Incline Hollow Knight

[Jasede]

Also try Dead Cells.

Doesn't that have procedurally generated levels?

It's a rogue lite so obviously yes. I mention it because the combat feels extremely tight and well done.

 

[Blaine]

Small (Jesus Christ, it's a novel) update: I got Salt & Sanctuary based on the recommendations in this thread and after watching ten minutes or so of a Let's Play just to get an idea of how it ticks. The Mr. Lemon Head faces are a bit odd, but whatever.

I was really impressed by S&S for the first few hours, but now that I've beaten the third boss (fourth counting the Unspeakable Deep) and am creeping around Sunken Keep, the wombo-comboing Retchfeeders have me reflecting on some of the game's flaws. Note that I've played Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dragon's Dogma, several Monster Hunters, and Hollow Knight to completion (or nearly to completion, in the case of HK), I beat the Unspeakable Deep on my second try, and I haven't yet permanently lost any salt. I've been around the block with these types of games and I have a basis for comparison.

The biggest flaw I've noticed is the poor implementation of aiming ranged weapons with a console controller. It's fucking horrible. I own a controller for the exclusive purpose of playing platformers, twin stick shooters, and a few outliers such as GTA. It seems I'll have to get used to using M&K for this game if I want to aim properly.

Something just feels not quite right about the boss fights to me. Yes, there is the usual need to observe the bosses and learn their patterns and timing, but character mobility and terrain is limited in Dark Souls fashion (i.e. no sproinging and air-dashing around huge areas whimsically like Mega Man or Samus). So far, all of the bosses have been ground-bound on a completely flat plane and dominate the screen. They also tend to have forward-facing attacks with incredible reach and damage. Thus once their patterns are learned, the idea is pretty much to roll behind them at the correct time and hit them in the back of the calf, staying behind them until they croak. The Queen has been the only exception so far since you can feasibly block, but in most ways (flat plane, no jumping over, etc.), was still very similar. The strategy possibilities are same-y and limited, and when I had a look online, found many players with similar complaints.

Then there are normal enemies. Fighting them doesn't seem to have the same hard-but-fair, give-and-take nuanced cadence of enemies in Souls games and so on. The art style is a bit muddy and desaturated, and a common device is for enemies to pop out of the background from nowhere with a brief animation and a bit of sound. When you can see them plainly, many of the non-humanoids have lightning-quick, oftentimes unblockable stunlock- and tackle-type attacks. So far I've found that the best way by far to deal with most of these isn't to employ skill per se, but to employ timing to essentially smash everything with overwhelming force (playing a Cleric with Haymaker currently) either as it spawns, or when it's charging and almost within range. Rolling is very risky with normal enemies because they can turn on an absolute dime mid-combo. Anything with a shield is a bit different, but even so most fodder enemies can be overwhelmed without any need to block or parry.

It just all seems a bit off. I think a lot of it's down to trying to clone Souls on a 2D plane. It really doesn't lend itself terribly well to this type of grounded, gritty, ideally cadenced gameplay, I don't think. It's not horrible and I will probably complete the game, but something's off.

 

[Jasede]

Please try Dead Cells. Just pirate it or something, it's essentially 2D Dark Souls with procedural stages. The combat feels about 2324 times better than in Salt & Sanctuary.

 

[Blaine]

I already did, you can stop shilling now.

Back to Hollow Knight briefly, I'm convinced that Hornet 2 is the best-designed boss fight in the entire history of Metroidvanias. It's so good I wish I could keep playing it until I can finish it without getting hit once.

 

[Jasede]

My God you guys have a warped concept of shilling. Someone please move this thread to retardo, it's shilling for Hollow Knight (which, by the way, is excellent and better by miles than either game mentioned in the last two posts.)

I also suggest removing the RPG forum as it's full of plants recommending RPGs.

 

[Blaine]

My God you guys have a warped concept of shilling. Someone please move this thread to retardo, it's shilling for Hollow Knight (which, by the way, is excellent and better by miles than either game mentioned in the last two posts.)

I also suggest removing the RPG forum as it's full of plants recommending RPGs.

Not that I particularly care, but you've been going on about Dead Cells at length now, and pretty stridently. Suggesting a different game once or twice in another game's thread is one thing, but you're becoming Clippy the Office Assistant at this point. It seems neat so far, but it's not Dark Souls-y and it's really not even a proper Metroidvania, although it's billed that way for some reason. Apparently being able to switch and upgrade equipment is the only requirement in some people's minds.

 

[Momock]

I didn't like Salt and Sanctuary without being able to put words on why, but you did for me Blaine. :D

I didn't try ranged weapons but I guess that it's the same as aiming with spells (it was horrible)

 

[Jasede]

My God you guys have a warped concept of shilling. Someone please move this thread to retardo, it's shilling for Hollow Knight (which, by the way, is excellent and better by miles than either game mentioned in the last two posts.)

I also suggest removing the RPG forum as it's full of plants recommending RPGs.

Not that I particularly care, but you've been going on about Dead Cells at length now, and pretty stridently. Suggesting a different game once or twice in another game's thread is one thing, but you're becoming Clippy the Office Assistant at this point. It seems neat so far, but it's not Dark Souls-y and it's really not even a proper Metroidvania, although it's billed that way for some reason. Apparently being able to switch and upgrade equipment is the only requirement in some people's minds.

