inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jul 7, 2019 22:26:37 GMT -6
It's just that what you're saying imo contradicts itself - it should be about the game being bigger, yes, and bigger in actuality rather than the # of units. The save room is 30% bigger, yeah, and so are all the other rooms in the castle - those which do count for more space you're exploring. I definitely didn't expect you'd agree with making the unit of measurement smaller like it used to be to fix the whole thing. My bad on the spikes, apparently I just didn't notice how much damage they did before or it didn't happen often enough because there were less monsters around to potentially knock me into them etc. I'll be curious to find out if you're right about RotN hard being easier than OoE, because I won't believe that until I see it. Why wouldn't I? Again, the universally accepted way to measure these games for the last two decades is to count out map squares. More squares = bigger game. It's pretty straightforward. The conversation needn't be muddied with aspect ratios.
The difficulty is fully dependent on how much you're taking advantage of the systems. I'd argue that Bloodstained Hard is likely harder than OoE on normal from an enemy statistic standpoint, but Bloodstained offers a lot more ways to get more powerful in meaningful ways. So if you're making all the food, getting the best weapon of the type you're using as soon as possible, leveling up your shards, etc. then Bloodstained is way way way easier. The example of grinding out a max grade familiar in the first area in twenty minutes on hard/nightmare exemplifies it perfectly. Even just getting the familiar and not leveling it at all still gives you a huge advantage at that point in the game.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jul 7, 2019 22:03:26 GMT -6
So they could have made the room blips squares again instead of the rectangles arbitrarily and thus had a much higher number of them and then you would have been satisfied? That would be cheap and cheesy. The method of counting the units is the same, but the units are bigger. Here's an easy example I think: The latter of course can't fill out the full of the screen as it is of course, obviously, so those borders are there. You'd need quite a bit more space/pixels to make that happen or a gross stretching, so it's shrunk down. A RotN rectangle is something like 1.3 of a previous Iga game's square. Yes, they could have arbitrarily counted them in squares again to artificially sate a want for a higher, inflated number, but imo that's silly. On the difficulty, I think I can speak on it, yes. Even on NG+ for hard, stage hazards to my ridiculous level 50 character do a bit over 400 damage. I would imagine that and many other situations would be instant death to a NG character on the difficult, and OoE has very few instances I can remember of ~2 hits being the end of Shanoa. I don't know how it ramps up, so I can't speak for the whole of RotN hard, but I know that even if I'm careless with a ridiculously strong NG+ character I can still bite it. That being said, again difficulty/being harder than OoE was not an intent or expectation that was had. Yup, if they made it squares arbitrarily then I would have no complaints about map size as it would end up being somewhere in the region of lower 2000's. Like I said, that's how the size of these games are measured. The only reason aspect ratio is part of the conversation suddenly is to try and find some sort of loophole. Since as things stand, the goal of "Iga's Biggest Castle" was not met unless you you start bringing in screen sizes. But a better question is, do screen sizes matter even? I find your use of save rooms as an example to be fitting. In both games they serve the same purpose, saving the game. Nothing else in there. Nothing to explore. Does one save room being 30% longer than the other make it more valuable? Does it make the game bigger? Of course not, that's ridiculous. That's why the games are measured by their room sizes and not how "big" the screen is. Circle of the Moon has a notoriously small player character, while Harmony of Dissonance has a slightly larger one comapred to later games. The result is that the rooms are bigger and smaller comparatively, but nobody on earth brings that into a discussion on how large the games are.
