- 1 Post
- 300 Comments
Sounds like the right move. A game with a cult fan base like this is relying on positive word of mouth to bring new people in.
Locking 2 factions behind a day 1 paywall when the game already has shaky PR was a death sentence for the success of this game.
I would stress that it’s unlikely this was a Dev decision, likely the publisher wanted these parts of the game nickel and dimed.
Hard agree. My expectations were “more hollow knight but with a slightly different game feel and maybe ramped up difficulty” and it’s delivering that exactly.
“More hollow knight” might sound reductive, but HK was a 10/10 metroidvania so I see no issues with more of that.
I agree that the change in movement has made it challenging again. I’m sure veterans like Fireb0rn are still crushing everything.
As an Australian I’m extremely patriotic about Team Cherry. Great team.
Does it look like this APU is going to be used in a Steam Console, VR headset, or the Steam deck 2? I had assumed console, but it seems a little underbaked in 2025, so maybe a mobile device makes more sense.
Valve tend to be getting it right with their hardware choices since the steam controller, so I’m sure whatever they do there will be good design sense behind it.
I’ve avoided being hyped for Silksong for years after realising it’s taking a long time, but Hollow Knight is one of my all time favourite games.
Not expecting this to top E33 for me for my personal GOTY, but if this is basically just bigger Hollow Knight but with a twist with different movement and combat mechanics, I’ll be thrilled.
Seems like they should have just gone with these VRAM configs with the non-super variants from the start.
After using steamOS, I’m more likely to buy a new AMD card when support for desktops comes in, or use Bazzite.
I really really would like quick resume on PC. That would be so much more valuable to me than multi-frame gen and path tracing.
Until then, my 3070ti (8gb VRAM) will have to do.
It’s the sort of game I think we should praise for those reasons, I agree. I’m definitely in the no-buy camp if a game has a cash shop. The indie game space is where truely high risk creative design is happening, AA is the space for slightly more ambitious titles that require that polish but can still take some risk. I respect Tango for that and definitely think they were done dirty BTW.
There would be lots of ways to make the style meter matter more that didn’t feel too forced.
Agree that maybe you could lose health if you’re not on beat, and gain it back for being on beat.
Nerfing move damage if you’ve used the same one too many times could also be a way. I know you get more style for varying your moves so it’s almost there.
Creating intrinsic motivation in the player is a tricky one to pin down. The player needs to be invested themselves to want to do a self-guided goal, almost by definition. Pokemon nailed it by having an anime, banger song, and gambling-adjacent card collection game (all of them being insanely popular) surrounding the gameboy games. That fed into the desire of players to catch em all massively.
Fair enough feedback.
I think it’s up to the game designers to motivate certain playstyles. If there was a reason beyond the personal self imposed challenge to attain S rank in every fight, that would be a motivation, but there isn’t a style rank cutoff for completion.
I didn’t play Rhythm Master but it sounds like that should be the default difficulty reading the wiki now.
To be more accurate, I refrained from spamming abilities for 90% of the game and did use more than 3 attack combos. But the option to just do that was there. It was not my main criticism of the game anyway.
I should say I approached the game with an open mind, maybe a little too hopeful by the hype, and I grew up in the 5th/6th gen of consoles, so understand the game is a PS2 throwback in terms of the design.
Never have I given DMC a fair shake, maybe that’s the kind of audience the game was going for.
Ultimately yeah, I’m saying the game isn’t for me. But I often hear the game in discussions of what the industry is missing in terms of game design, and I don’t think I agree that it’s worth that level of praise.
Immolation-only run is possible, so sorcery + pyro would be fine. Pyro glove is the most useful part of a SL1 playthrough in DS1.
Steve just does that as a bit, Photoshopping his head on to the protagonist’s body. These guys are like the Australian Digital Foundry that focuses on hardware. They’re very thorough.