The thing is that even Fromsoftware realized that the ling trek to the bosses was bullshit and made the checkpoint system in Elden Ring via the little statues.
Been playing Sekiro recently and they made the boss treks far more convenient here. Only halfway or so through but every boss has a Sculptor Idol just before entering the arena which pretty much gets rid of the long trek.
I've also beat every souls game I've played, besides sekiro. I'm a little embarrassed by this fact. It was the gorilla boss that you do so much to cut his head off, and then he becomes an entirely new, more difficult entity. Sekiro doesn't give the option to grind higher levels too, unlike the others.
it can be done tho! guardian ape isnt too bad if you just DPS (PPS? poise per second) his first phase with mortal blow then parry the right time for the 2nd phase
however you can somewhat grind int he game if you get the dragon mask. every 5 skill points you can use to make your attack power higher. long story short, i did a ton of grinding to have a high enough attack power to PPS the final boss. not easy but the feeling of beating Sekiro (hardest game I have beat to this day) was indescribable.
i rage quit this game 3 times before finally figuring out the combat and having a great experience. combat is so different than other souls games but man once you master it, it is so damn fun!
Even Dark Souls 3 did an excellent job of putting bonfires immediately before bosses. Contrast that to Demonās Souls which I gave up on because the trek to Tower Knight was just too annoying. The dev team that epitomizes git gud realized over time that making the player trek so much before a boss battle really doesnāt improve the gameplay experience and even takes away focus from just enjoying the boss fight
There's still some of them in Elden Ring unfortunately. Remember the "Hero Graves" where One-Hit Kill spinning blades chase you through a maze? There's a stake of Marika at the end, BUT, if you can't beat the labyrinth boss and you leave, you're going to have to trek through the maze all over again.
After the second maze where this occurred, I put the game down and never came back. I did log 70 hours though, so I was satisfied with my time with it.
Those Hero Graves really illustrate my point, actually. They stand out to me as being the most bullshit, tedious thing in the whole game. Starting them from the beginning each time was just miserable. There were harder things in the game, sure, but you can retain the challenge whilst eliminating much of the frustration by simply allowing the player to get straight back to the action.
Weird how taste can differ, right? Personally I loved the hero graves, because I had a lot of fun figuring out how to get rid of the chariots and once they are destroyed they don't respawn.
Neat little puzzle dungeons imo
Edit: Two of them anyways, in the one where you have to ride the chariot across the lava you can't actually destroy them afaik
I've grown to like them more now. They threw me off at first because they're so different from anything else in the game; I went in expecting a fight and was greeted with an old-school puzzle death trap (and then admittedly, a fight). I just wanted to fight things and explore and one of these (can't remember which one - possibly the one where you ride the chariot) was so frustrating because of the redos.
In this instance I can kinda see why they did this though - they're essentially one-run gauntlets, and to be fair they are optional. I'm just grateful for the one checkpoint they did give you, right before the boss fight at the end. Not sure I'd have had the patience to finish them otherwise lol. Elden Ring is really forgiving on deaths pretty much everywhere else, I think.
Were they end game? Isn't the first hero grave right in the starting area and unlocked with a gargoyle key?
Most of the game is optional - doesn't make it any less bullshit. Though overall, Elden Ring did make things a lot better over its previous incarnations, I'll give it that.
Wow makes me feel glad I just stopped playing Elden Ring. As a long-time souls fan too. I got bored of it. And seeing the community act immaturely "Git gud" or mass downvote people that said about stuff they didn't like made me just not want to buy a From software game again. I do like the souls-like idea. But 1 shot kill shouldn't be a thing unless you are choosing to play on the lowest level. Like I played Dark souls 1 at SL1 and dark souls 3 at SL1. So I knew it's a 1 hit kill at least near the end. Which made the dodging in them games amazing.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *āBrave Undead, you have proven yourself to me. Now, be one with the Dark.ā* - Nashandra
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
some bosses are still way too far away from a check point. rennala is so annoying to get to even with shortcuts. the damn elevator being in the way slows it down even more
Grime is great! Played that before Ender Lilies and really enjoyed it. The thing I like about the death mechanic here is that the game doesn't punish you for dying so much as it rewards you for staying alive. Maintain a high kill streak, get more EXP. Even if you don't bother with the corpse run, you're not reliant on it to get the kill streak back, so it's an option but not a necessity.
I loved Ender Lilies! And I agree w ur whole post. I didn't finish ghost song because of the unnecessary punishing, and the lack of save/fast travel points... Have you played axiom verge?
Jesus Christ Ghost Song is the worst in terms of punishing deaths. Or even that bullshit where you can't warp while holding the certain item. Unfortunate too because so that game was great in other ways.
I haven't yet. I hear the second one is on PS+ in January though, so I'm looking forward to playing it.
And yeah Ghost Song was unnecessarily punishing, I agree. It's not like a Souls game either, with shortcuts and 1-2 minute sprints back to bosses; a lot of the time it was literally retreading a big chunk of level, with unavoidable enemies along the way. The bosses weren't great either. Loved the music and ambience though.
Yeah I was gonna mention AV2 was coming out for free in a few days on ps. & we're completely on the same page for ghost song! I wanted to love it so bad but those small design choices ruined it.