Stage hazards do a flat 30% of your health on hard/nightmare. No such thing as instant death from them. Again, you don't have a horse in this race unless you've experienced it, and you're talking out of your butt regarding it right now.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jul 7, 2019 21:36:48 GMT -6
Re: the size of the game mourningxsun , you set yourself up with unrealistic expectations (as I'd pointed out before in the discord etc way back when we were talking about it before the game came out) with your math-theory that you thought the game was 2x the size of SotN + inverted, so that being 3600 squares. That was never going to happen, it's crazy. The game is about 1600 squares, yes, but those are 16:9 squares and not the old games' 4:3 ones. They can't be reckoned by the same measurement because that's more screen space per each square (now wide rectangles instead of squares, more like it). I know you know this, and iirc you had some kind of explanation that somehow they ended up being the same anyway and it didn't matter, but still the game is bigger because of this. It's just the same as the illusion that the game feels "slower" even if it is roughly the same speed as SotN - this is because Miriam is covering "less distance" because there's more screen you're seeing, not because she's actually moving slower. Games in old 4:3 low resolutions are smaller, and all rooms are basically much closer to squares. RotN rooms are larger rectangles. Beyond that, I can tell you that Angel and the rest of the team agonized over measuring this stuff to make sure this was right re: size. Angel-Corlux About the part re: difficulty, I don't buy for a second that level 1 on hard mode is easier than Order of Ecclesia's normal. There's no way. You generally die in two hits, and Vepar is especially rough from what I've heard. I was quite satisfied with the difficulty on Normal, myself, since I had to eat a good bit of food if I wanted to beat something on the first try. Some bosses actually did require me to do some re-fights, but not a lot, and that's fine - that's not what these games are about to me, anyway. Hard and Nightmare are there for people who want more of that challenge, though, and I think OoE is certainly tougher than Normal RotN, but we were told to expect that and it's what we got - just as with the map (the stated goal for the map was 1600 or more). The other things I just don't have as much to say about or didn't bother me, even if I could see them being issues for people. Overall, though, what I think happened here is you created some expectations beyond what they clearly said they were doing, man. Map's big enough to clear their goal, and the game is actually harder than the "around SotN" bar they had set. The whole napkin math thing was just for fun, wasn't really supposed to be an accurate prediction. Plus one of those guesses was around 1700 anyways.
But yeah, regarding the whole 16:9 vs. 4:3 ration aspects. Not buying it. Sorry but you can't just redefine the universally accepted way of measuring the size of these games to technically meet a goal. Screen sizes don't matter, room counts do. Aspect ratios have literally never ever been a part of the conversation regarding game size except for right now when the defense forces come parading out. Besides that, the map is filled with all sorts of "treats" like Valac's boss room eating up over 30 of those rooms, and the first big room of Den of Behemoths being a whole 80 room squares of literally nothing. Even if I did feel like ceding on this point, I'd still argue that the game wastes a whole lot of map percent on large empty rooms.
If you personally haven't played a fresh level one file on hard, then you're not really in a position to gauge my take on it. It starts out challenging enough, but similar to nightmare mode the difficulty just goes away after Zangetsu. I once again reiterate that the inclusion of Dullahammer heads on the ship at the start in higher difficulties was a bad move. Anybody who spends the fifteen minutes needed to get and level up the familiar can basically play the game on autopilot regardless of difficulty. The reason why the higher difficulties fail to be difficult is that enemy HP is not properly scaled up compared to normal mode. After the first 20% of the game you're just a glass cannon slapping other glass cannons. It's not interesting, nor is it meaningfully challenging. Curse of Darkness did it right, Bloodstained didn't. I argue that normal OoE is harder than hard mode bloodstained because you'll never hit a point where you can just slap away enemies before they can attack in OoE. Also Blackmore is a boss harder than anything Bloodstained has to offer by far.
Not really a fan of your weird psychoanalysis either. The game set clear goals and did not meet some. When the game has been in development for four years, I'm not really interested in hearing how they "technically made the biggest castle if you account for aspect ratios" or other nonsense like that. It's a poor excuse. Has nothing to do with expectations other than what was advertised. Castle isn't the biggest, nightmare isn't a nightmare. Discussions outside of official hugboxy channels have plenty of people with similar views.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jul 7, 2019 12:07:56 GMT -6
About the biggest castle thing, keep in mind that you're dealing with HD screens here so you're getting more castle per map square. Also, in PoR there was significantly more copy/paste than in Bloodstained when it comes to the maps so I'm not sure I'd fully count that. Bigger =/= Better... ..... Why does the 8-bit area not count? Other than that I agree, would be great to have some super difficult special area in there somewhere. ..... If your bitching comes from a place of love, your choice of words doesn't make it seem so. There are more friendly ways to express your thoughts (although I agree with quite a few of them). No offense 1: I understand the relative screen size as well as the lack of reskinned areas if we pretend that Den of Behemoths doesn't exist, but it still fundamentally isn't the biggest castle. They should have thrown in some reskinned areas. Invert the castle. Anything. I don't think a lot of people would have minded that if it didn't affect the size of the main castle.
2: It's separate from the rest of the game, and if you put it on the map, it would probably be a whole six screens long. If you want to count it as a genuine, full blown optional challenge area then go ahead, but that's some real slim pickings compared to the likes of Nest of Evil, Tower of Eternity/Evermore, and Large Cavern. Even the woefully small Underground Cemetery in AoS had more to it. Especially considering that 8-bit nightmare isn't even noticeably more difficult than other end game areas.