In two posts TOTAL in all of my Codex posting 'career'. Arguably four-five if you count 'related'. But fine, I'll give it a rest. I am busy playing Hollow Knight anyhow.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Blaine the best thing by far about S&S is the level design and interconnected world. I mainly play these types of games for exploration, so I enjoyed it a lot, but the combat is indeed rather mediocre. The main issue with it, I think, is that Souls combat is pretty simple to begin with, so when you restrict it to 2D, it becomes downright simplistic, and it doesn't help that bosses aren't particularly creative. And in the end I just ended up oneshotting all the normal enemies with a twohander. Supposedly the build variety and viability is actually very good in S&S, but I never bothered to replay so I wouldn't know.

 

[Blaine]

Exploration is very important to me too, and in general I enjoy very difficult and punishing games, but only if the enjoyment and satisfaction derived from mastering quality gameplay warrants the time and energy spent.

The build variety may be good, but when a large chunk of the bosses require the exact same strategy (enter flat arena, memorize timing, roll behind and attack), does that really matter? As for fodder enemies, sounds like you've played the entire game and agree that smashing everything with a two-hander is the fastest and most effective way to proceed.

I spoilered myself very slightly (I'll probably forget soon anyway) by quickly scanning down through the preview images of the game's bosses. There are a lot of big dudes you can't jump over standing on flat planes. I did see some obvious fliers and a few sets of (very constrained) platforms in there.

2D and limited mobility isn't the only factor here. The developers tend to employ enclosed arenas just like most Metroidvanias, except that relatively speaking they're far tinier. Most of the time you're just stuck on a line with the boss. They could have created larger, varied, sprawling arenas and designed the bosses with more mobility, different sorts of attack directionality other than charging or smashing one side of the line or the other, etc. Basically, they made it 1.5D. It's baffling, really.

 

[Sore Loser]

.

 

[orcinator]

It does absolutely nothing new, so the big question is whether it does something well.

I've played this game semi recently and I feel the same. There doesn't seem to be anything all that special about it. Granted I didn't play it very long, but when you've already committed the sin of making me do some incredibly dull platforming for more than an hour I doubt you'll be able to improve that much; especially since I saw a video of that area with all the spikes and saws (most original level design of 2017) and they still made you go through multiple boring to fight big dudes.

 

[Blaine]

Now that I'm currently about halfway through a playthrough of Dark Souls 2, the flawed nature of the enemy placement in S&S has become readily apparent.

It's been a long time since I've played Dark Souls, so I'd forgotten, but enemies almost never pop out at you from nowhere. You're afforded the opportunity to look up and notice a creature crouched on a ceiling in the dark, to edge up to a doorway and just barely see something around the corner, to hear basilisks crawling around unseen in a pit, to hear devil dogs start panting just before they attack, etc. It's another symptom of trying to do Dark Souls in 2D.

 

[MediantSamuel]

$10 on sale, what do people think? Enough incline?

I bought it a few hours ago on sale and I'm really really enjoying it so far.

Seems to only be getting better, too.

 

[Blaine]

$10 on sale, what do people think? Enough incline?

Why not read what's already been posted, you lazy fuck? Hollow Knight is at the pinnacle of the genre.

Everyone who's on the fence should buy it now while it's cheap, and then feel ashamed of yourselves for being cheapskates.

 

[Ivan]

it's indubitably incline, however I'll be without a gaming PC until winter, i.e. inevitable 75% off

 

[HoboForEternity]

bought it on sale.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Just bdat the false knight. Lovin teh game so far. Atnosphere is spot on, thr lore seems interesting eenough visual and music are great, it is challenging in a very good way.

It also feels really dark souly in a,good way too

 

[Blaine]

Hollow Knight so good, dude had a stroke sitting right there at his computer.

 

[Leechmonger]

I was really impressed by S&S for the first few hours, but now that I've beaten the third boss (fourth counting the Unspeakable Deep) and am creeping around Sunken Keep, the wombo-comboing Retchfeeders have me reflecting on some of the game's flaws.

I'm currently at the same spot you were when you wrote this. Does the game get better? I wrote about my impressions on the S&S thread, they're similar to yours.

I bought Hollow Knight along with S&S and Valdis whatever. I'm deciding whether to just switch over to Hollow Knight or stick with S&S.

 

[Blaine]

No, it doesn't get any better. Move on to Hollow Knight or Dark Souls/2/3 if you haven't already played any of them.

 

[HoboForEternity]

i think i screwed up the fragile flower quest. i haven't even unlocked that area yet, and i am not confident that i can traverse an area without getting damage if i am not familiar with it. this is gonna wreck my OCD shit damnit.

edit: oh you can go back to the mourner and replace the flower. so much for unique and delicate flower. i thought you got like once chance to do that quest and missed a mask fragment forever. the mourner probably bought it on tons on a sale on some dank flower shop or the mourner looted a shop when the city fell lmao

 

[Sore Loser]

.

 

[Sore Loser]

.

 

[Jaedar]

Bought this on sale, no regrets.

I think it started out too easy, and for some reason I thought it was a "souls-like" (idk if marketing or what made me think this), which was to the games detriment for the first bit. However, after it got going (around fight with hornet), it really got going. I keep stumbling into new upgrades while just exploring, and then finding that I could have taken stuff in another order if I had wanted to.

I feel I have to mention how easy it is to mostly ignore the movesets of certain bosses and simply go all out offense with magic and the right trinkets, but this is actually a good thing, maybe?