This game has serious progression problems, devs

[RobDeLaMorte]

There are already a few forum posts talking about issues with the difficulty, but this is something that seriously needs patching, and needs it badly. I'm talking from both my experience, and from watching several streams and talking to a lot of people about it. Ignore what the fanboys are saying; it isn't fine whatsoever.

There are three solid points in the game where players constantly get full on stuck. And I don't mean for ten minutes, I mean full on hard progress locked for literal hours until they either get told where to go or give up and ragequit or sequence break. The worst part is this is very easily fixable with a few changes too.


Major progression block 1) Gaining access to the train after defeating the Twin Dragons. Getting the photograph taken is obvious, knowing to take it to OD isn't. There's no real reason to go back to him if you're happy with the book you took, and Dominique for some reason just starts the photograph taking event if you talk to her once without giving the hint unless you manually talk again afterward. This is easily fixable by just making Dominique initiate dialogue with you after the photograph taking event.

Major progression block 2) Needing the ability to swim dropping from the second jellyfish enemy. The only hint to this is a quest for Lindsay, and the issue with that is it's to kill 8 of them with a 10% shard drop rate each time. That makes it pretty missable even if you think to do the quest. This could be avoided by just placing a special 100% drop chance version of the enemy just like you did with Seeama at the start of the game with the Cerulean Splash.

Major progression block 3) The worst offender in the game by far, the Aegis Armour needed to pass the spike barrier at the top of the entrance. The minimap has a habit of both filling itself in and not showing chests until you're literally on top of them at the Twin Dragon Tower. I have seen -literally- dozens of people in streams and youtube get totally and utterly lost at this point in the game because you don't even get hints from Dominique or anything. I am genuinely baffled how you let this happen, I haven't seen obtuseness on this level since Myst. Several people end up bruteforcing through the spike barrier with high potions. You can see the chest up there before you fight the boss, but it isn't obvious it's progress vital so I'd give it a unique colour or look. I'd also suggest putting some kind of other hint into the game or somehow setting that chest to show on the map at all times or something.


Ignore the people shouting loudly that it's fine as it is. It isn't. It really isn't. I absolutely agree that handholding the player by putting in a glowing trail like Fable 3 would ruin a game like this, but you've gone just a bit too far the other way. And know that I'm only kicking up this fuss because I think this game is fantastic and I care and want it to do even better. :3

Edit: Just to try to nip some more fanboyism in the bud, I am specifically asking for minute changes to just make the parts I've seen dozens of people struggling for hours on a little bit more obvious. I don't want magic markers that point the way through every room or anything, or nerfs to the stupid wind swords, or win buttons for bosses. I just want to save some people from getting mad with the game and wasting hours/refunding it in a rage. Making it very slightly more accessible isn't going to suddenly ruin it forever.

[Fullmetal]

İlk olarak O N O D A tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak jasque101478 tarafından gönderildi:

So, essentially you can combo three basic attacks:
Jump attack->ground attack->dodge cancel.

Yea, despite being able to pull this off as fast as it's possible, it's pretty pointless because instead hitting jump > atk > atk > dodge+atk, you may as well just walk to the enemy and chain three regular attacks resulting in stun-locking it to death. Having to perform the triple combo over and over again just felt immersion breaking and became annoying, so instead I just relax and focus on spacing instead. The enemies die just the same.

Feels more like a design fault exploit only valuable to top-tier speed runners who want to subtract a few seconds from their clear time.

Animation cancel should be there to enable dodge in response to enemy attacks, not for small gains in DPS.

Example: you jump towards an enemy and attack just within reach, instead of trying to attack again as fast as you can you actually watch the enemy as you attack again. It is still in a stun animation so you attack again, but this time you notice the enemy is winding an attack, so you go for one more attack and just as your attack hits you time your dodge, cancelling the last frames of your attack animation to successfully dodge.

This works as the controls are now, but it doesn't work if you used a triple combo. you have a deadzone where you can't dodge until you break the loop by letting another regular attack complete its animation.

Slide attack was a good idea, but unless you perform it from far enough away it draws you into the enemy hitbox on its body, stun-locking your character. It works to chain into a regular attack or a special attack once you get used to the spacing, but again pretty pointless as just walking up to an enemy and attacking three times normally is just as effective.

Here's a video of someone trying to use the jump version of animation cancel. He doesn't pull it off as fast as it's possible, but nevertheless by focusing his energy on trying to do it he misses repeat chances to just attack regularly actually losing DPS in the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfxrPOecnJQ

Design fault? Have you guys ever played Symphony of the Night in your life?