3: It gets the point across easier and I just finished downing a bomber to celebrate my whole one day off a week. No offense taken though
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jul 6, 2019 23:55:50 GMT -6
Spoiler embargo is long gone, and man oh man do I have a lot to say. Count this as the official spoiler warning.
Here's what's up, the game is a solid 9/10 in my book. Love it to death and will be playing it a lot in the future as I do with most 'vanias. The thing is, we *all* know it's a great game, but what about those things that are keeping it from being a 10/10? Well come one come all because I've been drinking, and I have an axe to grind tonight.
1: The game is not "Iga's Biggest Castle." As oft repeated by Angel, the stretch goal referred to the game as a whole, not just the castle. Well here we are, and the game failed to meet that standard. Want to test this yourself? Start a new game. Go through sixteen map squares. Pause the game. Look at your map percentage. It will be at 1.0%. Fill in one more map square. The percentage will still be 1.0%. I don't care enough to fully count out the squares, but this irrefutable proves that the map is between 1600 and 1700 square big. Is that a large game even by Iga's standards? Yes, entirely. I'm not claiming that the game is small by any means. But, SotN nearly hits 1900 map squares total, and PoR is greater than 1700 map squares total. SotN you can sorta write off if you want to not count the inverted castle, but PoR can't so easily be ignored. REGARDLESS. The point is that the game has failed to meet this promise. Plain and simple. And that sucks.
2: I've never really seen one of Iga's game fart out on the end so badly before. The game, pacing, exploration, and areas as a whole were top notch up until the last two. Arguably Oriental Sorcery Lab wasn't so great but that's mostly because it's just a very natural/earthy looking area on top of the castle and it just doesn't fit in. It's designed fine though. Anyways. Den of Behemoths. What the hell. As a concept it could have been a great area, but it really just shat the bed. It's not interesting to explore for starters. It's just big, map percentage wasting open areas thrown at you in a linear fashion. Then they just threw big versions of enemies you already fought at you. Not even interesting or hard enemies, oh no. Instead we just get big bats, cannons and toads. (I have more to say on toads and cannons in a bit) We could have gotten big versions of interesting enemies, like a Demon subtype, but no. Just big bats, toads, and rats. Yet the game can't even keep that simple themeing straight because normal sized Abyssal Guardians can be found here. And to think we were this close to closing out the game without reusing a boss as a common enemy. I'll also throw in that the placement on the map of this area doesn't make a lick of sense.
And then we have Glacial Tomb. The area isn't offensively bad as Den of Behemoths, it's fine even, if just a bit bland. But man, it sure as hell does not feel like a final area at all, and I can't be the only one that feels that way. I get to Dominique and expected her to open up the portal to the final Hell area or something, but no. Final boss and roll credits. I'm actually shocked that three story bosses were crammed into this tiny area. I'm not even mad, it's just fucking weird and left me feeling kind of let down with the ending as a whole.
3: The game just... isn't hard? I can forgive that on normal, that's fine. But Hard and Nightmare? Eesh. Hard mode still falls short of Order of Ecclesia's default difficulty. Nightmare is only "hard" due to the forced level 1 cap. Nightmare loses most of it's difficulty after the first Zangetsu fight, as your options for getting more powerful drastically open up after that point. If you spent the time to grind out the Dullahammer Head familiar in the first area then just disregard what I just said about nightmare, as it becomes trivially easy if you do that. The biggest reason for this is that enemy health was not properly adjusted for higher difficulties. If you know what you're doing (and you will if you have the desire to do a fresh nightmare mode file), then your DPS will be high, and enemies will die extremely fast. I was afraid of this happening for actual years at this point, and lo and behold, it happened. Want an example of an extreme difficulty mode managing to stay difficult the whole way through? Castlevania Curse of Darkness's Crazy mode. Play it, love it, die to the first enemy a dozen times.
