Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
edit: just remembered you said Switch but still
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Itâs on switch.
My vote would be for Timespinner as a slight pleasant game but since you said an aesthetic cleanser after Hollow Knight yeah the original beast of SotN would be my vote.
Bloodstained: RotN is the best Igavania since SotN itself in my opinion. I loved it and feel like playing it again whenever I see the icon on my Steam library. It isnât a Mighty No 9 type of failure in case you were afraid of that, itâs a return to form, but of course the Iga form in the first place was divisive and I also liked the GBA/DS Castlevanias more than most people did FWIW.
The other recommendations you got so far are passable but kinda left me feeling hollow. If youâre willing to switch to PC, the PC version of Bloodstained (since the Switch version is poorly optimized), Momodora: RutM and Redo are all better than the remaining options on Switch. (I think Redo is getting a Switch release in a couple of months but not sure when.)
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not on the eshop
Thereâs another game by the Momodora developer that came out recently. Mimoria or Memoria or something. It looks kind of neat. But I think itâs published by Dangan, which raises an ethical red flag for me and others.
Minoriaâs not as good. It experimented with a higher-resolution art style, more meandering levels and more stat-based boss difficulty, none of which really worked out. Not that any of the Momodoras are actively bad or anything, but RutM is the only game in the series that really has the magic touch.
The dev mentioned on twitter that the success of RutM was partly serendipity and heâs trying to consciously learn why it worked and how to expand on it for his next game, so Iâm looking forward to that
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rutm worked because
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it was the first game in the series that wasnât a 10-minute Klik N Play Cave Story fan game
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it was 2D Dark Souls before things like Blasphemous came on the scene
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big ol tiddies
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I uhhâŚwow! You are right. Those other Konami collections being on there I went âsurely two of the biggest games will also be on there.â
That and Dangan Ronpa means I do not understand the switch.
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Not to absolve them but since they got rid of the sexpest there is this: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/07/devil_engine_dev_says_dangen_still_hasnt_paid_them_and_wont_return_the_ip_a_claim_the_publisher_refutes
Would like to support devil engine one dayâŚ
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Yeah was going to say RUTM was successful for the same reason Atelier Ryza is the best selling Atelier game
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The switch port of Bloodstained might be wonky and have exacerbated the gameâs issues; I couldnât get into it despite loving the Igavanias.
Controlling Mariam didnât feel good, sheâs slightly unresponsive and sluggish. Couple that with the surprisingly hard to read and slightly unfair enemy attacks this makes for a poor technical challenge (donât play on hard mode) But it doesnât really work as a fun romp through aesthetics like SOTN was either because the port is pretty damn ugly and Mariam really lacks the charm and style of other Igavania protagonists
The SotN-like oddities (piano session with the fairy, disembodied yorkshire dog head, etc) were cool but not enough to carry the game
The later patches might have improved things, Iâve played the game on 1.0.2 and itâs up to 1.0.4 now
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Yeah that sounds like a Switch thing. The core movement felt really satisfying to me on PC. I especially liked how in the late game it gives you Aria-style hold-to-dash and leap powers instead of another pain-in-the-ass bat transformation.
Anyway, the main reason I think Bloodstained is so good is its maximalism. There are so many enemies, weapons, items, spells and upgrades of those spells that have qualitatively different effects. That gives you a lot of interesting stuff to find while youâre exploring the map, encourages constant experimentation with different tools, and creates emergent player-âinventedâ games of finding farming spots and paths.
The fast movement ties in with the maximalism in a surprising way. The level of speed flips on its head the emotional texture of completionist goals like âcollect the soul of every enemyâ: they are the reward for impatience instead of patience. You can always find an even more comically efficient method to farm kills on a particular enemy type if you treat it like a puzzle instead of tolerating boredom. So Bloodstained has been one of the only games Iâve played this decade where I aspired to completionism at all, perceiving that the grind wouldnât feel like one.
Thereâs no other search action game with this philosophy. The search isnât so much for progression items as for drops and curios, and the action isnât so much about not getting killed but at finding faster ways to kill.
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didnât notice this on PC, felt snappy and crisp. now, i donât own a switch, butâŚ
does anyone feel like the switch is just input laggy in general? thereâs some data on this:
http://electricunderground.io/shmup-input-lag-database/
http://electricunderground.io/a-hardcore-shmup-players-thoughts-on-the-nintendo-switch/
seems like you get an enforced extra frame of lag if you are using any controller setup other than joycons directly attached to the switch in portable mode due to the way the controller has to talk to the switch. thatâs in addition to allegedly lots of switch games being input laggy to begin with
wonder if this is actually as much of an issue as it appears to be from my perspective
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i remember at some point the momodora dev was going to give up on videogames if number 3 wasnât popular. and then it was, so he made 4 and that was a massive hit?
i might be remembering parts of this wrong, but itâs a nice story
rdein continued to tweet regularly about considering giving up on making videogames until early this year. Indie game dev seems to be mostly suffering for him. It makes me think a lot of other devs feel the same way but just arenât as open about it
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Is there anything good in Minish Cap?
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I think Iâm the only person on the forum who stans this game so I will tell you it is somewhat mediocre but there are things I like a lot about it. Things I Think About A Lot, to put it in SB terms.
Itâs not essential. But maybe if you have played other games in the series to death but you still want to be apsorbed in the familiar rhythms, it might be a way to spend your time.
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The first dungeon gives you a neat item. I mean, I canât remember if itâs well-utilized, but 15-year-old me remembers thinking it was cool.
If you somehow already have it, I recommend giving it a spin for at least an hour.
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Way ahead of you.
The first Rupee you find is for 20 Rupees so you get a tutorial message
5 minutes later when I got a tutorial message for a small heart and 1 Rupee I had questions whether I should stop playing, morally.
Finished the first dungeon though.
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Rocâs Cape and a good gramphic