TheShampion
Member
Language continues to be a virus. If you don't like it, you have find the cure, like a better term, otherwise people will just rely on the easiest path to communicate their ideas.
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Digibro: 'Metroidvania' Needs to Die
- Thread starter Tye The Czar
- Start date
Nerdkiller
Membeur
The Illiterati
Member
It's great for you to have an outlier opinion(I think BOTW is overrated) but to act as if the majority of SOTN players at the time and even in retrospect don't view it as quintessential is completely wrong.
D.Lo
Member
But one of them literally isn't, it does not have souls in the title. It's just shorthand for the whole loose series.
D.Lo
Member
I outlined my opinion in detail, with specific examples, you've called on an unprovable 'majority opinion' and offered no actual counterpoint.
You said it was a 'quintessential metroid like' which is utterly ridiculous when it is very, very poor at the Metroid elements. Several of Igarashi's games are better at the actual Metroid formula (Aria being his best).
Its just an easy souls game with absurd iframes cancel dodges, an incentive to 2 hand your weapon aka play properly and take off your shield and a ranged parry vOv
The Illiterati
Member
You have really got to be kidding me. I'm not wasting time arguing this point. I don't need to provide links. I played it when it came out, I was on the message boards, I read the reviews, and I know the legacy. I have no interest in telling you why the majority of people don't agree that "SOTN is a 6.5 game" or whatever you wrote because it's utterly ludicrous.
Most people consider it an all time classic in the genre, end of story.
LinkAndEpona
Banned
He was way way better when he was a brony.
On topic: I love these types of games and it's definitely earned its place as it's own genre.
Soulslike is fiiiiiiiine.
Reminds me of the promising but ultimately doomed pushback against MOBA.
D.Lo
Member
You need receipts, not fact-free emotional pleas to your own nostalgic experience.
Most people into Igavanias now consider it a poor one (though it still has the best graphics and sound). And I have never before in my life heard it referred to as a 'quintessential metroid-like'. The VAST majority opinion in my experience is the Super Metroid is the quintessential metroid-like game, usually followed by other Metroid games, commonly Prime 1 and Zero Mission.
Sgt.Pepper
Banned
I, for one, am expecting the game I always wanted, but no one is doing. The Dark Souls of Roguelike Metroidvanias.
thank you! perfect response
Digital Savior
Member
Metroidvania is more specific than MOBA. Multiplayer Online Battle Arena can describe any online pvp game.
I all for coming up with better genre names and descriptions. But, it will never happen.
I all for coming up with better genre names and descriptions. But, it will never happen.
Lucky Seven
Banned
Yes. I hate these types of videos.
StarStabbedMoon
Member
Well fortunately for this guy Nintendo and Konami have been doing their best to kill the genre's namesake but they can only do so much. We should just call it Bloodstained-esque from now on.
Diablohead
Member
I have no beef with the word Metroidvanias and to many it's an easy way to explain a game, I call my game in development an action adventure game which kind of means the same thing so it's just a matter of choice.
The 10's on a nutshell. People complained so much about irrelevant things they forgot about what was really important. This thread's first post is fantastic.
You're insane. SOTN is a timeless masterpiece that hasn't been matched let alone topped. Consensus is that it's a classic, end of story.
Doctor Decimate
Member
It's an inaccurate term that doubles as sounding absurdly clumsy but I think if we were gonna fight this battle it needed to be years ago. It's too widespread to kill at this point.
OrbitalBeard
Member
Eh, I think Iga has topped it at least twice.
I actually find the label an honorable part of both Castlevania and Metroid's legacy. As many said, both series are gone, and it's nice that they live as referents.
Just going by the visuals​ and music he never did. Gameplay is arguable, but SOTN is a complete experience.
D.Lo
Member
Lol you've both said 'end of story' with absolutely no backup of your opinion or backup to your claim that 'everyone agrees with me too'.
I have linked to a thread where I detailed my opinion and around 50% of the posters agreed it had some serious flaws and had aged very poorly in many ways. Refute the points I or others have made about the game's serious issues if you want to be taken seriously.
More_Badass
Member
If roguelike is acceptable, so is Soulslike
If anything, the way the games that came after and were inspired by both Rogue and Demons/Dark Souls is quite similar.
OrbitalBeard
Member
That's probably true regarding visuals, but that's mainly due to him never releasing another 2D Castlevania on a home console, outside of Chronicles.
Eh, SOTN is a lot more memorable and a very classic game that's going to be remembered over the other Iga games, regardless of them being better or not though. A lot of timeless, classical things are like that. It will always have more of a mindshare, especially as you spread out to the general gaming community and further away from more specific fans.