[TOYSIPO2]

İlk olarak O N O D A tarafından gönderildi:

Animation cancel should be there to enable dodge in response to enemy attacks, not for small gains in DPS.

so just don't go for a triple combo lmao

in all seriousness the triple combo being there is probably just to make speedrunner's lives harder and have more depth than it is to be useful in plain play

notably portrait of ruin had kinda useless directional movement tech (like half-circle-back rolling that moves you ten inches for a complexish combo...????) and you could always subweapon out of dodge cancel

this lead to you being able to instantly kill bosses and enemies with the darts subweapon that johnathan could use

later, this was corrected in order of eclessia, i'm pretty sure

landing anim cancel is a tech that's been around since forever, probably began as a mistake in sotn that then became a traditional attack tech since it does add a little more depth to typical metroidvania protag combat

notably miriam has some moments where it's harder to jump cancel, forcing you to dodge cancel, but i honestly don't mind that at all (and you can jump cancel right out of a dodge cancel, even instantly, so hoh)

[Pulowski]

+1, brings up serious issues. i had no ♥♥♥♥♥♥ idea the siwm ability was given by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ jellyfish i dont even know where they even are

[Pulowski]

İlk olarak KandaYu tarafından gönderildi:

100% this game with no stumbling blocks at all don't see why people are having so many issues, just finishing up farming shards now. I never hit any real walls of thinking what to do if you ever played any game style like this it should be easy enough to figure it out. Oh new enemy wonder what it shard could possibly do lets get one to know, oh new boss ability lets to check if I can get to places that were gated off before.

therefore the game is flawless if you 100 percent it and backtrack all the time. bruh

[Escanor]

The progression is fine nothing is hard to figure out and this genre has always been about about back tracking.

[El Fuerte]

I have to disagree with #1. OD (Vampire NPC) CLEARLY tells you that the train gate is locked by vampiric identification and he needs your photo to make one for you. And if you haven't chekced the gate before meeting him, you should know by this point that the NPCs at the village constantly gives you new dialogues, so you should see OD again and check it out.

I can agree with #2 though. That enemy needs to have a 100% drop rate for the swimming shard (even though i was very lucky to get it on first try hehe).

[PureRok]

İlk olarak Red tarafından gönderildi:

I have to disagree with #1. OD (Vampire merchant) CLEARLY tells you that the train gate is locked by vampiric identification and he needs your photo to make one for you.

Yea, I thought this was super obvious. "Vampires have this." "Hmm.. vampires." "Hey, I'm a vampire."

[Lord Hawkeye]

Explore more. These "issues" are not even issues. If you hate double backing and rechecking old areas after a new skill/power is gained to find new loot then don't play Metriodvania game. This has been the core nature of Iga's games. To explore, loot, kill and find the secrets. Complaining these secrets are too hard places you firmly in the Konami camp, that some players are too stupid to enjoy a secret filled game.

[Onoda]

İlk olarak TOYSIPO2 tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak O N O D A tarafından gönderildi:

Animation cancel should be there to enable dodge in response to enemy attacks, not for small gains in DPS.

so just don't go for a triple combo lmao

in all seriousness the triple combo being there is probably just to make speedrunner's lives harder and have more depth than it is to be useful in plain play

notably portrait of ruin had kinda useless directional movement tech (like half-circle-back rolling that moves you ten inches for a complexish combo...????) and you could always subweapon out of dodge cancel

this lead to you being able to instantly kill bosses and enemies with the darts subweapon that johnathan could use

later, this was corrected in order of eclessia, i'm pretty sure

landing anim cancel is a tech that's been around since forever, probably began as a mistake in sotn that then became a traditional attack tech since it does add a little more depth to typical metroidvania protag combat

notably miriam has some moments where it's harder to jump cancel, forcing you to dodge cancel, but i honestly don't mind that at all (and you can jump cancel right out of a dodge cancel, even instantly, so hoh)

Yea, nice explanation. Couldn't have put it better myself.

Say if I use Morgenstern, I can make the triple combo frame perfect in the hub, and always pull off a fast double attack > backstep + attack, but in the field the timing is often off.

I found the animation cancel to work more fluidly with greatswords, able to do it with my eyes closed, such as being able to long jump while charging an attack, which can then be chained to an infinite loop "tap jump + attack". The spacing and timing just feels more intuitive wasting no frames like faster weapons are prone to [because I'm not skilled enough to manage those really fast animations of one-handed weapons].

