02/09/2024 update:
After a while, I sat down to play this game again. Did my opinion change from last time? A little. Most of my criticisms remain the same, with a few more nitpicks, although now I find myself liking Dandara a bit more.
The music, the art, they elevate the game despite its glaring flaws, and I cannot say I hated the game as a whole, but I was frustrated by the lack of direction. Other Metroidvanias are more intuitive, with a general idea with where you should go, but here, the direction starts lacking once you reach the Hidden Kingdoms, and the lack of savepoints in that area still frustrates me.
However, after I better learned the jumping and movement, I could finally play this game better, and what I got at the end, despite all the frustrations, was truthfully worth it. I really like this game's setting and story, through and through, and that was the thing that got me to keep going to the end.
Would I still recommend it? Yeah, I would. It's certainly an unique experience, and I'm glad I played it.
(For extra context: I'm Brazilian, and this game was made in my native language and contains several references to Brazilian culture, History and folklore, which I understood.)
I have played this game for 15.5 hours.
First thing's first, there are many things I like in this game.
The music: It's fantastic, whether it's the ethereal ambience or the dramatic score for fights, it's a great feature the game has.
The graphics: I'm a lover of pixel art, and this game looks gorgeous. The backgrounds and the environment look sublime. The characters' designs look great, and they're pretty creative.
The story: It's compelling, and I like that you can piece it together through character dialogue and clues spread all around. It's a staple of Metroidvanias that I will like no matter the game.
Now, at first, on the first few hours, I really like the game, and I would have given it a higher grade if it weren't for a series of factors that piled on as the game progressed.
The gameplay. It's not bad in of itself, but then things get unbearably harsh once the enemies start popping around the clock.
You CANNOT attack while jumping. You have to stand still and then shoot, making you an easy target for enemies if you don't watch yourself. On top of this, you have to charge your attack in one second. Now this, IN OF ITSELF, isn't bad. It encourages you to think and plan your trajectory as you dodge the enemies and environmental hazards at your leisure. But then the game starts throwing fast enemies at you, and they come by the numbers. You don't have time to stop and think; you HAVE to move faster than you can think, and to the combat's detriment: You CAN'T shoot while jumping, AND you're forced to sit still for at least one second to be able to attack at all.
You can use other alternative, faster attacks, but they will drain your MP, and while you're able to replenish it, there's only an amount of times you can do so before needing to go to a save point. And the game, later on, has many difficult gauntlets and enemy-infested areas that punish you if you stop to think for one moment. You are forced to pre-plan every move you make and you still have to improvise midway through, because of several hazards and enemies the game throws at you.
The aiming system is weird. I'm not sure if it's just me, but when I'm aiming, the jumping trajectory line (highlighted in a green color) sometimes will stop if you're trying to move it from several smaller platforms, and many times I had to move my mouse back and forth to get it to move, and many times I got hurt or died because of this.
And, while the game overall has fairly even distributed save points, this one area, the Hidden Kingdoms, is way, WAY too big compared to the other areas, and it gets really tedious to navigate through it because there are very few save points. In this one massive area, on the lower part of the Hidden Kingdoms' map, there are but two solitary save points, and getting to them takes way too long. If you die in this area, you have to traverse a really far distance to reach the place you last died, making a tedious experience frustrating, especially in the Trials' area, where you have to walk a long distance to get to any of said Trials.
I found out later that you can enable "respawn at the door", which makes things much more convenient, but it's a cheat. Why is it a cheat? This wouldn't be much of a problem if this IMMENSE area had more save points. Even harder games like Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, and the Souls games have evenly distributed save points where you can rest and respawn without having to backtrack too much.
This huge difficulty spike is at best unwarranted, and comes across as an artificial way to increase difficulty, and it's the biggest detractor of this game. It doesn't feel challenging: It feels unfair, and unearned, and also frustrates me.
I have to say, however: I haven't finished this game. These are my thoughts after playing well over 15 hours, and most of these hours were dotted with frustration and lots of backtracking.
I may change my thoughts and thus my score later, but so far, this is my experience with the game. If you still want to play it, go ahead, I could maybe even recommend it, but be wary of these flaws; it might be more frustrating to you than it was for me.