4: Boss Rush. What the actual fuck happened here. I have never, ever seen a developer manage to mangle a boss rush mode ever, let alone to the extent it was done here. It's missing like what, half the bosses? Including the more iconic ones like Bloodless. On top of having half of the bosses left out, the remaining ones were divided into two separate courses for some inexplicable reason, meaning that "boss rush" has you fighting a quarter of the bosses at a time. The only way to to boss rush is by importing a preexisting and geared character, so if it was split into two courses to make it "easier" then that's entirely pointless. Your level is set to 30 as well for some reason, although that doesn't make a difference at all. And to top it off, the rewards are garbage. Wow you get one of those retro coins for a backer weapon that you can obtain with ease in the regular game, instead of something unique or interesting like every single other one of Iga's games did. What a waste. I really hope this doesn't set the standard for the rest of the """free DLCs"""
5: Reskinned enemies. Hooooooooly shit. Wasn't the whole point of moving away from sprites was that it would make it easier to create new and unique assets? What happened here? This is the most reskin heavy game that Iga's made by far. If you're playing in the intended order, want to know the last time you see a unique enemy model? Not counting bosses? Hidden Desert with the Living Fossil. Hidden Fucking Desert. Enjoy the remaining third of your game because it's reskins all the way down. Not only that, but for reasons beyond me, the most boring enemies imaginable were the ones used for half the game. Do you like Toads? Well there's five different types. Like Cannons? Also five different types that nobody even had the decency to meaningfully recolor. Fairies? Demons? Three of them each. Knights? I'm not even going to bother to count. Oh, can't forget the Elementals either. This game is almost at Circle of the Moon's level of nonsense when it comes to this. What mostly irks me is that none of the more interesting enemies were reused. How about a reskinned Tamako-Death blasting some new jams? Nope. But enjoy your five different toads.
6: Not really an issue, but more of a general preference, but couldn't we have gotten some more... interesting quests? PoR and OoE nailed it, so what's with the endless fetch and kill quests?
7: No optional areas. The 8-bit one doesn't count. I'm not exactly a huge fan of metroidvainas where the main story is a grand tour of every area. It's not really an exploration game if you end up everywhere by default. I can get over that if there's some big, fun, end game challenge area. OoE had that as did PoR. Every one of Iga's games barring Dawn of Sorrow had optional areas. So again, disappointment. Doubly so as you end up extremely overpowered towards the end of the game with nothing to really test yourself on. Bael is a joke of an end boss.
Anyways all my bitching comes from a place of love. I swear guys.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jul 6, 2019 22:40:21 GMT -6
The map is objectively the biggest Iga has ever had in a game, what’s this bullshit about the map not feeling “big”? And that’s just counting rooms but each of Bloodstained’s rooms is a time least 30% bigger than a SotN room because of the higher resolution and change from 4:3 to 16:9. And it’s took me 28 hours on my first run to complete the game with a 100% map and I still have a ton of things to do and trophies to unlock so I don’t buy that it feels incomplete. This game is NOT without criticism but I’ll be damned if one of those is because the map felts small or the game incomplete. Fuck that. Nah, it's not the biggest at all.
It's between 1600 and 1700 rooms based off of map percentages, and I'm sure somebody counted out the square somewhere. Either way that number is less than the size of SotN by quite a bit. And yes yes, "the inverted castle shouldn't count" and I'll give you that. Bloodstained is still smaller than Portrait of Ruin.
Bloodstained also has a lot of "empty" areas. Notably the Den of Behemoths. I'm borderline insulted that Den of Behemoths, arguably the worst area in the game, has the audacity to take up over 10% of the game size. The majority of that area is empty space because suddenly everything has to be big.
If you want to say that the castle is the biggest explicit castle in any of Iga's games, then sure, it is. But time and time and time again, that stretch goal was clarified as referring to the game as a whole, so yeah. Pretty horseshit.
Regarding the OP: The datamines from last year showed that Focalor was originally intended to be fought after the train, so you're pretty spot in in regards to him supposed to be in the game. Valefar was also supposed to be fought a lot earlier, which most people should be able to figure out as he seems *really* out of place in Den of Behemoths.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jun 27, 2019 11:59:48 GMT -6
I mean, steamspy shows that there are 200k-500k owners on Steam alone, and for a $40 indie game that's pretty nuts. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jun 25, 2019 11:37:22 GMT -6
"IGA's Biggest Castle" isn't actually met though.
That goal has *always* been specified as "iga's biggest game," not just the castle, and the room count is under SotN's with both castles. SotN is above 1800 and Bloodstained is below that number. I want to say it also is right under Portrait of Ruin but I'd need to see the room count for that game. This is even without mentioning a few rather large rooms of "nothing" that Bloodstained has.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jun 23, 2019 10:59:14 GMT -6
Wishlist: A boss rush mode that actually contains all the bosses
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jun 21, 2019 20:24:18 GMT -6
So, for those of you that haven't checked it out yet, here's the issues. To kick things off, it doesn't have all the bosses. Not even remotely close.
