no please dont it feels like garbage, the shooting sucks and the dumbass melee counter system just ruins the whole flow of everything
imo its ugly as sin too
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shovel knight is a very good mega man, not a mario
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i think this goes some way to explaining why i do like hollow knight, as well, where some folks hate its controls. i love a mario, but not every platformer has to feel or control that way and idk something about the idea that youāre tiny and weigh very little makes it work in my mind.
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This is a good point. I also donāt like mega man that much
More to the point, I think that Shovel Knight is a Bad Mega Man because his main weapon is a tiny little shovel that causes him to bounce backwards from enemies upon successfully bonking them, which doesnāt feel likeā¦good? I guess? Itās not a strong criticism from me, but I feel like Mega Man works pretty well because heās got a gun. He feels agile because he can strike from anywhere, whereas Shovel Knight feels like a dope to me.
I will say that I think the boss fights are really, really strong in Shovel Knight. They feel superbly designed around Shovel Knightās tiny little range. Itās just the Everything Else.
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Rockās pea shooter was always whack
shovel knight recognized the correct power of Zero Scrooge
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my issue with Shovel Knight is i just find the retro-aping style too wink wink and cutesy and cloying. the game really enjoys being like this collection of references to the retro games everyoneās heard of in ways that mostly feel like āremember this, guys ;-)ā and played in a passing one-dimensional way rather than commenting on it or expanding it in some way. also like wtf is a Shovel Knight to begin with. it just feels like Purple Monkey Dishwasher randomness of references to me with no substance. iāve seen people say that level design is great or whatever but from what i played i found it to be distinctly average. which i guess does distinguish it from a lot of other retro-aping games, but thatās not really a compliment to it or them lol.
iām actually surprised to see people annoyed by Hollow Knight/thinking itās unfair because my expectations for the game werenāt great but i ended up finding it to be a very smooth experienceā¦ maybe too smooth in some ways. the only real substantial struggles/unfairnesses i found where mostly on optional bosses and i found it far and away much easier than something like Environmental Station Alpha. and the art did really win me over, especially in the City of Tears section (there should be a whole game based off that setting). itās still a bit too āMetroid mixed with Grimdark Dark Souls stuffā for me but i was nowhere near as bothered by it as a lot of other hyped indie stuff.
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melee is superior to projectile, simple math + simple science
cut them down and smash them round, punish them for defiance
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i agree with you on shovel knight but hollow knight goes out of its way to drain any possible enjoyment you could have, from the gameplay to the music
I liked Hollow Knight a lot, and still think of it fondly, but I eventually bounced off of (and may never return to) it because of optional boss difficulty. I think the problem is that itās hard to know whether any of the many, many bosses you stumble upon are optional.
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i suppose thatās true. there is a big difficulty spike there with some of them. i think i gave up on several or tried to look up strategies for quick kills. on the other hand, i did think a lot of the optional content also was more interesting than the base game story/narrative wise. i actually think the White Palace was my favorite area of the game in spite of being Super Meat Boy just because it was kind of weird and interesting juxtaposition with everything else. maybe iām just so starved for anything that isnāt basic Metroid progression in those types of games.
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I think this can vary very (lol) much between players. For instance, I played through 80% of the game without an upgraded needle because I didnāt find the blacksmith for a very long time. Iā¦just thought everything took 1 million hits to kill. Still very proud of beating the last Hornet fight with the basic needle.
I also stumbled into the Bee area thinking it was mandatory, and ended up banging my head against it for at least 2 hours before giving up. (This was also pre-needle upgrades)
I think the game is designed around letting you push through these kinds of misunderstandings though, which is its greatest strength in my book. BUT I nearly bounced off of it because the first like, 3 hours are very dreary. I didnāt quite catch on to the language until the, uh, garden section whatever itās called.
And I think that stumbling into the horrible spider caverns and getting trapped there is a Make or Break sequence of events. It made the game for me, but Iāve heard other people talk about how it was just too frustrating. It really doubles down on the dreariness in a way that I respect and find amazing, butā¦itās a lot.
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I recently learned that Dreamcast emulation actually works these days, and so I have finally tried two games Iāve been wanting to play for quite a few years, Bangai-o and Lack of Love.
- Bangai-o is fun but collecting the fruit is a little tedious. Since I never care about score in such games, I might not bother collecting it. But the sprites make me want to collect it.
- Lack of Love is kind of impenetrable, but in a good way. I might resort to using a guide at some point, though. The intro movie didnāt really help me understand the basic story. I guess itās from the era where you read the instruction booklet if you cared. Or maybe youāre just not supposed to know.
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I never played FF7 and am enjoying the Remake to a surprising degree. I really like the presentation and characters. I like weapon abilities and the music is excellent. There are certainly issues with the battle system (the turn-based vibe kinda works but thereās a lot of annoying real-time quirks) and the filler content is whatever. I feel like I shouldnāt be enjoying it this much despite its flaws?
Also this is the thirstiest non-eroge thing Iāve played in quite a while.
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I kind of had the identical evaluation but the opposite reaction, I felt like I should be enjoying it more despite the flaws, but ultimately the huge quantities of filler and the messy inscrutable dynamics of the battle system made my experience dominated by simmering low-level irritation until I finally quit in chapter 11 (having already seen the best the game has to offer as far as I can tell from the discourse)
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I canāt remember which chapter Iām on but it must be just before Shinra tower. I think Iāve just found a place to turn my brain off and be swept along by shimmering Squeenix flash.
I initially tried it as an experiment to see how I would like the remake of a game I knew very little about. Something about the designs, world and ideas feels weirdly novel compared to modern JRPGs even though I know the game is over 20 years old. Iām also hugely surprised that Cloud is my favourite character.
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The underlying theme of how ecological and urban systems interact with social class is really good although Squeenix only dimly realized the strength of the material they were working with on that front
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I could fairly easily recommend playing up through 13 and arguably 16, I just canāt recommend finishing it
I think itās 13 that has one of the only nakedly filler dungeons I thought totally worked
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Yeah I expected someone might recommend an exact cutpoint that was later, but I already decided to ignore that sort of advice (as well the urge to keep playing from JRPG psychological tricks like ābut I just got a new spell, Iād like to put it to use on the next bossā that I needed to consciously suppress as I was putting my PS4 back in the closet).
For me even the best parts of the game around Wall Market were questionably worthwhile ā I played the game in the first place to have some relaxing comfort food to destress over a week I took off from work, but it worsened my mood most of the time instead. So Chapter 11 seemed like as good a place to stop playing as any.
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started my first dork souls 1 playthrough in yeaaaars, couldnāt think of an interesting build and iām very rusty so decided to go sorcery, cheesing the hydra and grabbing the dusk crown, dragoncrest ring etc. immediately so i can fuckinā nuke everything this side of the dlc. also experimenting with reshade for the first time beyond using it for better aa in yakuza kiwami 2
my x hundred hours of this were mostly on ps3 so iāve spent v little time with the pc port, does feel a bit jank and iāve noticed some significant fps drops in a few places even with dsfix - was remaster any better for this?
might follow this up with a reappraisal of 2 innit
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IIRC all the versions of DkS1 are about equally jank. You might notice the framedrops less if you play at 30fps-lock like the game was designed for, Iām not sure 60fps really helps it.
On my replays of DkS1 Iāve found I enjoyed the most when I denied myself from all the overpowered nuking and shortcut tricks and played with restrictions as though I had the knowledge of a beginner. Like play through things in the ānormal orderā including Taurus Demon, Depths etc, donāt minmax your levels, and stick to the titanite and weapons/spells they give you in the local area. The game regains a lot of its original tension and spark that way
1 Like