying to find collectables (I collected all frames and 43/50 secrets). There is replayability as always because of different storyline potentials and achievements/trophies, so it's worth it simply on the principle of treating it like going to the movies -- this is largely just an interactive movie that runs about 3-4 times as long as your typical movie, priced at about 2-3 times the cost of a movie, with extra reasons to go back and "watch" it again. If nothing else, get a friend to come over and watch them play through it and see how much their choices differ.
I'd say it's a reasonable deal at 30% off, a steal at 50%.
2013
EDIT -- Guess I'm already done. Went back to play it some more, accidentally started a new game, skipped the tutorial so I could quit back to the main menu, only to find out it didn't take my manual save I made from the previous game and the only autosave now was the one that it created at 0 hours and 0 minutes in the first room of the game. WHAT A GEM!
Original review follows below.
-------------------------------------
Oof, this game seems to be a mess. Metroidvania that's VERY light on the exploration and VERY heavy on the bugs (both as monsters and as issues with the game).
Take these impressions with a grain of salt, as I'm only an hour into the game and have just reached the Process Control area (for the record, Global Steam Achievements suggest less than 4% of people even get this far into the game).
Things I've encountered so far:
1) Controls are a VERY mixed bag. Using a DS4 and although the tutorial tells you to keep an eye on contextual prompts for things you can interact with, the control system only displays on-screen prompts properly (or as properly as they can when it assumes you have a 360 controller) during the tutorial. After the tutorial, all interactions will tell you to right-click, left-click, or whatever. A bit lazy, but I won't hold it against them.
2) There's these boxes you can shoot with your gun to get resources. You want these resources. Fun fact: the first time you shoot at one of these boxes (it takes several shots with the basic pistol to break one), the AI warns you to not waste your ammo on the boxes because you need to conserve it for enemies (despite having infinite ammo in your pistol). By the time you find out that you NEED to break some of these boxes, you're already a couple areas into the game and the backtrack doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Speaking of backtracking...
3) If you decide to backtrack, enemies MIGHT show up, but save points don't seem to work anymore in areas you already left. Why? Who knows?
4) When you reach your first elevator, you're in for a treat if you're using a controller because when you walk in, you interact with the elevator...and nothing happens. I thought maybe something was wrong and climbed up on top of the elevator to check out the area up there. After getting partially stuck in a wall a couple times, I jumped back down and noticed that when my character hit the ground in the elevator, she'd duck down slightly and there was a second interactive prompt. YOU HAVE TO CROUCH IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE THE BUTTON TO GO DOWN A FLOOR WHEN YOU'RE IN AN ELEVATOR.
4) Nevermind the text errors in the logs you discover on the way through the ship, the real gem is finding random code notes that will show up if you're running and aiming at the same time. One of them comes and goes too fast for me to read but in most rooms (at least in the Security and Maintenance areas), you can see one pop up a lot that's listed as "pre-camera_trigger" or something to that effect. Always a fun time when you can see flags for code just hanging out in your game.
5) They tell you to keep your light / surrounding lights off to avoid enraging the bugs/monsters/whatever. When a bug is enraged, it'll jump through the air toward you and likely hit you. Fun fact: they'll do this with the lights off and only really care if you're within a certain range of them. This includes LEAPING AT YOU FROM OFF-SCREEN. Definitely had one of those purple jankfests yeet itself through the area into my face while I had all lights off just because it was apparently the life goal of this thing to make out with my character (and apparently have no hitbox briefly so the shotgun wouldn't hurt it).
But yeah, I'm only an hour in, so this game's surely going to get better...right?!
Original review follows below.
-------------------------------------
Oof, this game seems to be a mess. Metroidvania that's VERY light on the exploration and VERY heavy on the bugs (both as monsters and as issues with the game).
Take these impressions with a grain of salt, as I'm only an hour into the game and have just reached the Process Control area (for the record, Global Steam Achievements suggest less than 4% of people even get this far into the game).
Things I've encountered so far:
1) Controls are a VERY mixed bag. Using a DS4 and although the tutorial tells you to keep an eye on contextual prompts for things you can interact with, the control system only displays on-screen prompts properly (or as properly as they can when it assumes you have a 360 controller) during the tutorial. After the tutorial, all interactions will tell you to right-click, left-click, or whatever. A bit lazy, but I won't hold it against them.