[Mystic Myotis]

İlk olarak Red tarafından gönderildi:

I have to disagree with #1. OD (Vampire NPC) CLEARLY tells you that the train gate is locked by vampiric identification and he needs your photo to make one for you. And if you haven't chekced the gate before meeting him, you should know by this point that the NPCs at the village constantly gives you new dialogues, so you should see OD again and check it out.

I can agree with #2 though. That enemy needs to have a 100% drop rate for the swimming shard (even though i was very lucky to get it on first try hehe).

You haven't read the whole conversation. Here is the problem.

In order for OD to inform you that he will set up your ID, you have to talk to him twice, and the second time has to be after you have found the train.
In order for Dominique to give you the bark about vampires and the train, you have to talk to her BEFORE you have the Silver Bromide but AFTER you have visited the train station.

What this means is that if a player is happy with the books they got from OD, and they crafted the photo before visiting Dominique to get the bark about vampires and the train, you have NO IDEA to take the photo to OD AND you have NO REASON to go back and see him again.

Potential solutions to this are to:

* Force the player to have the conversation about the train with Dominique before they can craft the photo. (don't really like this solution)

* Change the text at the train station after you craft the photo to indicate that while you've made progress, you still can't get in. Something like, "It still won't open. Maybe there's someone in the castle who knows more about this gate?" This is the simplest, most obvious solution, and unlike Dominique's bark, it doesn't outright tell you where to go, which should make the poser "git gudders" happy. >_>

* Add a line to OD within the first conversation with him that indicates that you should return to him periodically as he may have new books available later. This will get the player to return to OD periodically so that even if they missed Dominique's bark, they would still eventually wind up talking to OD just in the hopes that he'd added more useful books. This would be a good change regardless because OD will give you extra book slots as you proceed through the game, but there's some sort of bug with them and you can permanently miss out on the 3rd slot if you aren't checking him regularly through your first run of the game.


I also want to point out that none of these changes would make the game "easier" because this problem has nothing to do with challenge, but rather order of character barks. They would just make sure that if Dominique's bark does not appear for a player, they still have some way of figuring out what to do with the photo. This isn't hard to understand and I'm getting kind of annoyed that I keep having to explain stuff like this.

[Seraphita]

I will admit that there are problems I've encountered in my game, some that forced me to check guides to advance. Like the water shard for swimming. Good god. The aegis armor? Things like that that forced me to search outside of the game to find what I want. I wish there were hints...

[Texus]

I found myself in the middle again with both opinions and I guess arguing about it won't help at this point anymore.

It feels like whoever hasn't understood the other side till now, doesn't really want to understand it anymore.

I mean it seems to start with the "if you think that of the game, then your stupid" arguments again, even if probably both sides say some true things.

İlk olarak Sera tarafından gönderildi:

I will admit that there are problems I've encountered in my game, some that forced me to check guides to advance. Like the water shard for swimming. Good god. The aegis armor? Things like that that forced me to search outside of the game to find what I want. I wish there were hints...

Thats kind of what I mean. It sounds that you just like me just had one or two of those core moments that seems to be disscussed here where you had to search in the internet or something.

I can't do much about it but once in a while I wonder why they call others more or less stupid if they themself had the luck not to get stuck there.

[PixelBoomer]

İlk olarak RobDeLaMorte tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak ehekatlcat tarafından gönderildi:

Have we actually ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to the era where theres now kids who somehow have managed to grow up dodging every metroid and every castlevania game?

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I feel old.

Imagine the rage threads with people trying to unlock inverted castle if SOTN came out in 2019.

Oh it's yet another one of you. I guess you play hollow knight and dork souls, and have 100%ed them both no items fox only final destination too, right?

Let me educate your sorry ass. I've played and 100%ed every Castlevania handheld game, and done every one of their bonus modes. Yes, even Thief mode in Circle of the Moon. And in not a single one of those games have I ever got stuck like this.

Know why? Because having past game experience is totally irrelevant here. Progression in all the past games was always simple: Find new area-->Kill boss-->Get powerup to reach new area-->Repeat. This game suddenly introduces multiple instances where that simple progression is tossed aside and instead you're left to wander around aimlessly through the biggest single map (Not counting alternate/inverted versions) in any of these games. There are no hints by the game for either the swimming or the Aegis Armour. That's bad game design, no more, no less.

