Tag: metroidvania

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Game Ramblings #100 – Indivisible

More Info from Lab Zero Games

  • Genre: Action RPG
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Xbox One, Windows, macOS, Linux, Switch

I’m glad that this game was a milestone number for my ramblings, because it’s the kind of game I really live for. It’s both instantly recognizeable, but completely unique. It’s kind of an ARPG, kind of a JRPG, kind of a Metroidvania, but really it’s none of those things alone and all of those things together. It takes a bunch of pieces that shouldn’t work together, mashes them together, and spits something out that is phenomenal.

The first thing that really stood out was that the game was flat out gorgeous, though that isn’t much of a surprise. This is the team behind Skullgirls, which gameplay aside, was always known for its visual style. Right from the start, it’s a great mix of 3D backgrounds and 2D character art that pops like very few games do. Particularly in battle, the animation is all ridiculously well crafted hand-drawn art that really brings a bright and fun visual style to life. Amidst the chaos of battle, it’s all a joy to watch.

However, it’s that battle that really pulls you into the game. This is a bizarre mix of two RPG subgenres that somehow mash together. On the one hand, the battle system is very much an almost ATB-style system, where the characters charge up attack slots at different speeds up to a cap. However, those attack slots are not your typical menu slots – they’re instead button presses tied to each character, which can be comboed with directional inputs to do any sort of mix of functionality. This is expanded by different characters having different capabilities to really bring a simple but extremely deep combat system to life. It’s not unlike Valkyrie Profile in a lot of ways, but it definitely feels very much its own.

For example, Ajna can break enemies that are shielding with an up+down combo. I used a healer named Ginseng that built up power with straight attacks, then activated a power scaled group heal with their up attack. For flying enemies, I had an archer named Zebei that could shoot enemies out of the sky to be attacked by the rest of the party. At one point I even had a dog named Lanshi whose sole fight pattern was to bark at the enemy party, dealing large AoE damage. This is backed by a charged special attack bar that the entire party could use to do significantly large and flashy attacks to all enemies, like the one below.

On the defensive side, it’s all timing based. Correctly timing a button press when being attacked can block incoming damage, starting with partial block and growing all the way to character heals by the end of the game. This ability to block damage means that missing the button press is absolutely hazardous, as the game is scaled around the player preventing incoming damage as much as possible. A good player will basically never take damage, while a lesser player will likely need to grind a bit to become stronger, so this also works as a pretty solid built-in difficulty mechanic to allow better players to simply move forward.

In general, this battle system was just straight up fun. I spent a decent amount of time when grabbing new characters playing around to see how they felt, but over time settled on a party that really fit my preferred style. For me it was all about fast charging characters with good single target attacks, backed by Ginseng’s healing capabilities, and very little defense other than good timing. It fit a really fun sort of zerg rush pattern that I leaned hard into by the end of the game.

The Metroidvania aspect of the game is generally the weaker part of this mash of genres. It’s not that it’s implemented poorly – the levels all have a ton of side paths that are slowly unlocked as the player gains new abilities. It’s that the level layouts don’t really feel tuned to Metroidvania-style retraversal. It was pretty much without fail that I’d start on one end of a region map, get all the way to the far other side of the region map, and hit a story block with no new power helpful to the current region, requiring me to go completely back across the map to get to a ship and move to a different region. More often than not, the new paths opened with new abilities were typically smaller side paths that existed to collect upgrades, and not necessarily new paths for traversing the level in a different fashion. By doing this extreme side to side layout design, it really ended up making me retraverse the levels with nothing new to do, rather than the more Metroid-typical pattern of earning powers often, and traversing a region with full new paths. Things opened up a bit more by the end of the game, but by that point it kind of felt like too little too late.

That being said, the traversal not being great didn’t minimize my enjoyment of the game. This was ultimately one of my rare PS4 platinums, clocking in at a bit under 20 hours to get the full trophy set. Within that, I got to experience a bunch of great combat, some fantastically flashy and memorable bosses, and more than a few laughs at the party’s expense. For me this is even better, as I was a backer of their Indiegogo campaign, so watching this one come to life, and having it live up to my hopes is something that I’m always wishing for. At this point, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a proper non-mobile Valkyrie series entry out of Square, and if Indivisible is the way that someone runs with the gameplay, I’m certainly excited about the end result.

