u/New_Yak_8982

So I've cleared 99% of the map of the freshly released Dewdrop Dynasty and I want to share my opinion on it! I don't recommend it, at least in it's current state.

‎

‎First, the price. It's way too big for how small this game is. To specify how exactly small, I hit 60% completion at 1.7 hours and filled the majority of the map in 3.7 hours. That's, like, very short, I've completed Raider Kid and the Ruby Chest In 3.7 hours, and that's an (appropriately priced) microvania! The price:hours ratio is absurd here.

‎

‎But if the world is small, is it well designed at least? Not really. 3 out of 6 (technically there's 8 locations, but 1 of them is a fast travel hub and 1 of them is tiny and it's only purpose is to house the final boss) locations are dead ends, as in they have only 1 entrance to them and are disconnected from the rest of the map. The movement is nice and the character is fun to control but the level design feels randomly generated at times, like the creator just placed enemies and platforms in random spots without a care. And near the end you'll be able to ignore all the level design anyway because you'll get >!very long 8-directional dash (with generous i-frames) and jetpack!< which give you enormous amount of airtime when combined.

‎

‎Fast travel is implemented in a slightly annoying way. It's a cute idea to have a location that acts as the fast travel hub that houses teleporters to different parts of the world, but there was no need to put a long empty room between the rooms that contain said teleporters.

(also the checkpoints are not very frequent which is mildly annoying too but the dev said he'll add more checkpoints in a future patch)

‎Speaking of abilities. A lot of the abilities here are equippable and you can only carry 2 of them at once, but that means little because every ability (>!aside from aforementioned dash and jetpack)!< is so useless they're essentially just keys, I've never used them unless the game forced me to.

‎(There's also a dodge roll but it's so hilariously ineffective I only remembered it exists when I wanted to rebind the controls)

‎

‎In general, I'm disappointed, it looked fun in the trailers and the devlogs made me think the developer knew what he was doing. Low Bee Tier- I mean Low B tier metroidvania.

Straight to the point, the level design is satisfying to traverse because of the 360 dash ability, the occassional puzzle platforming where you need to figure out how to carry over an energy blast to break the barrier that blocks further progression is fun. The enemies are sometimes annoying but they can almost always be safely killed from distance with a spear and health containers accumulate fairly quickly.

The map is good, very detailed and has a lot of markers but the world design is bad. Looking at the general overview of the entire map there are very noticeable dead ends, every route converges in one specific spot in the middle of the map, the only properly interconnected location is the starting one, the locations feel very secluded from each other in general and the game sometimes relies on teleporters which is imho a cheap way to avoid thinking how to design a world.

Overall, the game looks pretty and has some fun puzzle platforming but the exploration is meh

(Also my savefile got randomly axed at the end after I got the bad ending which apparently wasn't intended and left me with a bitter aftertaste)

Mine is Pipistrello and the Cursed Yo-Yo, a normal urban environment after every other metroidvania having a mysterious sci-fi/fantasy/whatever world felt very refreshing

Animal Well also deserves a mention, the world looks very captivating but there's little to no lore explanations and you will not understand what and why is this place even as you're about to defeat the final boss (maybe there's some lore stuff on the lower layers but I didn't play this game just for puzzles so I was done with it after getting the base ending)

Finished Bobo the Cat in 4 days and 20 hours (damn that's a long game) after completing Biogun and finding no interesting-looking metroidvanias in my wishlist.

The graphics may not look appealing at first but they're cute, I liked a lot of the OST and the Sky Temples and Thunderreign Forest regions were actually really atmospheric.

Now, to the gameplay. The beginning of the game is spent without a jump... or anything else aside from moving left to right for that matter, but there's enough new mechanics introduced like jump pad mushrooms, cannons, moving platforms and tanks to keep things interesting. In general, there's a lot of various mechanics in this game that frequently suprised me and made for some cool enviromental puzzles.

The platforming is centered around avoiding hazards which I like less than the usual performing a tight sequence of movements but it's not worse, just different. I grew to like the movement, preserving horizontal momentum in the air by attacking is a cool idea.

The locations are laid out in a straight line and not that interconnected but I was always looped back where I needed to be after getting an ability and the big amount of collectibles, new mechanics constantly introduced and interesting level design in general made exploration fun for me. A crtique I can give is that some parts could use extra checkpoints, checkpoints don't refill your health for some reason, and there's almost always a chase sequence after a boss, without a checkpoint inbetween.

To get to each Dreamer (using HK terminology) you have to complete their respective subareas which shook up the exploration nicely. Though in said subregions there's a mechanic where you have to collect X keys of specific color to open a specific type of doors which I am mixed on because it ultimately damages the feeling of natural exploration.

The bosses were nice little puzzles to solve, like having to bait a frog to jump into a bottomless pit or turning a spider's summons into knitting balls and throwing them at the spider itself, even if a bit repetitive. The final boss, however, is the worst one, being very repetitive, having a runback, janky platform hitboxes and you can randomly get hit during a phase transition for no reason.

To sum up, an accquired taste metroidvania with some great enviromental puzzles, level design and unique mechanics but also with some noticeable flaws (like the mentioned checkpoints not refilling your health and there being not enough checkpoints but that's more subjective) that caused ocassional frustration for me but I ultimately finished the game satisfied. 

