So I made the mistakes of combining shipping on my LRG order of Iconoclasts with the absurdly delayed Celeste, so I didn't get the game until now, and this is one I'd been looking very much forward to playing.
I like going in completely fresh to a lot of video games as I do with movies, so I often make the mistake of making completely wrong assumptions about a game - such as The Messenger being anything like Ninja Gaiden - and this one was no different. I just saw the graphics and expected a fun mega man-like platformer, with metroidvania elements or whatever you could expect from indie games nowadays.
Following the introduction part through the first boss I was immediately celebrating how great the game felt at setting up a world and telling a story without any single line of dialogue - a video game trope that I'm particularly fond of. I saw the tutorial signs which stuck to explaining mechanics entirely through images, and appreciated that Konjak seemed like he was trying to go the extra mile to avoid written words entirely.
But then you get back to the main character's house, and suddenly people start talking.
And then they don't stop talking and talking and talking for the next few hours until you are done with the game.
At first that was incredibly off-putting, and I started out ignoring most of the dialogue. But I eventually latched on to it when some of the stuff going on started turning fairly interesting.
I'd really have appreciated it if it weren't like evil_ash_xero states in his very first post here, that the story really feels unnecessarily vague. I kind of like the idea that there's a world set up here where your only direct exposure to what is going on is via the individual absurd theologies of two conflicting societies inhabiting the game's world. But I don't like the idea that "what's actually going on" feels entirely inconsequential, and honestly kind of random and pointless. I'd love to hear what it was you found out on your venture to GameFAQs, because maybe I just don't get it?
And to my big surprise, the story in general is an incredibly blunt one. It's the kind of stuff you'd only get in a true indie game - People die, and they die horribly and occasionally in a gory manner. The game will make you like even the bad guys, and then kill them off whenever the hell it feels like it. And let's kill innocent kids too, why not? It is a stark contrast to the fun, bright and colorful graphics, but matches the themes of religion and totalitarian regimes.
At the end of the day, I think it ended up being my favourite part of the game. Especially Agent Black's entire story and her eventual bittersweet demise.
In terms of gameplay, it's, well... it's not really an action game, and definitely nothing like Mega Man. There's the shell of an action game, but essentially everything you do in the game is solving puzzles. Some of them are fun, while others are bland. My favourite part was probably the stage where you go back and forth in the tower you were captured inside, which has a really fun structure of slowly getting access to more and more areas - like a mini-metroidvania on its own.
The boss fights, too, are kind of a puzzle too. There's an action element, but the primary "challenge" is finding out just what you need to do, like a modern Zelda boss.
In fact, one of the more annoying elements to me was that the game is incredibly bad at telegraphing what's going on, and what stuff will actually kill you. The game looks gorgeous, but there's so much going on in a boss fight that it's really hard to know what you need to watch out for until you've already seen it play out and had the time to analyze how everything works - so expect to die a couple of times to every boss before you find out how to beat it - at least if you're playing on "Harder". On one occasion I did manage to beat a boss without ever actually figuring out what the game wanted me to do though.
But in general the bosses are fun and very original, so as long as you don't get caught up on tight gameplay design, or the lack thereof, I'd say they are at least memorable and a part of what makes the game stand out. Just don't think of Iconoclasts as an action game - it's a puzzle game. Or, it's a long winded dialogue heavy story which sends you backtracking over and over just to tell a story, and occasionally you need to go through some puzzles.
BrianC wrote:There was an unfinished game at konjak.org named Ivory Springs that is pretty much an early version of Iconoclasts. It has some of the same characters and plot elements, but for some reason, the plot in this one has something to do with Robin chasing a crow.
Well that explains
the final boss