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Game Ramblings #95 – Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

More Info from ArtPlay

  • Genre: Metroidvania
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Windows, Xbox One, Switch

Typically speaking I tend to stay more towards the Metroid end of the Metroidvania genre. I definitely own a bunch of the Castlevania games, but generally speaking I’ve been way too impatient to deal with the high damage, high danger gameplay. As the series got older, the 2d entries definitely trended towards allowing a safer type of gameplay on the standard difficulties, but then the games just kind of stopped. In good news, Bloodstained definitely feels like it picked up right where the DS Castlevania games left off – nice amount of challenge, super solid gameplay, and upgrades galore – leaving me with the right mix to hammer on through.

This game is definitely a case of classic, but refined. If you’ve played a 2D Castlevania you know what you’re getting into. You explore around, run into blockers, find a boss to get a new power, and get through the blocker. You retraverse areas that you’d been in with your new powers to get through new doors, rinse and repeat. While doing it, you gain some levels in typical RPG fashion, get some new gear with improved stats, and generally just get better at playing the game. This is all typical of the genre, but it’s done in a really polished fashion here.

There’s food to cook to gain health back, which isn’t unusual. What is done well is that the first you eat a new food, you permanently gain some stats from that. This encourages the straightforward act of cooking different foods, but also encourages simply searching out new ingredients, reinforcing the exploration of the genre. You’ll for sure find weapons, armor, and potions just exploring, and these can also be bought. However, they can also be crafted, once again reinforcing the stuff above. There’s even little touches like side quests for killing things that you can get back at the base, which push back into reinforcing the exploration loop. It’s all little things, but the big gain in all of this is as you’re exploring for things, you’re just getting more and more comfortable with core combat.

However, the biggest thing that really pulled me into the game was that getting hit by general trash wasn’t a damning thing. Ya, you couldn’t be lazy as that would be a quick path to death. However, getting hit a few times wasn’t a death sentence. Part of this was just that trash damage wasn’t typically a huge detriment. However, the trash mobs were definitely also pretty generous about dropping health pickups. This meant that while I had to be careful in exploring, I wasn’t majorly penalized for every single hit. If I really got myself into trouble, I could use my food and potions as backup, but more often than not my skill could carry me through safely. This left me to really run into boss fights fairly prepared.

And boy are the boss fights a ton of fun. Two headed dragon that chases you up and down a tower? Check. Transforming train engine after running through the rest of the train taking out enemies? Check. The bosses are super over the top thematically pretty much 100% of the time. Functionally they’re the usual pattern recognition of the genre, but as is typical the difference between fun and not is whether or not the patterns feel fair. In this case, they hit on solid patterns. Generally speaking, there was a mix of solid tells from the enemies, some quick reaction moves, and really flashy finishers to push the type of fights that I love to see in this genre. Even as I got into end-game bosses where I’d die a couple times, things never felt unfair. I’d recognize why I was dying, adjust my strategy, and go from there. As far as difficulty goes, that’s the best kind of end result I can ever ask for.

This was kind of my rest game before picking up some longer JRPGs, and I’m glad that I ended up picking this. I was definitely hesitant, because I figured that the billing of this one as a spiritual sequel of the Castlevania series meant that it might really lean into the older form of the genre. Luckily, this one really took the modern touches in stride. The gameplay is as classic as ever, but its got modern touches in balance and systems, combined with the fluidity afforded by modern hardware to really feel like it belongs as a modern extension of the genre.

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Game Ramblings #83 – SteamWorld Dig 2

More Info from Image & Form Games

  • Genre: Metroidvania – Action/Adventure
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Windows, macOS, Linux, PS4, Vita, 3DS, Xbox One

TL;DR

  • Fantastic Metroidvania that mixes that genres typical features with a solid mining mechanic to push progression
  • Great visual style and audio kick up the presentation aspects of this title
  • Fantastic gameplay loop that really fits the on-the-go nature of the Switch

My ramblings don’t hide at all that I’m a big fan of Metroidvania titles. However, I typically stay away from playing them on portable devices since the gameplay loop doesn’t typically feel that good in short bursts. SteamWorld Dig 2 is definitely a big exception to that rule. In crafting a really solid Metroidvania title on its own, the team behind this game has also crafted one that encourages fast travel and exploration in short bursts with frequent returns to base to power up, and given us a title that is both a great Metroidvania as well as the perfect game to play on the go, even if that wasn’t exactly how I went ahead playing it.

