Metroidvania General - An overcrowded genre with recycled themes and muddled mechanics.

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I wish I knew this before I bought that piece of shit. It's because of it I stopped buying nice-looking games, and now wait for strategy guides and such before buying (or rather not buying) them.
I learned about it accidentally partway through. I feel like guides cheapen the experience, personally
 
finished chronicles of the wolf.

The Good:
  • Has an absolutely kino selection of puzzles and traps and riddles to go through that make exploration fun. Instant death warnings, a random collection of gibberish that turn out to correspond to a combination of equipment that triples your attack. Loads of really cool shit that makes you feel like you're actually facing off against really powerful supernatural forces that you need to be careful around.
  • Great music. Montoya has more to offer than just Castlevania remixes. I wish I could find all of it online.

The Bad:
  • Janky, unsmooth controls. Even for a game that attempts to ape simons quest and "classicvanias" there's a lack of quality to the controls that make it fall just shy of being great. The biggest problem is how keys are not rebindable and you're stuck with like five actions including an air dash bound to a single button.
  • I'm all for superbosses but dark doppleganger and bloodless have too much health and I'm not grinding up to max level to be able to not spend five years in a single Bloodless fight and her 1 million HP.(for reference annihilation angel, my strongest attack, deals 20k on a crit and I can only use it twice)
  • Game's just too big for its own good. After a while you just spam airdash/slide all over the place to get anywhere because warp points are spread out and from point A to point B either involves a corridor that's too long for it's own good or a vertical shaft that's too high for its own good. It's the worst part of the game when you just want to get somewhere to try out a hunch on a puzzle but it involves 3 minutes of trekking every time.
  • Bosses are really easy, thrice so when you consider Holy Explosion/Annihilation Angel. they just have too much health and too little in the way of attack patterns.
  • The "other dimension" puzzle kind of sucks and was only solved because I had no other thing to do besides fight Carmine.
I find it a lot like Aeterna Noctis where there's a lot to complain about in the game but there's just so much passion put in the game I can't bring myself to hate it much. I truly enjoyed this and I hope Migami just polishes his next title instead of trying to capture a wider audience because I really love his style. I do want bullshit instant death traps. I do want to feel lost with vague puzzles that almost reach the levels of the vague original Simons Quest translation. I do want a game that won't be for everyone and knows it. I don't want just a less good Bloodstained or Hollow Knight.

Edit: Unpacked the OST from the game files.
Does something feel familiar about this track?(Mouchet Cavern)

I swear this sounds like one of the Runescape music tracks but for the life of me I cannot remember which one.
 
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I'm all for superbosses but dark doppleganger and bloodless have too much health and I'm not grinding up to max level to be able to not spend five years in a single Bloodless fight and her 1 million HP.(for reference annihilation angel, my strongest attack, deals 20k on a crit and I can only use it twice)
There's a couple things to help with that.

First, there's an obscure puzzle in one of the intermission areas. The one between the Library and Ceremony Room. If you read the plaque that usually lists the names of the areas, it suddenly has a puzzle on it that reveals a gear set which gives an obscene amount of attack power as a hardcoded bonus.

Using that power, which requires several rare drops, kill Dark Knight, the easiest superboss, over and over until you get a ton of orb ups. This allows you to theoretically spam Annihilator Angel. Except, replenishing orbs kinda sucks. However...

If you talk to the NPCs in the town that formerly had the vampire, one says something happens over at the town graveyard. Turns out now there's an infinite supply of orbs to let you spam Annihilator Angel.

Now you can kill Lamia, another superboss, at will because every time you do she drops a Super Extend that upgrades your HP, Mana, and Orbs. You see how this goes.

It's very stupid but it's doable. Bloodless is simple enough at max stats and using the Concentration Headband to get quick charges of Annihilator Angel. At max orbs and stats you have just enough to kill her.

The problem is, there's no reward! No new gear, no new ability, there's jack!
 
I've been playing The Mummy Demastered and I realizing that a lot of these more recent Metroidvanias are way more difficult than Super Metroid and/or SOTN ever were. At least in SOTN you could level up by grinding if you got stuck on a hard/difficult part. Now you can't progress unless you get really, really lucky. I feel the same way about Blasphemous.
 
I've been playing The Mummy Demastered and I realizing that a lot of these more recent Metroidvanias are way more difficult than Super Metroid and/or SOTN ever were. At least in SOTN you could level up by grinding if you got stuck on a hard/difficult part. Now you can't progress unless you get really, really lucky. I feel the same way about Blasphemous.

The thing with those two is that they were different even back then. Samus in SM is large, slow and loses momentum when jump shooting so she can't easily dodge stuff, this is compensated by suits giving absurd damage reduction (50% and 75%) and having acess to a huge amount of energy tanks and even reserve tanks, so if you explore and restock you can bruteforce any boss. There is a reason they gave her a parry in Samus returns and by dread.

