In the first minutes of the game, one of the main characters uses "hippie" as a pejorative and have you kill one of them. I guess it's supposed to be edgy and/or appeal to those knuckle-dragging gamers out there. Reminds me of Breathedge's "Mr. Sort-of-Libtard". Personally, I just find such "humor" revolting.
Actually, it's not necessarily that "little". There are about 5 pretty large areas to discover (about 10 if you count sub sections of those large areas). For experienced gamers, I'd recommend to start on "insane" difficulty right away. There was one boss I had to skip and will hopefully be able to beat soon now that I'm almost done with the game. Which already indicates the at least partial non-linear nature of the game. There are things you have to do to progress but the order you do them in (and sometimes even how much of it) is up to you. What really makes the game stand out to me though is the nature of puzzles and degree of interaction. For example - one of the areas is an amusement park and if you try to skip in line, the other characters will push you. If you try to board a train too early, the conductor will stop you and tell you that the cleaning staff is still in there. YES, there's actually cleaning staff that enters and leaves the train and takes a few seconds! It's little details like that throughout the whole game that make it so charming. The puzzles are frequently about using items in a specific way with someone/something. But even though there are a ton of items, you usually get helpful clues (don't forget about your bird companion!). I also love the fact that the game is mostly about exploration and little puzzles/tasks rather than fighting. Aside from the ~10 boss fights, it's rare that you have to fight. There is quite a number of NPCs though that start off as neutral and will fight back if you attack them though. All that said, releasing the game in 2016 in an unfinished state and then patching it up across about 3 years to then slap a "definitive version" onto what it should've been in the first place - that's not a cool move. Hence -1 star. It's a funny parallel to how the main character acts in the beginning of the game though. (Plus, there's one puzzle towards the end that is really annoying.)
I have to admit that I was hesitant about the concept, even though I enjoyed at least the "first half" of The Witness (if you finished it, you probably know what I mean). I suspected that the environments would feel gimmicky. But actually, a bit similar to The Witness, I find myself sometimes pausing between puzzles and just looking at the environments. Even though they're not quite as artistically intriguing, you can still tell that a lot of effort went into them, even though they're usually just in the background. Sound and music also matches what's going on and transitions very elegantly. As for the puzzles themselves - I've only played a few hours so far, so I don't know how everything will unfold yet but I've had a blast so far and the mechanics that have been introduced so far are all very engaging. The way the puzzles are set up is very innovative as well, as you've probably seen in videos. But since GOG seems to hate this game (Or maybe one has to pay to get mentioned on the landing page? But there were also shenanigans with the "date added" order in the store. When it was added, it got listed after ones I had already seen. Which is why I almost missed it.), I decided to post my review right now already. Plus, I feel like I've already gotten my money's worth.
I'm reviewing v1.07 on Hard difficulty. I first tried Chasm at release once and only remember that the backgrounds seemed repetitive, the controls unresponsive and so I stopped playing after maybe 30 minutes. Now, however, I have a very different impression. The controls are still up to taste in my opinion. They are very deliberate in that once you attack, you can't move for the duration of the attack (old school Castlevania fans might love this). You really have to learn the enemies' attacks, time your own ones well, commit to them, dodge. Only around the very end of the game you will have enough money to buy a decent amount of healing potions. Until then, you will spend more time trying to dodge every single attack and possibly even avoiding enemies entirely. Or luring them towards you so that you don't have to fight two at once. All of which is a lot of fun once you get used to the basic mechanics. The animations are absolutely gorgeous - so detailed and smooth that it seems like the game's biggest strength to me. I also quite like the chiptune soundtrack that got added later. Some aspects that I didn't like are: Missable things at the beginning of the game that block an achievement (for that run of course). They didn't ensure that room layouts for bigger, more complex rooms aren't used more than once in an area. You may see some of them even 3 times! Drop rate also seems low at times. I would say that this also a matter of taste, as I seem to recall not bothering with farming for all items in SOTN either but there are also many others who complain about this. In my opinion, the game doesn't lend itself to procedural dungeons. Its spirit is that of a regular Metroidvania adventure, not some Dead Cells or Rogue Legacy time sink. But one can always ignore that. All in all, I for one enjoyed playing through it once as a single player experience very much and hope that the game has made enough money that we will see a sequel that continues to improve on things.
Before considering buying this, you should realize that this is not a professionally made game that is aimed at a broader audience. It looks more like a hobby project someone made to play with friends and I'm guessing that those friends are behind most of the reviews because this thing is a mess. For starters, there is no tutorial and when you select "Instructions", a browser with this text opens: "Beat Hazard 2 - Instructions It's been a crazy few days getting the game ready for release. I've not had the chance to create the instructions. I'll be adding the instructions over the coming days. In the mean time, pop in to the Beat Hazard discord server if you need help. I'm there along with a lot of experienced players." How is that an acceptable state to launch a game in?! But alright, so I tried out the Daily Challenge - which was reasonably fun. But anyone who describes this as a bullet hell shooter misleads people, since this is a twin stick shooter. After the Daily Challenge, sounds only played in the left channel and I was back in the main menu without music. The UI design is pretty bad and the UX is worse. For instance, it said that I should enter my name. Since I used a gamepad, I couldn't click on the text field. Alright, so I tried to use the digipad to select characters. Nothing. Sticks? No dice. Bumpers? Triggers? What the hell is going on? Giving up on trying to enter my name, I just press "A" when all of a sudden, a bigger text field pops up. I can actually write into this one using my keyboard. That kind of lack of proper design is all over the place. Another example - when scrolling through a list of perks, you can actually select invisible placeholders BETWEEN sections of perks! Overall, this would be fine as a proof of concept, a nice project to have made at university. Or to get the funds to develop it into something that people expect to get when they pay for a game. I really wish I had bought this on Steam, so I could get a refund...
