2 years later, my opinions on Dandara

[Zoracs]

I got this game in March of 2018 I believe, for the Nintendo Switch. It was during the Switch's AAA drought, before things REALLY started moving, and around that time I was mostly playing Indie games like Darkest Dungeon, Cave Story, Immortal Redneck, and of course Dandara. I think details like these are important to know when considering someone's mindset, so here ya go.


Unlike those previously mentioned games, or really any Indie game on my Switch, Dandara has had me consistently coming back over these two years, in part to the game's replayability, and in part to the updates. I absolutely adore how unique and well-polished this game is, and the updates over the years really have been an amazing gift.

I love essentially everything about this game. The progression, the symbolism, the music, the art style, the use of color, the brilliant setting of tone depending on location, the fantastic controls (at least with a controller), and especially how free you are to explore and think about everything. Never once do I feel like my hand is being held, or that I'm being catered to, and I really appreciate that.

I find myself thinking this game is a modern day Super Metroid, in both gameplay and in quality. After Trials of Fear, I consider it a Super Metroid version of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. A truly unique combination with the developers own, special twist. If you love a good metroidvania, getting lost in a crazy cool world, something really fresh you've never experienced before, or any combination of the three, I think this game is a must play.

On behalf of, well, myself, I want to thank everyone at Long Hat House for this beautiful game, as well as the folks at Raw Fury for helping as many people as possible experience this wonderful game. I'm not sure what lies in Dandara's future, but whether there will be more, or if this is it, I'll be sure to come back again one day.

[XEXÉU, EX VOCALIST OF TIMBALADA]

Thanks for taking the time to write this up! I'm really glad to read it and I'm sure everyone of the team too!

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Could agree on that for Dandara before the big Update. Trials of Fear unfortunelately to me is just a big mess that added way too much unnecessary and especially very unchallenging content. The only thing I really appreciate about it is the new final boss. But while this game now finally gets an worthy final boss fight, the rest of the games was way too much dumbed down.
Especially the golden fortress was a joke.
Through 90% of the games content you can simply damage boost, which makes the beginning of the game the hardest part which is typical for bad balanced RPG-Elements.

I looked into the patchnotes and except for one enemy type I only found nerfs.
I know there is new game+ and some artifical options and so on, but I want an balanced game for my first playthrough without any articial modifiers.

[Zoracs]

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

Could agree on that for Dandara before the big Update. Trials of Fear unfortunelately to me is just a big mess that added way too much unnecessary and especially very unchallenging content. The only thing I really appreciate about it is the new final boss. But while this game now finally gets an worthy final boss fight, the rest of the games was way too much dumbed down.

I'll be honest, Trials of Fear did take a bit of time to grow on me. There was a period of time where I thought the pacing of the game was less natural, due to Lazuli's occasional messages, and the new realm is mostly inaccessible until getting the stone from the city, but that was about it from what I remember.
After finishing my most recent playthrough though, I think both of these inclusions were good calls, for their own respective reasons.

A gripe I do still hold with the new content, is that the new realm feels poorly laid out for backtracking. There are few checkpoints, meaning I have to go mostly everywhere on foot, and it becomes fairly tedious when simply exploring at my own pace.

As for the game becoming unchallenging, I've seen others with the same complaint, and I think it all comes down to us getting familiar and better with Dandara. You mentioned the game being better before the update, so I'm guessing you've been around for a while.

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

I know there is new game+ and some artifical options and so on, but I want an balanced game for my first playthrough without any articial modifiers.

Um, right?


Regardless, I haven't seen the patch notes, and I don't know if you share this unchallenging sentiment with the new realm, but I certainly found my first romp through the new realm pretty challenging, and the base game is only difficult when I have self-imposed restrictions like 3HP runs or no energy runs (which are insanely hard). It's the only way I get challenge out of Pokemon games too, and those used to be tough for me as well.


Challenging or not though, I still have a ton of fun with this game. How so? I think it all boils down to me being in control of everything. I have so much independence, and if I mess up, it feels like my fault (which it basically always is), not the game's.


I don't think you're wrong about the game getting easier though. The new realm adds more salt, which means more level ups, which makes the game easier. Balancing open world progression has always been a difficult, but I think I would still struggle as a new player no matter how much salt I had, I feel it all comes down to mastering the game's mechanics, which I say is how it should always be.


But then we have damage boosting.

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

Through 90% of the games content you can simply damage boost, which makes the beginning of the game the hardest part which is typical for bad balanced RPG-Elements.

Yeah, damage boosting is pretty good, but only in certain situations. 90% sounds like a huge exaggeration, but it's never felt like an exploit that I needed to use to beat the game, or one that was so broken it overshadowed every other mechanic.