SOTN may not be the "best" Igavania, but I'd easily bet on it being remembered in gaming long, long after any of the others and it is the favorite of many regardless of quality.
I'd refute but that would be like defending Super Mario Bros or Tetris or Chrono Trigger. They are seminal works that while OF FUCKING COURSE got polished in subsequent iterations, they just created the state of the art.
The term Metroidvania exists because those two games are so good they became the stick to measure the others, and such they are great themselves. They need no argument for their greatness.
The Illiterati
Member
Ah, so it's a mix of Bonk and Day of the Tentacle. Got it!
Riposte
Member
Accusations that Digibro is overthinking it or is trying to have an "academic debate" are inaccurate cop-outs. He's providing a minimal amount of thought to the matter vs. refusing to think about it at all, to challenge the term vs. challenging nothing. His argument can be broken down into two or three main points (e.g., metroid vs vania) and he delivers that argument in a fairly straightforward manner. I don't quite agree with his framing, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with it.
The descriptive vs. prescriptive argument in bound to surface in a discussion of genre (and pretty much anything else involving "rules" in thought, criticism, or analysis), however I think people are taking the laziest version of the descriptive argument, which ends up coming across as "stop talking about this!" Yeah, if "if it works, don't break it!" is sound on some level, but if someone points out ways something doesn't fit, then you not engaging them by just reiterating it.
Roguelike (insofar it meant games distinctively like Rogue) and JRPG (insofar it meant the type of "RPGs" (can of worms) Japanese devs were making circa it's adoption of Wizardry and standardization with Dragon Quest) were (and in the original sense, still are) perfectly apt as genres, but that's not to say they haven't been corrupted as they been expanded to mean more and more things (however so that may have came to be). Don't want to spend the time to discussion either of those terms, but it's worth noting in the video (or was it in the follow-up?) he actually does make a comparison between what occurred with JRPGs and "igavanias" (i.e., SotN-style Castlevania games); Metroidvania/Igavania began as a specific distinction between games within the Castlevania franchise/brand and then was extended outwards, like a roving blob of tacky game journo generalization, to absorb every 2D platformer or 2D action game with a hint of open-ended or non-linear level/map design ("Metroid"). So, yeah, kinda like "JRPG" and whatnot, but maybe not in the way you would hope.
SotN is flawed masterpiece, or, rather, it's an aesthetic masterpiece built on some terrible core ideas. And these ideas are easily identified. If you remove or streamlined its leveling system, the game becomes dramatically better without any real loss to what makes its audiovisuals or exploration so intriguing.
The only real problem with MOBA (aside from how lame it is to throw around) is that the MO is both unnecessary and redundant. The easily solution is "Battle Arena", since that's basically what the term already means.
Thinkpieces need to die lol
2D exploration platformer. That's still not really covering map iteration though.
Hm... Iterative exploration platformer!
ShironRedshift
Member
I kind of dislike the term, because it's like defining a word with itself.
"So what is Super Metroid?"
"It's a Metroidvania game originally released for the SNES."
"Okay, but what's a Metroidvania game?"
"A game that plays like a 2D Metroid or Castlevania game."
"..."
It's just something completely useless and conveys absolutely no meaning whatsoever to those that aren't already "in the know." And since Metroid and Castlevania themselves make up a bulk of Metroidvanias well... yeah. It's just really kind of odd.
Of course, it's already accepted, so whatever, but it's definitely one of the things that could have been better coined back in the day.
"So what is Super Metroid?"
"It's a Metroidvania game originally released for the SNES."
"Okay, but what's a Metroidvania game?"
"A game that plays like a 2D Metroid or Castlevania game."
"..."
It's just something completely useless and conveys absolutely no meaning whatsoever to those that aren't already "in the know." And since Metroid and Castlevania themselves make up a bulk of Metroidvanias well... yeah. It's just really kind of odd.
Of course, it's already accepted, so whatever, but it's definitely one of the things that could have been better coined back in the day.
fvng
Member
Tye The Czar
Member
Well, he is mainly an anime reviewer/analyst.
Riposte
Member
I pray everyday From will release another Souls game without the word Souls (or blood/borne) in it.
Tye The Czar
Member
King's Field V?
Not when people are using it to describe any game with non mashy combat or high damage and rolls, both things that existed since forever.
That's not a problem with the word itself, that's a problem with people using it poorly. I haven't seen it used that often though really.
It's absolutely fair to call Lords of Shadow a Soulslike and Nioh a Soulslike, though I think that's underselling Nioh's own identity a bit.