ouch… I thought I would by this game for my daughter (9), she is okay with platformers like Mario, but this sounds a bit too harsh, or is it?
Sadly it sounds like a game for hard core platform gamers (that love the super difficult levels), and just because of that one gameplay element (the escape mechanics). Maybe with enough feedback they will ‘patch’ in an easy option for all the other 90% of gamers that would love the game otherwise?
RPS found it a tough nut as well:
I have over 500 products on my Steam account, and I had never heard “metroidvania” before reading reviews (customer and professional) of this game. Now, it seems to pop up all over the place. Either a) I’m incredibly blind and it’s a common term, b) people are really, really, really trying to tell me something about this game, or c) both.
It’s certainly been around for a while, though more prevalent on consoles and handhelds than on PC.
Basically, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night diverged from the preceding Castlevania games by dropping a linear stage-by-stage progression in favor of the Metroid series’ approach to having a large interconnected world to explore with various barriers that are unlocked by gaining new abilities. Then when the GBA-era Castlevania games carried on that approach, people decided they needed a label to distinguish that style of exploration-focused platformer from the traditional ones. And then at some point after that, the term started getting applied to games from other series altogether.
I always take it to mean ‘difficult platformer’.
It has nothing to do with difficulty either way, other than the introduction of challenge from figuring out where to go on top of the challenge of negotiating an obstacle course. Plenty of traditional discrete-stage platformers are harder than the average metroidvania. The distinguishing feature is the sprawling interconnected world.
But it wouldn’t have sold as well under its original name: Microsoft Pinata Administrator.
One of the essential elements (IMO, of course) is the idea of unlocking elements of the world over the course of the game and the progression of the character, rewarding the player who revisits prior areas with new places to explore & things to collect. Even Metroid Prime did this.
Or, to the dismissive types, “backtracking.” But if you hate revisiting an area you’ve been to before, you’re gonna hate this type of game.
Finished it now, and it never got as bad as this one difficulty spike again. Perhaps I got Triple Jump too late; that helps a lot with catching these damn ridable bullets.
But a huge letdown: You can’t play your completed save. No way now to get the secrets I missed; so much for Metroidvania. The little imp wasn’t kidding when he said the final dungeon is a one-way trip.
This game is seriously incredible.
One of the best games I’ve played in years, one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played, with a sound track I’ll be listening to for years to come.
It’s basically icing on the cake that it happens to be the best Metroid game since the first Metroid Prime too, and probably sits above Shadow Complex in the order of 2D metroidvanias.
The “escape” sequences are some of the most thrilling, difficult, rewarding platforming sequences I’ve ever played, yet they aren’t frustrating at all IMO. Doesn’t hurt that their visual presentation is somehow even more incredible than the rest of the game.
This game is the 1st one in my Steam wishlist. If not for Pillars of Eternity, I would have bought it already.
So I started on Ori this weekend. Stats so far: 8 hours, 47% complete, 443 deaths. Not quite sure what to think of it yet, all the things it does really well are counterbalanced by things that are just plain bad.
It is probably the best looking game I’ve played this year, the art direction is sooo good. But the graphics are constantly fighting the gameplay. It’s often hard to tell what’s going to hurt you and what’s just scenery, it’s hard to tell apart enemy projectiles from goodies that you’re hoovering up (I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried dodging some experience points…), and I really really hate the places where the foreground layer blocks the gameplay layer.
The platforming puzzles, world design and secrets are great. The “bash” special power is really satisfying once you become really proficient with it (which is inevitable since you just can’t escape the Ginko Tree without having the bash embedded in muscle memory). But the wall jump is the worst one in any game ever, with the finicky timing and the excessive button mashing. Absolutely horrible. And at least on the PC inputs appear to be missed pretty frequently. Like maybe 1% of bashes just don’t trigger for no obvious reason at all. Or sometimes you’re walking along and Ori just stops moving. Let go of the d-pad, press the same button again, and he’ll start moving again so I don’t think it’s a case of getting stuck in the terrain.
I did kind of love the one escape sequence so far, it was treading a very fine line between hard but fair game of learning the patterns and getting the execution down, vs. making me quit in disgust due to having to repeat the early stages too often to get too see the later ones, and having way too many places where there’s no margin of error at all on the timing. (Miss any of the trampolines, and you’re dead. Miss a bash on the first projectile in half a dozen places, and you’re dead). Several times I thought I’d finally made it through the last obstacle, and it turned out there was yet another layer of bullshit to go through. I eventually ended up checking a video of the sequence at one point to verify that I’d really made it to the final obstacle. If there had still been more, I think I would have just uninstalled :-)
Kind of crazy to have a masocore platformer with these kinds of production values.
This, this, this…and this! All I wanted to say, and more <3
I’m sad that the Definitive Edition seems to have fallen off the 2015 schedule. It was going to be a perfect reason to re-play this game over my holiday break. New areas, new abilities, new music, rearranged progression…can’t wait.
Ok, Ori will easily make my top 5 for the year. It’s a really memorable game, and the things that bothered me about it fade away eventually. Very soon after that last post I got the proper wall-climbing ability, and that resolved 99% of my issues with the controls. I don’t know exactly how many deaths I ended up with in the end since the game doesn’t let you go back to the save after finishing, but it was probably around 1100. (890 in the backup I took just before entering the last tower).
I was wondering how a game with such niche appeal could possibly get made with such production values. Based on the credits the answer is that it was actually made by a surprisingly small team. That makes the visual representation all the more impressive. But kudos to Microsoft for taking the chance even so.
To me it’s even more impressive that the game was created with Unity. Sure, in some ways Unity is a great way to kick start development for a small team, but I’ve never seen any Unity developers achieve something so incredibly gorgeous and smooth.
Definitive Edition on April 27th!
Trailer:
I got the definitive edition recently and started playing it, about 7 hours so far. Wow, people aren’t kidding about that escape sequence. I was getting highly frustrated. There were a couple places where my fingers wouldn’t time the bash just right and I’d miss my opportunity. I probably played the escape sequence for an hour before I finally got it.
The rest of the game hasn’t been bad. I’d die here and there, but rarely multiple times in the same spot. Getting a new ability now and then keeps things fresh. I much prefer unlocking abilities then getting everything up front, that way I can master then piecemeal.
I think the game deserves the praise it has received. Makes me want to get Unravel for an easier palette cleanser, but with just as beautiful visuals.
Yeah, it’s worth it playing it to the end. It looks fantastic and the soundtrack is pretty amazing. It plays well, too, although the difficulty can be… well… uneven, sometimes.
I played this until the end…and then some, so I obviously thought this ended up being a very good game. There is some openness to the world and the ability to miss some things that can make the game a little harder or require some backtracking. I tended to upgrade the 2 non weapon trees, so I could be better at getting places with the double and triple jump, and the tree that showed more items on the map.
I think I finished the story after about 15-20 hours, and probably did another 5-10 hours of exploring after that. I realized I missed an entire section (maybe it was two).
There were times this was pretty challenging and the escape sequences were punishing - forcing me to replay a somewhat lengthy section over and over again. For the most part I learned what I needed to do and got further each time. Sometimes a sequence was tricky to pull off even after knowing what I wanted to do. I died a lot, but I don’t really try and avoid death. Sometimes it was quicker to just die on purpose to respawn at my last save point.
Playing a game that’s beautiful visually and aurally can really make a difference. I wouldn’t have enjoyed this as much if it used retro pixel graphics even though the gameplay was good. I’d put this up there in my top tier of platformers, but not quite up there with Rayman Origins and Legends.