Its my no.1 genre… i have played A LOT of them. People have already hit on the “big three” - hollow knight, super metroid and castlevania SOTN… heres lesser mentioned gems… sure, they’re not as incredible as those 3 genre topping master pieces, but theyre super super good and worth a play.
alwas awakening
tunic*
hyper light drifter*
hob*
Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R)
Metroid Dread
castlevania dawn of sorrows/aria of sorrow
axiom verge
metroid prime
castlevania 3
metroid zero mission
SM: ancient chozo**
SM: Ascent**
9 Sols
*yes, there could be called “zelda-likes” instead of metroid vanias, but i always felt those two game designs were kissing cousins… if you like one you might like the other.
** these are romhacks…,very very good ones. You need a rom of super metroid and emulator to play em.
but i always felt those two game designs were kissing cousin
I see them as the same genre. You have this “pushing the map’s frontier” mechanic, along with some power or item progression to enable that. The rest is find-and-seek to connect all those dots. IMO, the only major difference is a side vs top-down perspective.
Its true… i think the fundamental formula is that it makes you an explorer first- turns you loose with a very vague objective and lets you discover… map, traversal, sequence skips, w/e and gives you “clues” while letting you feel empowered to do things in your own order/way/time… thus making you feel clever.
Zeldas, you could say, are more linear, more “adventure” in progression than exploration… but its not black n white and each title has varying degrees of freedom
Its such a huge letdown for me as a massive fan of Hk… but they did so many things that are just… mean. They disrespect the player constantly… tc actually TROLLS YOU with trick benches n shit. But mainly waste so much of your time with shitty padded content. Fucking fetch quests, timed ‘flower’ quests by the dozen. Most of the primary content ends up being “just like hollow knight, but worse, and now do 10x more of the worse version.” So its unoriginal AND inferior to the source.
I tried so hard to love it and its nothing but frustration in the end.
I stopped playing it after the credits rolled only for someone to tell me there’s a secret Act 3 if you do some really specific stuff. I don’t really care for games that require guides, especially if they gate a bunch of content behind it, so I never came back to it.
However, I did enjoy the first two acts of Silksong much more than the first game. I was never a big fan of Hollow Knight and considered it among the worst of popular metroidvanias. But Silksong was pretty good outside of the fetch quests. Unlockable alternate move sets was probably my favorite bit
Sorry late reply… yeah i realized a lot of my frustration was trying to play spoiler free… but this game seems to beg for guides/walkthroughs, and i agree w you i really dont like games that feel super dependent on constantly checking a guide not to mention just breaking your immersion n taking you out of the gameplay… but some of the stuff is like “no way im just figuring that out!” Like egregious level of “hidden area behind a hidden area to fight a hidden boss that unlocks a hidden upgrade” level shit. Its one more in a long list of really bummer decisions from this team.
I mean the OG ended with the soul of the protagonist fighting the dead ghost of the antagonist in the afterlife, killing the already dead guy (who you have killed at least 3 times, maybe more already) in the afterlife before a cut to 500 years later and everything is plants.
Yeah, and the remake had all those same elements, plus
Tap for spoilerThe regular story jarringly derailed to bring us a space battle with plot device ghosts at the singularity at the edge of creation, and multiverses or time travel or some shit that undo the most dramatic moment of the whole franchise, IMO
It’s not explicitly 30+, but I think !retrogaming is one of the best active gaming communities on the Fediverse with a good mix of links and discussion, and the nature of the content certainly attracts older gamers.
Those darn millenials and their forcing everyone to drink their fancy drinks and then Karen gets mad at me, the poor veteran just trying to give this business my dollar!
And even if they did upsell like that, it was probably because some boomer insisted (at least at the time of this comic). Out of all the things I associate with “millenials”, wanting to upsell shit to make their employer more money isn’t one of them.
Speaker on ceiling: Anyone detected using an emulator will hear from our legal department for stealing the product we have but refuse to make available for sale.
If you havent played the sequel I would recommend it. It definitely is not the same as the original but is still really solid and hopefully there will be further games
I’ve seen recordings of people playing this before in stream VODs a couple times before the player fired up another game, and, well, this post finally got me to try it.
The on-ramp for new players trying to make sense of it is, uh, not great. Trying to make an account on the website tells you to download the game. Okay… Trying to make an account in the game then sent me back to the website!? (Why not just let me register on the website in the first place?)