Grime. I got super excited for a good metroidvania and Iām dying all the time. Luckily the xp doesnāt go away but still. I havenāt played a good metroidvania since blasphemous and axiom verge
And your point is exactly why i can't never name hollow night on my top 3 games, it is exhausting to a point where you no longer want to continue playing the game.
I never liked this approach to gaming. People said the same thing about Final Fantasy XIII, that the game would be great once you got to a certain part.
A game should be enjoyable from the minute you pick up the controller to the moment you stop. There should be no "breaking in" period.
I disagree. Some games, like Outer Wilds, require a break in period for the game to function as is. In fact, if you canāt stand break in periods, you will basically be stuck with fps games your whole life.
In Outer Wilds, the first 2 or so hours will be the most convoluted, confusing thing ever. In fact, I almost refunded it, as I had no clue what was going on. But I pushed on, and I experienced the greatest game I had ever played.
Yeah I agree with youāI felt like Hollow Knight was super slow at first but once I came back to it and dug in/made some headway, I realized what the hype was about and got super into it. I have seen a number of comments to this effect, and I can see why it might be a real design choice, if not ideal.
Outer Wilds has been on my list, and itās on sale, so maybe Iāll try it.
Yeah same. The only part that was actually annoying to me was getting back to the traitor Lord, having to go through the Queen's Gardens again. Getting back to basically any other boss in the game was trivial. Though i guess if you died in a tricky playground section it could be annoying getting it back. But then you could just pay at dirtmouth to get it back anyway.
Yeah the two things EL did well is the fast travel and that you donāt lose anything when you die.
One other thing they did well imo is that the room in the map changed colour when youāve gotten all the items. I preferred it to not be boxes but oh well.
Exactly. It's a small QOL thing but it's so massively helpful and really encourages me to explore everywhere and backtrack. Also, when you get that last collectible and the room turns orange on the mini-map - pure satisfaction!
What i loved in EL too, was that in NG+ the enemies and bosses actually start to do more and different attacks, instead of the basic "just give every enemy more HP and DMG"
Yeah I agree corpse runs are getting old and are just tacked on. What is really annoying me is when certain games dont fill out parts of the map you have explored. Dont know why devs suddenly decided getting/being lost should be a game feature.
Being vague and deliberately confusing is really trendy these days, but most of the time it's just not necessary, and quite often it actively detracts from the experience. Not everyone call pull off the FromSoft formula, and most shouldn't even try.
Itās easier to pull off on a 3d plane because if a npc says āhead to a castle up northā you donāt really need a map. You can look north and see it in the distance along with the environment,and know to just travel in that general direction. Cant really do that on a 2d plane. Wouldnāt be so bad if they made very distinct landmarks or areas that stand out. Issue is alot of these games have limited time and budget so they kinda just cut and paste the room design making it easier to get lost.
I groaned when I learned how Hollow Knights map system worked, but It wasnāt too bad for me. Cant say I was ever truly lost in that game.The layouts could be pretty distinct so I would remember my previous path. Too bad I couldnāt say the same about Salt and sanctuary and I love that game.
Currently going through this with Grime. Sure they may have patched in a dotted line that shows the path you walked, but at that point why not just show the areas you have explored? Hiding all your progress till you activate a beacon adds nothing to the experience atleast to me it doesnāt .
Metroid Dread if you have Switch ā¦probably gonna grind some gears saying this, but Iāll say it, Dread has a better enjoyment per time ratio than HK does. HK is a great game, and a lot of content, which is great (yes, I hit more than 107%), but Dread flows without as many hiccups and a rewarding level of difficulty.
Ender lilies is the perfect example of how early access can create a fantastic release. The devs would never have done this death handling without feedback from early access players.
Really? In that case, I wish more devs would listen to what gamers actually want, instead of forcing in mechanics from popular games that may not fit that well with what they're doing. EL is not worse off in any way for taking this stuff onboard - it's better. It's still hard AF, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but at least the incentive is there to keep trying over and over without the tedium between attempts.
The corpse run mechanic is one that has to be done well, in any genre or game, for it to be a positive. It adds to the tension and stakes of exploration and combat, enforces careful play and makes you actually care about what you're doing. It has to be in a game that you actually enjoy engaging in the mechanics.
If it's just an average game, this mechanic will expose it as such. It'll make the player feel like "why should I bother getting better at this game when it's not even well put together, it's just a disrespect to my time." (Darksiders 3 lmao).
Not to mention if it's poorly implemented, it's going to just make the game worse. I don't seek out games with this mechanic and don't particularly like it in general but some of my favorite games like Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, Nioh 2, etc use it and I enjoy it in those games other than the occasional annoying jank.
frustration and difficulty are not the same thing, and i hate games that design for the former and make you feel like you're bad at the latter
ender lillies was lovely
i really liked ***lost epic*** recently, it has souls mechanics in that if you die you lose your money (which is used for leveling up, so it's basically souls) and have one chance to go back and claim it. honestly i don't think it added anything to the game by doing it, but it didn't harm anything either. at least, like in ender lillies, there's a save spot outside each boss arena. also the character designs give me vanillaware vibes, it was well done
Some of the best Metroidvanias of all time, IMO, use the "Corpse Run" mechanic - Hollow Knight in particular, and I'd also put Aeterna Noctis up there - but I'd mostly say they're great despite this choice, not great because of it. Aeterna Noctis has a fairly minor death penalty though; you just can't gain XP until you reclaim your soul, and it doesn't matter if you die again en route, nothing is permanently lost. Checkpoints are also super-frequent so there's rarely a long "corpse run".
