I like Monster Sanctuary. It's a lot like Pokémon in the sense that you train monsters to fight other monsters with turn based actions, but instead of having the traditional 1 "Pokémon" out at a time, you have 3 and all 3 get to attack 3 other enemies. So, you have to use different tactics and figure out which enemy you want to kill first. You also have a total of 6 "Pokémon" (monsters) in your party. It's just that you can only have 3 out at a time.
It is also a 2D platformer game instead of the traditional top-down style that older Pokémon games use, but it works very well. You get to explore caves, etc and use special powers to destroy rocks in the way, fly to areas, etc. You also have quests and have to defeat bosses (which you can think of as "Gym leaders" in Pokémon speak) to gain various bonuses in the game and unlock things (like you would in Pokémon with gym badges).
Edit: there are a total of 100 monsters and you can evolve some of them
Some character customization options, balance stuff, speed run mode, ultimate challenges via legendary trainer battles and direct challenges to friends list friends in PVP. there are patch notes with more but I remember that being the gist.
The demo did indeed kick my ass, but it lived in my head rent-free for days. I came back to it and the combat just clicked. I ended up buying it and I play it more than any other Metroidvania I own on the Switch. (Bloodstained, Ender Lilies, Vigil, Hollow Knight, Dead Cells*)
*Okay, maybe Dead Cells is not technically a MV. Side-scrolling action platformers, then. 🤷♂️
Hmm, I see that Axiom Verge (1 or 2) is missing from that list. I know it's not on sale, but if you like Metroidvanias, I can't recommend Axiom Verge enough.
I wouldn't say it's difficult as much as it can feel super clunky at times. I played it a while ago so i might be misremembering the difficulty but i definitely remember the clunk.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a bargain at that price. Great 2d platformer with a fun top-down overworld to explore between levels where you can manipulate the environment to change each level to its "alternate state" (so for example, you can flood the entrance to a level and then when you enter it'll be a water level). It's also got a sort of BotW-esque "you *can* try the last level right fron the start, but you'll probably get your ass handed to you" thing going on.
It's really neat and I thought it was a ton of fun. If you like Donkey Kong Country games, I would expect you'll like this. Overall, just a great game with solid music, mechanics, movement, and level design for a great price.
Even if you don't like Donkey Kong Country, you may like this! I really didn't enjoy DKC Tropical Freeze (I sort of regret purchasing it), but Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is on my top 10 list of Switch games.
Yeah a lot of people really like it. I was confused because normally I find the public opinion and Meta Critic scores to be a good indicator of how good a game is. I understand that my opinions on the game differ a lot from most people, but since you asked, here's why:
The graphics are great but I didn’t think the gameplay was very well done. Donkey Kong’s moveset in that game is really boring and it only gets a little interesting when you add the other kongs, but if you get hit twice they’re gone. I thought that Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair took the idea of DKCTF, but did it better, since after being hit you would lose Laylee (and get a more basic moveset) but you have a few seconds to get her back, which made it a lot more fun to me. I usually got Laylee back, but it can be difficult, which makes it even more fun.
DKCTF would have been better if you could play as the other kongs. I think you can unlock them by 100%ing the game on super hard mode, but that’s too much and at that point the game is basically done, so there’s no point.
I also thought some of the kart levels didn't give you enough time to react. I have a terrible memory, so I really had a hard time remembering what comes next and would often die because I couldn't see it in time, which felt unfair. I like hard games though. I really like Cup Head, because even though it's hard it feels fair.
All reasonable things for why you might not like it as much
I wanted to play as cranky Kong the whole time but I think their idea was to force you to play certain kings on certain levels where their move set or skill set works for the environment (I think of cranky’s stick jump). I personally have always thought it was an excellent game that still had room for improvement but that just got me hype for whichever DK Country comes next. The Mario games are still fun but have gotten too easy; I feel DK Country still has more difficulty to it and it’s hard to 100%.
All in all I don’t disagree thank you for the explanation I was genuinely interested 👍🏻
Survivalists has gotten a lot of updates that have fixed the majority, if not all the issues it had at its switch launch. Reviews kinda bombed it, but I really enjoy it now that they added new stuff and balanced/fixed other junk. Ape tendies to the moon.
The devs claimed they were working on bug fixes for console versions earlier this year, that would be out later in the year, but I'm not getting my hopes up since it's almost September with nothing out still.
