the depths of eg-lana

King of Posters
1

so I’ve just played 20 minutes of la-mulana 2 and I am a liiiiittle bit dubious so far

thoughts:

  • the beginning is very linear and gentle but also explicitly calls back to parts of the first game, which seems designed to please nobody; I have to imagine it’s much less immediately exciting than dumping you into a bunch of brutal puzzles with curious side paths even for new players, and for veterans (who I have to imagine are the target audience for something like this) it’s a total drag.

  • they decided to make Xelpud a total dirtbag in this one (and localize him with some internet slang to boot). it’s almost endearing how awful he is because he also calls you constantly and won’t shut up, but I’m not sure if it quite lands. it’s not, like, Super Paper Mario bad yet, but it has the potential to be.

  • I don’t think they quite got the hang of moving to a 3D engine; everything looks a little worse and less aesthetically confident than either of La-Mulana’s original releases, and the art doesn’t scale very nicely at higher resolutions either; it’s quite flat.

  • the music is still great

getting back to work now but I don’t know…

2

Might be one for Youtubin’

3

yeah I am really afraid that trying to turn a totally idiosyncratic hobbyist labour of love into like a proper thing has backfired horribly on them but it wouldn’t be the first time

4

i was a year off but sounds like i might have been right on target anyway

6 Likes
5

“SB dislikes sequel to game SB super liked” is practically a running joke at this point.

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6

well they are often worse!

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7

distinct rough edges sanded down to rectify complaints, more content where it was previously sufficient

Games tend to become more like Games on sequels

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8

pretty pumped to play this before I finally play the original tbh

9

I actually just restarted the original yesterday and got like an hour in (which might be my farthest into it ever) so I am totally prepared for part 2, yup, no doubt.

10

oh geez definitely play the whole original! it’s so good!

11

I have no doubt about that. But hey, I funded this one, so I am going to play it now as well.

Also, I think part of the appeal of the original one was in the communal discovery of weird stuff in it, which I can’t go back in time and redo with the first, but I can definitely do here, so there is that.

12

I wish I could play a version of the game based on the concept/key art

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13

I can’t run it

It just sits at the Nigoro logo screen indefinitely

14

did you press Z

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15

I pressed basically everything

16

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just this, forever.

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17

false alarm everybody it started openly fucking with me and had a wonderfully bullshit puzzle solution right after the part I stopped earlier

full steam ahead

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18

Yeah after the current playthrough of the first is done (like, 15 hours in?) I’m super playing this the trailer looks so good

19

:stampstampstamp:

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