2) There's these boxes you can shoot with your gun to get resources. You want these resources. Fun fact: the first time you shoot at one of these boxes (it takes several shots with the basic pistol to break one), the AI warns you to not waste your ammo on the boxes because you need to conserve it for enemies (despite having infinite ammo in your pistol). By the time you find out that you NEED to break some of these boxes, you're already a couple areas into the game and the backtrack doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Speaking of backtracking...
3) If you decide to backtrack, enemies MIGHT show up, but save points don't seem to work anymore in areas you already left. Why? Who knows?
4) When you reach your first elevator, you're in for a treat if you're using a controller because when you walk in, you interact with the elevator...and nothing happens. I thought maybe something was wrong and climbed up on top of the elevator to check out the area up there. After getting partially stuck in a wall a couple times, I jumped back down and noticed that when my character hit the ground in the elevator, she'd duck down slightly and there was a second interactive prompt. YOU HAVE TO CROUCH IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE THE BUTTON TO GO DOWN A FLOOR WHEN YOU'RE IN AN ELEVATOR.
4) Nevermind the text errors in the logs you discover on the way through the ship, the real gem is finding random code notes that will show up if you're running and aiming at the same time. One of them comes and goes too fast for me to read but in most rooms (at least in the Security and Maintenance areas), you can see one pop up a lot that's listed as "pre-camera_trigger" or something to that effect. Always a fun time when you can see flags for code just hanging out in your game.
5) They tell you to keep your light / surrounding lights off to avoid enraging the bugs/monsters/whatever. When a bug is enraged, it'll jump through the air toward you and likely hit you. Fun fact: they'll do this with the lights off and only really care if you're within a certain range of them. This includes LEAPING AT YOU FROM OFF-SCREEN. Definitely had one of those purple jankfests yeet itself through the area into my face while I had all lights off just because it was apparently the life goal of this thing to make out with my character (and apparently have no hitbox briefly so the shotgun wouldn't hurt it).
But yeah, I'm only an hour in, so this game's surely going to get better...right?!
2013
I don't really have anything strong to write about this. I played it for a bit awhile back, came back to try it again, and the only conclusion I can come to is that it's an okay Metroidvania with some interesting ideas that has a bit too many issues with controls and bugs in general for me to enjoy it.
It's cheap on Steam, so if you see it on sale and you're hard-up for a Metroidvania to try, give it a shot and maybe you'll get more mileage out of it than I did. It's Trine-meets-Metroidvania, with an emphasis on puzzles and without the charm of Trine.
It's cheap on Steam, so if you see it on sale and you're hard-up for a Metroidvania to try, give it a shot and maybe you'll get more mileage out of it than I did. It's Trine-meets-Metroidvania, with an emphasis on puzzles and without the charm of Trine.
2021
About 11 hours in, game is fun enough, but I'm just not getting as invested as I was with some other Tales games. I'll definitely come back to this, but not in a real rush because I'm just having an okay time.
2016
EDIT: Now that I've played the free and paid DLCs, I'm bumping this to five stars.
My original gripe with sequence breaking and not being able to progress in the non-Volcano area was my fault because there actually are ways around those "roadblocks", to the extent that there's actually a 0% Item/Ability run you can do that you can get achievements for in both the main game and postgame. You can actually play the entire game without your weapon and still beat it in a non-pacifist manner. In fact, the game was designed with so many different ways to approach it that the devs added in achievements for each scenario that you could pull off and encouraged you to break the game as much as possible, while still making it manageable for anyone who wants that challenge.
The volcano thing is still weird because you needed to have a particular conversation and then have a couple cutscenes to progress that exploration because of story, and this happens with a few other postgame sections, including a post-postgame (yes, there is one).
I'd say that my only real standing gripe is the buttons being listed as numbers in the movelists because yes, I do enjoy experimenting with controls, but sometimes I would rather just look and see a familiar button list to know how to do things. Everything else is essentially golden, with some very excellent boss fights on top of that exploration and sequence breaking that the game unabashedly showcases.
Original review follows.
----------------------------------------------
If you like Metroivanias with non-linear exploration and bosses that are fun bullet hells, this game is made for you and you need to play it.
I have only a couple gripes.
