Author Topic: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch  (Read 19244 times)

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Offline M.K.Ultra

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #25 on: October 27, 2022, 01:22:07 PM »
Well I finally completed Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts last night. The second run with the goddess bracelet was much more difficult than using the homing crossbow. The weapon you are wielding really makes a difference in the game. At first I thought the different armor suits had no effect on the goddess bracelet's power since there is no special attach with the gold suit. Once I started battling the harder bosses I realized that they make the attacks more powerful and increase the range. I stuck with only using save states between stages, but did not force myself to get a perfect run (i.e., not get hit). On stages 6 and 7 it took me many tries to get through the whole level without dying. I actually created a save state right before Nebiroth (boss of stage 7) and once I beat the whole game, went back to clear stage 7 without saving in the middle. I thought the final boss fight with Sardius was actually quite easy and managed to get it on the second try. I felt great to clear this game as I had always dreamed at getting gud with it when I was a kid.



Offline Luigi Dude

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #26 on: October 28, 2022, 03:44:50 PM »
Blasphemous

Well this game fits this theme pretty well.  It's one of those indie Souls inspired Metroidvania games, so of course it's filled with creepy and grim dark imagery all around.  The pixel art and sprites look great so the presentation is top notch.  That was one of the reasons I had had my eye on this game for quite a while.  I finally played and beat it earlier this month, and for the most part it was pretty fun, but it does suffer from some annoying flaws that keep it from being truly great.

The biggest problem is despite it being a Metroidvania, you don't really gain any new abilities that change the gameplay and how you move.  Yeah there's some new attacks you can unlock but there's nothing like what an actual Metroid or IGA Castlevania give you in terms of increasing your mobility, which makes the backtracking in the second half of the game very tedious.  The gameplay also feels very repetitive in the second half as well since because of the lack of new gameplay abilities, nothing really spices up the core gameplay like other Metroidvania games will do all throughout.

The combat for the most part was pretty fun, but once again it would have been nice if they gave you more options.  The Dash attack you unlock it very useful, but the charge and downward strike you unlock are almost pointless since the charge time on both of them ends up leaving you open to attacks more often then not.  It also sucks that even when you upgrade your swords attack power, even some of the most basic enemies at the early parts of the game stick take several hits to kill.  This once again makes backtracking tedious since you cant just easily dispose of most enemies when going back to old area's.

Speaking of the difficulty, the game starts out pretty challenging but gets much easier in the second half.  It's kind of weird because some of the earlier bosses you fights love to shoot a lot of **** at you from all over the screen, but then the later bosses have simpler patterns that are easier to avoid.  It almost feels like the developers switched around the bosses and accidentally put the harder ones in the first half and the easier in the second.  Of course if you're trying to get the True Ending, there are 2 optional bosses that you'll need to beat that are pretty challenging, and if you do that, it makes the 2nd to last boss much more challenging as well.  Plus if you play the game on New Game +, there are 5 new optional bosses the game adds which were a nice challenge as well.

Oh, and anyone that wants to see the True Ending needs to use a guide.  The requirements are pretty much impossible to find on your own, and require you talking to a certain character before you fight a certain boss halfway through the game, or else you'll be completely locked out of that ending.  Also use a guide since the game does have things you can unlock that helps make traveling less tedious that the main game either does a terrible job at hinting at, or outright doesn't even tell you about.  This is why my second playthrough on NG + was way more enjoyable then my first, since I was able to cut down on a lot of the really tedious and boring stuff that trying to play blind in my first playthrough was filled with.

So overall it was a good game, that had the potential to be great.  I hear the developer is working on a sequel, so I look forward to seeing how they improve on this.
I’m gonna have you play every inch of this game! - Masahiro Sakurai

Offline M.K.Ultra

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #27 on: October 29, 2022, 01:10:06 PM »
Blasphemous

Well this game fits this theme pretty well.  It's one of those indie Souls inspired Metroidvania games, so of course it's filled with creepy and grim dark imagery all around. 

The biggest problem is despite it being a Metroidvania, you don't really gain any new abilities that change the gameplay and how you move.  Yeah there's some new attacks you can unlock but there's nothing like what an actual Metroid or IGA Castlevania give you in terms of increasing your mobility, which makes the backtracking in the second half of the game very tedious. 

This makes me wonder what your favorite Metroidvania is (not counting Metroid or Castlevania games)?