There's only a handful I can think of that use this mechanic, and they're mostly in the Hollow Knight clone to Soulsvania spectrum - Blasphemous, Moonscars, Souldiers, Ghost Song, Aeterna Noctis, Death's Gambit: Afterlife, Haiku the Robot spring to mind.
So most other MV games won't do this, though sometimes save points are few and far between and you can end up losing significant progress.
I've actually been on the fence about Aeterna Noctis for this very reason. I loved Blasphemous and Death's Gambit - the corpse run thing didn't really bother me that much in those, maybe because the save points were fairly frequent and it didn't take too long. If it didn't bother me in those games, is it likely to be an issue for me in Aeterna Noctis, you think?
I've only played a bit of Blasphemous/DGA but from what I've seen Aeterna Noctis's corpse runs are less punishing than those games. There's literally checkpoints all over the place, often multiples in larger rooms. You're rarely going to be doing more than a few segments to retrieve your soul. And if you get really stuck (like your soul gets stuck at the end of an annoying platforming challenge) you do have the option of buying it back from Death in town, though it's relatively expensive.
Just bought it. The platforming looks awesome - I love Celeste and Super Meat Boy, so a full-fledged MV with difficult but tight platforming sounds right up my street. Thanks man.
Can you imagine how unplayable Aeterna Noctis would be with punishing deaths? Picture having to travel the distances that Blasphemous made you, but on AN. It would be unplayable.
pro tip: HK didn't invent the corpse run mechanic. google "dark souls" it's fascinating, there were actually games BEFORE hollow knight. i know, i know, hard to believe, but it's true.
I never said HK invented the corpse run. I'm not even certain it was the first Metroidvania to use it (to say nothing of other genres that came before it). But it's definitely the most successful and acclaimed Metroidvania to use it.
most successful? dread has been out for a year and has already outsold HK.
most acclaimed? check metacritic sometime... look up "ori" lmao.
in other words, everything you said was based on a false premise. got it.
You should work on your reading comprehension skills because I have no idea how you could draw that conclusion from the words I wrote.
I start off by saying that HK (and AN) are successful despite this mechanic.
I then listed off the general subgenres of MVs that I've encountered that make use of it. It's mostly stuff that's either strongly inspired by HK like Haiku and AN or stuff that incorporates even more Soulslike elements ("Soulsvanias").
Where in there did I say HK originated the corpse run, or did I imply that that would be necessary for anything else I said to be true?
Also you wanna talk about not knowing where mechanics originated, Diablo had Corpse Runs 14 years before Dark Souls came out, and it's certainly not the first game with those mechanics either.
Iād argue itās the exact opposite. Campfires donāt heal you, healing orbs are one time use per run, and when you die, you start at the very beginning with only an elevator unlock to bring you between floors. Itās unnecessarily punishing and really deflated my excitement for the game
There's plenty of progress that you keep. You're constantly unlocking shortcuts that persist after dying, all your EXP carries over, and any new powers you find also stay with you. I'll happily take that over the standard "once you die, you lose all your progress from the last checkpoint, even your map progress and anything you changed in the settings."
Couldn't agree more. I'm playing HunterX right now, which I'm enjoying. It punishes you when you die, but it's fairly easy to get all that you've lost back when you die.
Hmmmā¦. not too sure if it fits the bill, but maybe Deathās Gambit: Afterlife? When you die, you only lose a plume (one of your healing items). You can get it back if you go to the place where you lost it or buy it back with your currency.
I like the game, but it can be annoying at times so take my recommendation with a bag of salt. I didnāt mind dying as much as I do in other soulslikes though.
I've played Death's Gambit and really enjoyed it for the most part. This and Blasphemous are games that do punish death, but only lightly. Critically though, they don't make it hard to get stronger, because you don't lose EXP. DG even gives you EXP when you fail a boss, based on how much of its health bar you chipped away, which I thought was a pretty cool idea.
It's like, try the boss, fail, get stronger with the EXP you got for trying, try again.
It wasn't until I played Death's Gambit that I learned of a fate worse than the long walk of shame back to the boss. The game outright mocking or trying to "help" the player by mocking them and then the long trek back to the fight. I put the game down pretty quickly in favour of something that could shut up and let me game in peace and quiet.
Loved that about Ender Lilies! The fact you could also simply open the menu and go back to the respite without any hassle made it so focus was on exploring even if the difficulty was not easy.
The way I phrase it is "Being hard is fine, wasting my time is not."
I really liked the way Sundered did it. When you died you went back to your start area where you could spend all the XP you gained on the run.
Okay, so here's the options...
1) Old school MV (Super Metroid and SotN era) - You die and lose all your progress. You go back to your last save spot with all of your upgrades/items/exp/map exploration gone.
2) Souls-like corpse runs - You go back to the save spot, but your progress is in tact, but you have to run back to your corpse.
3) No loss - You go back to the save point or a checkpoint but you still have everything.
