I was watching "...why Skyrim?" by Razbuten on sloptube this aft and it's so weird that it finally took Starfield for people to realise. Like Fallout 76 wasn't enough, only now are negative things people were first saying about Skyrim in 2012 finally bleeding into mainstream consciousness. It's so wild, like wow they ruined the magic system? The game has worse writing than a PS1 era Mega Man X game??? Skyrim is just shitty Game of Thrones?? Welcome to thirteen years ago!!
Bethesda hasn't made a really good game since 2002, but it'll probably be years before that realisation sinks in.
Aria of Sorrow at least does Symphony's bit better than Symphony, but still has a lot of the core issues (boring bosses samey areas stupid progression inert enemies etc) it is decent.
I don't want to hold you hostage in a tangential conversation, but I played AoS a long time ago and have been looking for a good metroidvania ever since (with the substantial caveat that I don't really like shooters). The only one* that I have found is Hollow Knight, so I'm also curious how you think that compares.
I'd say like half are boring. Dracula is good, Death is good, the hunter whose name I forget is good, even the final boss is surprisingly good for what it is (which really just means that it's fine). The Skeleton is supposed to be a brainless baby boss, the remaining few I can agree are boring and really shouldn't be.
I'd say again that there's a decent amount of distinction in a couple areas, but this is more correct.
??? I'm surprised you didn't complain about dumb drop rates (it really hampers the game), but I don't see why you think progression is stupid. Is it because it's not as multifaceted enough and it feels like keycards? While there are some keycards, I think it's generally okay about this issue, especially with things like the deliberate sequence break by jumping on the back of the bull to get into Arena.
Yeah, this is true. It's not all of them, but it's a pretty big portion of them, though I kind of struggle to imagine how to make them more lively in context unless it's just having them lunge at the player.
Something that I think is interesting is that, at least with how I interpreted what you said, Hollow Knight improves massively on every single issue.
*There's also the Touhou one that I haven't gotten back to because I don't know how to make the audio function, but I played another one by the same dev and it was only okay. Timespinner was also pretty cool, I guess.
Naw no worries, lesgoooo! I have not played Hollow Knight, I figured that kind of twitch Super Meatboy/Celeste style platforming would gel badly with backtracking.
The Headhunter is such a good boss!!!! Literally the only Koji Igarashi boss that challenges you to use your newfound mobility vs the classic games! Most other bosses are just giant damage sponges, like the ball of human bodies guy. Final boss is decent.
Yeah areas, Igarashi and the gang just like grey way too much. Aria has a drab pallette generally.
Dumb drop rates are really stupid and it's a shame they did not fix it when Circle of the Moon had the same issue, but I did not grind for souls, fuck that. I stuck with the ones that emulate old sub-weapons. Stupid progression is the thing in EVERY one of these games where you get a powerup - sometimes a cool glide or jump ability, sometimes shit like the box pushing in Circle, so keycards I guess - and then you look at the map and wonder which of these twenty dead ends has an obstacle that matches the thing you have, and hit the teleporters. I hate it so much, in Resident Evil for contrast you get the battery and go "Oh! This powers the generator for that outdoor elevator!" because the environment design is actually good.
These games give you way too much mobility and too many attack options as I described, enemies just get styled upon and their only option is either lunge attacks, yeah, or making them huge/damage sponges. These games have nothing as cool as the axe knight hallway in Castlevania 1.
Is Hollow Knight actually good? Is it not a nightmare to backtrack through twitch platforming and difficult combat?
One of the things I hate the most about games that bill themselves as "metroidvanias" is that they do what you describe just as you describe, where the powerups are always 1:1 with the some kind of obstacle blockings some number of paths. That's why I called it "keycards", because it's "blue keycard opens exactly blue doors, red keycard opens exactly red doors" like in boomer shooters. I hate it because, at that point, just have a linear game! By putting it all in a map like this, all you accomplish is padding the game by forcing the player to backtrack over shit they've already been to, or check a bunch of dead ends if they have a poor memory.
