BryanM wrote:Gasp, Raiden is way too generous a simile. It's more like Parodius, with its gentle difficulty.
Gaahhh, fuck! :O Brainfart. I meant Raijin, Magician Lord's electro-dude form. His AOE shield and spinneh-mah-winneh flip (more ninja than the Ninja tbh) is really useful in like two places, where you need to fend off encroaching bullets
(st5 boss comes to mind)... but its pitiful DPS means you'll need a triple doctorate in Stage 5, 6
and 7 studies to survive. 3;
I forgot all about Ninja. He's basically Wizard with marginally less DPS and marginally more HP. Decent bodyarmour character when you're learning the cruel ropes. Ditch him for Wizard when you go for the clear though. Once you have the basic layout down, you'll want kill-on-sight firepower.
Not the best run (I tend to avoid looking directly at the screen during walking stages, to help keep what scraps of sanity I have left), but it shows the exploits for the first three bosses. I'm just finishing up the text commentary, should only be two or three more days. I know zero people on the planet will ever actually read it, but this game is so completely undocumented in the english internet I feel like it's my duty.
I always say, it's about the one other dude on the planet.
Seriously, glad to see others doing a bit of guidance. It's a surprising amount of work, writing a decent guide, let alone adding video or even images. That on top of these games naturally tending to demand a lot of time.
"MUH XP POINTZ! THEY DO NUFFING!"
Hee, such mean bullying from the chat. They're bullying'em harder than the game is!
I can kind of sympathize, but um, not from the not-dodging thing, nor the lack of a games journalist difficulty mode. I've never played these games, and
I still hear Piccolo screaming "DOOOOOODGE!" in my ear.
Ludwig World Order really put the work in there - masterful document of not only DSP, but scrub mentality at large.
It's not that DSP got crushed like a flea. There's no shame in dying, particularly to foes aimed squarely to kill! Shit happens! But unlike IRL, here, you can learn from your death - returning like Jebus, to smite the cunts proper! It's a fuckin videogame bro chill out, you're not grandpa in NAM watching his buddies fall into the punji trap.
It's the failure to learn (and the inevitably comorbid arrogance) that makes a scrub. If they'd quit blubbering, and
definitely quit trying to coast by on GRINDAN, they'd find whole constellations of vulnerabilities to exploit, in this and any other quality action game. It truly is a pearls before Pigroach scenario with DSP, every time. What a loathsome slob in general, tbh.
A far classier fellow is our own beloved forum pet, D
TP!
DrTrouserPlank wrote:I don't see how I can get any better. The reason I am not improving is because I am as good as it is possible to be.
One for the ages.
No, it's from one of my greatest gaming shames: in Monster Hunter games, I'm told you can dodge the AoE roar attack that causes your guy to freeze up and cringe. Some i-frame in the middle of the roll. I've never been able to find it. Decades later, I'm still unwilling to use the cowardly power of [s]friendship[/s] youtube to see where it is. I'll figure it out myself, damnit.
That sounds eerily similar to my adventures with
Parl The Giant Hairless Cat in BB (BROTIP: play with headphones, Miyazaki loooves his audio cues! coil whine stops = time 2 roll motherfucker!). Only, as with Cutty-kun demolishing poor panic-dodging DSP there, it's relatively generous on timing. I'm pretty sure you're meant to AOE dodge with Parl, since his thing is "scratches unmercifully at range / asplodes BR00TALLY yet predictably up close, where you can slap his flapping ballbag."
Haven't played MonHun (it took years of remorseless CYBER VIOLENCE from impetuous young Burinju just to get my OAP ass into BB), but I notice a lot of commonalities in quality 3D Hard Action like that, dating back to my PS2 salad days with DMC, ZOE2 and Shinobi. All about discerningly generous i-frames! Equalises the innate loss of precision that comes with 3D action. (not a knock or a "TWODEE MASTER RACE" willy-wave; just the way of things, when we're operating in 3D space yet still watching a screen and holding a controller like it's 196X)
Magic Sword
Ah, I really liked this game playing it in the arcade. I'm a sap for Cadash-ish style action rpg's. It was a little disappointing to see the whole thing later on - it's kind of like eight stages worth of content spread out past their breaking point. Kind of like Gauntlet does.
It's one of the most annoying things about making graphical games - you have to create all this art, and then rig all these different enemies in source.... all for levels the vast, vast majority of players will never see, if it's an arcade game. I understand the reason why they need to pad, it's just a bit sad we don't live in a universe where that didn't need to be so.
The first stage's long, scenic path through the village, into the woods and finally arriving at the tower base is definitely some vintage false advertising.
Like a Bloodborne that ends the gorgeously-detailed main story at the first boss, then spends the remainder in Chalice aka DUNGEON WAD EDITOR mode. I can dig the latter, but I do feel a bit numb after a good couple hours running down marginally different hallways hoovering up loot (in MS, BB and Gauntlet alike). It's a bit like IRL, I suppose. Except the loot isn't real! Unless you're DSP, which brings its own set of horrors. 3;
Magician Lord's nonlinearity
I think there's one stage that's about 20 steps long with the correct route? And if you go the wrong direction, you can fight a completely skippable midboss?
Sounds like Stage 3, where the winning move is to ignore every door besides the last one - although there's also stage 4, where the gold strat is to ignore every door besides the first.
(if you go alll the way to the right, you'll be treated to not just a cool exclusive Winged Knight midboss, later seen in ADK's similarly vexing Crossed Swords, but also a movingly vast sea of clouds they should've really just let you see normally)
For Magician Lord, it's not 100% sure if the devs even knew that you move faster when jumping. Just another wonderful little thing about kusoge, that you get to wonder if they even knew what they were doing. Oftentimes the answer is "if you have to ask, probably not." And if the answer is obviously "yes they did", it's usually followed up by "those absolute bastards."
I'm pretty comfortable assuming they did understand their handling model, given several scenarios. st5's frog rushes, for example, or its miniboss's
high/low mixups (a nice little reflex/fine-motor test). Either someone designed those and other things around the air control, or things worked out well enough for it to not matter.
Worth also noting that the primary gain of bunnyhopping in ML isn't speed, but being able to move and attack simultaneously, without which you'd be screwed by basically
every miniboss and most bosses. This is something seen in dozens of sidescrollers, including lots of plainly well-engineered ones. Better-engineered than ML's clumsy grafting of standard-issue Makaimuraesque hop/shoot with a rambling sidescrolling ARPG, at any rate.
\m/
It's pretty compelling as a single-session game, since you can set yourself out for a variety of challenges both built into the game (e.g. get the survival trophy by clearing all Hard mode levels without a death) and invented (e.g. clear the game using only a melee weapon), and many strategies are viable. You can go for some of these within a single 10-minute session or set yourself out for a 2-hour marathon, which strikes a nice balance between arcade brevity and console variety, and the concentrated spurts of violence, the atmospheric easter eggs, and rad music will keep you coming back. My only complaint is that a difficulty mode in between Hard (3 hit points) and Badass (instagib on anything hitting you) would probably be the sweet spot for me. Considering harrying the developers to add such a thing! 
Wow! REVOURUTIONALY! 
"I'll run to the next room! Haw haw!" No, it follows you. "AIEEEEE!" Damn! Now that's ROVECLAFTIAN GAME DESIGN 
Might still be interesting to score-attack, with the gentlemanly (WIZARDLY 
)
While it's not ground-based, I'd mention Siter Skain's Kamui in the same expertly consolised bracket. Similarly nails a balance of generosity and intensity, with the addition of a very compelling scoring game.