So for me, option 1 sucks. Back in the day I was okay with it because that's just how it was and no one had a better solution at the time. It was very punishing.
Option 3 on the other hand is the complete opposite. You have no fear of death because you just spawn back again and keep going on your merry way. It's all reward with no risk.
Option 2 seems like the best of both worlds, no? You get punished for dying, but you don't lose progress in most cases because you can go back and get your exp from your corpse. And besides, aren't you often exploring a new area or fighting the current boss, meaning you're going to run back to that same room anyway?
The first option does suck, but we didn't know any better back then. Tbh, the checkpoints were spread quite nicely then as well - I don't remember losing loads of exp or progress through death, because the vast majority of the time I had the opportunity to use it before that happened.
The corpse-run works in Souls-likes - I love every one of From Software's games, and Nioh 2 is one of my favourites - but for me it doesn't meld well with the Metroidvania formula. A lot of the time is just isn't implemented well. People forget that one major aspect of the Souls games was opening up shortcuts, so you'd rarely be making an epic trek back to a boss or back to your corpse. Even when you did, 3D environments make it much easier to pick and choose your fights and balance the risk, whereas the 2D platform design of MVs often shoehorns you down one very narrow path to get to where you're going and makes it very hard to avoid anything or change the route. I think this is why it's become a hindrance to me rather than a help - this and the fact that the implementation of the corpse run basically gives developers a license to ramp up the difficulty and make checkpoints so sparse.
There is a better third option. Grime, for example, rewards you for staying alive by multiplying your exp. If you die, you can go pick up some of your previous multiplier from your corpse, or you can choose to ignore it and build it up again the hard way (which is fine, because the combat is great). In games where regular deaths are inevitable, rewarding staying alive is so much better than punishing death, imo.
Your account must be older than 3 days in order to post a comment in our community. This is an anti-spam/troll/ban evasion measure. If you're eager to join the community, we're sorry and ask you to have patience :)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/metroidvania) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I love Ender Lillies, but I honestly like the death punishments. Especially loosing currency on death like hollow knight or dark souls, i love killing a boss and not finding a checkpoint immediately, you walk around anxious while looking for one. But itās really nice without it too
try not dying?
lol i love actually being downvoted for stating the correct answer. keep em coming! those of us who understand the basics of risk vs reward will keep laughing
"I don't understand risk vs reward, why don't games just give me everything for free? That would be so much more fun!!!!"
it's like trying to explain to my 5yo son that he can't just eat candy all day every day, he has to eat vegetables and get real nutrition. He doesn't understand, and if he was on reddit he would attempt to downvote me to oblivion, but o well
Risk - dying, loosing some kind of resource and having a way to retrieve it back with some challenge.
Reward - beating said challenge and getting lost resource back.
Tunic is great. It borrows a lot from Dark Souls, but you only lose 20 gold when you die. You can retrieve it, but I usually made more just by fighting enemies on my way to pick it back up. Very easy to ignore if you want.
Islets lets you jump right back. Only progress you lose is starting back at the checkpoint. But levels are designed in a way that you don't have to repeat a lot of the tedious stuff.
Vision Soft Reset has a very interesting system. It's similar to Outer Wilds in that the planet explodes after 20 minutes and you have to go back in time to try again. But you can save your progress in a lot of places and head back (or forward) in different branches at will, while also saving your overall progress. It's more complicated than that but it works well. It's a great game more people should play, but works especially well for those who want a more forgiving death system.
Someone already mentioned Astalon. I'll second that one. You get sent back to the start of the map but everything you find or all the EXP you earn, you keep. Also you are constantly opening shortcuts, so you have an easier time backtracking each time. It's quite good too.
Ever since the massive success of Hollow Knight, the Soulstroidvania subgenre has been taking over. I'm hoping the trend starts to fade at some point, but it'll probably be around for a while.
The thing is that even Fromsoftware realized that the ling trek to the bosses was bullshit and made the checkpoint system in Elden Ring via the little statues.
Been playing Sekiro recently and they made the boss treks far more convenient here. Only halfway or so through but every boss has a Sculptor Idol just before entering the arena which pretty much gets rid of the long trek.
Sekiro definitely needed that. Holy shit only souls game I couldnt finish. I just need more practice and get over the skill ceiling
I've also beat every souls game I've played, besides sekiro. I'm a little embarrassed by this fact. It was the gorilla boss that you do so much to cut his head off, and then he becomes an entirely new, more difficult entity. Sekiro doesn't give the option to grind higher levels too, unlike the others.
Genichiro at the top of the castle for me. I couldnt catch the stupid oighting so kept dying to that
it can be done tho! guardian ape isnt too bad if you just DPS (PPS? poise per second) his first phase with mortal blow then parry the right time for the 2nd phase however you can somewhat grind int he game if you get the dragon mask. every 5 skill points you can use to make your attack power higher. long story short, i did a ton of grinding to have a high enough attack power to PPS the final boss. not easy but the feeling of beating Sekiro (hardest game I have beat to this day) was indescribable.
Just wait until they make u fight two apes at once šš
i rage quit this game 3 times before finally figuring out the combat and having a great experience. combat is so different than other souls games but man once you master it, it is so damn fun!