1) Although the UI itself is absolutely lovely, text instructions for abilities that show up in them are unintuitive because it doesn't account for the names of controller buttons, so explanations of moves will be things like, "Press (down arrow) + BUTTON 4." Sometimes when I'd learn a new ability/move, I'd just mess around with all buttons and directions until I figured it out. Not a big deal, just a small thing that makes you burn a few extra seconds to figure stuff out.
2) The non-linearity of this game is mostly excellent, and it's the "mostly" that's come back to haunt me a couple times in one form or another. There's an area I found early on that I couldn't proceed through because the game wants you to clear the first chapter before you're allowed to go do it.
At another point, I used hidden moves to get myself really deep into the volcano area and found myself eventually at a long shaft that seems to repeat infinitely with a save point in the middle of it. I was looking for hidden ledges to drop onto while falling infinitely because the map overlay on the save screen shows a separate-colored room at the bottom.
After spending about fifteen minutes wandering slamming into walls with my face or hammer or magic (and the brief opening that has some spikes on the ground in one section), I checked a walkthrough, only to find out that this area was inaccessible until MUCH later in the game and I had to use my hidden-tech skills to work my way all the way back out of the volcano to the teleporter (which was much more difficult to get back to than it was getting in from). This one was a little more frustrating because the non-linearity encourages exploration, but I was also penalized very thoroughly for exploring in this instance, to the point that I had to check a walkthrough to see I was wasting my time.
Those are minor issues, though -- the walk back from the first area I mentioned wasn't that bad (even if I did it twice) and if you're reading this and haven't played it yet, you're now aware that you shouldn't go too deep into the volcano using hidden tech abilities once you figure out how they work. It's essentially an extra 30 minutes I tacked onto the game for walking back from places and if nothing else, the volcano situation was good practice for honing those skills, even if it was frustrating.
I used all of this review to talk about these things because frankly, I don't want to lay out all the good things this game has going for it because they're innumerable. It's beautiful, non-linear, mostly encourages exploration, lets you progress story at your leisure for the most part, and the soundtrack is nice. There's a postgame and I haven't started it yet, but I will soon. There's also a free DLC that is suggested to be played in postgame and two other DLCs that add more areas/content and I intend to check those out eventually, as well.
Easily in the Top 20 and possibly Top 10 best Metroidvanias just for content alone.
My original gripe with sequence breaking and not being able to progress in the non-Volcano area was my fault because there actually are ways around those "roadblocks", to the extent that there's actually a 0% Item/Ability run you can do that you can get achievements for in both the main game and postgame. You can actually play the entire game without your weapon and still beat it in a non-pacifist manner. In fact, the game was designed with so many different ways to approach it that the devs added in achievements for each scenario that you could pull off and encouraged you to break the game as much as possible, while still making it manageable for anyone who wants that challenge.
The volcano thing is still weird because you needed to have a particular conversation and then have a couple cutscenes to progress that exploration because of story, and this happens with a few other postgame sections, including a post-postgame (yes, there is one).
I'd say that my only real standing gripe is the buttons being listed as numbers in the movelists because yes, I do enjoy experimenting with controls, but sometimes I would rather just look and see a familiar button list to know how to do things. Everything else is essentially golden, with some very excellent boss fights on top of that exploration and sequence breaking that the game unabashedly showcases.
Original review follows.
----------------------------------------------
If you like Metroivanias with non-linear exploration and bosses that are fun bullet hells, this game is made for you and you need to play it.
I have only a couple gripes.
1) Although the UI itself is absolutely lovely, text instructions for abilities that show up in them are unintuitive because it doesn't account for the names of controller buttons, so explanations of moves will be things like, "Press (down arrow) + BUTTON 4." Sometimes when I'd learn a new ability/move, I'd just mess around with all buttons and directions until I figured it out. Not a big deal, just a small thing that makes you burn a few extra seconds to figure stuff out.
2) The non-linearity of this game is mostly excellent, and it's the "mostly" that's come back to haunt me a couple times in one form or another. There's an area I found early on that I couldn't proceed through because the game wants you to clear the first chapter before you're allowed to go do it.
At another point, I used hidden moves to get myself really deep into the volcano area and found myself eventually at a long shaft that seems to repeat infinitely with a save point in the middle of it. I was looking for hidden ledges to drop onto while falling infinitely because the map overlay on the save screen shows a separate-colored room at the bottom.
