[Indie] CrossCode - Throwing Balls in a 2D Action RPG!

[Roguey]

However, the other sidequests (defending a tree against a wave of enemies, fighting against multiple waves in the pit) are even more obnoxious and physically demanding. If it's this demanding now, I suppose it's just going to keep getting worse. I'm too old for this.

I lied. Turns out the one sidequest I didn't bother with (the mole boss) was doable, and killing him gave me another decent weapon that made the other two easy enough to beat. Now it's smooth sailing again so I guess I'm going to keep it at.

 

[Kruno]

Are you bad at games Roguey?

 

[Achiman]

Ok, so I have Moonlighter still to play that is another indie darling. Is this worth pushing to the front of the queue over that?

 

[Damned Registrations]

I've heard mostly bad things about moonlighter, not sure it's an indie darling. By all accounts it got rushed out and has no depth to it's various systems.

 

[Siveon]

I've heard mostly bad things about moonlighter, not sure it's an indie darling. By all accounts it got rushed out and has no depth to it's various systems.

Yes. I've seen it being described as a bad combination of Binding of Isaac and Reccetear, and personally I'd rather play roguelites (if at all) with good gameplay rather than just Link to the Past-lite.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i have huge issues with this game:

- lots of platforming. not a problem per se, but it is in an isometric game where there's little to no way to understand what's taller than what.
- vague, absent or wrong directions. "find x on map y". there's no y, not even on the map (readily accessible after tab-click-click. so comfy!).
- maps are labyrinths, more often than not you spot a treasure with no way to reach it, then you backtrack all the needed jumps across the map, to the other side where you find the access.
- keyboard and mouse is literally painful, the amount and frequency of clicks needed for every fight is huge and brings pain to my wrist. and damn, i could jerk off all day.
- slow, extremely slow, almost frozen down pace, an incredibly long tutorial, then another tutorial, then the same tutorial again.
- oh god the uesless dialogues. please make it stop. i click more furiously during dialogues than during fights.
- grind. there seems to be a frightening amount of it, starting from almost every quest which asks the usual mmo fare. i know, i know, but still...

 

[Damned Registrations]

-You can tell if something is taller than you by aiming a sphere at it
-You can skip all the dialogue
-The xp scaling strongly discourages grinding and levels aren't worth much anyways. The game is about on par with dark souls in terms of technique eclipsing stats. And enemies don't even aggro on you, so you can completely ignore them if you're not in the mood for fighting.
-All the directions have been fine so far, often too specific to the point that it's hardly worth making you 'find' it.
- I like the little platforming puzzles to reach chests and hidden areas, but if you don't, skip them.

 

[Roguey]

Completed the temple mine. It had some fun puzzles, but also a lot of obnoxious platforming and nigh-perfect-timing elements. :\ Still going to keep at it but this is certainly something I'll never replay.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The next dungeon was another notch up in difficulty, and after beating it I'm encountering some shot puzzles I honestly can't solve. I'd suspect it was a bug if the game weren't so polished and tested. And the bosses are getting pretty mean, I lost the second duel 1-5 after winning the first one 5-0 and I lost the race in the second dungeon as well. I like it, but if your rickety old hands can't handle the temple mine, you might be SOL before the game ends.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, I'm in the heat temple and feeling the urge to give up again. Trial and error "be in exactly the right spot and aim in exactly the right direction" puzzles that I don't enjoy at all, plus now they've started putting time constraints on them. This has been in early access since 2015, which is wrong with the playerbase?

 

[Siveon]

Too much RPGs, not enough action games.

 

[Damned Registrations]

So I finished this off a few days ago. Difficulty actually levelled off after getting the 2nd element, aside from the very last puzzle in the game (which was insane) and the very last boss which was beyond insane... his phases had phases. Dozens of attacks. Took forever. There's a checkpoint halfway through and you'll need it for sure. Felt very satisfying though. I actually had to give up on it because I noticed it was about 5 hours later than I'd intended to stay awake for.

