There’s always the classics: Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a spritual sequel to Symphony, made by a good chunk of the people who made Symphony now that Konami has effectively stopped making games.
The Castlevania GBA and DS games are great as well.
I also really enjoyed Blaster Master Zero. It has a few distinct gameplay styles within the overarching metroidvania style overworld progression. Side scrolling platformer in a tank, on foot, and isometric on foot shooter.
I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played of Xeodrifter, but I didn’t get too far into it.
Funny thing is, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Metroidvanias, but…never enjoyed Symphony of the Night. There’s so much forceful encounter repetition, so many dead end items that don’t actually help you “unlock any doors”, and it’s so easy to get into a rut of wandering the castle unsure where you can go next.
I’m not trying to tell you you have to like it, or how to play your games, but there is no shame in using a guide if it helps you enjoy it more. I’ve had to come to terms with that personally
That’s the thing. I even remember trying to use a guide, but it’s difficult to work past all the “Here are 18 secrets that don’t do anything you can get from the beginning” as well as all the bits you can do out of order. Locating the part of the guide that gives you just enough to keep playing on your own is really difficult.
Many other Metroidvanias are sort of more clearly delineated between story beats, or major powerups you’re meant to get in order, all of which allow you to go places you couldn’t before.
“Blaster Master?” takes long drag on cigarette “I haven’t heard that name game in years.”
Man, I remember playing the OG on NES. Didn’t know they remade it… And made it all anime lookin’? Neat. If you’ll excuse me, I must go and tidy my crypt now.
I recently picked up the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. For all the Metroidvanias I’ve played as an adult, I never really got too into them as a kid. Gotta make up for that at some point, lol. Symphony of the Night isn’t on there, but I don’t want to start mid storyline (I’m kidding). My biggest fear is playing Castlevania will just make me more impatient for the next season of Castlevania Nocturne.
Its good. Not perfect, but better than I expected.
Headphones definitely recommended, a halfway decent Atmos home theater system sounds great but I still picked up subtle sounds better with even just bluetooth headphones.
Ambience is very much on point. Dialogue is a good mix of well-acted, and a tad “off” like the original. Angela and Eddie seem faithfully redone, so far. James too honestly.
Apartments were a nice change-up from the original, not too different thematically but still essentially a whole new layout, not at all a copy and paste job. Showdown with big knife guy was a big departure, though. Not sure if better or worse, but different from the original
Some graphical glitches (something like ghosting of the fog around objects moving on the screen, also flashes of light in the distance) sometimes that are frankly unacceptable for a $70 game, especially a game of this sort of mood, but hopefully they get those patched soon.
Combat is not exactly great. Nor was it in the original, to be fair. The dodging mechanic is a bit much, and at least on the hardest combat difficulty, it feels like you gotta already be familiar with enemy attack patterns, since it doesn’t give you much chance to learn and survive. But it does all feel learnable, so we’ll see if I just need to get gooder.
Steam achievement notifications at least one broke immersion for me, I might try to mute those next time I play.
But overall I’m very eager to resume playing after work, I left off after the apartments (and stayed up far too late doing so!)
I’m super happy with it so far, though I am not quite as far. I got up to Woodside apartments last night before going to bed.
Totally agree on the ambiance. They absolutely match the original and Akira Yamaoka did an amazing job in this department yet again. Also agree on the dialogue, really happy with it so far. I was worried due to how much I disliked the hd collections redone vocals but they did a good job here.
So far haven’t had much in the department of graphical glitches, though I did notice my frame rate tanked when I got to the apartments at the end of my session so I made need to tweak some settings.
Combat hasn’t bothered me but also I’m playing on standard and haven’t gotten the pistol yet so my thoughts are developing. Melee is quite satisfying in this game though imo
Agree on the steam achievements haha.
While I’m still early it does seem like they’ve grabbed the vibes straight from the original and dropped them into a modern coat of paint. And at the end of the day sh2 thrives on its vibes, so I’m very happy. Excited to keep playing
Satisfactory. It hit 1.0 about a month ago and I’ve been chipping away at a new world. It is so satisfying to build a working factory and figuring out the right input rate for your resources…it just feels so zen like.
I’m also weirdly feeling an itch to purchase and get into either Pokemon Scarlet or Violet. I can’t explain it, but I’ve apparently crossed the threshold of holding off and it just keeps floating around in my head.
This is a puzzle-driven metroidvania with a simple retro-inspired aesthetic that aims to teach you how to interact with it wordlessly, and it usually succeeds at it. I’m honestly not sure how to fill out the rest of this blurb without ruining the intended experience, but while I wasn’t this game’s biggest fan and wasn’t interested in digging into its secrets post-credits, I did enjoy my time with it.
I’m really happy with my few hours in it. I was afraid it’d be another Rain World situation where I can tell I like it and admire the craft but don’t actually feel the need to play it much, but I do find it enticing still.
This game got me good. The atmosphere and way it drips out puzzle after puzzle is so rewarding. I drew maps. I wrote down a litany of notes on my iPad to keep track of. I tried to solve everything I could on my own until I just couldn’t any more. It felt like playing games as a kid where you had to have paper handy and wrote down passcodes.
Pouring over every inch of the map was so fun, and while I do think there will be copy cats to this game pop up in the next year, I don’t think anyone will be able to capture the magic of this again. It’s like its own singular entity that no one else has ever done. Not in this way.
