Nintentard's thread

[rabidtictac]

I remember playing Dawn of Sorrow and I could never figure out why I didn't like it. I finished all modes in Aria with max completion iirc, but I couldn't complete a single playthrough of Dawn. I just didn't click with the game. The retarded touch screen runes didn't help, but maybe the slower speed was another factor. I do recall the weapons in Dawn were obnoxiously slow.

It's not that I think Dawn is a complete pile of shit, but I found the game strangely dull. I've tried a couple times to get into the game, and always ended up dropping it. The change in art direction was also off-putting after the magnificent art design found in Circle of the Moon and Aria of Sorrow. Circle has very stiff controls and it's quite difficult, but I had a good time playing regardless. I have fond memories of squinting at the non-backlit gayboy advance screen.

[ban]

Even the fucking katana was obnoxiously slow because you had to wait for Souma to do "le cool, ebin katana reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-seething *dibs bedora*" despite the actual attack animations being super fast and due to the re-seathing animations, the attack felt slow due to forced lag and it was fucking shit. It didn't help that even with the Double Soul(hahahahaha DS, geddit) you couldn't completely mitigate the animation commitement. The touch screen runes were fucking cancer and Julius mode having them just be decorative for show was a blessing. Speaking of Julius, that nigger was super strong and fast as fuck in Aria and yet he's so gimped at Dawn that it's utterly disgusting. Even his bullshit switching character with Yoko "I'm turning japanese" Fernandez and Alucard and their abilities wasn't enough to speed up gameplay in any way.

As for being dull, the castle is a rehash, the enemies are a rehash except strangelly lobotomized save for a few bosses, along with more lethargic movement except for those new bosses, fancy that. The layers and interconnected nature of the castle felt strangely constricting yet the moment it opens up it's...whatever, no sense of coolness like Aria's pathways and the cool ways to fast travel using your movement abilities. The extremely slow leveling process also doesn't help at all, which made the game even more of a slog. I can casually reach level 70 before facing motherfucking Chaos in Aria but reaching that russian bitch and his ukranian whore before turning into Skeletor? Oh, I have to grind to reach 40 and I'm still 10 levels underleveled according to the game.

It's a shame since the game had some very neat ideas, like using Souls for weapon leveling, weapon branching, weapon forms etc and it synergized well with the kind of gameplay style one would like, incentivising multiple playthroughs. Cool beans. Also, not only did it carry over the secret mechanic of "more Souls = more power" and it displayed the power levels one could achieve(9, 7, 5, 3) it also made it more obvious that a lot more Souls can synergize and thanks to the Double Soul gimmick, you could make many builds you could switch into and decimate foes. But then, the game slaps you by not allowing you to have enough MP, raises the cost of MP for select Souls, it becomes almost impossible to auire Souls even compared to Aria's fairly stingy Soul rate(without the Soul Ring and the Reaper's Scythe) but Dawn doesn't even give you tools to farm them any easier, the Souls are fucking gimped compared to Aria, the power levels are useless since you don't grow nowhere near as strong as you were in Aria nor do the Souls pack the punch at any point in the game, even at full Soul quantity, due to your stats being pathetic in the first place. Not only that, due to the animation commitment it's often a bitch to do cool combos with the various souls. Oh and for the weapons? Forget it, even if the final forms / branches of some weapons need some useless boss souls, good fucking luck finding the rest of them needed to forge everything before that. What a shitshow.

Circle of the Moon was breddy good though. Its only problems are the very stiff controls that are a product of its age, something that can be easily smoothed out in re-releases.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Circle of the Moon had some wonkiness in the damage formula. You almost always want to equip stuff that boosts your STR because beating your target's DEF by a lot increases your damage like exponentially.

Ritual of the Night almos lets you go fast with the dash attack you can learn for spear weapons. Even then you're still fucked if you have to jump a lot.

I assume you mean the metroidvania one and not the Curse games made by inti creates. I played blaster master zero not too long ago and thought that one was breddy gudd.

Blaster Master Zero 2 is also breddy gudd. Quality waifus, and the Zelda-style dungeons can actually be challenging this time around.

[ban]

Blaster Faster 3 is also breddy gud, the isometric on-foot segments are much better this time around and the fast action is pretty nice.

Blaster Master Zero 2 is also breddy gudd. Quality waifus, and the Zelda-style dungeons can actually be challenging this time around.

Come one Voice, we all know who you mean and how much you wanted to plant your seed inbetween her melons.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Guilty as charged

Also apparently you know have a jetpack if you leave the tank, which sounds amazing because in the previous games you died instantly if you fell even a single pixel too far.

[ban]

Yeah, in 3 you can have some small 2D platform segments as Jason with a jetpack to unlock shortcuts mostly and crawl through vents for secrets, otherwise you just use him for the isometric segments. It's a neat idea, reminds me of the 'Vania transforming secrets and the Megaman ZX human-only sidequests and hidden life extenders.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

You usually never leave the tank as Jason unless you had to in order to progress. The only time I did it willingly was early on in the first game because of mutant maggots that were too small to be shot at with the tank.

They may potentially have also borrowed stuff from earlier DLC characters. This Not-Protoman from Gunvolt wrecked enough shit that you didn't actually need the tank with him.

[ban]

In 3 there are optional Jason dungeons so he gets out more often, his arsenal has expanded to mirror that. I guess the application of DLC character lessons to a non-DLC character is spot on as well, given that as of now, they won't be doing DLC characters. Not even the Edjason rival guy, which is ok in my book, Jason's new suit looks cooler anyway. Straight out of a Level 5 mecha exhibition.

[mad bum]

You do get a speed option really late in the game though.

[Kugelfisch]

I don't care. It should be in the basic movement.
It's also part of the reason that I don't like Blasphemous. Waaaaaay too slow.

They should all look at Dead Cells. Fast, fluent movement. It's a dream to play and that's a large part of its success.