Loved the game so much I left a gushing review of it on Steam, which is something I've never done before. Often the rewards for finishing a quest or puzzle or finding a secret feel a little underwhelming, but there were a few nice rewards as well. Didn't even get close to 100% completion. There's a part near the end of the game where you can trade in the best hidden item in each area for a sort of key that unlocks a hardmode version of it- I found like 2 of 8, and one of those was basically a freebie. I wasn't scouring every last item intentionally, but if I saw an item or path I'd give it a solid try to reach it.

Game's combat is amazing as you get further in and unlock more abilities. You can specialize in all sorts of ways, and the different attacks really do have a lot of variety. It's not like 4 elemental versions of the same shit; as an example, the charged guarding abilties- the fire one counters an attack with a fuckoff huge laser that knocks an enemy back, does a ton of damage and burning status, and has a decent aoe along that line. The frost version freezes the enemy solid and does a chunk of damage, but has no AoE at all and only works vs melee. The wave version doesn't counter at all, but heals you for the damage you would have taken instead, and the lightning version also doesn't counter, but slows time for about 5 seconds. And those are just the level 1 versions. Theres 2 more levels to those, and alternate buff/aura versions of them at each level, and that's just for the guard type skills. Repeat for the melee, ranged, and dashing skills. Shit is bonkers. I get the feeling people will be figuring out new ways to speedrun this shit for years.

My main gripe would be that some of the timed puzzles are too strict in specific sections, and some of the ricochet ones as well. Though I might have been doing some of those wrong, because some definitely have alternate ways to solve them.

Also, the setting for the game being a game is brilliant, it lets them handwave a lot of stupid shit like NPC behaviour and arbitrary monsters and gamey world design while still getting a serious plot going on in the background.

 

[Merlkir]

I got this a few days ago and at first it was a big surprise. Game felt almost like Cave Story, very polished and solid.
I enjoyed the tutorial a lot, the puzzles were actually fun and doable (rare for me), but once the game "opened up", I was a bit disappointed.

So for an open world the layout seems very linear and restricted. And really, will this whole game feel like a generic shitty MMORPGUR?! I hate how incredibly busy everything is. I might be slightly brain damaged, but I'm definitely getting sensory overload from all the not-people running around, the map design (oh god, the different height levels where it's not immediately clear where I can climb onto!!!) and the respawning trash mobs!

Grrr, it seemed so cool, but after an hour of hunting hedgehogs I'm not sure I wanna continue...

 

[Roguey]

So for an open world

It isn't.

And really, will this whole game feel like a generic shitty MMORPGUR?!

Yes.

I'm definitely getting sensory overload from all the not-people running around

They're actually good to have around because paying attention to where they're going helps you make not-quite-obvious jumps and such.

the respawning trash mobs

Nothing in the beginning areas will aggro without you attacking first, so you can/should just run past them after fighting them the first time, unless you're giving in to the "grind items to get better loot to make things easier" scam.

 

[Lutte]

You can run from most things even when they do aggro as long as it's not one of those one time encounters where you're walled until you kill stuff, and as long as you don't need to stay in the area and can move onto the next one once you reach the point where you get things like the snowmen. Don't bother killing that shiet unless you need to spend a sizable amount of time on the map or need to do something like talking to npc. What makes this game shine best is the set pieces, not the more open areas roaming mobs.
And yeah, the weapon crafting system feels like it exists just for the sake of checking all the MMO flavorbox. It's not necessary, you find gear that is good enough to carry you through exploration and occasional quest rewards. I still haven't gotten a uniquely good chest armor piece so I've been buying them from the armor vendors whenever I gain access to a new area/settlement. Game gives you enough money for that and then some.