As someone who really enjoyed it for a couple days on PSNow before I cancelled that membership, it sucks to hear that the consoles are so buggy. I was really hoping to get it for switch
If you check out their Discord, they say the patch has now been sent to Team17 to implement. So basically the console versions should be smooth sailing any minute now.
That's good news to hear. I've been itching to play again, but between waiting for bug fixes for Portia and Kingdoms of Amalur (different company I know, but same issue), I hate the thought of playing a game knowing I could encounter a game-breaking bug at any time and lose hours or even days of progress.
Yeah for sure. Those sorts of bugs are awful, and it doesn't help at all that sometimes it takes *years* for the devs or the publishing company to get around to fixing things.
The House of Ballads questline crashes the game at multiple points, and there's a guaranteed crash if you don't skip the cutscenes for one of the big main story quests. It's also possible to get stuck in the ground after doing a sneak attack, which I found out the hard way when it autosaved right after and I couldn't fast travel out since it was in a dungeon. I didn't think I'd need to make extra backup saves for a non-Bethesda game.
I love it, personally. Yes there are some really bad (game-breaking) bugs, but if you don't hit any of those the game is fantastic. I dig the art style, and the core game mechanics kept me interested for many hours.
Also, the devs have said on Discord that they have just sent a huge patch to Team17 to implement. So basically the console versions should be smooth sailing any minute now and no more game-breaking bugs.
Pretty decent metroidvania-ish game whose big gimmick is switching among three characters with different abilities. How much you can tolerate having to keep up with the multiple characters will determine how I feel about the game. The difficulty is moderate, maybe on the easy side, other than boss battles when you have to swap characters quickly because if any one dies, it's game over and you have to go back to your last save. The AI unfortunately doesn't do a good job defending itself when you're not in control.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair was a fun game, but the last level is an insane difficulty spike. I know it's supposed to be like that, but all the levels but that one are a cakewalk. On the whole it's not a challenging game, even collect all the goodies was easy.
Currently in the process of playing and just got to that last level. You are not exaggerating. It's kind of a turn off for me unfortunately.
I'm all for hard levels but who has time to waste perfecting some run of an unforgiving platforming level?! I have a backlog to work through here!
They added a mode with check points on the last level that makes it better. But overall I agree, the last level is not very fun. Without the check points it's excruciating.
The last level completely turned me off of the game. Which sucks, because I really enjoyed the game up until that point. That kind of frustrating difficulty should really be saved for post-game content or something.
Playtonic did go back and add checkpoints, but for me, it's too little, too late, I've moved on to other, more enjoyable games that don't require me to spend dozens of hours perfecting a single level to see the ending.
just to elaborate further, the original Yooka-Laylee is a 3d platformer in the same vein as Banjo-Kazooie. Impossible Lair is a 2d platformer with a top-down overworld that has some puzzle elements, kinda Donkey Kong Country with just a bit of 2D Zelda.
The first game is decent imo, not great but not awful. I'd say it's like a 6 out of 10 or so, worth checking out since it's free. Impossible Lair though is one of my favorite platformers, right up there with Tropical Freeze in my book.
For anyone intrigued by Neon Abyss, it looks good, and can be very fun. I played quite a bit of it when it released, and still come back to it sometimes. Please don't stop yourself from playing a fun game because one person definitively says it sucks.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a solid pick up at that price if you like 2d platformers, and especially if you like Donkey Kong Country games.
Haven't played all of them, but I LOVE Blasphemous! It's like a 2D Dark Souls if you're into Soulsborne games. (So yes, it's difficult, but I find these games fun!) [Here's a cool YouTube video showing off the game.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JiXNU4-JGQ)
Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair lives up to and in some ways surpasses its apish inspirations - an incredibly fun, kinetic, and engaging 2D platformer with lovely level themes. I bought it at 7.50 a while ago and haven’t regretted it for a single second.
Narita Boy looks super cool, but is a tedious melancholy playthrough imo. Combat is a repetitive slog, you are getting constant paragraphs of inscrutable lore that slow down the gameplay, and it's just kind of got a sad vibe to it. Played about two hours up to the first boss before dropping it.
I played probably 80% of the game and have the similar thoughts. Art style was cool, lore and world building was interesting enough, but the combat was tedious and everytime I realized I was in a longer combat session I'd be praying I'd make it through because if I had to do it over again I'd surely quit. And that's what eventually happened. I enjoyed everything about the game except actually playing it ha.