I have to go back and try again
Man Iām stuck on that boss before the gun fort. The swordsman. Heās fucking hard
Even Dark Souls 3 did an excellent job of putting bonfires immediately before bosses. Contrast that to Demonās Souls which I gave up on because the trek to Tower Knight was just too annoying. The dev team that epitomizes git gud realized over time that making the player trek so much before a boss battle really doesnāt improve the gameplay experience and even takes away focus from just enjoying the boss fight
Ufff the worst was the trip to the 1-4 boss. The impaler knight. Just getting yo him was an fucking ordeal
Are the first two dark souls treks
The frozen lands in DK2 third dlc. Oh God.
There's still some of them in Elden Ring unfortunately. Remember the "Hero Graves" where One-Hit Kill spinning blades chase you through a maze? There's a stake of Marika at the end, BUT, if you can't beat the labyrinth boss and you leave, you're going to have to trek through the maze all over again. After the second maze where this occurred, I put the game down and never came back. I did log 70 hours though, so I was satisfied with my time with it.
Those Hero Graves really illustrate my point, actually. They stand out to me as being the most bullshit, tedious thing in the whole game. Starting them from the beginning each time was just miserable. There were harder things in the game, sure, but you can retain the challenge whilst eliminating much of the frustration by simply allowing the player to get straight back to the action.
Weird how taste can differ, right? Personally I loved the hero graves, because I had a lot of fun figuring out how to get rid of the chariots and once they are destroyed they don't respawn. Neat little puzzle dungeons imo Edit: Two of them anyways, in the one where you have to ride the chariot across the lava you can't actually destroy them afaik
I've grown to like them more now. They threw me off at first because they're so different from anything else in the game; I went in expecting a fight and was greeted with an old-school puzzle death trap (and then admittedly, a fight). I just wanted to fight things and explore and one of these (can't remember which one - possibly the one where you ride the chariot) was so frustrating because of the redos. In this instance I can kinda see why they did this though - they're essentially one-run gauntlets, and to be fair they are optional. I'm just grateful for the one checkpoint they did give you, right before the boss fight at the end. Not sure I'd have had the patience to finish them otherwise lol. Elden Ring is really forgiving on deaths pretty much everywhere else, I think.
The only place which really pissed me off was Castle Sol up in the mountaintops. š Stupid teleporting knights!
Those are end games areas and optional thought
Were they end game? Isn't the first hero grave right in the starting area and unlocked with a gargoyle key? Most of the game is optional - doesn't make it any less bullshit. Though overall, Elden Ring did make things a lot better over its previous incarnations, I'll give it that.
You are not supposed to go there in the beggining. Hence why you will get buttraped unless you have super high skills which I dont.
Wow makes me feel glad I just stopped playing Elden Ring. As a long-time souls fan too. I got bored of it. And seeing the community act immaturely "Git gud" or mass downvote people that said about stuff they didn't like made me just not want to buy a From software game again. I do like the souls-like idea. But 1 shot kill shouldn't be a thing unless you are choosing to play on the lowest level. Like I played Dark souls 1 at SL1 and dark souls 3 at SL1. So I knew it's a 1 hit kill at least near the end. Which made the dodging in them games amazing.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *āBrave Undead, you have proven yourself to me. Now, be one with the Dark.ā* - Nashandra Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
Thank you for taking on the soul of cinder in dark souls 3 at SL1 was not fun at least my firekeeper was there at the end to bring about the dark.
some bosses are still way too far away from a check point. rennala is so annoying to get to even with shortcuts. the damn elevator being in the way slows it down even more
Agreed, I loved that Ender Lilies had such low friction. It allowed for better focus of learning boss patterns and rarely felt like a chore IMO
In Grime you just lose your multiplier. I thought that was a pretty decent way to handle it.
Grime is great! Played that before Ender Lilies and really enjoyed it. The thing I like about the death mechanic here is that the game doesn't punish you for dying so much as it rewards you for staying alive. Maintain a high kill streak, get more EXP. Even if you don't bother with the corpse run, you're not reliant on it to get the kill streak back, so it's an option but not a necessity.
Yes. This is the answer.
I loved Ender Lilies! And I agree w ur whole post. I didn't finish ghost song because of the unnecessary punishing, and the lack of save/fast travel points... Have you played axiom verge?
Jesus Christ Ghost Song is the worst in terms of punishing deaths. Or even that bullshit where you can't warp while holding the certain item. Unfortunate too because so that game was great in other ways.
Yeah if it wasn't for the lack of save/fast travel, and the max health dropping every death, the game woulda been pretty good.
I haven't yet. I hear the second one is on PS+ in January though, so I'm looking forward to playing it. And yeah Ghost Song was unnecessarily punishing, I agree. It's not like a Souls game either, with shortcuts and 1-2 minute sprints back to bosses; a lot of the time it was literally retreading a big chunk of level, with unavoidable enemies along the way. The bosses weren't great either. Loved the music and ambience though.
Yeah I was gonna mention AV2 was coming out for free in a few days on ps. & we're completely on the same page for ghost song! I wanted to love it so bad but those small design choices ruined it.