SoTn was rushed and not balanced well. The game has exp scaling so Alucard will overlevel without trying and he actually has random growths so it's possible to get +4 in multiple stats at once. The next igavanias after this would have normal exp scaling and fixed growths.

Those games had absurd "powercreep" that modern MVs try to avoid so the game stays challenging, usually cause they're Souls inspired or want to have a tighter difficulty curve where old enemies never stop being threats. Blasphemous, 8doors, guacamelle, iconoclasts, etc never even give you a permanent basic attack damage or defense upgrade from beginning to end. In hollow knight the health pip system ensures anything can kill you. ESA stops having hp upgrades rather early.

Like, last time i saw an MV where exploring/grinding actually powerful was bloodstained and even that took a while (farming ingredients for food and unlocking perma passives nets huge upgrades).
 
Finished Ender Magnolia, overall I'd say it has excellent presentation and really satisfying gameplay, but missed out on plot and atmosphere.

The soundtrack and visuals are gorgeous, the soundtrack especially with the Mili songs.

The gameplay is fun, though it is very standard metroidvania in progression. I did like that the devs don't go overboard with locking items behind skills, especially in the starting areas. It's a bit of a shame that the game starts relatively open world but loses those aspects later on. It is fun looking for the next places you can visit after every upgrade without the game hand holding the player.

Sadly it's a clear case of the devs running out of money 2/3 through, leading to a very meh final area, lots of reused enemies as bosses and the endings are straight up garbage. Which is a shame.

Plotwise it has too many moving parts that just doesn't gel well with the Souls like little exposition and world building, atmosphere it feels a bit too comfy with how much things are in order, it should decide if it wants to be either grimdark or less apocalyptic.

Overall recommend for anyone wanting a Metroidvania fix.
 
I've been playing some of this over the weekend. The game wasn't what I was expecting from the trailers and secret level. It's very sci fi heavy and you even play as a giant robot in the tutorial. The movement feels good, the combat is okay. With some button remapping it's on the upper end of Metroidvanias for movement. In your pac-man form your movement sucks and it can be difficult to make accurate jumps. Especially if you don't turn off auto movement. It's like blasphemous 1 when human, where it's smooth enough but has small issues occasionally. Human is most the play time so far and you turn into pac-man to climb on walls. Most areas you explore to activate the pac-man rails on the wall that let you get to the next area. It's not as repetitive as that, but that's how Pac-man is used. Some bosses will have pac-man rails in the area so you jump onto them to get above large ground attacks or jump over the boss safely.

Exploring the world is where all the difficulty is so far. I'm maybe 5 hours in and the bosses have all been really easy. Very varied so you never know what a boss will be but easy. The difficulty comes from the exploration and your flask not refilling at check points. There are upgrade bonfires that refill your flasks and check points that act as respawn points but don't refill your flask, just your health. They aren't as common as you would like but there's short cuts to open so they often get you where you died quickly. Respawning (you pick between your last upgrade spot or check point) looks like you're going way back but a little exploration and you have a ladder or a door you opened taking you close to where you were in seconds.

It's a upper mid tier MV. Priced about where it should be if you're buying it at release. I think it's worth the asking price if you want to play it now. I also think it's worth waiting for a sale if you have a MV on the go and won't get to it immediately. I would recommend it without reservation if you enjoy the genre and think sci fi Pac-man is an interesting idea. If you don't like mecha anime you might be put off because mecha is a core part of the world and the presentation leans quite anime. Not silly anime but it's Japanese and you can tell it's Japanese.
 
Silksong will release on September 4th
After all this time I just don't even care any more. I almost forgot about Silksong until I saw people posting about it today. I'll probably play it some day. Even back when the first trailer came out though it had a bunch of stuff in it that looked like it was going to be less good than Hollow Knight.
 
After all this time I just don't even care any more. I almost forgot about Silksong until I saw people posting about it today. I'll probably play it some day. Even back when the first trailer came out though it had a bunch of stuff in it that looked like it was going to be less good than Hollow Knight.
At this point it feels like one of those movie tie-in games that get made a decade after the movie came out in theatres.

I'm sure it will be a solid game but I have zero hype for it and forgot it was a thing until I opened this thread.
 
After all this time I just don't even care any more. I almost forgot about Silksong until I saw people posting about it today. I'll probably play it some day. Even back when the first trailer came out though it had a bunch of stuff in it that looked like it was going to be less good than Hollow Knight.
At this point it feels like one of those movie tie-in games that get made a decade after the movie came out in theatres.

I'm sure it will be a solid game but I have zero hype for it and forgot it was a thing until I opened this thread.
Likewise. They waited so much I think I'm just going to shelve it for a couple of years until it gets mods and DLCs and whatnot.
 
