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[Impmaster]

I've been playing a lot of CS: GO recently. I think I'll start map modding and I've started watching CS:GO tournaments. What is up with me and competitive multiplayer games...

[SirNiko]

Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari

This looks really neat! The character design looks gorgeous, and I like how the protagonist's appearance is kind of awkward.

Is there a great deal of text? Like, several text boxes at a time, a text box for each interaction, or long stretches without any text? Having to translate everything and slowing down the game while I do so is a pretty big turn off.

[MeshGearFox]

Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari

This looks really neat! The character design looks gorgeous, and I like how the protagonist's appearance is kind of awkward.

Is there a great deal of text? Like, several text boxes at a time, a text box for each interaction, or long stretches without any text? Having to translate everything and slowing down the game while I do so is a pretty big turn off.

The most text-heavy part I've seen so far is at the beginning. Otherwise, up to chapter 4, it hasn't been all that text heavy. Basically there's no real dialogue -- you get a description of what happens when you interact with stuff, but it's very visual so you have that for context, and the same words tend to come up a lot. Now the game DOES have an in-game encyclopedia of everything, and it also logs what you do in this /storybook/, both of which are considerably wordier, but it's not stuff you're reading constantly.

[Razz]

got warioland 4 in the wiiu vc, still love the shit out of this game

[ThemsAllTook]

Snakebird is a pretty good time. Give it a look if you like puzzle games.

[SirNiko]

Yeah, been playing snakebird too.

It feels a lot like Hanono Puzzle or Jelly no Puzzle. The difficulty goes up pretty quickly, but everything is very logical.

The best part, though, is the squishy animated characters. I love how the birds get squashed into corners, quiver excitedly when they're near a piece of fruit, or warily eye a nearby spike.

[Tanner]

It feels a lot like Hanono Puzzle or Jelly no Puzzle. The difficulty goes up pretty quickly, but everything is very logical.

SOLD. as soon as i have a job i'm gonna get this

[Razz]

my friends were talking about that game today so I decided to pick it up, yea it's really cool -- I love the visual style and the puzzles are genius. I agree about the character animations being really cute

[SousaVilla]

I just finished Harmony of Dissonance on the GBA and I have conflicting feelings about it. I liked it, but some of the systems were just broken. Having to go to the menu to turn spells on or off is really annoying, especially when you're in the middle of a boss fight and out of mana. Rondo of blood already had subweapon and special ability without the need of a menu and it was amazing. Having subweapons deplenish hearts and spells deplenish mana is just a nod to tradition, why not make a single resource for that? On the topic of tradition: finding subweapons in the classic castlevania way of whipping cadles does not work in this game. I've lost count of how many times I've whipped a candle looking for hearts or money and get a subweapon I didn't wanted instead. I think it also lowers player experimentation, although that could be just my fault. Because the method of getting them was so imprecise I just kept one subweapon + spellbook that I liked through the whole game, only ocassionaly testing stuff when I got a new spellbook (that is, almost never)

The game seems SoTN 2.0 in its story and dual castle stuff, but with inferior components. Some of the castle areas felt really cheesy and over the top, like the bones section. I think it's an ok game still. It's the goddamn metroidvania formula that keeps you interested and collecting stuff. The movement also helps, dashing back to dodge a lizardman then dashing foward to hit him feels really good. Circle of the Moon in comparision feels so heavy and unresponsive, at least in the early game.

[Cobralad]

Get the wind crosses or gradius gears. Then youll understand how bonkers it is.

[SousaVilla]

I just discovered that you can change spellbooks by pressing up + R or L, and you can turn it off by pressing down + L AND R instead. Why on earth would they hide this information?

Wind crosses seem cool. Dashing through early levels and killing everything as you go looks a lot better than the slide.

[Alevice]

Yeah I liked some of the ideas behind HoD too, and while some levels were otright cheesy, there was some great moments like the waterfall of blood. I think they still hadnt figured out that they should have had a single specialy ability resource rather than two that just complicate things. I kinda wish the teleporting areas were like bettewr places. SOme areas just take forveer toreach no matter where you are.

