El Shaddai is still great! It is big and weird and ambitious. It is a pile of shaders in a disorienting sensory overload.
Only now after playing through it twice and then doing a little collectable clean up did I maybe go “oh” to the battle system. It is still one of those mismatched between verb set and enemy. I think the verb set is near perfect everything is always in reach and you never have to move your fingers.
If they have built purifying into your combo set it would have worked better, as is you still have a good chance coming out of a cutscene and getting hit.
And they got Jason Isaacs (Hello to Jason Isaacs) to voice Lucifel. Who does a great job and the Japanese dub is well real iconic and also great.
I like that it is fragmented. How much of that is them running out of money (the uhh visual design goes away at a certain point) and how much of that was intentional is unknown. That’s okay! I think it ties in with this being based off an apocryphal story that we probably have three incomplete versions of.
It’s one of my favorite games of the last generation and Glad it got made. Shame the followup? Looks unappetizing.
The platinum is called Lord of the Metatron. That seems like…a misuse of the word Metatron I think?
Samus Returns is a game where the hot new mechanic feels cool the first dozen times or so, before you realize that combat is almost entirely reliant on it and bogs the whole thing down.
On top of that, some of the boss battles are just awful. Still haven’t beat the final boss.
i loved El Shaddai’s visuals and aesthetics. it’s the only game i can think of that looks like seashells glimmering in the sunlight. i wish they would port it to PC or something. i have it on ps3, but barely played it because it came out at a bad time, but i was hyped for it.
Yeah I actually played Axiom Verge for the first time like a year before release at an indie expo, and hogged the booth for 30 minutes getting through the early game. It was the best game there and I was extremely froth for it to finally come out
Like, it’s definitely worth it, but the fact that whether it’s worth it or not has to be brought up at all just kinda underlines the points I made in that other thread
I love El Shaddai for its mad broken ambition and occasional glimpses of beauty. It’s the ultimate artist-driven game; nonsensical but spilling over with visual ideas and mood moments.
The tower of babel before the end of the world in the ancient African style, the fireworks and celebratory chanting at the apocalypse is one of the most impactful game compositions I’ve ever scene. Those fifteen minutes are so important to me:
And the chapter that is literally the FFVII remake everyone wants:
After years of trying, I am finally enjoying dark souls. Every once in a while I get the urge to try again, well this time things have been going really well so far, and today I rang a bell. It was borderline emotional to finally ding the bell after hearing so much about it.
Honestly all that made this attempt so successful was: a teeny bit of grinding, finding a halberd, and using the kick more often. Anyway yeah I’m having a great time.
I’ve been playing Nanairo Ringo again, which I’ve decided is one of my all-time favorite puzzle platformers, right up there with Donkey Kong 94. I may never finally beat it, but I love every little corner of this damn game.
I just played through a lovely little lesbian space Iliad VN called Helena’s Flowers and I really liked it.
And I finally picked up Heaven Will Be Mine when it was in an itch bundle and… I’m not sure yet. The setting and overall atmosphere are definitely my jam, but it’s a little opaque and the system of choice-making so far seems underwhelmingly blunt, but I like some of the writing. I’ll stick with it a bit more to see how/if it opens up.