You don't play this game for an open world experience or for grinding on trash mobs. You play this for the wonderfully tuned combat encounters and dungeon puzzles. If you ever do too little damage to something try to experiment with different sort of attacks and angles or even just stopping and observing, because even with subpar gear you'll still do a sizable amount of damage to enemies when you get them in a weakened state, which can require anything from charging a shot and hitting at the exact right time to break their guard to using the right element to break a shield to many other things. Some encounters have obscure mechanics, like a certain enemy at a certain point in game (not going to spoil the nature of it) summons other enemies, and you need to get those summoned things into their break point -after they charged a certain attack- and get them close to the summoner to weaken the summoner. If you just mash button until stuff dies you will kill the summoned things and end up with an infinite loop with the summoner summoning new things while being impervious to 90% of your damage. And this is just a common enemy of that later map, present both in the open without hostility and as mandatory one-time encounters when you're walled during some puzzle sequences. The game only becomes wilder with mechanics as you progress, just randomly mashing attacks on something's face doesn't cut it.

 

[pakoito]

I'm trying to like it but it doesn't seem to respect my time. I want to advance the story and get into the first temple, instead I have to do some FEDEX side-quests and grind trash mobs to have enough levels not to get three-shotted by bosses.

That and I suck, I don't play that many videogames anymore

 

[Roguey]

I'm trying to like it but it doesn't seem to respect my time. I want to advance the story and get into the first temple, instead I have to do some FEDEX side-quests and grind trash mobs to have enough levels not to get three-shotted by bosses.

As noted earlier, equipment is far more valuable than levels. Even the stock stuff you don't need to barter items for is better than nothing. But if you can't make it through the first dungeon with that, you're in for a world of pain because it never gets easier, only gets harder.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If the boss in question you're having trouble with is the mole or hedgehog, you might want to leave them for later. I wouldn't describe them as hard bosses in the scheme of things, but you definitely have access to them way before you've had much familiarity with the combat. The hedgehog boss in particular is a cunt if you don't have a party member, as his overhead attack is unblockable and quite hard to dodge.

 

[pakoito]

I'm trying to like it but it doesn't seem to respect my time. I want to advance the story and get into the first temple, instead I have to do some FEDEX side-quests and grind trash mobs to have enough levels not to get three-shotted by bosses.

As noted earlier, equipment is far more valuable than levels. Even the stock stuff you don't need to barter items for is better than nothing. But if you can't make it through the first dungeon with that, you're in for a world of pain because it never gets easier, only gets harder.

I was running around on noob equipment, so maybe this was my problem

 

[Damned Registrations]

You might also be tempted to grind out a bunch of enemies (or plants) for some 'gather 5 pelts' kind of quest later on, or to trade for some item. Don't bother- you can definitely get those rare materials from chests instead if you explore thoroughly, and 95% of the hidden/hard to reach chests don't require any skill, just careful observation.

I won't say the game is easy, but it does generally respect your time and keeps the grind entirely optional. The xp you get from both enemies and quests is scaled to your level, so just fighting the mandatory enemies in the dungeons will keep your level in a decent range since if you're too far behind you'll be getting like 1/3 of a level from a single kill. If you're a completionist you'll definitely be overlevelled and getting basically no xp from kills.

Also, the quests get better later on. Less 'kill 9 foozles' and more 'go here and complete this tiny dungeon' or 'do this weird minigame'. You still get a fair number of 'collect some crap for me' but as mentioned, you can complete those just by finding chests so I'd just ignore them and assume I'll stumble into the items sooner or later.

 

[pakoito]

I gave it a second chance and y'all were right. It's an awesome game, and it does respect my time. I just had to get over the first difficulty hump and I've been cruising since.

I'm 10 hours in and on my way to the second temple after opening all the secret paths in the desert. Everything feels really well crafted, although I hope not all dungeon puzzles are sokoban.

 

[Shaewaroz]

Very interesting throwback SNES style game. I just finished the tutorial, so far everything has been great.

 

[Jenkem]

just noticed this game got cards and achievements.. It's been in my library since it first came out in Early Access (some store had a price error)

Is it worth playing or really as grindy as people are saying? I'll probably load it up and play enough to get the cards anyways

 

[pakoito]

It's not grindy, that was my mistake.

 

[Lutte]

play enough to get the cards anyways