In my opinion, the greatest achievement of Hollow Knights game design is that it mostly avoids this. How do better metroidvanias manage to that? Well, here's a specific example from Aria of Sorrow (as I remember it): Have a gap that you can't cross with just a jump, and make it so both a glide and a double jump are separately accessible, so that the player can stumble on either one, then go back and cross the gap without access to the other! It's only a little less contrived, but it feels so much better and gives the player a lot more freedom to actually explore, justifying the jumbled map design.
Hollow Knight is full of progression gates where you can totally do it with multiple powerups, even if it looks at first like only one specific way is possible. It also has a handful of hard requirements, but makes up for that partially with all the different pathing that is possible.
Can be a good thing, since that's how DMC operates, and Godhand if I can make that reference.
I kind of didn't realize that people still like Castlevania 1 for reasons other than nostalgia and good sequels. I'll look into it.
Yes, it is one of the better video games and easily the best "kind of Aria of Sorrow-like game" I'm aware of after spending years looking, including beating AoS by a country mile (though I like Souls in AoS and Hollow Knight doesn't have quite the same diversity of nonsense).
You said twitch platforming a couple of times and compared it to SMB, but I don't really know where you got that idea. Well, I do know, it's from The Path of Pain, an optional area (with no mechanical reward) that tries to push the player's tools to there limits). I don't think I ever did it. Besides that, the required Royal Palace section probably qualifies as "twitch platforming" but it's only one part of the whole game. As someone with "Kirby player"-level platforming skills (read: I'm not good) I found it pretty frustrating, but I still beat it within a few hours. I think I ended up cheesing it slightly because your attack is really OP for dangerous platforming segments.
The combat is really only difficult when you're stuck somewhere, which happens maybe twice in the game with mandatory mob encounters and then with bosses (though you can even escape the first of those, probably as a Dark Souls reference). Therefore it barely factors into backtracking because you can just run away and the enemies generally aren't fast enough to chase you.
On top of all of this, fast travel gets introduced very early (the game is pretty respectful of your time), and they are usually paired with a savepoint nearby. Given all of this, I think backtracking is a non-issue generally and the more difficult thing is boss runs (i.e. when you die, needing to run through the level to get back to the boss, etc.) because some have a save right before, some don't, and some have a save on a branching path that you might have missed. It still isn't too bad because being a coward is OP for exploration, but it's a factor.
Does that cover your concerns?
Holy fuck you read my mind!!! Just like me fr!!!! I have not played a lotta Metroidvanias but I think only Metroid itself, as far as I've seen, does more organic powerup progression. That's a decent example from Aria, but also am I gonna remember that gap when I get either jump ability? Or is the castle boring and stupid... I do like the idea you describe in Hollow Knight of having experimentation be a factor.
Yeah but when you style upon a guy in Bayonetta or whatever you're pulling off ridiculously complex juggle combos against frequently deadly enemies (the Grace and Glory enemies in Bayo) whereas in a Koji Igarashi game you press B until the enemy falls, or whatever the spirit attack button is. Very lame.
WHAT FUCK YOU JUST INSULTED MY ENTIRE FAMILY LINEAGE, classic Castlevanias are tightly designed, carefully considered games about using a limited moveset to overcome very specific challenges. I talked about it in my Symphony ramble, helps they have superb visual design and banger soundtracks. Holy shit go play Rondo of Blood right now!
Alright, well it sounds like Hollow Knight has some nice design patches over its forebears, Idk if it'd be enjoyable (falling back on teleportation is always lame) but it might be worth trying.
It is definitely cute af ->
One last thing: I know the teleportation sounds lame, but it mostly isn't. It's not lame like teleportation in DS3 or Bloodborne or Aria is lame. It's relatively sparse and, interestingly, there are actually two interlocking fast travel systems (though one is small) to make pathing more interesting. In my view in substantially fixes that issue we discussed before about all the various dead-ends gated by powers, because the map is huge and it would be a pain to go all the way back to them. Instead, typically you have a teleport that's maybe 3/4 of a zone away from them, so you just need to go some of the way back to them.
Anyway, from what you've said I really think you'd really like Hollow Knight. I'll be sure to check out Rondo of Blood as penance for insulting your family lineage :)
Oh okay, huh. That actually does sound kind of okay honestly.
Ty for holding me hostage in this adjacent thread about viddy games, much appreciated