The Swords of Ditto: Mormo’s Curse

The game may not advertise itself as a rogue-like, but this is exactly what you're getting here. When you die, that's it. You lose all progress. The island & dungeons are reset and you gotta do it all again until eventually, you make it to the final boss. It's a rogue-like, don't kid yourself. Not helped by the fact thta there is a time limit ticking in the background. You have a limited amount of days tog et everything done, then you're forced to engage the final dungeon. Whether you are prepared or not. Harsh, even Darkest Dungeon let you take as long as you needed.... So what you DO keep when you inevitably die is money and levels. Leveling is entirely meaningless since enemies scale with you. That is something I never understood, the entire reason you would let someone accumulate levels in a game is to get an advantage over your foes. If your foes are constantly on the same level as you are, what in the actual fudge is the point of levels to begin with? So what exactly do you DO in Ditto? Well, you walk from screen to screen and battle enemies in a Zelda-like fashion. You have a sword, a dodge roll and a multitude of items ranging from bows to bombs. Combat is functional but extremely rudimentary. Don't expect the fluidity of a Dead Cells. Then there's dungeons in which you solve basic flip switching puzzle. There's an element of randomness to each challenge (again, it's a rogue-like) but not nearly enough to keep you engaged for long periods of time. This crap was stale after 2 hours. The most aggravating thing is the manual pick-up of loot and coins. Tedious does not begin to describe having to chase after each coin individually. There may be a magnet or something later in the game, I did not play long enough to find out. Bottom Line: Swords of Ditto is dull. It looks neat, it plays passably but there is nothing here to keep you entertained for more than a few hours. It might be a bit more fun in co-op mode, but single-player is not worth your time.

Looking at a lot of reviews across the web, it seems the main gripes with this game are: a) You 'lose all progress' when you die, and B) you don't have enough time 'to get everything'. The point of this game is that you're not meant to get everything before you face the main boss. You're supposed to manage your time and make the best use of exploring the current map, to find items, and also find out more about the back story. Also, after a couple of Swords, YOU CAN EXTEND YOUR TIME. Yes, you lose almost everything every time a new Sword awakens, however there are so many toys and items, and other goodies in the game. The aim of each Sword isn't to amass ALL items, toys, etc before facing Mormo. It's impossible to possess every item in this game at the same time, and it would also make fighting Mormo just too easy. The aim is to see what you can find with each Sword, and make do with it. Every time a Sword has awoken I have found new weapons, new enemies, new NPCs. There is a lot to find on the island, and it will take many Swords to find it all. This game plays like Link to the Past stuck in an infinite loop. If you like the idea of never ending LttP you will probably enjoy this game. In some ways the gameplay seems more refined, in other ways it's less. At first I found the hit detection seemed inaccurate at times (but not all the time). Since not long before writing this, I've found the detection to be much better. I'm not sure if it's due to the recent patch, or if I've just become more accustomed to the game's mechanics. Also I found that if I quit in the middle of a dungeon, some moving platforms would stop moving when a fired the game up again, making it impossible to complete the dungeon. However I was still able to exit those dungeons and carry on. If you are addicted to closure, or you don't like repetition, this game is not for you. This is a Zelda-like roguelite that is designed to be replayed many, many times.

Not a fun combination of rogue-like + time limit + time extensions (based on farming) + more farming + adventure / map exploration + permadeaths / loss of progression. This game could have been a good Zelda wannabe focused on exploration (especially considering the art style which invites you to "stop and smell the roses"), or a classic Dungeon crawler with rogue-like elements, or something faster and more "arcade-ish" like Half Minute Hero. But not all of those together, which is plain frustrating, repetitive and tedious.

The style is fun, very Zelda-like, which I love. But that's it.. Mechanics are sloppy: -Controls are *atrocious*; can't remap controller buttons (use JoyToKey, instead) -Lots of skipping, though I imagine they'll fix that -You have to wait for the dropped objects to "spawn", I guess, so you often run off without collecting them. OBJECT MAGNETS! STOP MAKING US *TOUCH* EVERYTHING TO COLLECT! Items fade pretty quick while a swarm of creatures attack you, wasting effort -You can't effectively attack creatures above you because of the angle and short swing range -Creatures level with you, so keeping your level from past incarnations is rendered useless althogh you can wear more "stickers" which are very small power ups -You lose *everything* upon death so you're fighting evolved creatures with no gear -Everything is super expensive but you mostly find coins valued at 1-2 gold with occasional 5, 10, 20 values - Since you lose *everything* when you die it's useless to grind out gear. You even lose "legendary toys" found in dungeons. They let you "buy" *some* of your current gear for your next life, but legendary toys are not allowed and even those costs are prohibitive -You can power up your gear - but the power ups are lost when you die - which will happen because they force you into the final dungeon via a very short timer. You can buy more time for 100 special currency - again, finding 1 at a time, mostly - so, again, super grindy. Oh, and you only buy *one* day/100 shards -To collect shards, you fight the current zone's "champion" creature - a randomly selected creature within the zone. Every hit on this creature yields drops, making them the only creature you want to kill because of the super low drop rates. Upon the champion's death, another creature is randomly selected within the zone .. the *whole* zone so you're constantly chasing the champ all over the zone .. wasting precious time while the clock counts down to the forced boss battle - and likely death Not fun