argyle wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2024 9:49 am
Let me take a mintue to discuss genres. Crim has touched on this before - I know he *hates* the term "Metroidvania". I don't like it either. I'm also not a fan of "souls-like" or "rouge-like/lite" - but that's a discussion for later. Not only do I not like the term Metroidvania, but I also don't like how some people misuse it. A 3D third person game where you happen to find items to unlock areas is NOT a "Metroidvania". Neither is a 2D game that has linear progression with minimal or no exploration. IMO, the 2 main things that make a "Metroidvania" are 1) It has to be a 2D sidescroller and 2) It has to be non-linear with a heavy focus on exploration. To that end, I propose a new term that I will try to remember to use going forward: Sidesplorer.
Sidesplorer is a good one. I also like explore em up (because it's dumb) and search action (which I legit think just works, full stop)
12. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
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As much as I love the Castlevania franchise, the handheld entries went largely ignored by me when they released. The same goes for Zelda and Metroid, really any of my favorite series that had handheld entries. I’ve just never been much of a handheld guy. I did get into the DS retroactively a few years ago (before my close-up vision went to crap) and managed to play through most of those Castlevania entries, but I wasn’t able to give the GBA games a go. So thankfully Konami released a collection of the GBA games with a few bells & whistles for consoles.
I played Circle of the Moon in ‘22, and was underwhelmed. The map was confusing and the difficulty spiked pretty sharply at points. It didn’t “feel” like an “Iggavania” - and I later discovered that’s because it wasn’t. So Aria of Sorrow was a return to form. This one WAS directed by Igga, and it shows - the map flows in a way CotM’s couldn’t dream of and the difficulty was much smoother. I didn’t necessarily care for the card mechanic, since some of the drops were so rare - there was a LOT of grinding to get some of them, and I know that it wasn’t necessary but…I guess my completionist brain kicked it. I also seem to recall using some of the built-in cheats a couple of times to get past some of the bosses, just because I wanted to move along. So in the end it was a definite improvement over CotM but still not quite up to some of the better DS entries like Portrait of Ruin, and of course nowhere near Symphony - but then again, that’s one of my all-time favorite games so nothing will likely touch that one for me.
Had the same experience with Circle not clicking but having a legit blast with Aria!
11. Souldiers
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At one point while playing this game I would have told you that it was a lock for my top 10, probably even top 5. And I’m still very conflicted on it. But in the end, I couldn’t justify it. Let me start with the good - firstly, the game is absolutely gorgeous. It has some of the best pixel art I’ve seen, and I was constantly impressed. Absolutely loved the aesthetic. Gameplay is a mix of a sidesplorer and an action RPG. I know, I know - many sidesplorers have RPG elements, but they are VERY prominent in this one. For one, you actually choose a class between Scout, Archer, and Caster at the start and each one plays very differently. I went with the Archer and really enjoyed the ranged attacks and other abilities that class offered. I would say I’d love to replay to try out the other classes, but…well, I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s not only xp & leveling involved in the game, but also skill trees and equipment. So yes, very much an RPG. And all of that stuff is great - the abilities you gain, for the most part, are substantial and feel like you’ve earned something. The skill tree doesn’t fair quite as well - some of the unlocks on it I found to be great helps, while others weren’t even really noticeable.
The game is basically divided into “overworld” traversal and city exploration, where you mainly are either picking up quests, and dungeons. The dungeons are massive and are made up of mazes of rooms and puzzles. Some might say TOO big. Me. I’d say they’re too big. They’re impressive, but they tend to wear on you before you finish them. And often it’s very confusing to figure out where they want you to go next inside of them, let alone how to get there. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it feels like a good movie that could have been great with a little prudent editing.