Here are the bosses that are nowhere to be seen:
O.D. Dominique Baal Valefar Zangetsu 2 Doppleganger Bloodless Glutton Train And if you want to count them, all the backer room bosses.
In previous games, the standard was that boss rush mode contains all bosses, although it was common for the final boss to be left out for some reason.
My second point of contention is that the mode is divided into two "course" that divide easier bosses from more difficult ones. This has been an aspect of Boss Rush mode for a few of Iga's previous games, although in this game I find it makes little sense as there are so few bosses in this mode to begin with. Not really much of a rush when you only have to fight five of them now is it?
Finally... Traditionally boss rush in Iga's games award unique or gimmicky items based on your time. From the several times I ran through it, I've only gotten a 16 bit coin from course A, and a 32 bit coin from course B. Subsequent runs only seem to reward very minimal early game items as a reward, including a whopping ether and cotton from my sub 1 minute nightmare run of course A. Beautiful.
I guess I could also mention that the music gets a bit glitchy if you're mowing through it too fast but that I can get over.
I'm not entirely sure why this mode was made to be so underwhelming. I personally hope it does not set the standard of quality for the other stretch goal releases down the road.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Jun 19, 2019 13:27:08 GMT -6
Not to be pedantic, but am I the only one a bit miffed that the game, is not, in fact bigger than SotN's 1890 room count?
Bloodstained is around 1700 rooms, and while the stretch goal said Iga's biggest castle, the devs clarified time and time again that they meant the game as a whole, not just the "castle" part of it. So, as a result, Bloodstained is not the biggest "castle" in the series.
The game is fantastic, but, eh? Disappointed this stretch goal wasn't actually met.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on May 28, 2019 2:49:32 GMT -6
Just let me grind with no limitations. It's my anti-drug. Same. I just want to zen out and grind until my eyes bleed.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on May 23, 2019 10:30:00 GMT -6
Woof, nothing like announcing modes getting sliced off and released after launch at the last second here.
Overall nothing to really say about this update.
Buy this extra thing, buy that extra thing, and extra modes will have to be added later.
Not exactly fuel for the hype train.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on May 3, 2019 23:07:28 GMT -6
The way I see it, Bloodstained is his "safe" bet right now. This is getting back on the bicycle and making something that, while new, would fit in exactly with what fans of Igavanias would want.
Granted he's throwing nearly every single mechanic and subsystem that he's even had in his game into Bloodstained and then some. So really, Bloodstained is just a big guinea pig in a way. "Here's all my ideas in a game that I know will be a hit" is the vibe I get off of Iga and Bloodstained as a whole. And that's not a bad thing.
What I will expect, going forward, is the series to play things a lot less safe. I would expect future games to not have as many systems and modes as the original Ritual of the Night. Only the ones that "clicked' with players will be going forward. The biggest departure I imagine we will see is setting. RotN is a love letter to Castlevania, but that same love will likely not extend to future games. Imagine a "real" modern day Igavania. Not like AoS or DoS, but a game that takes you through cities, space, and leaves the castles behind.
Or maybe even a proper globe trotting game. OoE kind of touched on that concept, but what if it was on a bigger scale? Or what if you had to actually walk your ass to wherever it is you want to go? Lecarde Chronicles 2 of all things managed to pull it off, so it would work.
All that being said, I don't see a world where Bloodstained as a series stops being a 2D metroidvania.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Apr 9, 2019 20:30:37 GMT -6
Just confirmed in the discord. Bust out the confetti everyone.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Apr 9, 2019 18:33:50 GMT -6
The ledges all seem to be designed as grates or bars to at least give some level of small plausibility as to why she could drop through them.
