A little farther in (about 15%, I think), I’m finding that I like this game a lot. I appreciate the messiness and there are many fun moments, such as the piano and the guy who offers to take you “somewhere interesting.”
I’ve been picking up shards like crazy. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to be selling them off to stay below a certain threshold, but I haven’t been because it’s fun to try them all out and I will probably end up with some kind of bad ending. Which is fine.
I’ve been using the Encrypted Orchid that I made using an “8-bit coin” that I found in a wall, along with a shard that increases sword speed. I’m finding that the attack numbers in the shop are a little misleading because some weapons are very fast or hit several times per strike.
That sucks about the crashes. I’ve had a couple of scary moments when the game seemed to get stuck but it was just loading a bit longer than usual. Rock solid performance for me otherwise (on PC). The only bug I had was that twice there were words missing in the text boxes. But funny enough this is random as I found out because I played the galleon twice. Once a word was missing and another time it wasn’t. Really weird
I’ve been caught up in work the last days but I still want to finish this… And I’m pretty sure I’ll play it again every time they add cool DLC like extra characters
It’s clear that despite the extended development time Iga and Co were having a good time making this one. Favorite enemy so far is the giant head of a bichon frise? Er, what breed is that one exactly?
The only crashes I’ve suffered thus far on PC are due to enemy death SFX competing with browsing bookshelves for a good read. Happened about 3/4 times before I decided to kill and read a lot less at the same time to ensure a smoother experience.
I can’t be arsed with what-looks-like the final Big Bad among other things that appear entirely optional but I have enjoyed paying full price for a product that is clearly a love letter to all things Castle-like and Vainy. I couldn’t personally tell you what an Oriental Sorcery Lab is but I do know that musically it would fit very nicely with just about any Shinobi game.
Yeah this is the truth. The Kotaku review I just read is like “it needs to catch up with the times!!! metroidvanias have progressed since SotN!!” which is like…fair point
but they totally miss the sheer joy that iga and crew imbued this game with
This game is fun so far but man it needs just a touch more optimization. The occasional noticeable pause when I kill an enemy sometimes and the game has to decide if it dropped something and load it in is annoying.
I kinda get where the Kotaku article is coming from even while having a lot of silly fun with this. It just feels like a redo of SotN and that is really a lot of fun, but also it just makes me hope the next game does more, or the alternate modes DLC do.
Wow damn, that’s kinda the roughest, aside from general lagginess I don’t know what the Switch version’s issues are. I could deal with visual goofs all day but once you add even a few subtle stutters here and there killing enemies, that feelgood buttery strut, slice and dice suffers. Hope it gets improved somehow.
That wasn’t in the PS4 1.01 patch. I also notice it more frequently when having recently transitioned areas. I suspect it’s part of some staggered loading scheme they had to implement to prevent 1.01 from overloading the RAM.
I’m in that great early Igavania phase where exploring feels dangerous. That sense always fades into the mid phase of the games. I’m hoping this one keeps it up.
I really enjoyed this game despite the technical hiccups/perf issues on even the patched PS4 version, but I’m curious if anyone else found the game was a little too easy once you discover how OP the portraits painting shard is. It was regularly even exceeding the per-hit damage on my weapon, but also hits repeatedly and constantly. I ended up breezing through every main and hidden boss (though I haven’t fought the librarian yet).
Also shout out to whips being the best weapon. They have the best attack animation and their lag is back-loaded meaning you get a lot of value out of back-dash-crouch-canceling the attack animation.