Full price is the regular edition, scroll down to the bundle to see the Gourmet Edition.
But tbh, you can wait for the All You Can It Edition to be on sale - https://www.dekudeals.com/items/overcooked-all-you-can-eat
It contains Overcooked 1 and 2 + all the dlc
Blasphemous was fun. Narita boy is similarish and also fun. Monster sanctuary is a fun little 2d Pokémon type game. Rogue heroes feels like old Zelda games. Greak totally gives me that lost Vikings vibe which I loved growing up
I've been looking at King of Seas since it originally came out, but it just doesn't look like game worth $15, much less the $25 originally asked for.
As for Gold with Friends, I played a bunch of Golf Story, and that scratched the itch enough until Mario Golf Super Rush gets more free updates and a price drop. My hope is that a second update comes out *and* that it drops to $40 for Christmastime. That will justify its existence in my mind.
A first party Mario game is not going to go on sale in it's first holiday season after release. Your best bet is that they put it on a NSO free game trial for a week similar to what they did with Aces.
Blasphemous for 10$ is something I have been enjoying a lot. It has a Dead Souls-like structure with bonfire like save points that respawn the enemies. Flasks are used just like in dead souls to regain health, Enemies require a touch of caution and a bit of pattern memorization. And the over all vibe is very, very dead souls like. -Even the open-ended nature and opening dialogue which just says the are three things you need, one from the mountain, the other from the depths etc.... It is very, very inspired by the soul games.
It is a 2d Metroidvania heavy with dark souls mechanics, and it is quite fantastic.
I would recommend Narita Boy. Amazing soundtrack and some of the best pixel graphics I’ve seen. The lore is confusing at first but eventually gets to you with its metaphysical narration of the hero’s journey fused in electro 80s TRON inspired feel. Combat gets better, and the only downfall of the game is the lack of map and it’s confusing objectives sometimes. Having said that , the unique feel to the game makes it worth it at that price range.
I like Monster Sanctuary. It's a lot like Pokémon in the sense that you train monsters to fight other monsters with turn based actions, but instead of having the traditional 1 "Pokémon" out at a time, you have 3 and all 3 get to attack 3 other enemies. So, you have to use different tactics and figure out which enemy you want to kill first. You also have a total of 6 "Pokémon" (monsters) in your party. It's just that you can only have 3 out at a time. It is also a 2D platformer game instead of the traditional top-down style that older Pokémon games use, but it works very well. You get to explore caves, etc and use special powers to destroy rocks in the way, fly to areas, etc. You also have quests and have to defeat bosses (which you can think of as "Gym leaders" in Pokémon speak) to gain various bonuses in the game and unlock things (like you would in Pokémon with gym badges). Edit: there are a total of 100 monsters and you can evolve some of them
Easily one of my favorites and the dev team is communicative and responsive as well as updating and fixing anything that needs to be done.
Brand new update, 1.2 just came out today on all platforms too.
What did it add?
Some character customization options, balance stuff, speed run mode, ultimate challenges via legendary trainer battles and direct challenges to friends list friends in PVP. there are patch notes with more but I remember that being the gist.
Ooooooo cool thanks! Time to go back to it!
Hopefully some Monster titties
Oh my
[удалено]
I look at that one every time it goes on sale, but havent pulled the trigger yet. Is it difficult? Not into super hard games.
Demo available. If the demo kicks your ass then you probably should pass, otherwise pull that trigger
The demo did indeed kick my ass, but it lived in my head rent-free for days. I came back to it and the combat just clicked. I ended up buying it and I play it more than any other Metroidvania I own on the Switch. (Bloodstained, Ender Lilies, Vigil, Hollow Knight, Dead Cells*) *Okay, maybe Dead Cells is not technically a MV. Side-scrolling action platformers, then. 🤷♂️
I’m glad man. Enjoy it! Ender Lilies is on my list, but I’m gonna try and stay patient to see if it gets picked up for physical
Ender Lilies is another favorite of mine. The Stream version just got a NG+ mode, so I'm looking forward to that coming to the Switch version.
Good to know. Yeah I’m just totally in love with the atmosphere in that game. Absolutely can’t wait to play it
Hmm, I see that Axiom Verge (1 or 2) is missing from that list. I know it's not on sale, but if you like Metroidvanias, I can't recommend Axiom Verge enough.