I'm reminded i finished Chronicles of the wolf and nearly beat primal planet, i'll post some quick summary

>Chronicles of the wolf

I agree with most of BiggestKai said but if i had to summarize the game is that it's basically Lecarde Chronicles 2.5. It's the same gameplay, pacing, abilities, puzzle, story and beats, with some improvements and being less incomprehensible (i only used guide a few times instead of the entire hunt for true end).

+This game has "friction" in a way that you don't see in modern games and feels good. A lot of stuff looks frustrating at first but you get a bit gooder and it's manageable. Even the so hated death traps and are mercifully nearby save points or foreshadowed (if it *looks* like a deathtrap then it probably is one). There is no auto save or checkpoint so you never want to lose progress. If you want the best gear in the game you need to actually farm drops and it didnt take that long for me other than the final armor.
+I think combat is fine. It's not super smooth modern but it's okay, not every metroidvania needs invincible rolls, parries and air dashes. All weapon types are useful and you'll have to use all your tools to win.
+The sound track is greaaaat and carries hard. It mixes a bunch of shit like dancy castlevania, grunge rock and whatever genre this banger is (i think acid rock??) that makes me want to stay underwater just a little longer.


-Like said, bloodless having one million hp is hard R retarded even if it's post game. It's not only NEVER implied she even exists or how to unlock her but you'd need hours of grinding to even stand a chance and you die in 4 hits regardless so your grind feels worthless. This has to be the worst crossover boss implementation i ever seen and i find absurd Mig (dev) thought it was a good idea. I'm glad i found first and didnt even try.
-I didnt think balance was that great. The later charge atks are completely busted and mandatory for killing bosses fast (and they scale with weapon atk so heavy stronger ones are better), which in turn makes sub weapons near worthless other than finishing off a weak far enemy. Even then there are only like 4 of them with overlap somehow (knife is right + diagonal, another knife is right piercing and a disk is diagonal pierce). Magic is also shared between a ton of shit and i felt healing was simply the most efficient spell in 95% of scenarios.
-Progression is kinda fucky wacky. For some reason ALL the mp ups are locked near the final hour of the game so i went from 60 to 150 in a flash. I also hate how the majority of powers are super boring predictable MV shit i already saw in lecarde chronicles 2 like slide triple jump double air dash spells etc,
-You still need a guide if you want the true ending because some things are still too well hidden for their own good.
-It takes too long to open and close the map and menu because this game is on a pre-historic engine. Map is kinda shit too and doesn't even separate zones by color
-Bosses are, honestly speaking, kinda garbage. They cycle between a few attacks and it feels like the best strategy is to start with strongest charge atk and then mash attack.
-This game needed just a few more overworld warps man. There are 3 non dungeon zones and they're long corridors and i missed the warp on the right so i had to slide for 10 minutes multipel times.
-The game is called "Chronicles of the Wolf" so why is the wolf not really relevant around half the game??

Still a good game i recommend to pirate if you wont buy. Don't be afraid to use a guide for true end.

>Primal Planet

I did not finish the game but i saved my daughter and played most of it, i think i need to find all the secret "cards" or something now but i had my fun.

+It looks, plays and sounds very good, even if the combat is simple and more about knowing what fights to pick, how to hit and run or stunlock and to bring spears and cooked meat. I like how there is a whole fauna moving at once and mobs will fucking attack each other.
+Large dinos are genuine big threats that can deal 4+ pips of damage and are tanky as fuck. They can appear at random too so it's nice to always have a source of stress somewhere. If you die you restart on same stage or from save so its not much loss.
+You can buy abilities, save npcs and build houses for them to buy more upgrades and progression is legit gated behind them, like double jump, air dash, firestarter, oxygen, antidote. It makes every upgrade point feel worth and useful, there is nothing wasted. I saw many reviewers whine about air being too low but it's clearthey skipped on oxygen upgrades and got frustrated in the last stage that you need to swim. You want at least level 3 there (1+2+3 points).
+This game has 2 player coop with the dino pet but it's also there for free as a friend. If you upgrade the pet it will get larger in size. It can heal eating bugs/fish, only takes 1 pip of damage from giants and can be resurrected for free so don't sleep on him. You can hire npcs and you should explore with one of them all times for safety.
+The game is small. It's like, 250 mega in size. I havent seen a modern game, even indie, of this size in a while.
+You have to find a fire source then keep it on until to light up the map, torches and burn thorny spikes to open paths or shortcuts which i like. The firestarter item lets you cheat this completely and is mandatory for a few thorns. You can throw spears and climb them too.