For that, it’s my game of the year. Astro Bot is my second, since it’s a technically near perfect game. But it’s also simply peak platformer. Animal Well is novel. It’s just built different.
I wanted to love it, but I just liked it. I was hoping it’d be more similar to TUNIC, where I can do 99% of the game solo. Idk if this is controversial, but I hate the community-based puzzles with a passion.
While I get where you’re coming from, Fallout 76 was a bad example, you don’t need a subscription to play (unless your preferred system of choice asks you for it regardless of the game you play) and it is intended to be a multiplayer first game, you might not like it, but it is not an example of what you’re complaining anymore than Elder Scrolls Online or World of Warcraft (which actually has a subscription model).
And the answer is simple, don’t buy those games, there are thousands of excellent single player games, if always online games start to fail companies will stop doing it, vote with your wallet. I recommend taking a look at indie games, there are several excellent games and almost assuredly they don’t have DRM, or at least not always online ones.
Hold up, “enshitification” is just turning into a buzzword now.
Enshitification has from the beginning described a service or product which is first released one way, and then over time is made worse for the users in ways designed to squeeze more profit out of them.
Without some serious mental gymnastics, forced stealth sections tend to just be bad design choices. Not every bad thing is the same kind of bad thing.
Without some serious mental gymnastics, forced stealth sections tend to just be bad design choices. Not every bad thing is the same kind of bad thing.
While I disagree with your comment on the definition of “enshittification”, I agree that forced stealth sections are just bad design. I remember those have been a thing for a long time now, and before then it was ice levels.
Copying from a later reply: I was reading their definition as being too specific. Imo enshittification is any time the relative average quality of a class of products or services decreases, either due to increased prices or decreased quality at the same price. This can be applied to a specific product or service, but can also describe a decline in quality across an industry.
Wikipedia isn’t the end all, but in this case I think it provides a working definition.
Enshittification (alternately, crapification and platform decay) is a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.
I was reading your definition as being too specific. Imo enshittification is any time the relative average quality of a class of products or services decreases, either due to increased prices or decreased quality at the same price. This can be applied to a specific product or service, but can also describe a decline in quality across an industry.
Enshittification refers to a process with specific phases that ensure services will degrade at the expense of users, and then business customers, so that shareholders can extract as much profit as possible from both of those groups. It was coined by Cory Doctorow, who explains it here:
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
On the one hand I get where you’re coming from, those sections are very thematically different from the rest of the game, but realistically it’s just a couple of minutes of very easy stealth.
I have no interest in playing this game myself, but I’ve been watching a streamer go thorugh the story mode. The combat is whatever, probably good enough if you like this type of game. The story between all the fights is told absolutely horribly though. Lots of stuff just gets skipped over or mentioned in a single picture. Like suddenly Goku is Super Saiyan God, with no explanation or a character is dead.
I’m pretty dialed into indie games. What kind of games do you like? I might be able to recommend some. I get most of my indie recommendations through word of mouth or curators.
The steam store page has an algorithm tuned to your preferences. If you’ve already been playing a lot of live service games, then it assumes you must like them. Once you start showing an interest in other games, you can probably just cruise through your discovery queue.
To skip the algorithm, you can try looking at the steam store web page in a private / incognito window. But if most of the money makers are live service or free-to-play then that may just be the default offering.
It’s mostly just finding some reviews/word of mouth sources that you trust and which align with your tastes.
On the review side of things Second Wind covers a decent spread of indie games. I also occasionally see some new stuff from streamers, but that’s more of a toss up since there’s a lot of sponsored coverage.
Almost everything on my store page is AAA or liveservice trash.
Very little on my Steam page is. This is just one data point but still it suggests their suggestion algorithm somewhat works for this.
Just an observation on that specific thing not a disagreement with the problem. Live service is trash and needs to go away if it’s not an exclusively multiplayer game.
Look at what pirate repackers like fitgirl and dodi are putting out. They have a much lower throughput and often focus on popular indie or small studio titles.
That’s not my experience with steam at all. Only one or two options of the steam store tend to show AAA games over indie games. If you browse by category or using the dynamic recommendation you’ll see plenty of good games.
I think this may be algorithmic. Like steam gives suggestions based on what you have already purchased, and what other people who purchased the same games also like. Additionally it’ll tell you what your friends are playing if you friend them on steam. This sort of gives everyone a different picture of steam suggestions that is tailored to them. It might be a good idea to find older non-live service games you like, add them to a new profile or wishlist, and then see what new information pops up for you.
We all are, but people keep paying them money. It won’t stop until people get their heads out of their asses and stop doing that. Kind of like how microtransactions won’t go away because whales won’t stop shoveling dump trucks of money at mobile games.
Why’d you bring up tem tem specifically? It’s supposed to be “Pokemon but an MMO”. That’s the entire appeal. I had Pokemon loving friends that played it at launch and loved it dearly. It’s sad that it’s died, but if you want a single player version of tem tem, there’s about 22 Pokemon games according to Bulbapedia. Go play one of those.
Yeah, I’m an offline RPG gamer and this generation is leaving me behind. Thankfully there’s still some great options like Zelda, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy. But I feel our options are slimming down.
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Aktywne