After a while, I sat down to play this game again. Did my opinion change from last time? A little. Most of my criticisms remain the same, with a few more nitpicks, although now I find myself liking Dandara a bit more.
The music, the art, they elevate the game despite its glaring flaws, and I cannot say I hated the game as a whole, but I was frustrated by the lack of direction. Other Metroidvanias are more intuitive, with a general idea with where you should go, but here, the direction starts lacking once you reach the Hidden Kingdoms, and the lack of savepoints in that area still frustrates me.
However, after I better learned the jumping and movement, I could finally play this game better, and what I got at the end, despite all the frustrations, was truthfully worth it. I really like this game's setting and story, through and through, and that was the thing that got me to keep going to the end.
Would I still recommend it? Yeah, I would. It's certainly an unique experience, and I'm glad I played it.
(For extra context: I'm Brazilian, and this game was made in my native language and contains several references to Brazilian culture, History and folklore, which I understood.)
I have played this game for 15.5 hours.
First thing's first, there are many things I like in this game.
The music: It's fantastic, whether it's the ethereal ambience or the dramatic score for fights, it's a great feature the game has.
The graphics: I'm a lover of pixel art, and this game looks gorgeous. The backgrounds and the environment look sublime. The characters' designs look great, and they're pretty creative.
The story: It's compelling, and I like that you can piece it together through character dialogue and clues spread all around. It's a staple of Metroidvanias that I will like no matter the game.
Now, at first, on the first few hours, I really like the game, and I would have given it a higher grade if it weren't for a series of factors that piled on as the game progressed.
The gameplay. It's not bad in of itself, but then things get unbearably harsh once the enemies start popping around the clock.
You CANNOT attack while jumping. You have to stand still and then shoot, making you an easy target for enemies if you don't watch yourself. On top of this, you have to charge your attack in one second. Now this, IN OF ITSELF, isn't bad. It encourages you to think and plan your trajectory as you dodge the enemies and environmental hazards at your leisure. But then the game starts throwing fast enemies at you, and they come by the numbers. You don't have time to stop and think; you HAVE to move faster than you can think, and to the combat's detriment: You CAN'T shoot while jumping, AND you're forced to sit still for at least one second to be able to attack at all.
You can use other alternative, faster attacks, but they will drain your MP, and while you're able to replenish it, there's only an amount of times you can do so before needing to go to a save point. And the game, later on, has many difficult gauntlets and enemy-infested areas that punish you if you stop to think for one moment. You are forced to pre-plan every move you make and you still have to improvise midway through, because of several hazards and enemies the game throws at you.
The aiming system is weird. I'm not sure if it's just me, but when I'm aiming, the jumping trajectory line (highlighted in a green color) sometimes will stop if you're trying to move it from several smaller platforms, and many times I had to move my mouse back and forth to get it to move, and many times I got hurt or died because of this.
And, while the game overall has fairly even distributed save points, this one area, the Hidden Kingdoms, is way, WAY too big compared to the other areas, and it gets really tedious to navigate through it because there are very few save points. In this one massive area, on the lower part of the Hidden Kingdoms' map, there are but two solitary save points, and getting to them takes way too long. If you die in this area, you have to traverse a really far distance to reach the place you last died, making a tedious experience frustrating, especially in the Trials' area, where you have to walk a long distance to get to any of said Trials.
I found out later that you can enable "respawn at the door", which makes things much more convenient, but it's a cheat. Why is it a cheat? This wouldn't be much of a problem if this IMMENSE area had more save points. Even harder games like Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, and the Souls games have evenly distributed save points where you can rest and respawn without having to backtrack too much.
This huge difficulty spike is at best unwarranted, and comes across as an artificial way to increase difficulty, and it's the biggest detractor of this game. It doesn't feel challenging: It feels unfair, and unearned, and also frustrates me.
I have to say, however: I haven't finished this game. These are my thoughts after playing well over 15 hours, and most of these hours were dotted with frustration and lots of backtracking.
I may change my thoughts and thus my score later, but so far, this is my experience with the game. If you still want to play it, go ahead, I could maybe even recommend it, but be wary of these flaws; it might be more frustrating to you than it was for me.
Nicoulas20
1 year ago