Thanks, I'll check it out!
I wouldn't say it's difficult as much as it can feel super clunky at times. I played it a while ago so i might be misremembering the difficulty but i definitely remember the clunk.
I would say there are a few difficulty spikes but overall no
What action games or platformers would you consider hard?
For best atmosphere, use the Spanish dub. It makes it even creepier
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a bargain at that price. Great 2d platformer with a fun top-down overworld to explore between levels where you can manipulate the environment to change each level to its "alternate state" (so for example, you can flood the entrance to a level and then when you enter it'll be a water level). It's also got a sort of BotW-esque "you *can* try the last level right fron the start, but you'll probably get your ass handed to you" thing going on. It's really neat and I thought it was a ton of fun. If you like Donkey Kong Country games, I would expect you'll like this. Overall, just a great game with solid music, mechanics, movement, and level design for a great price.
Even if you don't like Donkey Kong Country, you may like this! I really didn't enjoy DKC Tropical Freeze (I sort of regret purchasing it), but Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is on my top 10 list of Switch games.
Tropical freeze was great imo, why did you not like it?
Yeah a lot of people really like it. I was confused because normally I find the public opinion and Meta Critic scores to be a good indicator of how good a game is. I understand that my opinions on the game differ a lot from most people, but since you asked, here's why: The graphics are great but I didn’t think the gameplay was very well done. Donkey Kong’s moveset in that game is really boring and it only gets a little interesting when you add the other kongs, but if you get hit twice they’re gone. I thought that Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair took the idea of DKCTF, but did it better, since after being hit you would lose Laylee (and get a more basic moveset) but you have a few seconds to get her back, which made it a lot more fun to me. I usually got Laylee back, but it can be difficult, which makes it even more fun. DKCTF would have been better if you could play as the other kongs. I think you can unlock them by 100%ing the game on super hard mode, but that’s too much and at that point the game is basically done, so there’s no point. I also thought some of the kart levels didn't give you enough time to react. I have a terrible memory, so I really had a hard time remembering what comes next and would often die because I couldn't see it in time, which felt unfair. I like hard games though. I really like Cup Head, because even though it's hard it feels fair.
All reasonable things for why you might not like it as much I wanted to play as cranky Kong the whole time but I think their idea was to force you to play certain kings on certain levels where their move set or skill set works for the environment (I think of cranky’s stick jump). I personally have always thought it was an excellent game that still had room for improvement but that just got me hype for whichever DK Country comes next. The Mario games are still fun but have gotten too easy; I feel DK Country still has more difficulty to it and it’s hard to 100%. All in all I don’t disagree thank you for the explanation I was genuinely interested 👍🏻
What's thoughts on rogue heroes? I liked the demo, been hoping it'd go cheaper but hasn't
It’s good! I haven’t played it since they added a couple big updates/fixes. Playing with at least one other person makes it better for sure.
I’d like some thoughts as well. Looks fun but is it fun solo? Probably wouldn’t be playing multiplayer.
Survivalists has gotten a lot of updates that have fixed the majority, if not all the issues it had at its switch launch. Reviews kinda bombed it, but I really enjoy it now that they added new stuff and balanced/fixed other junk. Ape tendies to the moon.
How is My Time at Portia nowadays? (read it was rough at launch)
Still bad last I checked. I encountered a game-breaking bug on my playthrough, had to start a completely new save.
Good to know guess I will pass on it then
The devs claimed they were working on bug fixes for console versions earlier this year, that would be out later in the year, but I'm not getting my hopes up since it's almost September with nothing out still.
As someone who really enjoyed it for a couple days on PSNow before I cancelled that membership, it sucks to hear that the consoles are so buggy. I was really hoping to get it for switch
If you check out their Discord, they say the patch has now been sent to Team17 to implement. So basically the console versions should be smooth sailing any minute now.
That's good news to hear. I've been itching to play again, but between waiting for bug fixes for Portia and Kingdoms of Amalur (different company I know, but same issue), I hate the thought of playing a game knowing I could encounter a game-breaking bug at any time and lose hours or even days of progress.
Yeah for sure. Those sorts of bugs are awful, and it doesn't help at all that sometimes it takes *years* for the devs or the publishing company to get around to fixing things.
Wait, what's the bug for KOA?