After spending about fifteen minutes wandering slamming into walls with my face or hammer or magic (and the brief opening that has some spikes on the ground in one section), I checked a walkthrough, only to find out that this area was inaccessible until MUCH later in the game and I had to use my hidden-tech skills to work my way all the way back out of the volcano to the teleporter (which was much more difficult to get back to than it was getting in from). This one was a little more frustrating because the non-linearity encourages exploration, but I was also penalized very thoroughly for exploring in this instance, to the point that I had to check a walkthrough to see I was wasting my time.
Those are minor issues, though -- the walk back from the first area I mentioned wasn't that bad (even if I did it twice) and if you're reading this and haven't played it yet, you're now aware that you shouldn't go too deep into the volcano using hidden tech abilities once you figure out how they work. It's essentially an extra 30 minutes I tacked onto the game for walking back from places and if nothing else, the volcano situation was good practice for honing those skills, even if it was frustrating.
I used all of this review to talk about these things because frankly, I don't want to lay out all the good things this game has going for it because they're innumerable. It's beautiful, non-linear, mostly encourages exploration, lets you progress story at your leisure for the most part, and the soundtrack is nice. There's a postgame and I haven't started it yet, but I will soon. There's also a free DLC that is suggested to be played in postgame and two other DLCs that add more areas/content and I intend to check those out eventually, as well.
Easily in the Top 20 and possibly Top 10 best Metroidvanias just for content alone.
2021
Interesting/fun take on roguelike deckbuilders, with deckbuilding actually being relegated to skills that you start with and can acquire through party member acquisition (defeat your enemies to gain them) or sacrificing said members (for items, skills, or other benefits).
I've only played a few hours with it so far and although it's not perfect, it's also still in Early Access and the dev team is dropping updates on it all the time.
If nothing else, the soundtrack jams hard. Will potentially revise rating and review later based on more time spent with the game.
I've only played a few hours with it so far and although it's not perfect, it's also still in Early Access and the dev team is dropping updates on it all the time.
If nothing else, the soundtrack jams hard. Will potentially revise rating and review later based on more time spent with the game.
2020
So, PS4 controller doesn't work with a game on PC that is listed as part of the "PlayStation Talents" program during the opening splash screens. Actual KB/M controls are pretty awful and unmappable, too. Hold RMB to aim with your gun, press LMB to shoot, but use WASD to aim. It's like they tried to replicate the authentic feel of bad controls with...bad controls. Great job, guys. No way I'm finishing this because it's an act of the gods to shoot an enemy in a remotely timely fashion. One star for atmosphere and nothing else.
Original review follows.
-------------------------
Keeping this in the backlog for now and not giving it an actual rating yet, but I figured it's worth noting for anyone who is considering buying this on Steam -- PS4 controller's L and R triggers do not register with the game, which means you can't aim and fire your weapon without putting some extra work into reconfiguring stuff.
Will post a real review eventually when I get back to it and manage to actually kill an enemy (and hopefully play further).
Original review follows.
-------------------------
Keeping this in the backlog for now and not giving it an actual rating yet, but I figured it's worth noting for anyone who is considering buying this on Steam -- PS4 controller's L and R triggers do not register with the game, which means you can't aim and fire your weapon without putting some extra work into reconfiguring stuff.
Will post a real review eventually when I get back to it and manage to actually kill an enemy (and hopefully play further).
This is a tough one to write about.
Short answer: It's probably a really good game at its core and if you like puzzle-centric Metroidvanias that encourage exploring, this is probably your cup of tea.
Longer answer: For me at least, it's too puzzle-centric. There's an amazing amount of exploration to be done with secrets hidden in practically every room you enter (and if they're not hidden, it's because you stumbled into a secret room and the chests are there, waiting for you if you can solve a puzzle to reach them).
Fast travel is a little unintuitive at times because some campfires you travel from don't reach areas you think they would when heading back from them. That being said, the caves you explore are labyrinthine in nature and it kinda fits the mold of the game, so it's hard to gripe about that.
The soundtrack is solid. Not much else to say about that because it's an enjoyable listen, but nothing I'm adding to my music collection.
Enemy diversity is a mixed bag, in that there are some interesting enemy choices that have distinct behaviors, but some enemies really are just basic palette swaps with nothing else going for them beyond dealing more damage/taking more damage before dying.
Bosses are a great time, though for all the traveling I did in the game, they feel few and far between. That may just be a perception issue on my part because of getting lost a few times and having to backtrack a bit to figure out where to go next, but I figure it's worth noting.
Bosses (outside of maybe the first) require patience and paying attention to the layout of the room and whatever resources might be there to maximize your chances for survival. Although a barbarian's instinct might be to Hulk-Smash! your way through them, the player better bring a heaping of awareness to the match because you don't get any kinds of items to heal or boost stats or anything of the sort when going into these fights -- it's adapting to the situation or getting wrecked.
I think I enjoyed every boss fight I encountered outside of maybe the boss of the Eternal Palace area, which just felt like a chore to deal with, despite probably being the easiest boss to figure out.
I should give a brief mention to combat in general -- it's extremely basic and consists of you slashy-slashing and occasionally using your bat to manipulate resources around you to deal with enemies. Sometimes you might throw a stone to hit an enemy and elicit a particular behavior from them (be it knocking them off a ceiling or a ledge), but it's mostly just about slashing (or charge-slashing) while not being in the way of whatever the enemy might have in store for you.
I want to mention the map system because I said earlier that the place is very labyrinthine and it is, but it's also worth noting that the map system comes with a variety of markers to allow you to make notes-of-sorts for each room in case you need/want to come back there to deal with something specific. Wish you could have an easier way to pick the icon you want instead of just scrolling through all of them, but I appreciate the sheer number of options available.
Some puzzles are mandatory and I think at least for me, I'm just not that fond of the puzzle mechanics for this game. You (barbarian) send your bat (Pip) out to light up certain stones that can cause effects (temporarily or permanently based on each room) that allow you to traverse said rooms. You use the right-analog stick to aim a fruit that sends the bat in that direction. You can also throw stones this way (of which you have limited supplies) or special fruits (of which you also have limited supplies) to either hit switches from a distance or use your bat to do some specific tactics to help make puzzle progression a thing.
The puzzles are oftentimes clever, but sometimes just frustrating because they rely on the player's ability to hit angles properly with a limited supply of items. As an example, there's a very simple puzzle in a secret room that involves a ball and chain swinging back and forth over a pit of spikes. The chest is on the other side of the room behind a locked portcullis. The switch is on a ledge up and to the right of where the ball swings back and forth in a pendulum fashion.
What do you do? Simple, you try and angle and time your stone throw so that it bounces off the ball/chain on the way back to the right, causing it to ricochet onto the ledge with the switch to hit it. I understood exactly what it wanted after the first throw, but with 25 stones in my inventory, I couldn't manage it and had to just abandon the chest to come back later if I wanted to (I didn't). There were no nearby resources to recover my stones, so I couldn't go back and try again quickly. Not all puzzles are like this, but enough are that it can get frustrating (at least for me).
It got to the point where I wasn't really having fun slogging through some puzzles and it kinda took me out of the game. At one point, I found this puzzle that was simply moving around the perimeter of a room quickly while getting a monster inside a maze in the middle of the room to follow you through said maze. There are hazards in the maze that will kill the creature and you need to get it to a certain place in the maze in order to solve the puzzle, but between teleporters in the maze that would fling the creature back the way it came because it sat in a spot for too long and the hazards, I gave up despite knowing what to do after having it die on me about a dozen times or so.
I mention this because it was in the last area I got to before I quit and when I went back to explore the rest of the area, I found my way to a room that had notes that said that the puzzle I gave up on was one of three trials I had to overcome to make progress. Yeah, that was it for me. I wasn't dying to ruthlessly hard platforming (there is some hard platforming in the game), I wasn't missing vital resources when I needed them for an area -- I just couldn't get a stupid creature to follow me through a maze where it was crystal clear where it should go, but I simply couldn't get it to behave the way I needed it to in order to get it there. When progress is beyond my control and in the hands of enemy AI behaving properly, I'm kinda over it.
I'd encourage anyone who wants to play a Metroidvania with deep exploration to it and doesn't mind sometimes-frustrating puzzles to give it a shot. The game has a lot of good things going for it and if you can get past bashing your head against the brick wall that is handling those puzzles, you might have a grand time with this game.