Offline Mop it up

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #28 on: October 29, 2022, 02:02:31 PM »
If it counts, I played through Kid Dracula on the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. A curious little oddity that released only in Japan before this, I guess this is a sort of prequel / origin story for Castlevania? It's fairly short with nine levels, and not particularly difficult until the final stage. The general gameplay reminded me more of Mega Man, with a similar stiff jump and "firing" three shots at a time, though at least Kid Dracula can aim *gasp* upwards! It starts out in a typical Castlevania-style stage, but diverges from there with other locales like a city, sky, temple, ship, etc. Hearing an upbeat version of the classic Castlevania theme is a bit surreal.

Offline Luigi Dude

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #29 on: October 29, 2022, 05:31:54 PM »
This makes me wonder what your favorite Metroidvania is (not counting Metroid or Castlevania games)?

Well my favorite non-Metroid or Castlevania game that could still be considered a Metroidvania would be Wario Land 3.  I mean it's got Wario unlocking new abilities to use to help access new area's in the games levels that are quite large and filled with multiple treasures to find in each one.  Yeah it isn't one giant interconnected world, but it's got everything else that can be considered a Metroidvania, even if it's a more platformer focused Metroidvania.  But still, the amount of gameplay variety in the game is insane and pulls off what it's trying to do very well.

Of course Wario Land 3 is not the most fair comparison since it's more of a platformer Metroidvania hybrid.  For a game that would be more comparable to the traditional Metroidvania's that focus more on action, I'd have to go with Shantae and the Pirates Curse.  It does the best job out of any non Metroid/Castlevania Metroidvania to incorporate new abilities into your moveset that not only help change the gameplay up, but make backtracking much smoother as well.

For some games that are more recent, I do think Monster Boy and the Curse Kingdom and Hollow Knight are also truly great Metroidvania style games.  My only problem with both of them is they have slow intro sections that go on longer then this type of game should and have other parts later in the game that drag on longer as well.  Other then that, they're both solid titles with a lot of great moments and gameplay variety.
I’m gonna have you play every inch of this game! - Masahiro Sakurai

Offline broodwars

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #30 on: October 29, 2022, 06:59:22 PM »
Been playing a handful of "horror"-adjacent games before and since finishing Infernax (which, btw, I don't recommend after having finished it a few times. It definitely has a weak/bullshit last 1/3). Just to summarize...

Shin Megami Tensei 5 - Been playing this off an on for months. To be frank, this game should be on a better console, because it's downright pathetic how poorly it runs on the Switch. That aside, I've been all over the place with this game. IMO, the game has a severe difficulty balancing problem, as the 1st area is WAY too punishing considering for many this will be their first experience with the (bad) mainline SMT series. I came very close to quitting the game after my 20th time of being one-shot by a death spell in that 1st area. If you CAN push past that first area, though, the game kinda gives up and just lets you walk all over it until you reach the final area of the game, where it spikes right back up again.

I'm currently in that final area, Taito, currently trying to find where the game expects you to go since it just dumps you in a giant area full of demons 20 levels higher than your party and says "do whatever."

Inscryption - Highly recommended, but the 1st act is by far the best part of the game. The 2nd act just downright sucks, and the 3rd act tries to get back to what the 1st act did but isn't as interesting.

Shadow Warrior 3 - It's Doom Eternal, but for people who don't appreciate the strategy of that game's combat. There are maybe 2 enemies in the entire game you need some sort of strategy to take out. The rest are just "shoot your biggest gun at them until they die", which led to me becoming really bored with the combat by the end. I really wanted to like the platforming, but I found wall running in particular to be very buggy. There are sequences in that game where I just couldn't get the wall run to trigger for the life of me, and I had to find a way to glitch through it.

Resident Evil Village (DLC + main game replay) - The DLC is alright, but it's not worth the $20 asking price nor the 1.5 years of development time it took the devs to create it. It's almost entirely re-used environments, the enemies are pure bullet sponges, and there just isn't a particularly interesting hook to it.

I'm currently doing my 1st replay of the main game, as I only ever played it once before.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2022, 07:01:23 PM by broodwars »
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Offline M.K.Ultra

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #31 on: October 30, 2022, 12:08:49 PM »

I'm currently in that final area, Taito, currently trying to find where the game expects you to go since it just dumps you in a giant area full of demons 20 levels higher than your party and says "do whatever."


I remember Taito having a difficulty spike. I had done every single side quest and thought I was overpowered until I went there where I just barely made it through.