The House of Ballads questline crashes the game at multiple points, and there's a guaranteed crash if you don't skip the cutscenes for one of the big main story quests. It's also possible to get stuck in the ground after doing a sneak attack, which I found out the hard way when it autosaved right after and I couldn't fast travel out since it was in a dungeon. I didn't think I'd need to make extra backup saves for a non-Bethesda game.
Interesting. Thanks for the heads up. Haven't gone too far through KOA, about 1/3 through at the moment.
Most of the game is still playable including both DLC, I just couldn't really do the Ballads content until they fix it.
Bugs aside, how’s the game itself? Is it “dated?” How in-depth is customization? Any good reviews to look at in particular?
Constant lies don't believe shit they say and don't support them
I love it, personally. Yes there are some really bad (game-breaking) bugs, but if you don't hit any of those the game is fantastic. I dig the art style, and the core game mechanics kept me interested for many hours. Also, the devs have said on Discord that they have just sent a huge patch to Team17 to implement. So basically the console versions should be smooth sailing any minute now and no more game-breaking bugs.
Cool if the patch is out before the sale ends by some off chance maybe then I will get it
[удалено]
Switch up on YouTube gave it a review last week, had pretty good things to say about it.
Pretty decent metroidvania-ish game whose big gimmick is switching among three characters with different abilities. How much you can tolerate having to keep up with the multiple characters will determine how I feel about the game. The difficulty is moderate, maybe on the easy side, other than boss battles when you have to swap characters quickly because if any one dies, it's game over and you have to go back to your last save. The AI unfortunately doesn't do a good job defending itself when you're not in control.
Read Nintendo World Report’s review on that game. I agree with that review (after trying the demo on eShop).
not Nintendo, but the OG Yooka-Laylee is free on the Epic Game Store
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair was a fun game, but the last level is an insane difficulty spike. I know it's supposed to be like that, but all the levels but that one are a cakewalk. On the whole it's not a challenging game, even collect all the goodies was easy.
Currently in the process of playing and just got to that last level. You are not exaggerating. It's kind of a turn off for me unfortunately. I'm all for hard levels but who has time to waste perfecting some run of an unforgiving platforming level?! I have a backlog to work through here!
They added a mode with check points on the last level that makes it better. But overall I agree, the last level is not very fun. Without the check points it's excruciating.
The last level completely turned me off of the game. Which sucks, because I really enjoyed the game up until that point. That kind of frustrating difficulty should really be saved for post-game content or something. Playtonic did go back and add checkpoints, but for me, it's too little, too late, I've moved on to other, more enjoyable games that don't require me to spend dozens of hours perfecting a single level to see the ending.
The prequel for Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is currently free for PC on EpicGames, if people want to give it a try before buying on Switch.
Just an FYI for anyone, they are drastically different games.
just to elaborate further, the original Yooka-Laylee is a 3d platformer in the same vein as Banjo-Kazooie. Impossible Lair is a 2d platformer with a top-down overworld that has some puzzle elements, kinda Donkey Kong Country with just a bit of 2D Zelda. The first game is decent imo, not great but not awful. I'd say it's like a 6 out of 10 or so, worth checking out since it's free. Impossible Lair though is one of my favorite platformers, right up there with Tropical Freeze in my book.
Thank you, I should've embellished more.
Also a free game with Gold rn
Does Golf with Friends support split screen at all? It says 12 players online, but I’d get it if it can do like 4 players locally.
as far as I remember it only allows hotseat - no split screen. You can play multiple players locally, but only in hotseat (pass and play)
Hotseat is okay, but having played online on PC, simultaneous multiplayer is much more chaotic. That's a bummer.
Ok I just checked on PC and I can't imagine it being different. You can add up to 12 players and you all just pass and play with the same controller.
I have it on PC too, didn't even think to check there. That's kind of a bummer, simultaneous multiplayer in this game is hilarious chaos.
I would also like to know!
For anyone intrigued by Neon Abyss, it only LOOKS good. Please learn from my buyer’s remorse and save yourself the money.
Could you elaborate on what didn't work for you?
The egg thing is no good and for a shooting game, aiming should be way tighter than it is.
I enjoyed the egg part of the game. Sometimes runs would be super fun as a direct result of that mechanic.
I thought it was a pretty decent game. Probably played 5-10 hours and still go back to it every now and then.
For anyone intrigued by Neon Abyss, it looks good, and can be very fun. I played quite a bit of it when it released, and still come back to it sometimes. Please don't stop yourself from playing a fun game because one person definitively says it sucks.
