This game’s foremost sin is its infinitely respawning enemies set to the world’s worst jazz fusion, but its second worst sin is just how deeply painful the backtracking is. Imagine a metroidvania where every new move you get goes away whenever you get hit, and you have to then go all the way back to where you got the move and pick it up again. And you can bank them up but only by manually entering the level, grabbing the move, and then reloading the level and grabbing it again. That’s exactly how this is – holding onto a specific costume you need to get a secret statue is SO arduous.
That being said, I just did level 10 (the Escher-ish painter themed level) and really enjoyed it. For some reason, it was way easier than the frustratingly difficult previous 2-3 areas. Very noticeable drop in difficulty. I think their level sequencing was a bit off.
im beginning to think this game is kind of genius, specifically because i didn’t have to backtrack hardly at all to finish it and now im really curious about getting some of the weirder statues. seems like the amount of statues you need to finish the game is just right.
but then i think about doing more balan bouts and i get angry and now i think the game is bad, again
if this game had a mod scene i would make a mod that just replaces balan bouts with statues and that would solve like 30% of the problems i have with this game. it’s still totally unhinged but the pacing would suck so much less in the later levels.
i think it would be cool if there was a mod that literally just tells you when the game expects you to press the button for balan bouts because at least on PS5 the timing is fucky wucky
yeah that was 100% the worst part of amazing mirror. it was designed in such a way that most of the time you could go get the powerup pretty quickly but there was at least one challenge where you had to traverse most of the map with the powerup, and it was annoying as hell
Hm, you’re right! Amazing Mirror got a bit frustrating in that regard too, but at least most of the powers were fairly common. In Balan you usually have to go to one specific level and play through a good chunk of it before you can grab a costume.
I meant to say, the costumes actually respawn after a while. So do the keys. So the trick is to pick them up repeatedly while you wander around the level going “what the fuck am i supposed to be doing”. Just get them every time.
UPDATE: I continued playing this game exclusively high as hell, and did eventually finish it. My notes:
The game is good fun when it’s easy, but when it gets challenging it’s a chore to play. You can’t predict it, either. There was a span of 3 or 4 worlds where it got way too difficult, but then the next few worlds after that were blessedly easy. The level sequencing is totally off.
The “Balan Bouts” are terrible, but there’s a certain charm to them. There are so many of them that you can sort of get a sense of Balan’s day-to-day life. I started thinking of the bouts as though I were watching a betta fish swim around its tank. Every day, Balan goes for a routine flight around their empty little domain, during which they will always encounter some detritus they will excitedly smash, and then they will shoot an energy ball at something: either an abstract art piece or their bishounen rival (another betta fish trying to encroach on their waters). Sometimes they think, “it’s blue out today”, and occasionally they think “oh, it’s orange out today”. But either way, they’re going to destroy some debris. It’s like a woodchuck sharpening its teeth. Balan doesn’t think about it at all, simply destroys it because it’s there. You shouldn’t think about it either.
I think it’s kind of uncomfortable that whichever race you pick for your main child character, the other kid is always that same race.
At the end, everybody is really grateful to Balan… They solemnly shake Balan’s hand and walk off into the middle distance. But you have to wonder, what did Balan actually do for these people? In all of their stories, Balan simply lurked in the background and winked at the camera, but never took any concrete action. I went through these peoples’ psyches and fought an embodiment of their fears… They should be thanking me! Balan didn’t do shit!
I really don’t like that you see Balan’s true face, and their true face does raise a lot of further uncomfortable questions about this game’s treatment of race.
My partner ended up really liking this game and, to my surprise, started playing it completely sober without me to farm costumes and get additional statues. The only way I can explain this is that she has never played a 3D platformer before and does not know what she’s missing. I should probably hook her up with Mario 64 or something.
I actually went through the trouble to get the god damned secret Balan costume and it was not worth it… It trivializes the game in a quite enjoyable way because it lets you simply fly around wherever you want. But the problem is, if you take ANY damage while wearing it, you lose it, and then you have to farm rainbow drops to get it back. This means that you can never truly relax and enjoy the costume. You’re always on extreme edge while wearing it, because it was a huge time investment to get it in the first place, and getting it back will not be easy.
I can’t believe when you beat the game it unlocks a third act in each world. I did 2 of these bonus levels and they were NOT worth the bother. They’re just the same level layouts with slight tweaks. Weed’s not going to cut it, I think I’d need mushrooms to attempt this. And I don’t trust myself to play Balan on mushrooms and not come out of the experience a worse person.