-It has 16gb minimum wtf. It ran bad here this is fucked up for a tiny indie pixel game.
-I love the idea and wanted so much a "survival metroidvania" but the elements here are very minor, like a freaking far cry game. You go around picking everything on the floor to craft shit and it respawns when you switch rooms so at one point i simply ran back and forth two rooms getting reeds to build houses. With the final inventory upgrade you can carry so much food+medicine you should be immortal.
-NPC balance is nonsensical. The spear teammate is simply the best npc in every scenario because she spams spears which are the strongest, ranged and you can pick them, effectively giving you free spears. She has the highest hp too.
-The enemy AI can climb and chase you but it can be kinda janky and dumb, especially when enemies jump in and out of water. Many times it felt less like i beat a giant dino and more like i exploited the AI. That said, you still need the resources to win and time your throws and rolls to pull of. Throw poisoned spears.
-It's not really a great "metroidvania" as you learn everything with level ups and the map is actually fairly small with little worth exploring. The "secret rooms" have stuff like 1 random loot bag and maybe a plant. The main reason to explore is to find the map of the room, a painting (50~ exp) and a sanctuary (2 levels) and later the keycards.
-There is not much exploration depth beyond what i already said and swiming still is kinda sucky cause you can't roll and move slow, and the final stage requires you to swim a good amount.

funny fact: I just looked at steam updates and the devs added a mechanic where you can ride dolphins to move fast and there is no oxygen loss so i guess THAT is triavialized for better or worse. It also improved the map to show keycards so that probably helps the endgame, sadly my pirated copy is not updated.

That said, good game, if overpriced.
 
I'll give some reports of my own. Finished Blade Chimera a while ago and recentlyish Blasphemous

Blade Chimera

Nice presentation, on the shortish side, though not a real problem, story takes itself too seriously and really makes it be a lot more linear than it needs to be. You can explore an area just fucking around only to have the story send you there eventually when you have already ransacked it. The story itself is passable, but nothing to write home about. The combination of melee and guns works well enough. Enemy design is solid, level design is poor.

It does give the most free form system to move through the map. It's basically free teleport from almost anywhere to almost anywhere instantly and there are even puzzle pieces that can only be obtained by teleporting into parts you cannot go into by normal means. Backtracking is a cinch with this so completing the map is pretty painless.

I got credits but had zero desire to do any of the extra content, the sidequests are shit for the most part and are a big part of unlocking the secret ending/boss. Woke faggotry only an instance of "strong wamen soldier, bigot" when talking to an NPC, nothing else that stuck out to me.

Game is fine if you like the genre and want to blow a few hours on one. Don't expect it to stick with you.

Blasphemous

Finished it by getting the bad ending. Killed the DLC bosses that don't involve going NG+ and by doing that I considered myself done. Atmosphere is peak as well as presentation. Controlled like ass though, felt I was constantly fighting the controller and it's one of those games where you have upgrades to make the game play less like ass (faster walk speed, less recovery on dodge) instead of actual upgrades. I soldiered through thanks to the presentation and ambience but the control really took a while to get used to. I am interested in the sequel since I've heard it improves in a lot of aspects.

Difficulty was very hard at the start since I also ended up going to the mountain first which seemed like the hard path from the ones available, since the bosses on the other 2 gave me much less trouble, I was also a dumbass and missed the first sword upgrade in the starting area. Once I got through those stumbling starts, dificulty was not particularly, bad, oneshot a few bosses until it spiked again with the DLC ones. Have zero interest in playing again for the other endings. No woke faggotry though depending on your vision of Christinaity it could be blasphemous (I MADE THE JOKE).

Blade Chimera looks better, Blasphemous gives you a better experience of getting lost in the game. Both look nice in their own way. Neither will set your world on fire.
 
Blasphemous
I keep meaning to get around to playing Blasphemous. I got about 3/4's of the way through Blasphemous 2 and then my save file got corrupted and I didn't have the heart to restart it. I was planning on playing the first one before I go back to the second one but I keep putting it off.
 
I keep meaning to get around to playing Blasphemous. I got about 3/4's of the way through Blasphemous 2 and then my save file got corrupted and I didn't have the heart to restart it. I was planning on playing the first one before I go back to the second one but I keep putting it off.
The biggest thing is you can't animation cancel, once you commit, you commit, which is really a sticking point when it comes to the roll and whenever you want to do the dodge slash. Did Blasphemous 2 feel good to control or did it feel clunky? That's the main thing I'm wondering.
 
The biggest thing is you can't animation cancel, once you commit, you commit, which is really a sticking point when it comes to the roll and whenever you want to do the dodge slash. Did Blasphemous 2 feel good to control or did it feel clunky? That's the main thing I'm wondering.
It felt somewhat clunky. But I was also emulating it on my phone with Yuzu and the FPS would range between 26fps and 29fps so it could have been because of that. But I did find dodging kind of hard. Some monsters in particular were really tough to dodge like those candle swinging monsters.
 
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