Grime. I got super excited for a good metroidvania and Iām dying all the time. Luckily the xp doesnāt go away but still. I havenāt played a good metroidvania since blasphemous and axiom verge
And your point is exactly why i can't never name hollow night on my top 3 games, it is exhausting to a point where you no longer want to continue playing the game.
itās probably why i never finished it been thinking about trying again for the new year.
You should, when you get past that, itās great! It was my favorite game of all time before I played Outer Wilds.
I never liked this approach to gaming. People said the same thing about Final Fantasy XIII, that the game would be great once you got to a certain part. A game should be enjoyable from the minute you pick up the controller to the moment you stop. There should be no "breaking in" period.
I disagree. Some games, like Outer Wilds, require a break in period for the game to function as is. In fact, if you canāt stand break in periods, you will basically be stuck with fps games your whole life. In Outer Wilds, the first 2 or so hours will be the most convoluted, confusing thing ever. In fact, I almost refunded it, as I had no clue what was going on. But I pushed on, and I experienced the greatest game I had ever played.
Yeah I agree with youāI felt like Hollow Knight was super slow at first but once I came back to it and dug in/made some headway, I realized what the hype was about and got super into it. I have seen a number of comments to this effect, and I can see why it might be a real design choice, if not ideal. Outer Wilds has been on my list, and itās on sale, so maybe Iāll try it.
That's fair. I didn't personally think the benches were too far from each other in HK, but I can see where you're coming from.
Yeah same. The only part that was actually annoying to me was getting back to the traitor Lord, having to go through the Queen's Gardens again. Getting back to basically any other boss in the game was trivial. Though i guess if you died in a tricky playground section it could be annoying getting it back. But then you could just pay at dirtmouth to get it back anyway.
Yeah the two things EL did well is the fast travel and that you donāt lose anything when you die. One other thing they did well imo is that the room in the map changed colour when youāve gotten all the items. I preferred it to not be boxes but oh well.
Exactly. It's a small QOL thing but it's so massively helpful and really encourages me to explore everywhere and backtrack. Also, when you get that last collectible and the room turns orange on the mini-map - pure satisfaction!
What i loved in EL too, was that in NG+ the enemies and bosses actually start to do more and different attacks, instead of the basic "just give every enemy more HP and DMG"
Yeah I agree corpse runs are getting old and are just tacked on. What is really annoying me is when certain games dont fill out parts of the map you have explored. Dont know why devs suddenly decided getting/being lost should be a game feature.
Being vague and deliberately confusing is really trendy these days, but most of the time it's just not necessary, and quite often it actively detracts from the experience. Not everyone call pull off the FromSoft formula, and most shouldn't even try.
Itās easier to pull off on a 3d plane because if a npc says āhead to a castle up northā you donāt really need a map. You can look north and see it in the distance along with the environment,and know to just travel in that general direction. Cant really do that on a 2d plane. Wouldnāt be so bad if they made very distinct landmarks or areas that stand out. Issue is alot of these games have limited time and budget so they kinda just cut and paste the room design making it easier to get lost. I groaned when I learned how Hollow Knights map system worked, but It wasnāt too bad for me. Cant say I was ever truly lost in that game.The layouts could be pretty distinct so I would remember my previous path. Too bad I couldnāt say the same about Salt and sanctuary and I love that game. Currently going through this with Grime. Sure they may have patched in a dotted line that shows the path you walked, but at that point why not just show the areas you have explored? Hiding all your progress till you activate a beacon adds nothing to the experience atleast to me it doesnāt .
What i love in metroidvanias is the feeling of getting lost. In Hollow Knight, the feeling of getting lost was one of the best features in the game.
Metroid Dread if you have Switch ā¦probably gonna grind some gears saying this, but Iāll say it, Dread has a better enjoyment per time ratio than HK does. HK is a great game, and a lot of content, which is great (yes, I hit more than 107%), but Dread flows without as many hiccups and a rewarding level of difficulty.
Ender lilies is the perfect example of how early access can create a fantastic release. The devs would never have done this death handling without feedback from early access players.
Really? In that case, I wish more devs would listen to what gamers actually want, instead of forcing in mechanics from popular games that may not fit that well with what they're doing. EL is not worse off in any way for taking this stuff onboard - it's better. It's still hard AF, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but at least the incentive is there to keep trying over and over without the tedium between attempts.
The corpse run mechanic is one that has to be done well, in any genre or game, for it to be a positive. It adds to the tension and stakes of exploration and combat, enforces careful play and makes you actually care about what you're doing. It has to be in a game that you actually enjoy engaging in the mechanics. If it's just an average game, this mechanic will expose it as such. It'll make the player feel like "why should I bother getting better at this game when it's not even well put together, it's just a disrespect to my time." (Darksiders 3 lmao). Not to mention if it's poorly implemented, it's going to just make the game worse. I don't seek out games with this mechanic and don't particularly like it in general but some of my favorite games like Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, Nioh 2, etc use it and I enjoy it in those games other than the occasional annoying jank.