The difficulty became too much for me around the middle of the second dungeon, but turning it down to “easy” alleviated that issue. Make no mistake, easy isn’t “easy”, I’d say it’s what the standard difficulty should have been and highly recommend that anyone who plays it should just go ahead & start at that setting. Some of the platforming late game gets pretty hard, and there’s no setting that will help that. One timed section in particular in the penultimate dungeon had me pulling my hair out. I actually put the game down at that point for a couple of months before coming back and finally pushing through. Doing so searching online for tips I quickly discovered that EVERYONE hates this section of the game and found it just as frustrating as I did, so I felt better knowing I wasn’t alone.
The game is very long overall - my save says 40 hours. This is one of the issues with wanting to replay it with the other classes, it’s just a very big ask for me.
None of these issues are why the game didn’t make my top 10.
This game was very poorly, sloppily ported and no effort was made after release to fix any of the issues. I first noticed very bad “stuttering” - pausing would be more accurate - when I was playing the Switch version. Just after the first dungeon it became unbearable. The game would freeze for a split second in the middle of the action or while I was trying to make a jump, and it was just enough to mess me up. So I figured, “OK, this is just a bad Switch port” - that happens, tho not usually with 2D games. I sold my Switch copy on eBay & grabbed a PS4 copy from there. And it was BETTER, but it still wasn’t good. The game would still freeze for a split second - not as often, but enough, and it only got worse the further in I played. Also, the game would hard crash WHILE I WAS SAVING. It did this probably 4-5 times throughout the game - hard crash to the dashboard, always while I was saving. The first time it happened, it corrupted the save. You know that little warning about not turning off your system while the game is saving? Yeah...someone should tell this game that. The only thing that saved me was I was able to very quickly download my last cloud save before the corrupted one was uploaded. I still lost a couple of hours of play, but that was better than the alternative (and honestly, I don’t know that I would have started the game over from the beginning for a third time).
I’ve talked a LOT about this game, and that’s because the highs of it are very, very high. I still recommend it if you have the patience for the minor design issues and more irritating technical issues - OR if you play it on PC, where I hear it runs fine. The design issues are blemishes on a fantastic game, annoying but able to be overlooked in light of everything the game does right. Probably the result of the game being mainly made by one guy. But the technical issues are unforgivable IMO, and those are what kept this out of my top 10.
I looked more into this one given your praise but in addition to having technical issues across platforms it seems like the levels are really long which turned me off. I might Steam Deck it for less than $10 or hopefully a good Humble Bundle some day
10. Evil West
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Speaking of flawed games…man, Evil West is a real throwback to the glory days of the PS2. Crazy linear action/adventure games that are short on story and big on over-the-top action? Yes, that’s all here in spades. You are basically a cowboy vampire hunter in a third person shooter with tons of blood & explosions. The game is a blast, and early on it felt perfect - it was challenging but felt like it was giving me the tools I needed to succeed while teaching me to play better. I felt like I was getting better at using the different moves & abilities to combo enemies and come out on top. I was probably 2-3 hours in or so when I hit my first wall: the first real boss.
See, I had fought what I had *thought* at the time was a boss earlier and managed to succeed, so I was unprepared when I came to the first screen-filling boss and got my rear end handed to me. Several times. Finally, I begrudgingly turned the difficulty down & made it through. Gone were my thoughts of the game being “tough but fair” - but I was still having a blast, so no big deal.
As the game went on, it started becoming more of a slog. The game delights in throwing wave after wave of enemies at you in a war of attrition. Not only that, but it combines enemies in groups that are downright evil - no pun intended - their abilities playing off one another to make your life very difficult, and increasingly un-fun. This went on until I believe the next-to-last level where I gave up, finally broken - even the “Story” difficulty setting I was playing on being beyond my meager skills.
There is still a lot of fun here, and I still recommend it in spite of itself to anyone craving that early ‘00s style of gameplay. But I feel like some more playtesting would have probably resulted in a more balanced - and fun - difficulty. One that would have allowed me to actually finish the game.
I want this to be on PS+ or something, I really want to try it!