This game is genuinely good for my mental health.
I'm not an expert in Metroidvania games; this seemed like a good one to dip my toe. TAG is super-cute & is what I was looking for: tons of secret treasures. When you get new items, it unlocks all kinds of new things in old areas. The game is cute and simple to learn, and the setting is just fun. There are fun puzzles everywhere, and I feel pretty clever when I figure them out (but see 1 below). So why am I not sure I want to get into MetroidVania games, based on this game: 1) Periods where I'm not sure what to do next. Am I just missing an item that was hidden 10 screens ago, or am I have I just not figured it out yet? If I guess correctly, the game will be fun (although see below), but if I guess wrongly... I'm going to waste like God knows how much time of my life doing something completely pointless, then check the Internet and find out what I need to do 2) Time wasting: Why does the character walk so slowly?! It takes too long to get alllll the way across the map for the next part of the game, or to return to an earlier area to find more secrets. I'm spending half my time walking through areas I've already beaten. Also, the game has a day/night cycle that is pointless. There's nothing to do to change the time except just wait. Like leave-the-window-open-and-surf-the-Internet-for-a-while-wait. Finally, there's the jumpy parts. Oops, I timed a jump slightly wrong; now I have to do this whole damn part over again 3) Am I just bad at video games? The first boss I ran into (sewer monster) seems insanely difficult. I watched a video online and found a few exploits that help hugely, but still haven't beaten it. Why should I need cheesy exploits to win a game? When the monster's coming out of the ground at me, I don't have enough time to escape (see 2). You know what else would help me at beating this boss? More hearts. Like the heart you get from beating this boss. Maybe this is just my lack of patience. Also, the 2nd boss (stone spiky face thing) wasn't as hard
This would be a truly awesome game except that it suffers from a some bad design decisions and nasty bugs. The gameplay is generally very fun and unlocking moves for the characters is really neat. There are quite a few characters, each with their own moves, although at least one is borderline unplayable. The game manages to be fun and nostalgic, while not be quite as repetitive as the original NES game. However, there are some truly annoying missions you have to go through to win, and the end of the game is pretty tedious because most of the enemies stop dropping coins, and you can't use the subways so travelling to pick up power-ups to use on the last level is a real pain. Also, because the game is much more difficult, you can't just start using a different character.