Offline M.K.Ultra

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #32 on: October 30, 2022, 12:42:52 PM »
Well I rolled credits on Alien Isolation on PS4 (for the second time). This was supposed to be a "no deaths" run. Obviously I am not going to complete the game without dying, even on the easiest difficulty. So it was really a matter of playing the save system to create a death free run. The problem is that there are only two save states, current save and previous save. Based on what I read online, if I just picked previous save each time I died I would be okay. I think where I ran into trouble is I would die, load previous save and then die again before saving again. This means the current save from before the first death becomes the previous save, since the game does not keep an earlier third save. Now there are mission saves which maybe what you have to load in that situation, but it happened enough that the prospect of restarting a mission ~1-2 hours each time that would happen does not sound appealing. Long story short, I did not get the trophy for no deaths. Ironically, I did get the one for being killed 100 times by the alien. I also got all the ID tags and Nostromo logs so future runs won't be bogged down with collectible hunting. I still plan to play again on the hardest difficult setting next time. We will see if my PS4 is still working for a fourth run to get the no deaths done right.

Offline M.K.Ultra

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #33 on: October 31, 2022, 10:19:30 AM »
Happy Halloween NWR

Offline Luigi Dude

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #34 on: November 01, 2022, 01:28:57 PM »
The last 2 weeks I played through the Castlevania Advanced Collection again.  I play the 3 GBA games on it earlier this year, but stopped after completing the normal modes on each one.  Now I came back to do some of the more advanced modes.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon


Finally played Magician mode that gives you all the cards from the start.  This is basically speedrun mode since having some of the cards the late game enemies drop lets you just rush though the game.  No seriously, one of the abilities makes your body unable to be injured and lets you just run though all the enemies.  Now you wont get any experience from them, but it doesn't matter since when you fight the bosses, you can just spam the Thunderbird summon to cheese all the bosses and the experience they give you will easily catch you up.  When I beat Dracula, my overall level was only a few levels lower then my normal playthrough, despite being several hours less.

Then I did Fighter mode, and this mode is basically easy mode.  Your whip attack is buffed up so much, most enemies die in a few hits, and your defense is so high can take a ton of damage now.  Plus even though it's called Fighter mode, the Cross item also has it's attack power buffed up and just destroys bosses.  Seriously, the bosses in Fighter mode died faster with spamming the Cross item then the bosses in Magician mode did by spamming the Thunderbird summon.  I also didn't die in any of the bosses except for my first time in the Dracula fight, while in Magician mode I still died several time in some of the bosses including several times against Dracula, since Magician mode nerfs your defense a lot so if you do Thunderbird at the wrong time, the boss could kill you once you lose the invincibility frames.  Fighter mode on the other hand you can just stand next to the bosses and keep spamming Cross, and if you get hit it wont really matter since your defense is so high you can afford to take the hits since the bosses will be dead before they even have a change to kill you.  The only boss that can still kill you in this mode is Dracula since if you don't time you jumps and Cross throws right, the bats that circle the eye can still catch you off guard like they did my first time, but the second time I was ready and easily got it.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow


This is my first time playing Soma Hard Mode.  Well it certainly makes the game up until the Death boss fight harder.  Had to be more careful in during this time since enemies and bosses take more damage and cause it.  After the Death boss fight though, you can then gain access so some of the best weapons and armor in the game and at this point have plenty of money to buy lots of potions at the shop, so the second half isn't really that much harder then normal mode.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance


Did this games Hard mode as well and it's pretty much the same situation as Aria.  The first half of the game is noticeable harder then the normal game, but the second half isn't really that much different.  I still have to wonder how the developers didn't notice how cheap potions cost at the shop and didn't even try to put a limit on how many could be bought.  I guess if you do a Hardmode run and refuse to buy potions from the shop, it would be a pretty challenging game the whole way through.  Of course the fight with Maxim at the end is such cheap BS, that the game is pretty much encouraging you to buy potions.  The fact the Maxim fight is the one boss fight that's not in the Boss Rush mode shows you even the devs realized how terrible that thing was, and took it out since it would have made Boss Rush mode impossible had it remained in.


So yeah, that's it for the GBA Castlevania games.  I'll eventually do Sniper and Thief mode in Circle of the Moon, as well as Julius Hardmode and Maxim mode in their respective games.  But right now I'm burnt out on Metroidvania's.
I’m gonna have you play every inch of this game! - Masahiro Sakurai

Offline Adrock

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Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch
« Reply #35 on: November 01, 2022, 07:02:55 PM »
How do y'all finish these games so quickly? I have three dungeons left in Spirit Tracks. I recently got past the point I reached on my initial 2009 attempt.