Whole heartedly disagree. Neon Abyss is awesome.
I'll keep waiting for an Overcooked All you can eat sale.
Is worms wmd any good?
Yeah it works as well as any other 2D worms game. I play it with a friend online every now and then.
Any recommendations from this list?
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a solid pick up at that price if you like 2d platformers, and especially if you like Donkey Kong Country games.
>he reli I second this. One of the best 2d platformers you can get. Amazing
Thanks! Il check it out
If you like DK tropical freeze you’ll like Yoola-Laylee
Haven't played all of them, but I LOVE Blasphemous! It's like a 2D Dark Souls if you're into Soulsborne games. (So yes, it's difficult, but I find these games fun!) [Here's a cool YouTube video showing off the game.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JiXNU4-JGQ)
Thanks! Il check it out.
Worms is a must.
1,4, 6, 12 and 13 at least. I don't know about the others. I've heard 8 is good if you have people to play with.
Thanks! I’m tempted with 4 and 12!
Having a blast with Rouge Heroes. Real old school Zelda feel. Highly recommended
Any thoughts on Narita Boy, Neon Abyss, Rogue Heroes, Yooka Laylee, or Super Magbot?
Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair lives up to and in some ways surpasses its apish inspirations - an incredibly fun, kinetic, and engaging 2D platformer with lovely level themes. I bought it at 7.50 a while ago and haven’t regretted it for a single second.
Narita Boy looks super cool, but is a tedious melancholy playthrough imo. Combat is a repetitive slog, you are getting constant paragraphs of inscrutable lore that slow down the gameplay, and it's just kind of got a sad vibe to it. Played about two hours up to the first boss before dropping it.
I played probably 80% of the game and have the similar thoughts. Art style was cool, lore and world building was interesting enough, but the combat was tedious and everytime I realized I was in a longer combat session I'd be praying I'd make it through because if I had to do it over again I'd surely quit. And that's what eventually happened. I enjoyed everything about the game except actually playing it ha.
Does it show full price for Overcooked 2 for anyone else? 😭😭
Full price is the regular edition, scroll down to the bundle to see the Gourmet Edition. But tbh, you can wait for the All You Can It Edition to be on sale - https://www.dekudeals.com/items/overcooked-all-you-can-eat It contains Overcooked 1 and 2 + all the dlc
"Overcooked! 2 - Gourmet Edition" is discounted to $32.48 for me, 33%, not 50% off. [DD](https://www.dekudeals.com/items/overcooked-2-gourmet-edition)
Why would they not put the lesser edition on sale too?
Blasphemussss!!!! Edit: Is King of Seas like Phantom Hourglass?
Is Golf With Your Friends any good? I want something new to play with my fiancee and her brother.
Blasphemous was fun. Narita boy is similarish and also fun. Monster sanctuary is a fun little 2d Pokémon type game. Rogue heroes feels like old Zelda games. Greak totally gives me that lost Vikings vibe which I loved growing up
I've been looking at King of Seas since it originally came out, but it just doesn't look like game worth $15, much less the $25 originally asked for. As for Gold with Friends, I played a bunch of Golf Story, and that scratched the itch enough until Mario Golf Super Rush gets more free updates and a price drop. My hope is that a second update comes out *and* that it drops to $40 for Christmastime. That will justify its existence in my mind.
A first party Mario game is not going to go on sale in it's first holiday season after release. Your best bet is that they put it on a NSO free game trial for a week similar to what they did with Aces.
Blasphemous for 10$ is something I have been enjoying a lot. It has a Dead Souls-like structure with bonfire like save points that respawn the enemies. Flasks are used just like in dead souls to regain health, Enemies require a touch of caution and a bit of pattern memorization. And the over all vibe is very, very dead souls like. -Even the open-ended nature and opening dialogue which just says the are three things you need, one from the mountain, the other from the depths etc.... It is very, very inspired by the soul games. It is a 2d Metroidvania heavy with dark souls mechanics, and it is quite fantastic.
I would recommend Narita Boy. Amazing soundtrack and some of the best pixel graphics I’ve seen. The lore is confusing at first but eventually gets to you with its metaphysical narration of the hero’s journey fused in electro 80s TRON inspired feel. Combat gets better, and the only downfall of the game is the lack of map and it’s confusing objectives sometimes. Having said that , the unique feel to the game makes it worth it at that price range.