So I've started playing Afterimage because I heard it has good exploration and a big map. I've visited 4 locations not counting the hub village but the exploring still felt boring for me because the level design feels like an arbitrary jumble of platforms and corridors with some enemies in random places instead of something coherent. Will there be some quality level design to go with the game's apparent quantity later on?

So I've completed Biogun in 12 hours and here's my short review:

First I want to point out that the main character has a proper dash from the start which means that the beginning is not a slog in terms of movement, thank god. You get a normal double jump later on, but there are more unique abilities like >!a sniper rifle that pierces through walls tp activate buttons to open doors or to destroy breakable blocks!< or >!an ability to capture an Ability orb and activate it when needed!<.

The locations frequently loop around and level design has a lot of thought put into it, rooms use various combinations of enemies in interesting ways and keep things fresh + there are ability orbs that give you a temporary/one use boost needed to complete a section, so traversing the world is fun. There's very little platforming though, most of the danger comes from the enemies.

The bosses were cool but I first or second tried most of them aside from the sniper boss, the blue optional boss in the Heart and the final boss because the mana needed for healing accumulates fast and the healing windows were quite lenient.

The narrative is... surpisingly neat and the world felt alive (pun not intended) with all the settlements and artificial structures like a lab or the vein railway stations, I expected it to just be random clots of cells upon random clots of cells since it's set in a dog's body but I was actually interested in the world while playing the game.

that's my thoughts on Biogun, a good Metroidvania with an unique setting and interesting exploration

After playing the absolute masterpiece that is Grime II I planned to play Grime I one day too. Now that I have completed it in 16 hours, time to crystallize my thoughts about it in this post. Warning, a ton of Grime II comparisons ahead.

Starting with the exploration: The general route feels more linear, for example returning to starting locations like Weeping Cavity, Unformed Desert or Lithic seems to be optional if you just want to complete the game. The only time I was constantly backtracking and criss-crossing the map like during the 'Find 3 thingamabobs' main quest of Grime II was when I was mopping up the collectibles in the starting locations. But, the locations are winding and interconnected so exploration is most certainly not boring.

The fast travel is a bit of a mess, there are techically Nervepasses but they have weird placement (shoutout to that one Nervepass from Lithic), there's not a lot of them and checkpoint teleporting that is for some reason hidden behind a hard optional boss is far better.

I've also found a lot of one-use items I always proceeded to ignore, maybe there is some utility for them in the NG+ but as a non-completionist I almost forgot they exist.

The map of a location is hidden until you find it's respective Beacon. I don't have an issue with it personally but I understand why people hate it. Although Grime II improved this system because it showed you the general outline of the part of the location you've already explored so it's easier to know whether you're walking around in circles or treading new ground. Also in Grime I map is uncovered by chunks, not in an area around the player like in Grime II, which I actually liked more because it made spotting unvisited entrances more convenient.

The combat feels as good as in Grime II, you have to learn which attacks you need to dash through, parry, interrupt with pulling, where you can perform a full combo, cool stuff. At first I hated the stamina, but even if I would prefer to not have it, it did make me play different like stopping sometimes to get dash privileges if I see that a boss is going to do an unparriable attack.

The platforming is less diverse and there is less of it in general (I've heard about a White Palace equivalent though) than in Grime II but I've enjoyed it.

Fall damage can fuck right off. Before the >!float !<ability it constantly made me stop, look down and then ponder whether I will recieve fall damage or not, thank god it's gone in the sequel.

To sum up, a competent A tier metroidvania whose formula was refined to perfection by it's sequel, great job Clover Bite!

After enjoying the hell out of Grime II, Rusted Moss and MIO's platforming sections and seeing all the praise for Before I Go's platforming I bought it.

The first stretch of the game doesn't have a lot of platforming because you don't have the neccesary abilities so there was nothing to distract me from how bad the combat was.

In other even non-combat oriented Metroidvanias bosses were usually a nice breather from the exploration and the most thoughtful fights, but that's not true in Before I Go. Half of the bosses are static and just spew projectiles at you to the point you can consider them walls instead of actual enemies. Luckily the runbacks are short and there's not a lot of them.

Enemies are exhausting to fight because of how often you need to spam X to kill them. You either don't notice them, or they block your path and then you go back and forth to shoot them 2-3 times and return to cover (or just kill the enemy from a distance so it doesn't notice you, basically the same thing). The little amount of HP you have at the beginning is also not enough to ignore the annoying combat (plus the enemies can push you into spikes). The problem is partially solved by the HP accumulating faster (you need to collect only 2 HP shards to get an additional HP) and the charge shot which kills most of the enemies in 1-2 hits and is way more fun to use, should've been the primary weapon tbh.

There are also magic spells I never used at all and a charm system for some reason.

That soured my first impression of the game, but when you do get the neccesary abilities platforming becomes actually fun, there are quite a lot of mechanics to juggle for such a short game (my savefile says my playthrough took 6 hours and I got 80% of collectibles). With each Dreamer (using HK terminology) killed a new orb type is opened which shakes up the platforming and makes finding them more rewarding.

The exploration is good, you frequently open shortcuts and loop around to the primary backtracking grounds; there were several cases of me entering a different chunk of a location i've already been to from an another location and then connecting them through a shortcut, really cool. Want to mention the absolute lack of handholding as well, there are no quest hints or goal markers on the map.

I would've put it in A tier because the platforming was genuinely fun but the combat gave me a (literal) headache in my first play session, so B tier in my tierlist.