I finally started playing this on my vita, I can already feel I’m going to make more progress than i would on my PC. SB1 is still out of comission so I can’t look up the old thoughts on the game. So let’s get some honest feedback going.
How far reasonably can I get in this game without looking at a walkthrough?
If I’m looking at walkthrough is it even worth playing?
How much of the puzzles are Tower of Druaga mysterious bullshit and how many can cause a moment of Revelation?
I don’t know how much has changed in EX, but the puzzles are very much revelatory rather than “notepaper on the side of the cabinet” tier. There are only two particular moments in the game that seemed counter-intuitive to me (I lamented over them in the old SB thread years back).
I’d take the safe approach of only looking at a walkthrough when you have exhausted all your options/are tearing your hair out. The puzzles are the heart and soul of the game, really, and you won’t get the most out of it if you don’t at least give it a good try.
Taking notes is a very, very good idea.
the Moonlight Temple was the point at which the “puzzles” strictly necessary for progress became too ridiculous for me to do without a walkthrough. i’m surprised i didn’t quit immediately after michael jackson became not just an easter egg, but one you have to interact with (in an unexplained, arbitrary manner, naturally) to progress. no matter how much i tried to approach the game on its own terms i would never have hated myself enough to get through that area without a walkthrough (or any of the increasingly more ridiculous ones after that, i lost steam around the Graveyard trying to figure out how to save iirc, and had stopped having fun hours before).
I’ve defeated two guardians. I’m still vague on how much progress I’m making. I was just supposed to cheese the Giants boss with projectiles right?
Yeah, that’s a pretty good start. I always got up close and personal with the Giant, but hey, whatever works!
Taking out bosses is good progress, as is discovering new fields. If you get stuck in one field, try another. There’s a lot of crossover when it comes to puzzles and solutions - nothing is really self-contained.
Yeah, that’s about where the game hits full steam puzzle-wise, if not Twin Labyrinths. The remake streamlined a lot of things from the “MSX” original, but it also introduced some pretty bizarre new design choices.
Honestly, as soon as I started having to look at walkthroughs the game was pretty much dead. It was the logical leaps of the most obtuse room escape games paired with highly lethal environs. I can’t help but still have some affection for it, though.
I just started this yesterday. dealing with the mausoleum of the giants now i just need to find the altar, but im not going to fight Sakit and go directly to the Temple of the Sun.
The ideal way to play La Mulana is without a faq, I played the original long ago, even not knowing what to do it was always fun, pity I ended up using a faq.
The diference are little, some puzzles, more bosses and the bossfights itself, but the main change is the puzzle for the final boss, EX doen’t have it.
Strive hard Rudie you can do it.
i made it pretty god damn far without looking anything up, but i didn’t make it all the way. and actually i never quite finished it. i keep meaning to fire up ex, actually, because playing on vita sounds pretty nice. need to, like, clear out a week, or something.
la-mulana rules, it’s some all-time top-ten shit imo
La Mulana starts innocent enough, you solve a few puzzles, get access to a ton of areas, go roughly 1/3rd through the game, and get hopelessly stuck.
The problem is that you are stuck in every one of those new areas at once.
And maybe those other areas from the beginning of the game? You probably have not finished everything there is to do there? Who the hell knows? The farther you get into the game, the more convoluted the puzzles get, and the more rooms you have to backtrack to if you get stuck. It is impossible to not abandon all hope at one point.
If you check a wiki for one quick puzzle, well you do get a bit farther, but then you get stuck again really fast, and all these other puzzles from before are still unresolved, so the temptation to check the wiki again is impossible to resist, etc.
La Mulana is impossible to finish alone and impossible to appreciate by not playing alone.
If you want to devote your life to a single vidcon, La Mulana is probably the best choice. Easy to admire, hard to appreciate.
I cleared the original La Mulana version, with help, back when it originally came out. Recently, I finally got around to picking up the Linux version of the remake over the holidays and playing it through.
The first third of the game remains brilliantly paced, if playing solo.
The middle of the game is bumpy, but doable. I noticed that the remake completely killed a number of sequence breaks that I, uh, accidentally found my first playthrough, making the game more linear overall but also blocking your progress with very specific puzzles that, if you don’t get, you’re not moving forward from. (re: above, The Temple of Moonlight is about where most people get really stuck. In the original version, I couldn’t find the staff because my eyes never registered the switch as anything but background art!)
The last third of the game is still purposefully obtuse and expects you to loosely put together hints scattered across the entire game by power of elimination and memory and way too many things. It becomes full-on adventure game all of a sudden and you have to adjust, and some of it is STILL really hard to figure out without taking very detailed notes.
I kinda feel like it’s a game best played communally; not necessarily resorting to a wiki but getting other people to help and hint your way around, rather than bluntly solve things.
Every now and then I pick up my save, hopelessly stuck after the fifth guardian, unsure how to proceed in the chamber of extinction and/or the twin labyrinths. It did start getting too obtuse a little before that (temple of moonlight), but I think I ground to a halt about three years ago. Wouldn’t mind finishing it sometime but idk if it’ll happen.
I agree that it’s absolutely brilliant compared to other modern metrovanias though
The Chamber of Extinction puzzle is one of the big “how do I even” puzzles of the game. I cleared Twin Labyrinths long before getting around to it; the puzzle of THAT one becomes much more clear and doable after a few particular items are acquired. (the way of summoning the boss ankh is… a thing… though)
Now you’ve done it. I just went back and cleared twin labyrinths. Increasingly feeling like I need to clear chamber of extinction though because I’ve beaten six guardians and some endgame-feeling stuff is happening yet I still seem stuck.
oh for fuck’s sake
I finally figured out where I’d been stuck for three years: flooding the tower of the goddess. which I had no idea I was supposed to be doing and would never in a million years have figured out how to do.
I have no idea why this game insists on being so periodically dumb like this because it’s so brilliant otherwise
OH MY GOD NO IT WAS WORSE THAN THAT
I JUST DIDN’T REALIZE THE GIRDERS WERE LADDERS
yeah, welcome to endgame content, enjoy(?) your stay
yeah so there’s two areas in this game (so far; I think I’m around 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through) I’d say definitely look up, and those are:
when you first reach the gate of illusion and you’re trying to figure out the warps, there’s one massively stupid, unintuitive bit you just want to be told.
the thing I just dealt with, after you’ve defeated 5/6 guardians but you’re unsure how to proceed in either the tower of the goddess or the chamber of extinction to make progress.
I’m still salty about Mario Time.
actually getting the cog of the soul is turning out fairly stupid too. manageable, but only because I had the prerequisites.
I should probably stop playing this game but nnngh it started so well
yeah actually there’s just a huge amount of bullshit involving like half a dozen usable key items (key word there is key), most of which you could’ve missed up to that point, when trying to progress through the chamber of birth after having beaten 5 or 6 guardians
the game gets good again after that though!