I’m not clear on the progression. I do know you can choose between different mentors that give you a fixed set of perks or abilities (these are kind of like character choice for this game or take the place of weapons in a game like Hades). The mentors can be leveled up by completing quests, adding new things. That’s about all I’ve seen
Oh, I missed the Noita news. I’ve perhaps been more excited about that leaving early access than Atomicrops.
Speaking of which, I just hit year 6 and it was one of my most comfortable runs thanks to a few really powerful item combos.
Time? I just wanted to know about the game in 2 minutes.
Well, then Hades also could improve! In Hades case it didn’t bother me because by the time I looked into it, there was already a fairly complete wiki which gives me a idea of the features and content in the game.
So I reached year 9 (of 10) on Atomicrops over the weekend(!!) and while I’m only two years away from finishing the main game, the difficulty has been steadily amping up and I might be reaching the end of the road now; it’s moving into what I feel is bullshit territory. More bullets, faster bullets, faster enemies, a little tankier perhaps, and flying shrunken heads drifting in vertically and horizontally throughout the year. Okay, fine. The biggest problem however, is enemies that charge you–fast–from off-screen. There’s no warnings or cues so it becomes a split-second reflex flick to knock them back and hopefully kill them before they connect with you. In the plains area we’re talking wasps, bulls, bats, bugs, beeson, bullet barrages and the aforementioned shrunken heads. At least with bullet hell you’ve got some time to react and there are usually patterns, but here it’s a lot faster and looser so it’s messy and very difficult to control without adequate firepower/protection. I’m going to try for a little longer!
A few general longer term criticisms: the ant colony meta-progression is kind of pointless. It helps, without a doubt, but while it presents itself as an interesting series of choices (choosing one closes off another), it’s not: you’re just exhausting a list of upgrades that you’ll eventually fully unlock anyway. A lot of them are incremental improvements that you just forget about (but I’m sure if you rolled them all back you’d feel it). The best upgrade/discoverable is the time capsule which transfers some of the fertiliser, seeds and items from your previous run. It’s a nice early game boost. There’s also an ‘Atomicats!’ thing which remains a mystery to me. Seems like fluff but no idea yet. At present the character balance is a bit off so I suspect that to be tweaked in the next patch.
I think overall the core gameplay loop is unique and very interesting and I think its opacity has been a big draw for me: working out how best to play and discovering various things with each session. I fear leaving the game and coming back to it later because I’ve built up a lot of muscle-memory and a large part of the experience is gauging and juggling numerous elements in real-time to be as efficient as possible. It reminds me a little of Void Bastards or Cryptark in that regard. And while it’s not a heist game, you do have to scout the outer wilds, raid the ‘low-hanging fruit’ camps, look out for escape tunnels and get out before the sun goes down.
I had some fun, but I left Atomicrops after not that much time, 15 hours or so. It’s doesn’t have a big variety in the experience itself.
Dracula Genesis is 33% off and it has a new update:
- 3 new Characters
- Brand new water shader with cool reflections
- When you’re irradiated, radiation on your bullets will trigger more rarely
- Added weather effects that change gameplay slightly, introducing new enemies and powerups
- Reworked some minibosses
- You can use HP to unlock “manalocked” chests when you have no mana
- Reworked many world 1 areas, added new island variants
- Fury system - a way to gradually unlock more difficulty for those who feel the game is easy
- Manalocked chests can now be opened with HP when you have no mana, also you can now also reroll them
- New default Drakoh’s gun (experimental)
- Some tier 3 relics are now tier 1 relics with slight balancing
I’m just approaching 50 hours now. Did you ever venture into the outer regions? Beyond the initial desert/plains/tundra/jungle areas? There’s a lot of big nasties and big rewards out there (including the meta-progression discoverables).
I initially stopped around the 15 hour mark too once I’d beat year one and realising that each subsequent year would be the same, but harder. Like Risk of Rain, a lot of the game’s variety and excitement for me comes from the different synergies you can discover and seeing how far you can get with them. That’s why the bumrush enemies are disappointing because they feel cheap after everything else!
Yes, I saw the outer desert area at the West. Scary stuff, even with a upgraded flamethrower on my hands!
Spelunky 2 is out. 15€ for me.
it would be sacrilege to call this orange box-level value at $18 on release day, but its close! instant buy!
My reflexes were on point and I kept the camera and reticule locked ahead… I’m now on the final year. Gourds make the best bullet hell guards.
How aggressive is the metaprogression in Hades? I’m one of those people who are philosophically opposed to the idea, but secretly I don’t really mind, as long as the gameplay is very good, like in Dead Cells. Should I be okay here?
I figured I’d post my question in this thread to avoid stinking up the game thread.
Not very aggressive.
Firstly, there are the weapons. You need to unlock most of them. I have favorites - I am sure everyone does - but they are really about play styles. There’s an additional system where you can unlock stuff for each weapon but I haven’t gotten to it yet (I have a bit of the currency). I think this is more about modifying move sets and such.
Then there’s the mirror in the bedroom. This has a decent amount of stuff (with many upgrades gated by the same currency you use to unlock weapons). But a lot of it has a low maximum. I just hit the max health upgrade, which I believe doubles your starting health (50 to 100). There’s interesting stuff here, like getting an additional dash you can chain or a small amount of healing each time you finish a room. So it’s not all just “here’s more damage/defense/etc”. In fact more of it is not that than is. And the scaling tends to be quickly capped, as I said. It’s enough that you feel it, but not crazy overwhelming.
Then there’s the palace itself. You can change the decor and add rooms. Some of these confer permanent bonuses, but they’re all pretty modest and I haven’t seen anything stacking so far. And opening up stuff in the palace is important for other reasons. The plot here is terrific.
There is some sort of. . . I can’t remember the term. Let’s call it relics. As you curry favor with various characters in the game, you;ll unlock more of them. you can equip one (there’s a mirror upgrade that allows you to swap relics each time you finish a region).
There may be more systems I haven’t gotten to yet. The game’s design philosophy is clearly not “we’re going to let you upgrade damage 100 times and then scale enemies accordingly”. This is true of the in-run upgrades as well. There’s some of that, but there’s a lot more “this thing changes the way one of your abilities works”.
I can’t recommend Hades enough.
Buy it. :)
Aggressive on the first hours, moderate later, and finally falls off on the endgame where you grind alternate versions of the weapons. But the gameplay is good, like in DC.
Retrunal for PS5 is supposed to be a roguelike, probably one of the bigger budget ones on the horizon. This is Housemarque studios taking a crack at a more AAA game (previous games include Nex Machina, Resogun, Outland, Super Stardust)
well if nex machina and super stardust is their pedigree im interested. but “returnal” is a groaner of a name.
I’m reading some impression of Spelunky 2. They highlight the difficulty, saying it’s higher then in 1… which it wasn’t an easy game.
I played some Spelunky 2 last night.
I never played much of the first so can’t comment on comparative difficulty, but this seems tricky for sure.
But in a good way, as I do feel the urge to instantly restart after every death! And the deaths can be pretty entertaining.
I think I only made it to level 1-3 so far. Note I am traditionally terrible at platformers. :)
I played an hour of Spelunky 2, made it to the second zone once, and I’m already eager to unlock the shortcut. I haven’t mastered the first zone yet so I’m being a bit more impatient than I should be.