Oh look, yet another Metroidvania game that will release before Chasm even gets to beta...
Still working through Hollow Knight but I know that the game only has about 10-15 hours left of gameplay. Hopefully, there will be a new Metroid out on Switch soon.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I can also confirm that the game works great after 16 hours of testing. I did perform a horrible sin by buying it originally through my windows machine as I was super excited to play the game. I however fell into the category of players that could not play the game due to stutter and slowdown issues that the developer could not identify or fix. I downloaded the linux-beta build ready for disappointment that I would again run into stutter and slowdown issues but it runs smoothly and without any hard crashes! I see the criticisms and merits that the game has garnered so far. It's refreshingly fun to explore but it does stick to the Super Metroid tropes a little too strongly at times. Just wait until you get to the third major area, you'll see what I mean.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Compared to the Lucas Arts and Broken Sword games, the puzzles were particularly easy. I would say that the quality voice acting, humor, and animation were the saving graces of this game. The length of the game did feel truncated, especially in the latter third of the game.

The game's writer missed several key opportunities to drive the story forward emotionally. A prime example would be finding out what happened to the lost family member. That specific set piece should have hit with a lot more visceral impact, but it fell flat because there was so little time spent with the development of back story and the relationship of the family.
I wanted to feel propelled into action, to save the day, and feel triumphant in beating the main antagonist. What you are handed is a very empty victory that relies far too much on secondary or even tertiary characters. It left me feeling rather powerless as a player.

The game is still wonderfully humorous and it is still worth the three hours I got out of it. But, keep an eye out for how the difficulty and options drop off when playing as Lily as opposed to Aidan. That was highly frustrating and a little insulting to the general intelligence of the player. Yes, she is a small child, but she is written as somewhat of a child genius and those sections should have played quite a bit more challenging than what was presented.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I have played as far into the game that is possible in early access. I had 100% in the Autumn's Fall (or is it Rise?) until the new update. The only complaint I have so far is that the developer's have chosen to not give the player the choice to disable the auto-jump functionality. There are free buttons on the gamepad and for the more platforming intensivee sections I would like to be able to trigger jumps on my own.

The game is very odd in that the universe feels fairly cohesive, if not convoluted at times, but the gameplay is trying to be so many different things at once that it starts to get distracting. Twin stick shooter, crafting, fetch quests, pixel perfect platformer with no real jump button, bullet hell, JRPG...Some of the elements gel quite well, others not so much. I am kinda waiting for the lead character to jump into a giant mech suit and introduce a horizontal shmup stage or something of that nature.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I had a really difficult time understanding the "Persistent Progress System" as well, but after several hours and defeating higher level enemies it starts to make more sense. You always start at the beginning of the first stage, what changes as you level up is the first load out of weapons you receive when you enter the main control room. ( I honestly don't know what that room is supposed to be; it looks like an old NASA mission control center.) Anyway, along the first two hours I played I was always given some crappy wooden plank and rubber armor as my beginning load out, but as you start to meet harder enemies the starting weapons and armor are much more powerful. Plus, your upgrade boxes usually increase in quantity as well which means that you can in a way get back into the higher level areas quite quickly given that your equipment and stats are much improved right out of the gate. It kinda sucks that this process isn't automated but it does put more responsibility on the player to manage their equipment and stats in a manner that let's them more effectively deal with the enemies that may have killed them earlier.

The game reminds me a lot of the early Mega Man games in that you have to die countless times to figure out all the quirks of the enemies throughout the levels. I too experienced a lot of crashes, but most of mine resulted in the window closing and just having to reboot the game through Steam instead of having to reboot Ubuntu. If you get to the boss of the first level, which I think is Slash, remember to take to the air, do not battle him on the ground unless you have a shield in one of your weapon slots. Tapping the Y button while in the air will do a hard drop on an enemy on the ground and holding the Y button will have a cool, airborne bomb effect with some weapons. The Rocket Hammer has been my favorite weapon so far.

View this comment - View article - View full comments