Thoughts on game

[ogit]

As always the npcs and dialogue are great, excellent art style and vibe. The new systems keep the feel of your earlier games in a really nice way.

Thankful for the zoomed-out map mode, the detailed one looks nice but isn't very useful and scrolls too slowly (also I didn't realize you could teleport directly from it until the final area). Minimap is a great addition. Map markers are always appreciated but feel finicky to use. Cycling through warp points (on the zoomed-out map) in set order has felt awkward in previous games as well, would feel better to just move the cursor freely.

I'd often swap upgrades for exploration and bosses, loadout saves would be useful. Not a fan of the abstract upgrade icons, would help if similar bonuses shared a theme but would prefer something more clear like special attack icons. Upgrades are fun, though the sluggish junk-smashing ghost stands out as not being useful.

Skull shrine challenges are easy to trivialize by teleporting to an early area, perhaps activating one should respawn enemies and block teleports?

Big Lisa's endless orb shop feels like an oversight, like in the end the system works but it just seems strange. Surprised the price doesn't ramp, but the supply itself devalues orbs found in the world. Would've liked to have more orbs taken from her and added to the world - like existing orb reward sources could give two, they could be added to enemy-rush totem rooms, etc.

Movement feels good, combat's perhaps too mashy but works with dashing and jumping. Boomerang could charge faster for in-combat use, also thought its teleport could be bound to Y so you don't lose the quick-return feature.

The game's overhead perspective feels fine, trading off vertical exploration isn't my preference but it comes together well and is well-utilized at bosses, which are easily the game's highlight. Platforming is also fine but I would try to tighten up the first area's floating logs since they're the worst of it and give a bad early impression.

I do think the lack of verticality might contribute to some areas feeling a bit samey, perhaps helped by overly-ambient music? Like there's plenty of memorable areas with great atmosphere but there's also a bunch that blend together, and the flatness lends to similar layouts. (I do think area-specific gimmicks are used well though.) And the soundtrack might've been bolder in general, outside of bossfights I can't say I often noticed it or remembered it afterward.

The game might use a pass to clean up the roll/dash conflations, like bubbles saying "R1 to dash" before you find dash, misleading keybinds, etc - not the biggest deal but it's caused early confusion, myself included. Likewise the purpose of the heart generator in the timed challenge rooms isn't at all obvious, would be better to remove it and just heal the player as needed like challenge chests already do. Also found the final Kendra puzzle very obtuse, could've used some visual or npc nudge.

edit: Also wish that you respawned with full special energy, instead of having to remember to interact with the save point.

(thanks for game)

let us buy fake merchant upgrades

[GalaxyBrain]

Originally posted by ogit:

Skull shrine challenges are easy to trivialize by teleporting to an early area, perhaps activating one should respawn enemies and block teleports?

A respawn would be helpful since you often clear an area not knowing a shrine is close by. Once activated, you need to wander away from where you're exploring to find enemies.