Difficulty compared to Hollow Knight and Ori ?

[Satsujin Jiken]

Looking into difficulty before buying as I don't want too sweaty experience. I've read a lot of comments both that it's "too easy" and "too hard", but these aren't that informative without context. Is the difficulty issues just about being inconsistent? How would you guys compare this to Hollow Knight or Ori? Maybe somewhere between, or similar to Ori?

I'm fine with metroidvania games having some "20+ tries" difficult bosses IF they aren't blocking progress so that there's no way to go elsewhere and grow stronger before retrying.

And just a disclaimer that seems most gamers enjoy the challenge with soulslike games so I don't mind catering to that. Just personally looking for games that have more focus on exploration, maybe puzzles and story. Honestly I'm just mortified there won't be more of Ori...

[Grauken]

Before the most recent update, the game was very easy except maybe the first two bosses, but afterward you got so many upgrades that you basically could tank and still beat all bosses. Now after the third patch, they rebalanced difficulty but massively overcorrected to the point that many boss attacks are faster, deal more damage and worst, most bosses are complete hit sponges that take ages to kill. Only managed the final boss to 2 times out of 10 attempts or so, not to think of the final final boss.

[Ragna]

Starts hard , end easy .
I felt way OP at the end.

[Satsujin Jiken]

Yeah I played the demo now and the difficulty felt okay. It has been probably further tuned from that but I'm not sure I vibe with the game otherwise. It was okay overall.

Movement: The game is too zoomed in to have any real platforming. Jump is wimpy and feels like there's input lag before anything happens. It's so short that to be able to reach the above "floor" you need ledge grabbing. But that mechanic slows down movement so much there's very little fun to be had. Also every jump you need to make with the lasso thing is basically a blind jump which is cardinal sin in platforming. I don't understand at all why the screen is so zoomed in. Especially when navigating downward it feels like you're blindfolded and just feeling by hand. On top of that you have the screen edge darkening, it feels so claustrophobic. The crouch slide should be faster and have noticeably lower sprite and hitbox, this feels so slow that it achieves nothing and wastes a button.

Combat: Monsters often don't respond to your hits, just walk on top of you like nothing and you take damage that you can just heal back. You feel super helpless in the beginning without any attack that has reach. Maybe they were going for sense of growth but I just think it was unnecessary because there was no good memories to be made there.

Some hitboxes were confusing. In the elevator boss seems like you need to stand about halfway inside the boss sprite for optimal position. There is no way to dodge the spike wave he does on slamdown, but you can still dodge the hitboxes if you know where they are. I "died" couple of times and was just respawned back to the beginning of the room...? I thought I would end up at the save point.

Exploration: I think the biggest flaw is the minimap consisting of blocks which makes the world feel much cheaper than it really is. If the minimap room contour would match the actual room geometry, the game would feel more pristine and make it easier to associate a room on the map with the actual room. Might seem like nitpicking but this is a major factor in any exploration or metroidvania game and actually the biggest gripe with the experience I had.

I don't want to dunk on the game, I know a lot of people enjoyed it. The good parts to me were graphics, VFX and audio, which are very convincing and no doubt help sell the game. Lots of interesting trinkets to collect and adjust the combat feel I guess. Also the text "cutscenes" and the lore seemed cool although putting the text below the screen as if subtitles NEEDS voice narration. (Just put the text in the middle of screen if you don't wish to imply you ran out of budget hehe)

Maybe I'll grab it on sale later and see how well it does in the long run.

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡ °)]

You'll have to wait a bit more to see people's opinions on the new patch. Prior to it if you explored areas instead of rushing into boss rooms you got overpowered extremely fast, and so only the first boss or two were somewhat challenging. The latest patch buffed the bosses, decreased the main character's invincibility-on-hit duration, etc., so a lot of older feedback regarding the difficulty doesn't apply anymore.

Originally posted by Satsujin Jiken:

Yeah I played the demo now and the difficulty felt okay. It has been probably further tuned from that but I'm not sure I vibe with the game otherwise. It was okay overall.

If it's the same demo that was available prior to the release (sounds like it is), then i can say for sure that the full game plays much better, devs did an amazing job after collecting demo feedback.
Movement and platforming are a lot smoother, especially the hook. Your hits now have a pushback, so enemies (*cough* the Couriers *cough*) don't just continue speeding in your direction anymore. Dying spawns you in saverooms, that part was altered specifically for the demo. And that particular boss was adjusted to make it more obvious that you can pogo on his head. I still have a few gripes with gameplay (falling speed is still a bit too fast imo), but it's a massive difference from how unresponsive the demo was.

[Satsujin Jiken]

Originally posted by ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡ °):

it's a massive difference from how unresponsive the demo was.

Thanks for the heads up. I just installed the demo yesterday, I don't know how uodated it is.