That point aside, the game is 3D and features levels designed with this fact in mind. Watching her "drop over" ledges in an area like The Tower of Twin Dragons would fuck with perspective beyond belief.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Apr 9, 2019 1:58:14 GMT -6
That's a bit of an odd way to look at it. Presentation doesn't really change anything in a practical sense. Spiraling up the tower and popping in and out of it makes for a bit of a dizzying spectacle, but stare at the map the whole time, and you'll just see a big rectangle that's four "squares" wide. It's nothing remarkably different from what we've been used to. Go back to the ship at the start and you see the condensed level design in action, something we'll be seeing for the majority of our time in the game. We are in a castle after all. Personally I haven't really gotten the vibe that the rooms are more "spaced out" at all. They're a bit bigger in terms of how much space Miriam takes up on the screen I suppose, but a grid square is a grid square no matter the size. Assumptions aside, watching the gameplay of the first video posted in this thread bloodstained.forums.net/thread/3949/newest-build-footage-egx-london shows a map completion percentage of exactly 1% after filling up 17 map squares. Granted the percentages are rounded to the tenth so there will be slight discrepancies, but if the build has the completed game in it, then indisputably we will have a game size of about 1700 squares/rooms/whatever you want to call them. Not a lot of mystery in terms of game size there, which is why it's far more interesting to discuss the possibility of a second castle or even a surprise location that doesn't count towards the map like the Chaos Realm in AoS. Just going off of what has been revealed publicly without bringing datamined info into things beyond the map grid? It's certainly possible that we could be looking at a map that will be going above 100%. I've been saying that if Iga *really* wanted to pull a fast one we'd have a castle A, B, and C. But that's beyond a pipe dream. That aside I'll be thrilled with 1700 unique rooms without any inverted or reskinned nonsense going on. Assuming that there will be more than 1700 rooms is not unreasonable though, as there's *always* been a "but wait there's more!" moment in Iga's games. Sometimes it was small like fighting Dracula in HoD. Then there was the time it was literally all of Dracula's Castle as with OoE. Dunno what we'll get personally, and I can say that there is literally nothing in the dozens of pages of datamined in-game info that actually points to a second castle. But I say we wait and see nonetheless.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Apr 8, 2019 23:03:22 GMT -6
I remember the "forbidden post" too, but we need to remind ourselves that the datamining was based on the 2018 Demo, a slice of the game that ended up carrying some data of it along with it. Names and terms changed, other things were added and i'm sure the game wasn't yet finished in 2018. It is probably that the data we saw wasn't the whole thing. All the information that was on that post and more was gathered and hidden. That being said I've had plenty of time to pour into staring at it, and there was a lot of information to be gained by doing so. Just throwing that out there. Plenty was clearly scrubbed from the files beforehand though. ---
Anywho, taking a look at the some of the recent videos of the current build, and paying attention at map completion percentages every time the menu comes up, it shows that the game will be about 1700 rooms at 100% completion.
On that note, and the reason I started with the topic of data-mined info, one weird little nugget that was mined up (that actually isn't a spoiler and has been freely discussed several times in the presence of Angel and company on the discord so don't worry) was the full map grid size. Like, when you look at the map, how big the grid actually is that the map is on. RotN's map grid is 100 vertical by 200 horizontal squares. For comparison, SotN was 50x60, and the following games were all smaller. Could the 100x200 grid be a placeholder? Absolutely. But if not the game is either psychotically spaced out or it's larger than the safe assumptions would lead one to think.
I'll spare the details (though will dig up all the information I posted in the discord if somebody really wants to see it,) but through the power of napkin math, I went off and hand-counted both the grid size, and the amount of actually utilized squares for the castle map in every single igavania. I then came up with a percentage of "utilized map" for every single game. Theeeen I averaged it all out to try to come up with a small handful of reasonable game size guesses for RotN. One of those numbers was mid-3000's which, is about double of the "about 1700 rooms" guess we're currently at with the current build. Basically that would lead one to assume a potential 200% map completion for the game, which would be rad.
It's an assumption based off an assumption based off an assumption based off of a random grid found in the files that might very well be a placeholder. But it's still something to consider nonetheless.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Mar 29, 2019 12:30:20 GMT -6
"Augument INT, as the name implies, increases your INT, being a Passive Shard. Weirdly, it's rank reads "Faster Casting" although Passive Shards aren't cast. Maybe a bug."
I was thinking that it was just listing what the shard would start doing when you rank it up.
|
|
inherit
1971
0
Mar 30, 2020 22:59:12 GMT -6
91
mourningxsun
106
Sept 6, 2017 22:03:08 GMT -6
September 2017
mourningxsun
|
Post by mourningxsun on Mar 15, 2019 12:39:23 GMT -6
Enkeria "Boss Revenge is the best way to explore her, but even with the in mind she would be limited to one room" Huh. We know nothing about Boss Revenge, but the kickstarter implied that there would be some exploring/world to go through to an extent. I highly doubt we'll be locked to one room in some kind of reversed boss rush mode.
|
|