The basic idea of the circle mode is easy enough to understand – although I doubt I will ever get very good at this, at least with a mouse, and I’m still not quite sure on whether or not I’m supposed to hold a key down/click-and-drag or just click and then follow the motion? – but there are other modes that it threw me in (mania?) when I tried loading another song from the catalog and it was rather difficult to even figure out what keys I was supposed to push. (The diagram on the wiki was not helpful – I spent a while confused thinking I was supposed to use ASDF for a “4K” when it seems like it’s actually DFJK for some reason?) Probably all makes sense to someone who’s been playing it for years, but, yeah… Pretty UI, but the on-boarding could use some work.
Might be fun to poke around at for music discovery though.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents worth from giving it a try.
In Osu! (Standard, so the circle clicking mode) you can, by default, use Z and X aswell, instead of the mouse buttons. Standard is a long learning process, and if you do decide to maybe play it again, my personal recommendation would be not to get stuck on PP (performance points), it could really ruin the fun of the game, when you play the same song and map for the 100th time in a row.
Mania, I haven’t really played so I can’t really help with that.
A tutorial song and map should’ve immediately downloaded after installing Lazer, but if it didn’t, I recommend downloading it, cause it does help with the basics of Osu! Standard.
Also settings has keybinds and you can change anything to anything pretty much. I would recommend clicking around it.
I did do the tutorial (after fucking up the first time through the initial setup and only getting the recommended songs and going “?!?!?!” for a moment) so I know about Z/X but what I mean is it’s not entirely clear if I’m supposed to keep holding them while dragging. The UI’s clear enough if I missed entirely, but if I kind of got it, I’m not really sure if I’m doing it right. With the reversals and the circle closing-in timing and a lot going on on the screen visually, it’s a bit much all at once. TBF, it’d probably make sense if I spend more time poking at it; those were my initial impressions.
Thanks for trying to help me, btw, with your comment; always appreciated.
Sliders you are supposed to hold until the slider ends, so as soon as it ends, you can let go. Reverse sliders (so the ones that have arrows and go backwards) you hold the same way and keep holding when it hits the arrow and goes back to the beginning, then you can let go.
Starting off, it is a lot to focus on, but you do get more and more comfortable with it the more you play. It’s the first game where I’ve really seen that play more to get better, because theory doesn’t help much.
If you do keep on playing, then more power to you. Top players are insane, so I’d recommend looking at someone like mrekk or Ninerik on Youtube. If you don’t then at least you tried it.
What’s the rom hack? Gen 4 is one of the few Pokemon gens I haven’t played and I’ve wanted to do it with a Rom hack that fixes some of the old issues with it
Renegade Platinum’s the way to go. There’s much more pokemon variety, the trainers are stronger and smarter, and there’s plenty of QOL fixes that make it feel more modern.
The ROM hack I’m playing is just following platinum. I don’t remember what quality of life changes there are, but it adds your Pokémon waking behind you like in HG SS
This is my first play through, so I wanted something focused on quality of life stuff, or that could be described as vanilla+
(Having looked at the link now I don’t think it adds any quality of life stuff, and I just REALLY wanted my Pokémon to follow me. I think renegade might have a version based on following platinum though? It makes more changes like difficulty though)
and this option from the thread, which is compatible with following platinum if you wanted quality of life, plus your pokemon following you :) (frankly I really wish I had played this instead 😅)
I think I was mistaken that renegade is compatible with following platinum, here’s it’s page if you’re interested in something that makes more changes and adjusts the difficulty curve :)
Yeah thats very fair. My impression is that Draynos hacks are usually not brutal, but there’s no version that doesn’t patch difficulty so if you like the challenges you either play with higher difficulty or you pick a different patch
I want more vanilla+, so I’m usually a tad bummed about that, but people regard his hacks really highly, even if theyre less what I’m looking for :)
Castlevanias: Aria of Sorrow, Order of Eclessia, Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin (no, no Symphony on my top-top list, it’s awesome, but not that awesome);
Ori and the Blind Forest mentioned already;
Axiom Verge 1 and 2;
Some call it heresy, but… Dark Souls! bit harder, bit turn-based (combat, aye, heresy x2, but stamina system makes it turn based for me, thats wild)… but running all around, having maze with many options, each boss unlocks new paths and parts of map… 200% metroidvania to me.
+1 for the Castlevania Aria/Dawn of Sorrow games. The Soma Cruz games were where the series truly hit its peak.
Portrait of Ruin was alright. I enjoyed that they found a way to incorporate more varied environments into the series.
Order of Ecclesia took me a while to start enjoying. The weird hybrid 3D graphics threw me off at first. Once I got past that, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I wanted to enjoy this game, but it gave me hardcore motion sickness after about 10 minutes. I haven’t had that happen in very many games, so it was notable in this one.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne