Just finished the "Seal the Deal" contract in Death Wish, here's my thoughts having finished it.

[Vext]

Just some thoughts from someone who actually finished it (not 100% yet though) seeing as how nearly every single post on here is from people who either have not finished and are saying it's bad or have not finished and are saying get good. Not really up for a discussion or debate, just mainly throwing things out from a different perspective aimed partially at the devs as well. If anyone else has finished it (or if you haven't I suppose) feel free to respond what you think.

Overall I'm extremely pleased with the new content, death wish alone would be enough to warrant the 5$, the fact that it comes out alongside co-op and a new area is quite nice. Not to mention the fact that it was free for a day so everyone that owned the game didn't have to pay is magnificent and highly appreciated. The new customizations are nice additions and feed the collection lust I get from playing platformers like this. The new music is great, and I'm glad to see more snatcher. Some of the aspects of the fights like the final fight in "Seal the Deal" was so chaotic it was almost comical how many attacks were flying across the screen. I very much enjoyed the extent they were pushed in various parts such as the parade and the dual fight with the Conductor and DJ Grooves. I enjoy the varied options in contracts as well as a lot of the missions themselves. The no jumping ones in particular are very fun to try and pull off. Only complaint with variety is simply that I wish there were more snatcher coins to find. Having only 3 per area just made me wish there were more, especially consdering the overwhelming amount of speedrun contracts, it feels like the collecting ones got left out to dry which is unfortunate.

As for the bad, there's a lot, but in ways I honestly didn't expect.

The RNG is maddening, especially considering some of the contracts require perfection. One example being the sandbags above the mafia boss fight. Now I know they go in a specific pattern above you but there are several points where the boss becomes vulnerable but a sandbag is falling and blocking the way, meaning you have to wait for it to fall, which is just long enough for them to get up and void your contract for not missing a hit opportunity. Anyone who has done speedruns knows full well that the worst games to run are the RNG heavy ones because It's unfair, unfun, and based too heavily on luck and not skill. The contract is like asking a pro poker player to win every single hand, it won't happen for a while because there's too many luck based factors. The fact that it plays in to the fight while also asking for perfection from a very small window of opportunity is insane to me. Granted aside from that one aspect, I think the sandbags give a good boost in difficulty without feeling cheap. But the fact that it results in things like that is no good, not to mention there's various other scenarios like that throughout.

Sometimes the buttons don't work. Happened a few places but feels like programming rather than a bug based on how it happens. Biggest offender being trying to throw the bottle at snatcher. There's a full 1~2 second delay from picking up and being fully able to walk around, and actually being able to throw it. I'd understand if I was locked into animation and couldn't move yet either but being able to run around with it but not throw is surely not something chosen on purpose. Furthermore, trying to mash the throw button somehow results in setting it down occasionally even though it's the wrong button for that, and if it happens you no longer need to press B to pick it up which means walking next to it will auto pick up and if you're like me, will try to double jump, not have one, and get hit. Could be a glitch, but only a part of it seems that way so I'm unsure.

Scenes are not automatically skipped in contracts specifically stated are "speedruns" and the clock continues to tick down during them. This one is just mind boggling, you have an option in the game settings to do this very thing in the base game which shows you are completely aware of how speedruns work, yet this still remains in these contracts. I legitimately have almost nothing to say on this, I'm stunned that it's a thing at all, it genuinely feels like a bug. Either the times should compensate more for this or (preferably) they should be disabled. Especially the skippable ones, why even have the scene there if the clock doesn't pause, skipping it is required to beat the time?

The easy mode option being in between attempts is frustrating, is on a poorly chosen button, and lingers too long. There's very little more fristrating than spending a long time trying to do one hard thing and having to wait in between attempts. You need that momentum to keep you in the zone, and having a message continually pop up and linger for a few seconds that you can't skip past makes it feel like an eternity. There should really only be at most an alert on the side that the option is available and can be turned on before starting the contract, not in between attempts. Furthermore having it on the confirm/skip button is a really poor choice. Trying to skip causes it to stay longer, or even to activate on accident, something that is easily avoided by swapping it to any other button. Granted I don't think it should be in that location to begin with.

Restarting puts you back before the dialogue. Same issue as above. When trying to do something like not using hats, or not missing a hit chance, each time you mess up and need to retry, you either have to wait to be hit enough to die or hit restart and run forward, mash through dialogue, then try again. Very irritating to have to run around until you die or retry and run up and mash text each time when you're already on edge from trying multiple times and failing. Since the whole before the fight starts option might be needed I'd suggest simply having a full restart option in addition to a quick reset on the fight itself the way the game automatically does if you die, but on command.

Some of the boss fights contain attacks that are so abrasive you can't actually see your character, which makes it impossible to avoid incoming attacks. Snatcher's attacks are a good example of this. There are several times in which the attack covers the screen so definitively that I can't even see my character. And not in the sense that I lose track from the chaos, I mean literally she is covered by explosions and I do not actually know if I am in a safe spot or being targeted by the attack. More times than not I take a hit purely because it's not actually possible to know what to do. I only managed to scrape by from holding a random direction or standing idle and hoping that I don't take a hit while I am unable to see anything, I'm dead serious.

The raised speed of attacks sometimes puts you into an unavoidable stunlock wombo combo from attacking them. The mafia boss is the main offender of this but the conductor and DJ grooves fight had it happen once as well. When they perform the knockback scream it sends you so far away, so high into the air, and does it so slowly that it seemed to be about a 90% chance I'd take a hit from it because by the time I landed they'd already be hitting me. Which in theory is fine, except for the fact that when you land your attack, a fair amount of the time you're too close to actually avoid the scream. The main way it happens seems to be the air attack or bouncing on their head, problem is, the window to hit them is so small that most of the time you have to use one of those two rather than swinging on the ground leaving you in a lose-lose a shocking amount of time.

Too heavy on the memorization. There's quite a few contracts that require you attempt several times in order to chart out the perfect path just to squeak by. Which to an extent is fine, but it really kills the game flow when you constantly need to stop and calculate things like how to collect pons in a timely manner, which just results in wandering around looking for large piles and memorizing their locations into a shortest route possible instead of actually playing. This happened in quite a few contracts where I realized I couldn't win and needed to invest a fair bit of time calculating angles in order to do it. It's honestly just a huge tedious buzz kill more than it is irritating or cheap.

The camera contracts take screenshots. Lo and behold doing the contract for taking pictures of enemies results in a popup in the corner alerting me to it taking a screenshot, meaning I have a pile of screenshots of random enemies that I have to go and delete now. I can't fathom why this would be the case and I sincerely doubt anyone wants those random shots saved for any reason. I'm guessing it's tied to the code and disabling that for that contract would be difficult but regardless it's a little not the best. Which is a shame because I thought the idea itself was clever since most people probably never touched the camera. Would have been even cooler if the camera didn't freeze time or if the contract required a specific attack as the shot. Would have been a real good challenge to snap a pic of a boss doing its huge attack in the middle of the fight.

The contract order is questionable. There definitely seemed to be an imbalance in difficulty along the path you have to take through them. Many of the easier ones are locked behind the hardest contracts which feels kinda bad to do something ball bustingly hard then try the next one and breeze through it. It's very apparent, especially with the first few contracts being some of the trickier ones, but they're required in order to unlock the path to the rest.

There's probably other things but my head hurts already so I'll leave it at that. And for anyone that is wondering. No, I have not 100% cleared it, I'm only at 80/111 but I have finished the final contract. No I have not used the easy mode option yet. No I have not done the seal the deal content yet or the contracts for that area since they're not unlocked, waiting to finish that in co-op with a friend. This was purely for the death wish content.

[FibS]

I'm sort-of-fine with the concept of Death Wish being broken and unfair, partially because that's in the name and partially because the devs warned us about it beforehand - it's clearly intentional.

I don't find it very fun, though, because 1. the game's casual-orientated mechanics start to fall apart when you're trying to do ninja moves and 2. often I don't feel like my skill had anything to do with why I failed, especially because some Death Wish maps are "slightly harder actualy gameplay, but with a cheapass rocket (or three) killing you constantly."

Chapter 5 Act 2 is also RNG hell, by the by.

[Red]

I just want the mode to be purely skill reliant and to challenge me to master the game. I don't want time wasters, unavoidable attacks and RNG because those 3 things reek of amateur game design in a mode like this since you're not in control of the outcome. When those things are involved in a challenge and said challenge becomes unbeatable because of them then that challenge isn't really a challenge, it's just a time sink.

I also fully agree with the missions that force you to memorize a huge layout and path to be pace killers. They're super boring and not challenging at all and I can assure you that a lot of people will just watch a playthrough of them, check their pathway and call it a day. The 100 pon mission becomes as easy as the base game when you're able to do that.

[Cerulis]

There are quite a few issues and glitches that have been present in the game since day one that only become relevant now.

Let's take a small thing as the wall run glitch for example: sometimes Hat Kid won't actually go up the wall despite the animation triggering. In normal play? That's fine, that may annoy you a little sometimes but you're not loosing much if that happens. But in a thight speed-run like every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ level in Death Wish seems to be? Now that can ruin your entire run.

Please keep in mind that this was a sole example. These inconsistencies add up and bring to light many of the flaws within the game that we could just ignore up until now.

[Dr. Gooner]

honestly this is the best post about the whole thing by far, there's a lot of good ideas in this but also a lot of bad ideas that they really should iron out

there's one mission that i really like but the amount of enemies that require you to swap hats to deal with bogs the pacing down, specifically the dweller raccoons and the burning crows

[Supernatural Cookie]

Have to agree with that some of the missions seem very poorly thought out. The first alone is an excellent example, requiring you to figure out an optimal path through trial and error before you even stand a chance. And then learn that.. The trial isn't over until you actually collect the piece.

Also as Fibs says, the casual mechanics don't quite work with very tight limitations.

[Elzquiem]

Originally posted by Vext:

*Snip*

Quality post here and I agree with the overall you said. The challenge preference is bound to personnal opinion but there's lots of bad as you mentionned, the biggest offender being the RNG factor. I will not go further, you detailed it very well.

Originally posted by Supernatural Cookie:

Also as Fibs says, the casual mechanics don't quite work with very tight limitations.

I also agree with that, the game was not intended to be played that way but changing/enhancing the game mechanics would be too costly for the dev team.

What annoys me the most about the DLC is this line from the store :
"* A ton of outfits, flairs, dyes and even camera filters!"

... that are actually hidden beneath deathwish challenges, so if you play and enjoy the game for his cuteness and customizing stuff, you gotta play this mode, even if you didn't wanted to in the first place. It's a good thing to bring people give it a try, but when you see what you will need to do to unlock some stuff, I wonder if pleasing a niche is really better than trying to appeal the maximum audience.

[Seibitsu]

My main problem with it is the time limit. I hate time trials and give me a lot of anxiety.

[pikX]

I like this overview of it. I haven't finished it myself yet, but I agree with basically all of these presented points. Thank you for giving an honest look at it and not blind rage like most of the other people.

As a veteran of Super Meat Boy, Buster-only and No-damage runs of the classic Mega Man games, and tons of other ridiculous things (a lot of which i didnt have a controller for at the time), I can say that if i had to pick one thing to change, i would be stuck between giving a few i-frames of recovery back and allowing easier practice of some of these challenges. That does not include what i call "super star ultra arena syndrome", which is cutscenes taking up time on the timer, or anything else that feels more like an oversight than intended difficulty. I don't actually know what easy mode does for sure since i always tell myself "thats wimp mode stay away you arent a filthy casual" (no offense to any of you casuals out there, its meant to offend me not you). If it makes these things more tolerable i guess i can at least somewhat be ok with it? Maybe? I don't know for sure.

Since I'm one of *those* people that lives for the challenge, I like the addition overall. However, I too still see flaws in the execution.

[Dr. Gooner]

Originally posted by pikminman13:

I don't actually know what easy mode does for sure since i always tell myself "thats wimp mode stay away you arent a filthy casual" (no offense to any of you casuals out there, its meant to offend me not you). If it makes these things more tolerable i guess i can at least somewhat be ok with it? Maybe? I don't know for sure.

i have used it for some of the... crazier challenges since im definitely no master, but it definitely feels like it lowers the challenge to around "slightly harder than the normal game" or just throws a band-aid on the difficulty (it turns 10 seconds into train rush but harder vs it throws health at you in bosses and that's it)
honestly surprised there isn't an easy mode for the great big hootenanny, like just adding health pons or something