I was a bit worried this would be a disappointment compared to HK. But it's basically the same game, but a continuation. I'm only 15% in the game now, the first 10% may have felt a bit linear, but now the metroidvania part starts to reveal itself. I can't wait to spend more time on this. It was an insta buy for me and it was really cheap!
While playing the first game, some people told me that it was not even a metroidvania, but the second one was. I have no clue what those people meant. This is basically a clone of the first game which was a metroidvania game - and a good one. This one keeps the same spirit and has improved in many areas. Some areas are worse - I kind of liked the mystic behind the rosary beads since I did not know what they would contain Now I know it's just a protection bead against some of the elements or physical damage with different strength so I kind of lost interest in the beads that was basically my favorite part of the first game. However, the wooden statuettes took the place of the beads so it was a quite fair exchange since now I can mix both my beads and my statues into thousands of combinations. I like the concept of switching between three different weapons and all of them are actually really useful. The music is even better in this game, even though the first one had awesome soundtrack as well. I could basically run around in the Aqueduct of the costales just to listen to that music over and over again. There are some annoying bugs here and there, like the ghosts in the caskets, if you punch them off screen, they don't come back and you can't kill them but they keep throwing spears at you. Then I have to quit the game and start from latest checkpoint. Happened to me 5 times this far which is a bit annoying, but hopefully the devs will fix that issue soon. However, it's a top notch game and I'm 90% finished with the game and I enjoy every second of it as I did with the first one. I don't want it to end so I try to do everything before exploring more of the hidden map. I hope there will come a DLC soon, both to the first one and the second one to extend the adventures even more.
Blasphemous has got some critisism for the controllers, but I totally disagree. It's a bit complicated in the beginning, yes, but you get charms to improve that functionality. "Hollow knight" controls would never work with this style of gameplay since it's supposed to be realistic pixel art gameplay. Japanese anime style controls would never work in a serious game like Blasphemous. But with the right charms, it gets close enough. It's a real metroidvania, and it's totally rad. It's quite similar to Castlevania 2 to the NES, but it's 100 times better. The religious spanish creepy inquisitor theme feels both familiar and unknown at the same time. It's like a pixel art horror movie in some way. There are multiple endings and tons of stuff to explore and to not explore until next time. I used the wiki myself quite a lot, but I would have preferred to do it without. Perfect atmosphere, great spanish guitar music, awesome pixel art graphics and a very creative experience in general. As a metroidvania fan, loving Hollow Knight, Pronty, Castlevania, The Messenger and similar games, this is a perfect game suitable for my taste. Ignore all negative reviews if you like the above games. 10/10. I've spent 30 hours this far since I want 100% completion and I'm at 90% right now.
I'm a great fan of Hollow Knight and while waiting for Silksong I've been looking for a similar experience for a long time. I found this game by accident and bought it on sale to see if it caught my attention. I have never been a fan of underwater games but Pronty really surprised me. Not the first 2 hours, bit after that it started geting very familiar and I could identify myself in a similar atmosphere as Hollow Knight. Music is very fitting, usong the fish as a weapon was a bit strange in the beginning but you got used to it after a while. Gameplay is basically a copy pasye of Hollow Knight and they even have charms that you can collect. Bosses are awesome and graphics are very mysterious. I can not understand how the Wiki for this game are almost empty and there are very lottle dokumentation for the game. It really keeps the same high quality standard as Hollow Knight. The only thing I jabe realtid to this far after almost 50% map exploration is that there is a lack of side quests and interesting random characters. It's a bit more liniear than Hollow Knight, but only very little. You don't really habe to google "boss order" since they come in the order they are supposed to be played. I would have wanted maybe a little bit less liniear approach, but it's okay. It's a great game and really a hidden gem. It deserves much more attention.