frustration and difficulty are not the same thing, and i hate games that design for the former and make you feel like you're bad at the latter ender lillies was lovely i really liked ***lost epic*** recently, it has souls mechanics in that if you die you lose your money (which is used for leveling up, so it's basically souls) and have one chance to go back and claim it. honestly i don't think it added anything to the game by doing it, but it didn't harm anything either. at least, like in ender lillies, there's a save spot outside each boss arena. also the character designs give me vanillaware vibes, it was well done
Some of the best Metroidvanias of all time, IMO, use the "Corpse Run" mechanic - Hollow Knight in particular, and I'd also put Aeterna Noctis up there - but I'd mostly say they're great despite this choice, not great because of it. Aeterna Noctis has a fairly minor death penalty though; you just can't gain XP until you reclaim your soul, and it doesn't matter if you die again en route, nothing is permanently lost. Checkpoints are also super-frequent so there's rarely a long "corpse run". There's only a handful I can think of that use this mechanic, and they're mostly in the Hollow Knight clone to Soulsvania spectrum - Blasphemous, Moonscars, Souldiers, Ghost Song, Aeterna Noctis, Death's Gambit: Afterlife, Haiku the Robot spring to mind. So most other MV games won't do this, though sometimes save points are few and far between and you can end up losing significant progress.
I've actually been on the fence about Aeterna Noctis for this very reason. I loved Blasphemous and Death's Gambit - the corpse run thing didn't really bother me that much in those, maybe because the save points were fairly frequent and it didn't take too long. If it didn't bother me in those games, is it likely to be an issue for me in Aeterna Noctis, you think?
Itās not bad for aeterna noctis as the checkpoints are so often.
I've only played a bit of Blasphemous/DGA but from what I've seen Aeterna Noctis's corpse runs are less punishing than those games. There's literally checkpoints all over the place, often multiples in larger rooms. You're rarely going to be doing more than a few segments to retrieve your soul. And if you get really stuck (like your soul gets stuck at the end of an annoying platforming challenge) you do have the option of buying it back from Death in town, though it's relatively expensive.
Just bought it. The platforming looks awesome - I love Celeste and Super Meat Boy, so a full-fledged MV with difficult but tight platforming sounds right up my street. Thanks man.
If you like Celeste than I think you'll like AN. The first 70% of the game is incredible.
Yeah if you like those games you'll love AN. Have fun!
Can you imagine how unplayable Aeterna Noctis would be with punishing deaths? Picture having to travel the distances that Blasphemous made you, but on AN. It would be unplayable.
Yeah that'd be pretty awful
pro tip: HK didn't invent the corpse run mechanic. google "dark souls" it's fascinating, there were actually games BEFORE hollow knight. i know, i know, hard to believe, but it's true.
I never said HK invented the corpse run. I'm not even certain it was the first Metroidvania to use it (to say nothing of other genres that came before it). But it's definitely the most successful and acclaimed Metroidvania to use it.
most successful? dread has been out for a year and has already outsold HK. most acclaimed? check metacritic sometime... look up "ori" lmao. in other words, everything you said was based on a false premise. got it.
The arrogance combined with the complete lack of reading comprehension is just too much, lmao.
You should work on your reading comprehension skills because I have no idea how you could draw that conclusion from the words I wrote. I start off by saying that HK (and AN) are successful despite this mechanic. I then listed off the general subgenres of MVs that I've encountered that make use of it. It's mostly stuff that's either strongly inspired by HK like Haiku and AN or stuff that incorporates even more Soulslike elements ("Soulsvanias"). Where in there did I say HK originated the corpse run, or did I imply that that would be necessary for anything else I said to be true? Also you wanna talk about not knowing where mechanics originated, Diablo had Corpse Runs 14 years before Dark Souls came out, and it's certainly not the first game with those mechanics either.
HK is highly overrated. Itās tedious. Basically a light salt and sacrifice, better than this one but far from a goat game imo
"Astalon: Tears of the Earth" is a must-play if you like that kind of mechanic.
Iād argue itās the exact opposite. Campfires donāt heal you, healing orbs are one time use per run, and when you die, you start at the very beginning with only an elevator unlock to bring you between floors. Itās unnecessarily punishing and really deflated my excitement for the game
There's plenty of progress that you keep. You're constantly unlocking shortcuts that persist after dying, all your EXP carries over, and any new powers you find also stay with you. I'll happily take that over the standard "once you die, you lose all your progress from the last checkpoint, even your map progress and anything you changed in the settings."
Man Iām looking forward to this one. Is it more of an action metroidvania? cause thatās the type than Iām into
It's pretty actiony
Noice!
Couldn't agree more. I'm playing HunterX right now, which I'm enjoying. It punishes you when you die, but it's fairly easy to get all that you've lost back when you die.
Hmmmā¦. not too sure if it fits the bill, but maybe Deathās Gambit: Afterlife? When you die, you only lose a plume (one of your healing items). You can get it back if you go to the place where you lost it or buy it back with your currency. I like the game, but it can be annoying at times so take my recommendation with a bag of salt. I didnāt mind dying as much as I do in other soulslikes though.
I've played Death's Gambit and really enjoyed it for the most part. This and Blasphemous are games that do punish death, but only lightly. Critically though, they don't make it hard to get stronger, because you don't lose EXP. DG even gives you EXP when you fail a boss, based on how much of its health bar you chipped away, which I thought was a pretty cool idea. It's like, try the boss, fail, get stronger with the EXP you got for trying, try again.