Want to get your mind blown more? SoTN isn't the perfect game you guys think it is, and doing the same obscure ♥♥♥♥ from back then isn't necessarily a good thing. There's a reason most other game series evolve from their roots, take those elitist nostalgia goggles off yer head for a moment and realise this.


People like you who keep saying "No it's fine guys shut up it's easy you're just babies, it's just like SoTN and SoTN is the best game evar!" are not only wrong, but you're actively going to hurt this game by making the devs think it's fine when it isn't. I've said it to several people like you and I'll say it again: If only a few people had these issues, it'd be their fault. If dozens upon dozens of people have these problems, it's the game's fault.

İlk olarak LockDown tarafından gönderildi:

Okay so first off ♥♥♥♥ right off with your "fanboy" ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. That pretty much removes all your credibility right there by insulting literally anyone who disagrees with you.

Second, no, there's no issue. There's no need for patching. This is based on Symphony of the Night remember? Things weren't always crystal clear in that game. It wasn't always obvious where you need to go. THINGS LIKE THIS USED TO HAPPEN IN GAMES. It's called playing the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game and exploring and figuring out what to do.

Poor baby, you got suck. Herr herr durr. Suck it up and figure it out. The game shouldn't be changed to hold your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ baby hands and ruin it for the rest of us because you're too lazy to figure it out.

So how about we ignore YOU and the others ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥? Because the game is 100% exactly fine as it is. My best friend, who backed the game and introduced me to it, got 100% of it done with 48 hours of playtime. If he can do it without having his hands held, you can to.

And you can read what I said to the last guy, and proceed to find the nearest window.

Except having previous experience playing games of this type does indeed become "totally relevant" because you understand the genre. Knowing that there are cryptic flags to progression will clue you in to this stuff.Look, I'm sorry you weren't around to experience the golden age of gaming, but just because you're 12 doesn't mean you cant enjoy the recent incarnations of it. If you are that stuck, and your puny ape brain can't figure it the f**k out, google it, clown. Stop whinging on the internet and advertising that you are daft. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. GIT. GUD.

[TOYSIPO2]

"This is based on Symphony of the Night remember? Things weren't always crystal clear in that game."

spike breaker armor in sotn: inside huge conspicuous spike room where you obviously need a new ability to get in, and said ability is the reward for exploring the entirety of a new area that you can (ideally) only get into as bat, to gain that new bat ability to get the spike breaker armor

all of that to access a very out-of-the-way but conspicuous spike-laden path which gives you one of the kinda-obvious needed items to not bludgeon richter to death

it's all out of the way and not in your face, but if you bother to do more exploring at all and don't just kill richter as soon as you are able and put the game down, you start to quickly find a rabbit trail of out-of-the-way but not very hidden progression items

aegis armor here: certain unmarked part of the top-left of the twin dragons boss arena which may already be filled in if you went looking for the valkrye armor, potentially missable in many circumstances and only able to be found if you have the exact instinct to look there, and even then if you get distracted and start looking for progression instead of just invert secrets, you've just lost three hours

sotn was for all intents and purposes LESS cryptic somehow, most progression items were stored at the end of locked rooms or areas, and in any metroidvania, the mere instinct of "explore the unexplored" was good enough, except maybe very certain puzzles in each of the DSvania titles, and aria of sorrow, and that's only pertaining to the good end where the secret felt neat and, well, you expected the method towards the good ending to be somewhat hidden

here the context is different, this is breaking the format in unexpected ways that can blindside you. while the aegis armor is at least tied to invert, invert doesn't guarantee access to a new area that then provides the aegis armor, the accuracy you need in searching almost puts it on par with making it a breakable wall drop in the valkyre armor area, and THAT'D probably make it LESS cryptic somehow

instead of seeing the secret in exploring, instantly knowing "gotta find a way to get in there, will probably run into it while exploring" you're expected to, in essence, comb the entire castle for this one unmarked area

it's a pretty fodder way to demand the player go to past areas; this could've even been fixed by placing the aegis armor one room up from the boss arena, therefore implying on the map that you could get up there with invert and until you got invert, you'd be like "wha- how, oh boy looking forward to getting up there somehow". it'd still be a bit odd, but like 50-60% less complaining would happen and it might not've even been mentioned here

this thread might not even have been made if that was one room up so the map transition would imply that you need to explore that square further, and not left you to guess across every possible invert location on the map (which could potentially be a lot)

[El Fuerte]

Geez i hope you guys never stumble upon Majora's Mask then. You people would probably quit that game after half an hour for "being stuck" lol