Been watching my gamepro friends play this and lol at dedust3 and de_notmirageamobaparody
My unpopular take but I still think no SMT gameās battle system justifies itās length. PQ was no different. Eventually just castinf Hama and Mudo on every random battle.
There are a lot of cute interactions between the casts but also for me the strong point of the Persona games is seeing the casts grow as people and in this bottle episode thatās not possible so it is everyone embracing their quirks.
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Rain Worldās controls are more complex than is helpful (seriously, switching hands is bonkers stuff only Ancestors has any right to pull off) but theyāre learnable; it doesnāt help you attack or move but it helps you be embodied in this prey animal. Theyāre perfectly in line with the aesthetics if you can approach it on its own terms.
I like the art (if thatās what youāre talking about)? Itās kind of a pixel-Blame! and I think the array of doors, cave openings, and tiny vents gives the rooms a much more interesting and complex set of interconnections than the regulation door-size most of these games adopt. In the same way that hard screen borders serve a definite purpose for composition and expanding the imaginative space between rooms, varying up the connections widens the scope of the world.
Another example: the deliberately obscure UI and map. Maps are problematic in Metroid-likes; itās fair to have some concession to players, but almost every game overwhelms a sense of being lost and alone (by my eyes Hollow Knightās map is just poor; itās another feint towards self-sufficient-sternness in a game thatās really Nintendo-nice at heart). Rain Worldās map is hard to read, hard to orient, and most importantly requires the player to learn a new skill to interpret. Like Morrowindās fast travel, the affordance is gated behind a player skill that deepens the playerās ties to the space.
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really the existence of metroid in nintendoās canon at all is weird. itās such an odd fit alongside the fantastical, kid friendly stylings of mario and zelda. for whatever its faults in retrospect, super metroid is especially anomalous for its time for being as dark and atmospheric and moody as it was. just likeā¦ things that no one really associates with nintendo at all! I have to wonder how metroid got made and if its success was kind of an accident that nintendo begrudgingly went along with. but maybe in the early 90s their brand image wasnāt cemented quite as solidly as it is now. idk it just seems weird in retrospect.
there was some criticism of super metroid that I was catching up on in the last thread and I just have to say ā I still think super metroid is terrific for what it is, for when it came out, and while it is very janky I think itās mostly good jank. and itās easy to take for granted its atmosphere, presentation, and sophisticated-yet-understated narrative in 2020, but all of those things were really breathtaking to experience in a first party flagship title in 1994. not that you canāt find prior examples of those things, but for my money super metroid is the first action game that combined all those elements in a coherent polished manner, and is easily far and away the best of the first wave of nintendo published SNES titles.
my biggest issue with it is more the second half of the game, particularly if youāre trying to be completionist, is maddeningly tile-hunting and unintuitive in the worst ways, and the rewards for exploration are pretty underwhelming. but idk I think itās overall masterfully paced and the level design is mostly excellent. imo it does a great job intuitively guiding you through what is still a fairly labyrinthine map layout. I still think it succeeds where most of its imitators (including sotn) fail in terms of integrating ability-gated areas organically and memorably into the world. like I feel like areas that block you are presented as setpieces that you encounter along your progression through the map, so it becomes a lot easier to remember that one ledge you couldnāt reach when you get the high jump boots or whatever. it certainly isnāt perfect in this regard but I feel like so many imitators either take too passive of an approach of just blatantly signpost it so that you canāt miss it at all. super metroidās more organic approach does a lot to make it feel like a cohesive adventure instead of a series of key item pickups.
I certainly donāt think itās above criticism but I love it and I think it owns hard for what it is, even if I prefer the moodier, weirder, creepier atmosphere of metroid NES and return of samus
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I agree with your other criticisms but this just isnāt true at all. like you get one weapon early on that grants you access to new areas but the rest of them are basically just like, choose your preferred combat flavor, and I appreciate that about it a lot. even if the reflector ends up being easily the most useful 90% of the time.
I actually think one of axiom vergeās strengths is that itās relatively inventive about how it grants you access to new areas. really shocking to play a game like this from 2015 that just doesnāt have a double jump. even if phasing through walls is gimmicky it still feels good to execute and makes the level design considerably more interesting than just some ledges are too high to reach or whatever.
another good mark in this game: there is so much hidden stuff, and the game is constantly throwing new tools at you that enable you to find it, that backtracking is honestly joyous instead of being a chore. like after you get the grapple hook and upgraded glitch gun you have to backtrack across the entire map but by this time youāve also gotten enough of a variety of other abilities that the trek back across the map is arguably more entertaining than it was on the way in.
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Whereās aderack to talk about R&D1
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yeah iām gonna start this soon, iām planning a bit of a psx deep dive of stuff i missed and weird imports
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Kaze no Notam is awesome
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Itās a relaxing hot air ballooning sim with an absurdly high skill ceiling
The kind of game you can play 20 minutes a day for months
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Also if you havenāt yet, give Silent Bomber a try. A short, excellent action game unlike anything else
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This video sold me on Rain World, without saying too much
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Axiom Verge has a pretty good soundtrack, and this song in particular rules:
Other than that my take is exactly this:
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i donāt really know how to express this but hollow knight legit made me depressed and wonder if i even liked video games at all lol. i donāt know that i can entirely blame it on the game due to the circumstances surrounding my play, but it was a truly bad experience and i still havenāt pinpointed exactly why. i essentially ragequit the game after dying in a way that lost me a significant amount of progress after being increasingly frustrated with it
i think nearly every design decision in HK was laser focused to both appear at face value somewhat appealing to me and feel utterly anathemic in practice. the controls, the movement, the combat, the mapping, the aesthetic, the music. maybe thatās why i keep thinking about it and why i get so frustrated. i donāt know why that game bothers me so much!
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like, idkā¦ hollow knight feels mean in a way very few other games feel. i think maybe it demanded me to sublimate my will to it without ever convincing me that such an act would be in any way worthwhile
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i actually should try rain world again, i really liked what i played but couldnāt figure much out and i felt like i needed to pay more attention
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One of Brocoās posts sold me on Environmental Station Alpha a while ago and I just want to reiterate that it really is far more worth peopleās time than Axiom Verge and probably Hollow Knight as well. Itās ultimately a metroidvania but with very satisfying movement, great pacing, and a fairly unique postgame. I feel like if it wasnāt so much of a metroidvania the game would have left a bigger splash.
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i found hollow knight extremely up its own arse yeah
not just out of fatigue with the genre either - contrast that with me putting sotn on purely to mess with something in retroarch and then ending up most of the way through the game yesterday
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yeah, i compulsively played like 25hrs of it in a week and found it miserable, while still being a ~good~ game on paper or whatever. everything is there and designed well but i find it sort of repulsive.
i think that is how the game is for maybe 10hrs, you probably arenāt missing much yet. i recommend just keep pushing through, spending time in those environments, learning on a small scale how different creatures function.
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I recall trying to use hammer when it plus some plugins was the then easiest Quake 1 mapping program. Didnāt get far. A lot of the Q1 engines can load HL1 BSPs, if you want to swap the entities and fire nails around in one.
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