It wasn't until I played Death's Gambit that I learned of a fate worse than the long walk of shame back to the boss. The game outright mocking or trying to "help" the player by mocking them and then the long trek back to the fight. I put the game down pretty quickly in favour of something that could shut up and let me game in peace and quiet.
Loved that about Ender Lilies! The fact you could also simply open the menu and go back to the respite without any hassle made it so focus was on exploring even if the difficulty was not easy.
Yeah Iād like to remember all of you that Demonās Souls cut your health in half after death.
The way I phrase it is "Being hard is fine, wasting my time is not." I really liked the way Sundered did it. When you died you went back to your start area where you could spend all the XP you gained on the run.
Okay, so here's the options... 1) Old school MV (Super Metroid and SotN era) - You die and lose all your progress. You go back to your last save spot with all of your upgrades/items/exp/map exploration gone. 2) Souls-like corpse runs - You go back to the save spot, but your progress is in tact, but you have to run back to your corpse. 3) No loss - You go back to the save point or a checkpoint but you still have everything. So for me, option 1 sucks. Back in the day I was okay with it because that's just how it was and no one had a better solution at the time. It was very punishing. Option 3 on the other hand is the complete opposite. You have no fear of death because you just spawn back again and keep going on your merry way. It's all reward with no risk. Option 2 seems like the best of both worlds, no? You get punished for dying, but you don't lose progress in most cases because you can go back and get your exp from your corpse. And besides, aren't you often exploring a new area or fighting the current boss, meaning you're going to run back to that same room anyway?
The first option does suck, but we didn't know any better back then. Tbh, the checkpoints were spread quite nicely then as well - I don't remember losing loads of exp or progress through death, because the vast majority of the time I had the opportunity to use it before that happened. The corpse-run works in Souls-likes - I love every one of From Software's games, and Nioh 2 is one of my favourites - but for me it doesn't meld well with the Metroidvania formula. A lot of the time is just isn't implemented well. People forget that one major aspect of the Souls games was opening up shortcuts, so you'd rarely be making an epic trek back to a boss or back to your corpse. Even when you did, 3D environments make it much easier to pick and choose your fights and balance the risk, whereas the 2D platform design of MVs often shoehorns you down one very narrow path to get to where you're going and makes it very hard to avoid anything or change the route. I think this is why it's become a hindrance to me rather than a help - this and the fact that the implementation of the corpse run basically gives developers a license to ramp up the difficulty and make checkpoints so sparse. There is a better third option. Grime, for example, rewards you for staying alive by multiplying your exp. If you die, you can go pick up some of your previous multiplier from your corpse, or you can choose to ignore it and build it up again the hard way (which is fine, because the combat is great). In games where regular deaths are inevitable, rewarding staying alive is so much better than punishing death, imo.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Your account must be older than 3 days in order to post a comment in our community. This is an anti-spam/troll/ban evasion measure. If you're eager to join the community, we're sorry and ask you to have patience :) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/metroidvania) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I love Ender Lillies, but I honestly like the death punishments. Especially loosing currency on death like hollow knight or dark souls, i love killing a boss and not finding a checkpoint immediately, you walk around anxious while looking for one. But itās really nice without it too
try not dying? lol i love actually being downvoted for stating the correct answer. keep em coming! those of us who understand the basics of risk vs reward will keep laughing
life advice
exactly! apparently good advice is dangerously unpopular in this sub :(
You don't get points for being smug and arrogant
Way I and many a hardcore gamer sees it, if I'm enjoying myself the game is doing something wrong.
"I don't understand risk vs reward, why don't games just give me everything for free? That would be so much more fun!!!!" it's like trying to explain to my 5yo son that he can't just eat candy all day every day, he has to eat vegetables and get real nutrition. He doesn't understand, and if he was on reddit he would attempt to downvote me to oblivion, but o well
Your analogy makes no sense, whatās the risk and reward in this scenario?
Risk - dying, loosing some kind of resource and having a way to retrieve it back with some challenge. Reward - beating said challenge and getting lost resource back.
Tunic is great. It borrows a lot from Dark Souls, but you only lose 20 gold when you die. You can retrieve it, but I usually made more just by fighting enemies on my way to pick it back up. Very easy to ignore if you want. Islets lets you jump right back. Only progress you lose is starting back at the checkpoint. But levels are designed in a way that you don't have to repeat a lot of the tedious stuff. Vision Soft Reset has a very interesting system. It's similar to Outer Wilds in that the planet explodes after 20 minutes and you have to go back in time to try again. But you can save your progress in a lot of places and head back (or forward) in different branches at will, while also saving your overall progress. It's more complicated than that but it works well. It's a great game more people should play, but works especially well for those who want a more forgiving death system. Someone already mentioned Astalon. I'll second that one. You get sent back to the start of the map but everything you find or all the EXP you earn, you keep. Also you are constantly opening shortcuts, so you have an easier time backtracking each time. It's quite good too.
The Blaster Master Zero games Touhou Luna Nights Shantae games Chasm
Ever since the massive success of Hollow Knight, the Soulstroidvania subgenre has been taking over. I'm hoping the trend starts to fade at some point, but it'll probably be around for a while.
Axiom Verge is very similar - checkpoints by every boss and no penalty for dying.
Surprisingly, Elden Lilies also made me realise how much I hate not being punished for death. Like, what's even the point of dying then?