I loved the Kingdom games and just had to play a similar game - at least what I thought. I got quite disappointed since this game had basically no similarities at all apart from the lack of y-axis movement. I loved the graphics and the weather changing though, but spending 23 dollars for this was just a bit too much. It was not really a bad game and I finished the whole game. It was short and quite repetitive. I like the general idea, but it lacked all the fun from the Kingdom games. Building and upgrading buildings to level 3 in 10 seconds was not really fun. And enemies basically never destroyed any building. I played on normal mode and I think they went past my barrier once or twice. Towers were quite useless and there were really clumsy controls and not really much to do. I spent 10-11 hours on this game before I finished it and I don't regret it, but I feel a bit robbed from my expectations and money. You can buy it when it's $9 or something, but don't expect it to be even close to the Kingdom games. This is something completely different.
I've been a great fan of games like Alwas Legacy, Hollow Knight, Cuphead etc...and I saw this game and thought "hmm, it looks a bit like Alwas Legacy, maybe it's worth a try". Then I was reading it was random generated maps which I felt was a big minus and I didn't really want to install the game after I bought it on sale because it just felt like some random failure clone. But I was so wrong, I got hooked after 10 minutes and it's great. I want to highlight that you can actually stop the map from being randomized using the architect in the game and stick to the same level as long as you keep using the architect. I think I've died 400 times by now and I've reached level 99 and completed two bosses. I just can't stop playing and collect more cash for my perks. It's awesome!
At first sight, I was not that impressed. It was more of a "oh no, not yet another random 2D platformer". But after 30 mins of playing I got the metroidvania feeling. It actually reminded me of the old NES game Ufouria/Hebereke combined with Salomons Key and Metroid. Not that I'm a fan of Solomons Key puzzles, but It was a perfect balance of those kind of puzzles and it kind of made sense to the game mechanics. While writing I'm at the Beholder and I've destroyed the three other guardians. I'm very impressed and I regret I didn't buy the second one as well on the Sale. I have to wait to the next sale ;)
I saw the pictures on this game and it looked pretty nice. I was expecting some kind of Settlers or Age of Empires look-a-like game but in this beautiful world. But what did I get? Some kind of mobile game. It was basically no interactions, no characters moving, you couldn't control anything. It was just clicking on all highlighted places opening up a popup with yes or no. Clicking around everywhere and then stuff just disappeared from the world and you could proceed. If you're a fan of Clash of Clans and similar mobile games, maybe it's for you - but imagine Clash of Clans in single player. This is basically what this is. No no, I wasted my money. To be fair to the game, I played it for 10 minutes, so maaaybe there is a chance it will get better the more time you give the game. If that's the case you can ignore this comment. But those 10 minutes did not catch me even a second.
I got kind of sad when the work in DK3 was interrupted and Bullfrog died. The games has always followed me almost my whole life and they have high replay-ability. The original one DK1 is of course the best of them all still and no clone can compete with that game. However, if you compare DK2 with War for the Overworld, it's actually not that much different at all. It has basically everything that DK2 has, but with some extra stuff like potions and the sanctuary. I did not really find the potion stuff that useful but it's a fun addition. The only thing I miss are the original monsters from the DK series, but since it's a spiritual successor, I understand they could not use those characters and names. I don't "feel" that much for the WFTO monsters as I feel with the DK monsters. But they have a similar monster for the corresponding character in DK, but with less personality. What bugged me more was when you play as one of the monsters, it was quite a bad UI for switching between the weapons and I could not really see any difference while switching weapons. Imagine DK1 when you cast those red little screaming blobs and then switch to a fireball, and then switch to healing - it's all very clear and visible. In WFTO, it was more of "I have no clue what's happening now, but I'm switching weapons at least". However, it's a very good game even though the DK games are still much better.
I started playing this game 3 years ago, and I saw on Gog that I by that time gave it 7 minutes of playtime. I don't know why, I probably was not in the mood for a game like this at that point. I just gave it another try and I've finalized the first 2 chapters. And darn, I'm so happy I gave this game a second chance. It's so few pixels, but yet so many details. It's extremely good artwork since I with 5 white pixels can see that something actually is a letter for example. The context really makes everything fit very well. I really boosts your imagination while playing the game and that's a very important part when it comes to these kind of games. Compare Monkey Island 1 with the remastered version of MI1. I 100% prefer the old style because I really prefer that world I imgine from the pixels over the very describing remastered world which does not let you use your imagination at all. Last Door really puts me in another world and I totally love that.
