The game just feels lifeless to me

[dondashall]

It's very hard to judge much of anything because of how lifeless everything seems. The game might as well take place in an empty room with wireframe models, all that you can judge is the movement. Everything else feels lifeless.

[Prippo]

bro explain "lifeless"? the pixel art is crisp and colorful, the combat systems are really cool... like what???

[Porko Rosso]

I get where OP's coming from but I can't put my finger one why the game feels like that exactly.

[nit3mar30]

Originally posted by Porko Rosso:

I get where OP's coming from but I can't put my finger one why the game feels like that exactly.

Probably because for many of the rooms, we are just traversing, there isnt any enemies to fight . At the same time, we are running through the place but in the background, it feels kinda static, there is any animals in the background.

Sure, u see clouds and stuff, but there isnt any life in there, just birds flying in the background to make the world feels more alive?

[solamon77]

Another reason why it feels like this is how drab the sound effects are. They are so small, slight, and tinny. It makes your character feel lifeless.

[RiggedQuarter]

Attacks feel stiff. Character feels ridiculously floaty. Why do I have to attack to land on a platform? Special inputs? Naw lets make the specials direction plus a button or just hold the button down. It's a shame because I really like the concept but this feels deeply flawed.

[dondashall]

Originally posted by RiggedQuarter:

Attacks feel stiff. Character feels ridiculously floaty. Why do I have to attack to land on a platform? Special inputs? Naw lets make the specials direction plus a button or just hold the button down. It's a shame because I really like the concept but this feels deeply flawed.

The directions + a button is a concept lifted from the Tales series, which is fine it's not a bad system, but It works there because it's a real-time RPG where you have A LOT of different special attacks to choose from so increasing the pool you can use in actual combat is a good idea and worth sacrificing a little bit of input delay. It's not really appropriate for a metroidvania where fast & accurate inputs is more a priority.

[RiggedQuarter]

Originally posted by dondashall:

Originally posted by RiggedQuarter:

Attacks feel stiff. Character feels ridiculously floaty. Why do I have to attack to land on a platform? Special inputs? Naw lets make the specials direction plus a button or just hold the button down. It's a shame because I really like the concept but this feels deeply flawed.

The directions + a button is a concept lifted from the Tales series, which is fine it's not a bad system, but It works there because it's a real-time RPG where you have A LOT of different special attacks to choose from so increasing the pool you can use in actual combat is a good idea and worth sacrificing a little bit of input delay. It's not really appropriate for a metroidvania where fast & accurate inputs is more a priority.

I think you might be forgetting Symphony Of The Night. There you had multiple buttons at once, fighting game inputs, and the different equipment/weapons to allow for all those extra special attacks. It's not the extra time it takes to perform the move I'm worried about. That comes down to timing and input execution. My issue is that it doesn't have any depth. I want it to be more complicated and facilitate even more of those specials. I don't want them to be an auto aimed lock on (at least not all of them) Fast and accurate inputs is on the player and should be incorporated into more titles. the system currently here feels like an accessibility option and not a fully realized input system.

[dondashall]

Originally posted by RiggedQuarter:

Originally posted by dondashall:

The directions + a button is a concept lifted from the Tales series, which is fine it's not a bad system, but It works there because it's a real-time RPG where you have A LOT of different special attacks to choose from so increasing the pool you can use in actual combat is a good idea and worth sacrificing a little bit of input delay. It's not really appropriate for a metroidvania where fast & accurate inputs is more a priority.

I think you might be forgetting Symphony Of The Night. There you had multiple buttons at once, fighting game inputs, and the different equipment/weapons to allow for all those extra special attacks. It's not the extra time it takes to perform the move I'm worried about. That comes down to timing and input execution. My issue is that it doesn't have any depth. I want it to be more complicated and facilitate even more of those specials. I don't want them to be an auto aimed lock on (at least not all of them) Fast and accurate inputs is on the player and should be incorporated into more titles. the system currently here feels like an accessibility option and not a fully realized input system.

No, just haven't played it. Never had a playstation growing up and my current speakers don't work well with emulating that game, I do want to give it a go when I get new ones though. Oh, now I see what you mean.

[Vizer]

lifeless is definitely a good word for it. for me, it's because there aren't enough enemies. in most games of this genre, the enemies are as much a part of the level design as the platforms and obstacles. you encounter enemies on nearly every screen

in this game, fights feel so few and far between. i want to keep practicinf and trying out my combat stuff, but i have to run around for 5 minutes to even find another room with enemies in jt

[MartinX]

Don't know what's up with the fan boys who are giving you clown awards. I've been playing Vernal Edge for about 5 hours now and even though I'm liking it overall (I'd say it's a 7/10 metroidvania so far), I can definitely understand what you mean by the game feeling "lifeless".

While going through some of the levels it almost seemed to me like they were left unfinished with how many empty rooms there are and how little happens between the arena fights. If at least there were some lore titbits/extra dialogue to find in those empty rooms I would be OK with it, but a lot of the time it just feels like I'm testing a beta-build of some of the levels.

[Supernatural Cookie]

I've not played a lot, but for me the biggest issue is the music. Its so.. barely there that it somehow sucks the life out of the game. Everywhere feels the same, a bit of a theme to each area in audio helps keep things to feel fresh. As is it feels like the game is just.. missing huge parts of it. Feels unfinished to me.

[Black Captain]

Definitely agree. The hero is bland. Npcs have lifeless dialog. There are 9 regular mobs in the entire game. So much of the maps have dead ends with nothing hidden and there are so few hidden rooms. The world map is action less hub with nothing to do. And the world doesn’t have personality. They did nothing with unreality. And the bloom attack is so lackluster and takes forever to build. I think I used it once after getting it because of how limited it was and it was weak. Granted, I played on hard, but still.

[Zelakon]

Agreed, and several of you have correctly identified the reason behind this; it's due to a lack of enemies during traversal.

To surmise how this happened, I'm fairly certain the devs originally had enough present, but feedback during beta-testing would've been that they disrupt the flow too much, due to how spongy they are; but rather than reducing enemy HP (which would've nerfed the difficulty of lock-in encounters too much), they reduced the number of these enemies instead.

[Ithurtswhen_ipee]

I actually prefer that not every single inch of the area is covered with monsters

[Mostbee]

It's not only the lack of enemies that displays the lifelessness of the game envyronment, but the way enemies are presented too.

Lore wise, in some dialogs it's mentioned animals, and the ship driver even says that there is a lot of enemies around. There's few exceptions, but we don't see almost any of them until they teleport to us (some even literally, like the church guards), we don't find them, they find us and lock us in an area where previously didn't had nothing to begin with.

The cities though, feels livid and populated with uninteractable characters on background, unreachable places, stuff in motion and working like windmills... why isn't there others lifelike this in other islands? It all feels and seems like abandoned places, consumed by growing plants, where no animals could actually survive the floating lands instead of certain species of birds, domesticated animals or whatever, and it would pretty much work and fit this atmosphere if it tried to in-lore, but it doesn't.