Then again I've never really put it to the test. A damage boost run, sounds interesting. I'll have to try it, after I finish my Spanish homework.

and playing Xenoblade Definitive
and Persona 5 Royal
and Bug Fables
and my next semester starts in 2 weeks
oh god help.

[Zoracs]

Originally posted by XEXÉU, EX VOCALIST OF TIMBALADA:

Thanks for taking the time to write this up! I'm really glad to read it and I'm sure everyone of the team too!

You're welcome :)
Or, you're ALL welcome, actually :)

It felt right, expressing my gratitude. I've been in the habit of doing that for a while now.

[Chocos Ramabotti]

Originally posted by Zoracs:

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

Could agree on that for Dandara before the big Update. Trials of Fear unfortunelately to me is just a big mess that added way too much unnecessary and especially very unchallenging content. The only thing I really appreciate about it is the new final boss. But while this game now finally gets an worthy final boss fight, the rest of the games was way too much dumbed down.

I'll be honest, Trials of Fear did take a bit of time to grow on me. There was a period of time where I thought the pacing of the game was less natural, due to Lazuli's occasional messages, and the new realm is mostly inaccessible until getting the stone from the city, but that was about it from what I remember.
After finishing my most recent playthrough though, I think both of these inclusions were good calls, for their own respective reasons.

A gripe I do still hold with the new content, is that the new realm feels poorly laid out for backtracking. There are few checkpoints, meaning I have to go mostly everywhere on foot, and it becomes fairly tedious when simply exploring at my own pace.

As for the game becoming unchallenging, I've seen others with the same complaint, and I think it all comes down to us getting familiar and better with Dandara. You mentioned the game being better before the update, so I'm guessing you've been around for a while.

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

I know there is new game+ and some artifical options and so on, but I want an balanced game for my first playthrough without any articial modifiers.

Um, right?


Regardless, I haven't seen the patch notes, and I don't know if you share this unchallenging sentiment with the new realm, but I certainly found my first romp through the new realm pretty challenging, and the base game is only difficult when I have self-imposed restrictions like 3HP runs or no energy runs (which are insanely hard). It's the only way I get challenge out of Pokemon games too, and those used to be tough for me as well.


Challenging or not though, I still have a ton of fun with this game. How so? I think it all boils down to me being in control of everything. I have so much independence, and if I mess up, it feels like my fault (which it basically always is), not the game's.


I don't think you're wrong about the game getting easier though. The new realm adds more salt, which means more level ups, which makes the game easier. Balancing open world progression has always been a difficult, but I think I would still struggle as a new player no matter how much salt I had, I feel it all comes down to mastering the game's mechanics, which I say is how it should always be.


But then we have damage boosting.

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

Through 90% of the games content you can simply damage boost, which makes the beginning of the game the hardest part which is typical for bad balanced RPG-Elements.

Yeah, damage boosting is pretty good, but only in certain situations. 90% sounds like a huge exaggeration, but it's never felt like an exploit that I needed to use to beat the game, or one that was so broken it overshadowed every other mechanic.

Then again I've never really put it to the test. A damage boost run, sounds interesting. I'll have to try it, after I finish my Spanish homework.

and playing Xenoblade Definitive
and Persona 5 Royal
and Bug Fables
and my next semester starts in 2 weeks
oh god help.

You can try to damage boost. I suppose you will first need a few levels, but the game forces you through the gate, where you have to sacrifice lifes anyway. Ok it's optional, but I never put my points too much into health ( I balanced it) until I got to that point. And so yeah it depends on how much points you spend on health and other think. Damage boost to me is also using the healing items when you're able too. You have a large amount at the end and sustain way too much level. My complaint also spans over the hidden realm, there it was also very obvious there is one small exception on the dungeon where you have to fight a big arena battle against waves of common enemies, there you have at least watch out a bit more.

Most of the time it really doesn't matter if I dodge or not this is why the hidden realm felt rather boring and like filler content to me, especially since it's for most of the time just a cameo to built in Hidetaka Miyazaki, the Metroid designer, and Koji Igarashi the inspirations for the game, this felt very out of place to me.

And yeah I played the original already on release. Never touched it again though until Trials of Fear were coming out. I played with the thought to replay it anyway. The devs told me they just smoothed the difficulty curve just out. Since i'm not able to replay the original anymore I can't compare it cleary. But i'm pretty sure that in the original game the Golden Fortress was much more unforgiving (except eldar, he was always an pushover) I liked it because it reminded me on these older games were you really had to concentrate and be econimal with your ressources. This was somewhat the inspiration since this game leans heavily to Dark Souls with some of its game mechanics, also the world was apathetic, the dark mood was fitting to its unforgiving nature. You can become way much stronger in the game now. unfortunelately way too strong.