This is 100% a Metroidvania, so of course you’ll be spending a lot of time in the map looking for new secrets.

Let’s get this out of the way – yes there’s a whole lot of digging in this game, but this is still a Metroidvania in every way. There’s a ton of secret areas to find, a ton of upgrades to get along the way, and a lot of little enemies to destroy for loot. You’ll spend a lot of time traversing and retraversing levels as you gain access to abilities to let you get through new block types, let you grapple hook, let you fly, and more. However, it is that little mining detail that really separates this game from the pack.

Digging is in the name of the game, and it’s what you’ll really be building your abilities around.

While combat is there to some extent, digging is the real core upgrade loop here and it isn’t as simple as it looks. Throughout the game you end up gaining upgrades to your pickaxe, but you also gain a bunch of other things with similarly destructive tendencies. This ranges from things like jackhammers to mines to grenade launchers, all set in a bid to blow up as much stuff in your way as possible, and the more destructive it gets the more entertaining the result. Throughout this entire process you’re also digging not just to clear paths, but to find gems to sell, upgrade tokens for obvious purposes, and the occasional treasure that can be traded for upgrade blueprints. Basically, you’ll want to always be digging somewhere in order to find every little thing that can be used to move you along the upgrade path.

There’s also a bunch of really smart passive upgrades that may sound weird to Metroidvania veterans, but really do a good job of smoothing out the grind as the game goes on. Just when you get tired of gems falling down into pits, you can purchase an upgrade to draw gems into the player. Just when you’re getting tired of searching every nook and cranny for gems, you can purchase an upgrade that visualizes these things on your active minimap. Just when you’re starting to get tired of searching for those last few little hidden spots, you gain an item that will show a sparkle in-world if you’re near a hidden breakable block. These are all things that simplify the experience to be sure, but they’re given at points well past where mechanics are learned as a reward for getting so far, so they end up feeling like a huge thank you to reduce grind mechanics at the point where it would start to become tiring.

Sometimes you just accidentally start up fire robots to take out enemies that are ahead of you. Oops.

However, the thing that most impressed me is how good this entire loop works for a portable device. Getting through this game is a huge bunch of effectively 5-10 minute sequences where you mine for a bit, fill your bag, and return to town to sell your loot and upgrade your abilities. This is smartly capped by other things that make you want to go back to town anyway, such as a lantern that runs out of fuel, water resources that can sometimes be hard to find, or health that can sometimes be a bit difficult to come by. Typically these things could be really frustrating, but in practice it really reenforces the loot, sell, upgrade loop that Dig 2 is pushing so hard for. There’s a ton of fast travel devices that you unlock all over the world, so there’s almost always somewhere near your start and end of a single loop to warp around which does a ton for minimizing unnecessary retravesal as well.

This basically then becomes the perfect portable title. Grab your Switch, 3DS, or Vita, play for 5-10 minutes, get a loop in, and put the device to sleep. You’re always making progress, always increasing your power curve just a bit, and always doing something beneficial to getting towards the end. With a typical playthrough clocking in at the 6-8 hour range, this gives you a whole bunch of little loot loops to take advantage of as well so you end up getting a bunch of mileage out of it when played this way.

Really this ends up being a great Metroidvania title, even if it’s a bit off the typical path for this genre. Even just from presentatin aspects this one hits all the right marks. Visually this is a looker, the audio and soundtrack are all fantastic, and the framerate and controls are solid throughout. From a portable perspective this is also the perfect way to play the genre, with a game loop that enforces a 5-10 minute mini-run setup instead of longer form gameplay that these can sometimes get stuck in. Would this game work fine as a console or PC experience as well? Absolutely. However, I think this one really nails it as something you’ll want to bring along with you as the perfect travel companion experience.