[Nillo]

Imo Harmony of Dissonance is the worst of the GBA trilogy (Circle of the Moon, HoD, Aria of Sorrow) and the other two were a lot more fun to me. But I also don't think I'm really the target audience for Harmony. Looking back on the series as a whole, Harmony seems to be intentionally designed as a nostalgia trip for people who wanted more Symphony and I couldn't have that experience when I played it (I only played Symphony AFTER finishing the GBA titles). So to me it just looked like a game with dubious, dated design choices.

Anyway...

I finished the first Phoenix Wright game earlier this week (spoiler: it's awesome) and just started on the second one. Immediately got stuck on the first case because I didn't realize I could present a character profile. They just slipped that feature into the game without mentioning it, which I thought was pretty weird. But once I figured that out the rest of the case was easy.

[Alevice]

honestly I still cant get hooked by Circle of the Moon. It feels soooo sooo clunky.

[oahda]

I was told to download Skyward on mobile. Game itself pretty fun, but geez, everything around it is so annoying.

The main menu is full of buttons that actually look like buttons and none of them actually led into the actual game but opened Safari and stuff, and then I realised what just looked like titles denoting records in certain categories were actually the buttons to start playing those categories. They didn't look like buttons at all.

When you lose, the music restarts, which is really annoying in the beginning when you lose like every third second before you get better. And when you lose a bunch of those annoying buttons appear at the bottom of the screen, and that's really the only place where you can keep your thumb when playing so that you can see the rest of the level ahead of you so it's very easy to accidentally click one of those buttons as they pretty much appear faster than you realise you've lost.

BUT! The actual game is a lot of fun. Just the UI stuff that's bad. And the restarting music. The music is itself very pleasant, tho, as are the sound effects and graphics and gameplay.

It has achievements like all the mobile games, tho. I don't care I played 100 times or did 1500 steps, just let me play. ;__; The only number that's interesting is the highscore.

[s0]

honestly I still cant get hooked by Circle of the Moon. It feels soooo sooo clunky.

yeh circle of the moon is basically ok but the controls are so stiff and awkward

aria is the best (and best handheld castlevania in general) imo

[SousaVilla]

I played just the beginning of Circle of the Moon and the positive side for me was that it felt a lot more sober than HoD. Some areas of HoD were too over the top for me. The Soundtrack is also a lot lot better, and because of this it felt more atmospheric in general.

On the downside: Without the dash your character feels sooo heavy, and you only get the sprint ability 15 minutes into the game. HoD slide was fast and you could go through levels with weak enemies just sliding or alternating between the dash and the slide, which felt really good, CoM slide is a lot slower. I dont know if I'll keep playing, as movement is one the most important things in a metroidvania. You'll be doing that even more than fighting enemies, lol

[SirNiko]

CotM also has a pretty small selection of items. You get most spell cards by chance and there aren't any other weapons except the sub-weapons. The first run-through is clunky and feels like classic castlevania with experience levels instead of SotN on a hand-held, especially since the abilities are really constrained (you always get them in the same order). The second through fifth run-throughs mix things up giving you specialties, but I think most players are tired of it by then.

Pretty much, it was really good for an early GBA title but it's aged pretty poorly since then.

[SousaVilla]

On a side note: I don't think any of the igavania on GBA did much to improve on SoTN basic ideas. Actually, I think HoD and CoM are worse, even if still good, and don't attempt anything bold with the formula. I played Aria a long time ago and like it, but it felt just a small variation. I don't know how the DS ones fare, but this has diminished my hype for bloodstained, as I don't think you can play the same game five times times and don't wish some new elements shaking things up. It's a pity, because I really want to like that game, SoTN being such a big nostalgic experience for me.   

[s0]

ya aside from menus and dialog i can't think of anything the handheld games really improved.

sotn is also obviously the most ambitious and the one that had the most effort put into it. like i said in the other thread i never played it when it originally came out and played the GBA games first so no "nostalgia" involved.