Any good metroidvania recommendations?

[Dramart]

Castlevania Portrait of Ruin

 

[Momock]

No Astalon, no Castle in the Darkness 2 -> shit list.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Just looked up Astalon.... fuck that preview video. Like seriously, whoever marketed that needs a fucking knife in the gut. If you've got a good game, show gameplay, don't hide it in some distorted window in the background behind some fucking fanart. And don't make 90% of the footage screen freezing or flashing. And for the love of god why would you waste like a third of the video on credits nobody will recognize?

The game looked like it had potential from the ~5 seconds of it they actually showed.

 

[Momock]

Haha! That's true. The third trailer has less bullshit, and you actually see how you change character at the bonfires:

[/QUOTE]

And Matt Kap should be recognizable: he did Castle in the Darkness, one of the best five metroidvanias from the last 10 years.

 

[JDR13]

Really? Seemed bland to me. The light itself was obviously totally irrelevant and they didn't really show any interesting content, just whaling on a simple boss that doesn't move and the simple corridor leading up to him. Along with the old standby of 'you can't criticize our shitty art if it's too dark to see it LOL'

As a Dark Hunter you were dropped into a wreaked world. To survive, you need to equip yourself, fight through your way, collecting ‘shards’ from killing super nature creatures to reinforce your energy. Through surviving, you will explore the mysterious dark zones of the apocalypse world.

Yeah, I'll uh, pass on that thanks.

I wonder if you could be any more blatantly false with your description.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Really? Seemed bland to me. The light itself was obviously totally irrelevant and they didn't really show any interesting content, just whaling on a simple boss that doesn't move and the simple corridor leading up to him. Along with the old standby of 'you can't criticize our shitty art if it's too dark to see it LOL'

As a Dark Hunter you were dropped into a wreaked world. To survive, you need to equip yourself, fight through your way, collecting ‘shards’ from killing super nature creatures to reinforce your energy. Through surviving, you will explore the mysterious dark zones of the apocalypse world.

Yeah, I'll uh, pass on that thanks.

I wonder if you could be any more blatantly false with your description.

I suppose I could use sloppy engrish like the developers did to make things more confusing. You seem to like that.

 

[DraQ]

I don't really like animu stuff, but Bushiden seems to have rather nice oldschool art direction instead of just "HURR PIXERS!".
Recompile looks like very much not my thing but I must applaud that it knows what it wants to do with its visuals. It's rare.

I am mostly waiting for the new Ori there.
New HK possibly if I move HK out of my backlog and end up enjoying it.

 

[Grauken]

Recently played the first Ori and it's Definitive Edition back-to-back (the Definitive Edition really being definitive and an improvement) and Guacamelee! Gold Edition and the Super Turbo Championship Edition back-to-back, and while the later STC Edition has a bit more content, it's terribly integrated into the main game and really really fucks with the flow of the game, and some of the changes are definitely WTF territory. They even included a new mechanic which makes a lot of fights too easy, so they compensated with more and harder enemies at other points, but in a rather heavy-handed way. Thankfully the Gold Edition you can still be bought separately on both GOG and Steam, so if you plan on getting into the game, definitely go for that one over the other (as the new stuff isn't really worth it and makes the games inferior)

 

[DraQ]

I need to replay both Oris back to back.

 

[Grauken]

I was thinking about playing Will of the Wisps afterwards (same with Guacamelee 2), but I think I have a slight burnout at the moment and wouldn't appreciate the games as much as when I go into it in a few months

 

[Damned Registrations]

Playing Death's Gambit right now. It's definitely one of those 2D dark souls games like Salt and Sanctuary, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Artwork is good, it's very open (there's no real platforming upgrades or the like so most areas are open as soon as you reach the hub) the combat is great (lots of weapon types with active skills, good enemy variety, great bosses with optional refights that are WAY nastier, not just better stats) and it's got a lot of little secrets to find in each area. Level design is a bit bland, but not too bad. I accidentally sequence broke a good chunk of the game (like, half of it? More?) which resulted in some weird shit but it's still a danger to be in new areas, even though I'm overlevelled for them now. There's something weird going on with the dying mechanics too, and an option to play it out ironman, which is probably doable on a second playthrough if you're careful and good. You can even kill off friendly npcs and their corpses become part of the background.

 

[Grauken]

Which are the best exploration platformers you played from the past years? I don't have much experience with the genre, lately, but I am finishing Hollow Knight and this is what I liked and want more of:

1) Exploration with big areas and "backtracking";

2) Good combat challenges against bosses.