But also I installed Hollow Kniight from wife's family sharing and started to play it. It's amazing. Funny how the first 3 minutes displayed all the things I was mentioning here fixed. Voidwrought copied so much from HK, but the level scale and responsive movement should have been the first ones.

[Tall Dark and Gruesome]

Hollow knight is much better balanced and is a completed/polished game. Ori plays much more like a puzzle platformer and goes between sedate and frantic depending on what zone you are in.

This game is complete but still being balance passed, its worth wishlisting or picking up if you are a huge fan of the genre, but it will probably be in a more polished state in a month or two once the dev has more post launch feedback and more post 1.0 patches have gone out. the patch this week was a rollercoaster that fixed one late game item, improved one weirdly hard early boss and wildly broke the last boss of regular mode.

[Seima]

I just refunded it after failing the first boss for the 6th time. I thought I finally beat it, but then it pulls out another form, and another one. Nope. Not interested in the investment to 'git gud.' Not enjoyable and stuck with no way to backtrack, advance, or explore.

[GullsForSale]

I have the same experience with the first boss. I tried to pogo it, but cannot chain the pogos consistently, which feels awful. And with no iframes on the ridiculous roll... I get movements get better and more enjoyable with upgrades later in the game, but I'm not having a good time right now. I won't refund, but I'll wait for some adjustments before giving it another shot.

[Flandarz]

My first run, I had a lot of trouble with The Council. Like a dozen deaths or so. But on my second run, I one-shotted em. I think they're just one of those bosses where experience with the controls and the pogo hitbox (and some judicious gathering of upgrades beforehand) helps immensely.

[Tritoch]

Surprised so many people are having trouble with the first boss, he barely does anything just dodge and pogo over him when he gets close.

[Seima]

Originally posted by Tritoch:

Surprised so many people are having trouble with the first boss, he barely does anything just dodge and pogo over him when he gets close.

If you say so. My refund got rejected because I've owned the game more than 2 weeks. Last time I buy a bundle of games during a sale. Great job, Steam. I'll try again eventually but I like the SotN element of Metroidvanias. Can't advance? Go level up until you can curbstomp that boss then go enjoy exploring again. Really it's that I can't backtrack that bothers me the most.

[Tall Dark and Gruesome]

Originally posted by Tritoch:

Surprised so many people are having trouble with the first boss, he barely does anything just dodge and pogo over him when he gets close.

I died a ton too until i realized his safe zone is to dodge below most of his attacks. you get the ground slide right before that boss and you are meant to use the two lower platforms and ground sliding to avoid the room transitions, once you figure that out the fight becomes much easier.

its still way longer than most first bosses and the original version where it was 5 phases each with full health before you can find any health or damage upgrades was a bit silly.

[Satsujin Jiken]

I didn't actually know about the entire pogo mechanic when I played the demo. Only when I started playing Hollow Knight afterwards that actually taught me to pogo, by positioning spike platforms suggestively. I wonder if I missed a tutorial section in Voidwrought or if the game just blatantly assumes everyone played Hollow Knight before?

But I think it's pretty scuffed mechanic and I struggled executing it a lot. The way you need to hold forward to get anywhere but also down to pogo is needlessly complicated and IMHO only inherits from Ducktales being developed for controller with extremely limited amount of buttons. For me, most pogo platforming sequences were ruined by imperfect diagonal directional input that either screwed up forward momentum or pogo registering. I think this is especially atrocious with circular joystick where you never know how perfectly down or diagonally you are holding.

The Messenger did this so much better: the "pogo mode" is a toggle with slow fall mechanic and omits the need for joystick direction juggling. It was actually enjoyable to pogo in combat and platforming without the needlessly complicated input.

So how did I survive Hollow Knight? I just bound a little macro to grip button on my Steam controller to execute a pogo while I'm free to hold left or right on the joystick. It still fails when I switch direction too soon before or after pogo, but works 80-90% of the time.

If I was a developer I would implement a single button pogo or at least offer an accessibility option for it.

[Flandarz]

There's a pogo tutorial *after* The Council fight, at the top of the shaft leading back to the beginning area, Probably woulda been better before the fight though.

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡ °)]

Originally posted by Satsujin Jiken:

I didn't actually know about the entire pogo mechanic when I played the demo. Only when I started playing Hollow Knight afterwards that actually taught me to pogo, by positioning spike platforms suggestively. I wonder if I missed a tutorial section in Voidwrought or if the game just blatantly assumes everyone played Hollow Knight before?

You didn't miss the tutorial in the demo, there's none. Which actually got me stuck unable to progress back when i played the demo - it bugged out on the first launch and wouldn't let me execute upward and downward attacks and without a tutorial i assumed the game simply had neither. Had to look up a walkthrough on youtube to see what i was doing wrong lol.

Full game has a tutorial now, but yeah for some reason it's only after the first boss. But for me protag's falling speed is still a bit too fast to be able to execute it consistently :I