I just beat this and I've already forgotten stuff. The game at least has somewhat of a unique premise. You dig a hole until you get to the bottom. Sure. It's super linear. Don't believe the Metroidvania tag, there's very little of that here. Particularly since the areas themselves largely lack any kind of intelligent design. It's hard for a game like this to have any kind of design when the point is for the player to be able remove stuff at will. Granted, the player can't destroy everything, and there are a few side areas that take advantage of the indestructible objects to create challenges for the player. These caves are undoubtedly the best part of the game, but they are short. The main game, however, is mostly just monotonous downward digging, with the only tension being whether or not you can return to a checkpoint. It can be easy to accidentaly softlock yourself if you run out of water for performing your high jumps, and the game has an absolutely ridiculously tiny limit on placeable ladders that you might use to get yourself out of such situations. Instead they give the player a kill yourself and restart button, which seems asinine when there was a more obvious and intuitive solution right there all along. So while the main gameplay's interesting, it wasn't really enjoyable to me. The side areas were, but they're only about 1/5 of the runtime. You might feel different, but what I can say for sure is that this game certainly ain't worth $10. Wait for a sale.
The Momodora series started as a series of flash games, which, while forgettable, were cute for what they were. This game in particular seems to be no different than its predecessors with one exception: it now has a price tag. I got this game on sale for $4, and it's absolutely not worth any more than that, and the only reason it's worth anything at all is because of the spritework. Are there any particular noteworthy moments of gameplay? No, the mechanics are minimal and level design basic (outside of a gimmick or two in the final dungeon). What about the soundtrack? Barely exists. Story? Also barely exists and every development is utterly predictable. Now, I'm not going to say that the game is incompetently made. There are no real bugs I can recall running into and the controls and physics work as they're supposed to. But fundamentally, the game doesn't have anything interesting to offer, any reason to buy it or play it. If you're for whatever reason still interested, I'd suggest checking out Momodora 2. It's a very similar game, but at the very least it's free.
A lot of games these days are under the mistaken impression that you need to appeal to everyone. La-Mulana is not one of them. This is a game with a vision all of its own. There are only three types of people that should play this game: -3000 IQ galaxy brained geniuses -People who want to see what a game made by the above type of person would look like -Hardcore Metroidvania superfans looking for the greatest challenge of their lives If you're not one of the above, it's not for you. If you are, this will probably be the greatest game you've ever played, as it was for me. Understand what comes with the territory in a game like this. It's absolutely unintuitive. You will get tons of hints, many of which are extremely vague and at times the wording may even be misleading. The combat is brutal due to lack of air control, poor range on your main weapons and everything dealing contact damage (though the game does gift you with a particular subweapon that generally makes bosses much easier). But also see the flip side of this. The world is designed such that every screen is full of detail and brimming with interactivity. You will be engaged with and think harder about this game than any laughable "narrative-driven" game with "deep" moral choices. The combat... is still not very fun, but it can be a nice break from having to think and provides tension and spectacle that a pure puzzle game could not. I understand the devs were heavily inspired by the game Knightmare II: Maze of Galious in making this, and the game's design is even more understandable in light of this. However, this game's outstanding 16-bit pixel graphics and immaculate OST are something all of its own and can be appreciated regardless of who you are. I generally don't give out 5/5s. I didn't give one to Deus Ex or System Shock II. But something like this? Once in a lifetime. No game will ever capture the feeling of exploring lost ruins better. Are you ready to claim that feeling for yourself?
I was ready to call this game a masterpiece like everyone else, but the more I played, the more things I started to notice. It's still great, but there are some things I have the obligation to make you aware of: -Don't come into this game expecting balance. There are some very clear poor choices (albeit surprisingly nothing too overpowered) -There are a number of potential softlock scenarios. They're all either telegraphed and given workarounds or else just extremely unlikely, but I ran into one myself on my first playthrough. Final boss requires hacking, 3 ICE picks, or heavy weapons, and I had none of these things. This wasn't a well telegraphed as the prior scenarios -The level design starts to become rather poor in the latter half and will grant you many cheap deaths at the hands of turrets in asinine, nonsensical locations (in an access shaft as you're climbing a ladder, for example) -Like with Deus Ex, it's more linear than it appears. Sometimes you're just forced to walk into an irradiated area and that's the way it is. With that out of the way, go ahead and read the other reviews to see all the gushing praise that I largely agree with. Everything about the game that isn't related to the above is marvelous. Even when newer takes on what SS2 does come out, like Dead Space or Alien Isolation, it's easy to see why people come back to this game after all these years
Deus Ex was a game made in the year 2000, and boy does it feel like it. It's not just in some of the political commentary feeling a bit quaint; the game is very buggy on modern systems . Had to mess around with renderers quite a bit to actually be able to see things, and even then, I had vanishing textures everywhere. As for the game itself, it's somewhat lacking in focus due to the developers not knowing how to properly balance things. The game isn't as open ended as it appears; there are often multiple ways to complete an objective, but in practice there is only one way available to you because of the way you've built J.C. This extends to the weapon balance, where all nonlethal options other than the stun prod are generally nonviable (and pointless, as there is a human enemy type that explodes on defeat, not to mention certain story events that canonically make J.C. a killer) and meanwhile you would be a fool not to carry around a GEP gun. The game may have stealth, but it's often much more trouble than it's worth (sometimes it's barely even possible), and explosives are your friend. Other gameplay foibles include the enemy patrol being seemingly random and ladders being a complete pain. Where the game really shines is its atmosphere. The modeled textures, the cyborgs and robots, the synthwave soundtrack, the bums huddling around fire barrels all the same, the beep boop sound effects, it knows how to do cyberpunk well. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that a lot of the soundtrack was compressed in such a way that it could have come straight out of an SNES Final Fantasy game. Guess that's Square Enix for you. I won't comment on the story so much other than to say that it probably will railroad you more than you might want and it does have the Endingtron 5000 problem, if a bit less pronounced. Solid espionage thriller stuff otherwise. It's a good thing this game is more than the sum of its parts. Some of those parts are showing age.