Short answer: It's probably a really good game at its core and if you like puzzle-centric Metroidvanias that encourage exploring, this is probably your cup of tea.
Longer answer: For me at least, it's too puzzle-centric. There's an amazing amount of exploration to be done with secrets hidden in practically every room you enter (and if they're not hidden, it's because you stumbled into a secret room and the chests are there, waiting for you if you can solve a puzzle to reach them).
Fast travel is a little unintuitive at times because some campfires you travel from don't reach areas you think they would when heading back from them. That being said, the caves you explore are labyrinthine in nature and it kinda fits the mold of the game, so it's hard to gripe about that.
The soundtrack is solid. Not much else to say about that because it's an enjoyable listen, but nothing I'm adding to my music collection.
Enemy diversity is a mixed bag, in that there are some interesting enemy choices that have distinct behaviors, but some enemies really are just basic palette swaps with nothing else going for them beyond dealing more damage/taking more damage before dying.
Bosses are a great time, though for all the traveling I did in the game, they feel few and far between. That may just be a perception issue on my part because of getting lost a few times and having to backtrack a bit to figure out where to go next, but I figure it's worth noting.
Bosses (outside of maybe the first) require patience and paying attention to the layout of the room and whatever resources might be there to maximize your chances for survival. Although a barbarian's instinct might be to Hulk-Smash! your way through them, the player better bring a heaping of awareness to the match because you don't get any kinds of items to heal or boost stats or anything of the sort when going into these fights -- it's adapting to the situation or getting wrecked.
I think I enjoyed every boss fight I encountered outside of maybe the boss of the Eternal Palace area, which just felt like a chore to deal with, despite probably being the easiest boss to figure out.
I should give a brief mention to combat in general -- it's extremely basic and consists of you slashy-slashing and occasionally using your bat to manipulate resources around you to deal with enemies. Sometimes you might throw a stone to hit an enemy and elicit a particular behavior from them (be it knocking them off a ceiling or a ledge), but it's mostly just about slashing (or charge-slashing) while not being in the way of whatever the enemy might have in store for you.
I want to mention the map system because I said earlier that the place is very labyrinthine and it is, but it's also worth noting that the map system comes with a variety of markers to allow you to make notes-of-sorts for each room in case you need/want to come back there to deal with something specific. Wish you could have an easier way to pick the icon you want instead of just scrolling through all of them, but I appreciate the sheer number of options available.
Some puzzles are mandatory and I think at least for me, I'm just not that fond of the puzzle mechanics for this game. You (barbarian) send your bat (Pip) out to light up certain stones that can cause effects (temporarily or permanently based on each room) that allow you to traverse said rooms. You use the right-analog stick to aim a fruit that sends the bat in that direction. You can also throw stones this way (of which you have limited supplies) or special fruits (of which you also have limited supplies) to either hit switches from a distance or use your bat to do some specific tactics to help make puzzle progression a thing.
The puzzles are oftentimes clever, but sometimes just frustrating because they rely on the player's ability to hit angles properly with a limited supply of items. As an example, there's a very simple puzzle in a secret room that involves a ball and chain swinging back and forth over a pit of spikes. The chest is on the other side of the room behind a locked portcullis. The switch is on a ledge up and to the right of where the ball swings back and forth in a pendulum fashion.
What do you do? Simple, you try and angle and time your stone throw so that it bounces off the ball/chain on the way back to the right, causing it to ricochet onto the ledge with the switch to hit it. I understood exactly what it wanted after the first throw, but with 25 stones in my inventory, I couldn't manage it and had to just abandon the chest to come back later if I wanted to (I didn't). There were no nearby resources to recover my stones, so I couldn't go back and try again quickly. Not all puzzles are like this, but enough are that it can get frustrating (at least for me).
It got to the point where I wasn't really having fun slogging through some puzzles and it kinda took me out of the game. At one point, I found this puzzle that was simply moving around the perimeter of a room quickly while getting a monster inside a maze in the middle of the room to follow you through said maze. There are hazards in the maze that will kill the creature and you need to get it to a certain place in the maze in order to solve the puzzle, but between teleporters in the maze that would fling the creature back the way it came because it sat in a spot for too long and the hazards, I gave up despite knowing what to do after having it die on me about a dozen times or so.
