The action roguelite thread

My impression of Neon Abyss isn’t very good. Decent enough to play it a few days on gaps of free time if you get it from Gamepass or a future bundle, not good enough to actually buy it.

Action: The action is bland, it’s far away from something like Dead Cells or Hades. This is perhaps one of the most important points.

Mechanical action: The previous point was more about how it feels, if it’s visceral (it doesn’t. This is more about how interesting is the combat from a mechanical standpoint. Well, it isn’t. You can’t carry several weapons, they don’t have extra modes, nor there is ammo, there are no movement abilities like dashes, you can have a single ‘active’ ability but it seems to be rare to have one and its use is very limited as it uses up a resource, for now there is only on consumable I have seen, the grenades which sucks to use as they can’t be aimed. 98% of the game is hold fire while jumping/avoiding enemy fire.

Build variety. And this is the second most important. The first issue would be somehow admissible if in exchange the game would have a super crazy build variety, with an incredible amount of variation. But it doesn’t seem to be the case, from what I played and watched on some youtube videos. Most of them don’t really affect a lot on how you play the game.
In fact some of modifiers I have seen were ‘dupes’ with another skin.
edit: example, in my current game I have:
-extra damage when you are in the air.
-extra life? I’m not sure
-extra damge and rof… when I’m wounded, I suspect
-explosion around me when I’m wounded
-extra max health + slight more damage
-extra damage in this room each time you pick up something on it
-you can use a egg instead of a key
-chance of getting a key when I melee someone
-extra rof and movement speed
-chance of firing a laser in addition your normal fire
-chance of dropping a bomb or mine when using a key
-extra rof and and damage
-gold gained when you are wounded
-extra jump height
-extra damage when you are wounded

Pets. Perhaps the most distinct gimmick of the game is how your character is followed by three, four or even more pets, that shoot at enemies for you or whatever. It’s actually kind of annoying, because at some point you can have 7 or 8 sprites moving around you and confusing the action you see on screen more. And some enemies and encounters are bulle-hell-y so it isn’t something to dismiss.


Awesome or stupid? you decide

Information obfuscation. Items or weapons don’t show descriptions until you pick them up. You may thing is an oversight, but there is passive you can get that enable it seeing them before picking them up, so yeah, bad design decision. They punish the new players, and in addition make a passive without any use for veterans. The game has some stats because sometimes you pick up passives or perks that increase slightly your damage or talk of a % of chance, but no number is seen anywhere. Some descriptions, even when you see them, are gibberish, I have no idea of what the object does.
edit: hell in the shops you can’t even see the name of what you are going to buy.

Something that also dislike is how is one of those games that close the entrances and exits and spawn the enemies when you enter. In games with a bigger combat arena (like Hades) is fine, but here it feels more constrained, and sometimes it spawns melee enemies super close to you starting position. Lovely.

As a positive, I will say the game has three difficulty modes from the start, easy / medium / hard, and easy is noticeably easier.
Enemy variety is fine, if there are new enemies in the later world I haven’t seen.

That’s pretty much it.

The reviews do look pretty bad, though, and it reminded me that Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin still isn’t out. I give 2020 a 40% chance.

I exited to the main menu yesterday night in Neon Abyss. I went to resume my run… and it doesn’t have that option, it started a new one in the bar. Great.

On the other hand I’m intrigued by the total clusterfuck kitchen sink design that Dracula: Genesis features. Other games may have a more restrained design, where they focus on one thing. Not here. It has:
-different starting characters to choose from
-different classes that is basically another permutation on top of the character type
-world difficulties and game modification to choose
-you play using:
*a jump/dash/movement ability
*a sidearm (infinite ammo)
*up to four main weapons
*a special energy weapon (rmb), it uses energy
*2 abilities, they may use mana
*1 consumable
*a melee action up close
*1 unique alientech passive
*another UI slot that I still don’t know what is for lol
-there are onetime powerups you pick form the ground, too, from simple health kits to special bombs or a ghost mode
-Weapon have tiers, I have seen up to tier 3
-Weapons can have traits applied on top of it, beyond their normal unique characteristics
-Each weapon, except sidearms, can get up to 3 weapon mods, they can be exchanged.
-Weapons have an ammo system, and it isn’t unified. Although the game only drops ammo for your current weapons. Some reload automatically, others don’t need to.
-Some weapons can get charged up.
-There are perks you can find or get when you level up
-You also have a stat summary, affected by game modifiers, powerups, weapon mods, perks, etc
-there are special anomalies in specific areas that throw a wrench into the level, like ‘enemies provoke a fire when they die’.
-you have health, mana, energy, radiation, character level and gold for runs, and for the metaprogression you have a second currency and a global rank.
-the UI indicates that in the future there is going to be an inventory with four slots?
-there are several npcs that buy, sell, offer or get you something, each one is slightly different.
-there are curses