• Axiom Verge does 1) but definitely not 2)
• Salt and Sanctuary does exploration and combat, but it's not much of a metroidvania and doesn't really have backtracking that much
• A Robot Named Fight is pretty good at exploration and backtracking, considering it's a roguelike-like metroidvania, but the combat is more about getting a good build of abilities and weapons and knowing how to deal with enemies
• Environmental Station Alpha might apply, it does exploration and backtracking in good measure, it's pretty big and the game is hard (mostly the bosses though), but the graphics are, well, difficult to parse. It's retro to the point it's painful to look at sometimes
• An Untitled Story does 1) and 2) but the difficulty is more due to platforming than combat and the graphics are what you would expect from a freeware game, expressive but not great (download here http://www.mattmakesgames.com/)
• 2 is a game you probably never heard about, but it does 1) very well. Combat is very simple though. (you can get it here https://hubol.itch.io/2)

 

[Curratum]

Salt and Sanctuary and Bloodstained are the only ones I found worth playing to the end.

 

[Citizen]

Bros, recommend me something similar to the first Ori. I really loved the combination of secret hunting, platforming and puzzles and wanted to try more metroidivanias, but it seems like most of them are much more combat focused, while I'd love something closer to ori in terms of combat to puzzles ratio

 

[CryptRat]

I have not played Ori yet, do you only want that the challenge is more in the plateforming parts than in the boss fight parts or that there are no enemy or at least not many enemies during plateforming parts, or both?

 

[Citizen]

I have not played Ori yet, do you only want that the challenge is more in the plateforming parts than in the boss fight parts or that there are no enemy or at least not many enemies during plateforming phases, or both?

Less enemies and more challenging platforming puzzles instead of challenging combat and filler platforming

 

[CryptRat]

You may check Teslagrad.

 

[Citizen]

Thanks man, I'll look into it

 

[DraQ]

Bros, recommend me something similar to the first Ori. I really loved the combination of secret hunting, platforming and puzzles and wanted to try more metroidivanias, but it seems like most of them are much more combat focused, while I'd love something closer to ori in terms of combat to puzzles ratio

Uh, second Ori?
It's a bit more combat focused, but still pretty platforming-centric.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's been a long while, but 'an untitled story' fit that bill pretty well iirc.


It's free too.

Also I've never played it myself but I hear La Mulana (and the sequel? I think it has a sequel, not just a remake) is all about secret hunting.

 

[V_K]

Any more metroidvanias like Aquaria i.e. with no jumping?

 

[Grauken]

Any more metroidvanias like Aquaria i.e. with no jumping?

Flying astronaut btw. Space ship
- Hero Core
- Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
- forma.8

Submarines
- The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human
- Subbania

Puzzler with no jumping
- Full Bore

Pinball machine + metroidvania
- Yoku’s Island Express

 

[Momock]

Not really a metroidvania but in VVVVVV you explore an overworld freely and can tackle the zones in any order, and you don't jump (you invert gravity). In Knytt Underground you jump and climb in your humanoïd form but bounce around in your ball form. Toki Tori 2 isn't a metroidvania in the purest sense either since you don't gain habilities, only knowledge on how to solve the puzzles (think The Witness) and you can't jump, it's all puzzle oriented.

 

[Grauken]

Just finished Alwa's Awakening. Can't say I enjoyed it, it's really designed around trial by error: you try to get from one save point to next, learning exactly what you have to do to get through each screen on the way and often you die because you didn't time your jumps pixel perfect, etc. Lots and lots of redoing the same screens over and over. Your hitbox is slightly too large and you often bump into spikes at the top of some cavern (obviously put there to kill you) because you can't consistently pull of low jumps (or I couldn't). Oh yeah, some spikes kill you instantly (despite 3 HP), some not. There are a lot of walk-through fake walls and fall-through fake spikes. I realized later you can use the block building ability to test out fall-through stuff. 5 bosses, all pushovers when you figure out the spot where you're save from their attacks, and their patterns are really simplistic.

Also has a pretty boneheaded design decision, you get an item halfway into the game (a bottle for water) that allows you to basically double your HP, by replenishing it once your base 3 HP run out. But if you then die and respawn at your latest safe point, that bottle is empty and you have to find a well again to fill it up. Which means if you for whatever reason use up your bottle in a dungeon, most of the time there's no point going all the way back to a well. So most of the time you run around relying on the base 3 HP, making this upgrade more or less pointless.

Oh yeah, the walking speed is extremely slow, felt like walking through molasses. Overall, somewhat tedious experience with few redeeming qualities. The soundtrack is nice.

The sequel comes out tomorrow, and from the trailer shown at least the walking speed seems to have improved
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1205900/Alwas_Legacy/

 

[Lyre Mors]

Thanks for the review, Grauken . Would have surely bought this at some point I was in a Metroidvania slump, and would have surely been disappointed. Off the wishlist it goes!