I mention this because it was in the last area I got to before I quit and when I went back to explore the rest of the area, I found my way to a room that had notes that said that the puzzle I gave up on was one of three trials I had to overcome to make progress. Yeah, that was it for me. I wasn't dying to ruthlessly hard platforming (there is some hard platforming in the game), I wasn't missing vital resources when I needed them for an area -- I just couldn't get a stupid creature to follow me through a maze where it was crystal clear where it should go, but I simply couldn't get it to behave the way I needed it to in order to get it there. When progress is beyond my control and in the hands of enemy AI behaving properly, I'm kinda over it.
I'd encourage anyone who wants to play a Metroidvania with deep exploration to it and doesn't mind sometimes-frustrating puzzles to give it a shot. The game has a lot of good things going for it and if you can get past bashing your head against the brick wall that is handling those puzzles, you might have a grand time with this game.
2021
My favorite game, but probably the worst version I've played. It's not bad by any means, but despite some nice QoL adjustments, there are some things about it that I find lacking or annoying.
Regarding QoL adjustments -- I love only needing one arrow to use a bow. I also appreciate that the Trap Door monsters in the Sealed Cave have enough of a delay on them now that you can respond to their targeting.
Strangely, the design for the same areas as usual ended up a little weird at times, with the areas that should normally scroll from off-screen not doing so until you reached them in larger rooms. This might not sound like a big deal, but it's really awkward in smaller rooms with hidden secrets. The house in Mist is a good example of this, with the room above the front room not actually visible because of a secret off to the right via an entrance through the fireplace. The end result is that you have to move far enough north to see something that should be visible without any effort, while a blank area is the point of fixation in the room. It's extra strange because the map doesn't display this well either in some scenarios, as if they were trying to eliminate the scrolling aspect of the map and cut borders of the map a little too short.
The inconsistency with hidden walls is also weird, as FF3 had highlighted areas whenever you walked into a hidden passage to show your pathing. Unlike the vanilla version of FF4 that obscures passages completely or gives them a slight dark-blue tint (depending on your version), this one elects to display the paths in tile form when you're on them inside buildings and other structures that aren't considered dungeons, while paths in the towns themselves or dungeons are completely clear and indiscernible while traversing them. It's not necessarily a bad thing, just another weird inconsistency that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Finally, I am inclined to agree with people that aren't fond of the pixel art -- this version didn't really feel like an improvement to me, other than glossing up of cutscenes, which wasn't pixel art as much as just use of modern effects and design to elicit something you couldn't get from a regular 16-bit experience at the time.
The game is still grand, I had a fun time in spite of these little things that nagged at me, but I'd rather play any other version again. And I will.
Regarding QoL adjustments -- I love only needing one arrow to use a bow. I also appreciate that the Trap Door monsters in the Sealed Cave have enough of a delay on them now that you can respond to their targeting.
Strangely, the design for the same areas as usual ended up a little weird at times, with the areas that should normally scroll from off-screen not doing so until you reached them in larger rooms. This might not sound like a big deal, but it's really awkward in smaller rooms with hidden secrets. The house in Mist is a good example of this, with the room above the front room not actually visible because of a secret off to the right via an entrance through the fireplace. The end result is that you have to move far enough north to see something that should be visible without any effort, while a blank area is the point of fixation in the room. It's extra strange because the map doesn't display this well either in some scenarios, as if they were trying to eliminate the scrolling aspect of the map and cut borders of the map a little too short.
The inconsistency with hidden walls is also weird, as FF3 had highlighted areas whenever you walked into a hidden passage to show your pathing. Unlike the vanilla version of FF4 that obscures passages completely or gives them a slight dark-blue tint (depending on your version), this one elects to display the paths in tile form when you're on them inside buildings and other structures that aren't considered dungeons, while paths in the towns themselves or dungeons are completely clear and indiscernible while traversing them. It's not necessarily a bad thing, just another weird inconsistency that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Finally, I am inclined to agree with people that aren't fond of the pixel art -- this version didn't really feel like an improvement to me, other than glossing up of cutscenes, which wasn't pixel art as much as just use of modern effects and design to elicit something you couldn't get from a regular 16-bit experience at the time.
The game is still grand, I had a fun time in spite of these little things that nagged at me, but I'd rather play any other version again. And I will.