I just learned that SuperHot Mind Control Delete is something akin to a roguelite, so I guess another game to talk about!

It finally has a firm release date: November 10th.

That means we’re up to a 70% chance of it actually releasing in 2020.

It’s so good!

Skul: Hero Slayer update, includes three new skulls

Sometimes I think indie developers create the gifs first and then try to fit a game around them.

The gifs are always amazing. The gameplay can be hit or miss.

I watched two YT videos and gameplay wise, it obviously remember to Dead Cells as it’s the other 2d platform action roguelite, but the pace is a bit slower, less frenetic. Combat encounters are notably longer, it seems enemies have 2-3x more health than in DC. The gimmick here is obviously the class system, instead of selecting weapons or skills, you can swap classes, each one has a predetermined set of weapons, passives and abilities; there are two dozens, but as seen above, they are adding more.

I finally found a way to attempt to play Enter the Gungeon, game which I had bounced of at least two time previously.

The solution? To manually adjust the difficulty with mod loader. Install this
https://modthegungeon.eu/
and then type in the console “give master_round_1 2”. That gives me two extra hearts. Enough to not die always on the second stage.

Hang in there. I found it incredibly difficult at first, but after remapping the controller and putting a good amount of time into it, I finally got my first DraGun kill just the other week. Unlocking vendors and weapons will help too.

The problem with it for me is that if you suck, like me, it is very difficult to progress, because you need to kill bosses to get progression currency.

Hades is on sale again at Epic and I have a coupon, so I might pick it up for 10, now that I know about the more that gives you Damage resist

Trust me, I’m one of the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked.

Oh my friend, in this forums who sucks the most can be argued…

Speaking of Gungeon, have anyone played Exit the Gungeon?

It seems much less well regarded than Enter the Gungeon, but most complaints are about the random weapon system, which they changed it a bit on the last update last week.

I played a dozen of runs with cheats. I advanced further with them, seeing new levels and enemies. I rescued 3 npcs, and unlocked a handful of new weapons and items. I even got slightly better at the game after a while, being hit less. But my skills were still pretty far away from actually beating the game, even with 4 extra hearts.
In the end, even with new weapons and more health, I dropped the game. I just don’t like the combat that much.

And another one

Seems a mix between Hades and Wizard of Legend cards and Dead Cells progression

Undermine will be released today on Steam… and Gamepass!

Undermine first impressions

Combat is… mediocre, overall. It’s more Binding of Isaac than Dead Cells.
It doesn’t feel smooth, as it doesn’t allow to move and attack, you stop when you attack.
It has a very vertical ‘topdown’ perspective, so it’s weird they chose jump as the avoid action, instead of roll.
Colliding with enemies doesn’t hurt you. Combat pace is overall slow.
In exchange of that, it’s one of those roguelites where it’s hard to heal yourself. You don’t do it between floors or anything like that.
Traps can be triggered and also hurt enemies.
It’s heavily based on metaprogression. It’s ‘one of those’. You buy from basic mechanics like seeing enemies HP bar to extra hp, extra damage, extra amount of gold not lost on game over, extra bomb damage, etc
The currency used to buy items in the runs is the same as the unlocks for the meta progression, so you have to decide what’s more important, up to a point.
About the passives and perks you gain, it doesn’t seem it goes very crazy in combinatorial varied builds, unlike Hades.
It doesn’t have difficulty selection, at least not right now. Dunno if it’s unlocked when you finish the game for the first time.