leviathan game mode

[Hookworm]

Without the very basic features: dash, slaughter its so good like wiping @ss with a cactus. I dont understand why devs do everything to ruin a great idea to extend the game. rip endgame content

[Shin]

The idea is for you to try enough times to buy these skills and make them permanent.
But these first tries are god awful to play. And you earn those ability points SOOOO slowly.
I really wished they re-balanced this mode. I really wanted to play it but i just rather try to 100% the rest of the game instead :(

[Hookworm]

Yeah, i got the 100% as well, then tried this leviathan. I simply didnt feel the urge to spam the runs to unlock these very basic features.

[CAPRA KID]

Originally posted by Shin:

But these first tries are god awful to play. And you earn those ability points SOOOO slowly.

Originally posted by Hookworm:

I simply didnt feel the urge to spam the runs to unlock these very basic features.

As someone who did grind out both the dash and slaughter, I can assure you made the right decision to stop. There's so much more wrong with the mode, and it's so baffling because the idea of a post-game wave-based mode for this game sounds impossible to fumble.

The thing that pisses me off just as much as gating your basic dash & slaughter behind a grind is the fact that the weapons are temporary, split into subclasses & appear randomly as upgrades... amidst other choices, such as upgrades for said classes, which seems more than a bit odd to me. Do you want to upgrade your precision weapons, or do you want precision weapons? Teehee, just kidding... you might still get heavy or blade weapons instead. :^)

This is the one example where you can get away with letting the player character get super over-powered & it doesn't take the fun away, because of the rhythm, score, combos, etc... yet the balance for this mode treats a powerful player as a fail state. They had an infinite fun machine, powered by lightning in a bottle & we still somehow ended up with... this.

[BoD[6-4]]

I didn't like the Leviathan mode either. I just wanted a horde mode with no grind at all and no rng, just a "pick your weapons, choose a song and slay the enemies"... that's all I wanted

[Feuver]

The Leviathan mode could be great but as said here, there are some absolute head-scratching design decision here.

IMO, and first and foremost, you should not start a end-game grind DLC mode weaker than the start of the normal gamemode. No Dash, No Slaughter and No Guns does make the game harder, but in the "I can't engage with 60% of the game's intended mechanics" way. Can't heal because you can't execute enemies for HP, can't counter enemies with specific mechanic when you don't have the weapons BUILT to counter them, and you can't get out of trouble when some enemies are designed to catch up to you if you don't dash. Absolute headscratcher there.

Even worse, the fact that things like the Dash, Slaughter are tied to the RNG of the mode means you can reach boss waves without a dash or a slaughter mechanic, or even worse a gun. I can tell you, no game is worth bashing the angel boss that flies 15 feet above the map with a sword, until you inevitably die because again, you cannot DASH away.

Some options are even just straight up run-ender. DO NOT TAKE EXPLOSIVE ENEMIES.
For some reason (Every other game has enemy explosion hurt enemies only, it's a BOON not a debuff), the enemy explosions hurt you, and guess what? If you're fighting with a sword or the shotgun, you're going to take damage, lose combo, and even die.

It takes quite a while to even unlock the starter dash and slaughter. One of them is pure RNG (can take 3 runs, can take 15+) so you can unlock the dash. One of them is 150 void, which again, can take a long ass time of dead run because you run out of recovery. For the guns - it takes even more resources, and anyways the gun will decay after 4 waves, so better hope you unlock it again.

I just dunno. TONS of questionable choices in this DLC that doesn't make it feel like I'm power gaming, makes me feel like I'm ramming my head against a wall until I finally have a chance 30+ runs in.

[Feuver]

Originally posted by CAPRA KID:

As someone who did grind out both the dash and slaughter, I can assure you made the right decision to stop. There's so much more wrong with the mode, and it's so baffling because the idea of a post-game wave-based mode for this game sounds impossible to fumble.

The thing that pisses me off just as much as gating your basic dash & slaughter behind a grind is the fact that the weapons are temporary, split into subclasses & appear randomly as upgrades... amidst other choices, such as upgrades for said classes, which seems more than a bit odd to me. Do you want to upgrade your precision weapons, or do you want precision weapons? Teehee, just kidding... you might still get heavy or blade weapons instead. :^)

This is the one example where you can get away with letting the player character get super over-powered & it doesn't take the fun away, because of the rhythm, score, combos, etc... yet the balance for this mode treats a powerful player as a fail state. They had an infinite fun machine, powered by lightning in a bottle & we still somehow ended up with... this.

You're absolutely correct. Most roguelite games/endless gamemodes are not actually pure RNG. They will usually start offering you upgrades directly tied to your current upgrade set, by hidden or exposed mechanic. If you've got 3 explosive perks already, the game will tend to offer you more explosive perks (though not always, but it absolute feels amazing when you think you've hit jackpot RNG and got the big combo, when the game absolute cheats a little to give it to you.)

The worst part is that this gamemode allows you to add EVEN more rng options to the wave-upgrade menu... which means you will have even less chance of getting what you want. Some weapon upgrades DO give you more chance to get said gun... but it's a chance, and if you start slapping every sigil and boons in the rotation, god knows how much that would help...

[Socrates Jackson]

This might be the worst rogue-like mod/update I've ever seen. I say that as someone who absolutely adores this game. I've played it through multiple times and wanted an excuse to play it more, but Leviathan is just awful. The "upgrade" choices are useless (20% chance to do bleed damage with one kind of weapon. Or a slow effect. In a game based around killing enemies before they attack. Thanks...), unlocking literally anything useful is a pointless grind, and even after you do, it still sucks because Oops! You didn't get the right weapon! And some of the first enemies in Leviathan use AOE attacks in a confined area, ensuring your combos fall apart and your run ends early. It feels like they didn't even test this before release.

I'm glad they tried, and I hope they learn from it, but damn this was a disappointment.