Truth. I almost regret paying the $12 I did to get it on PC with HD and fixed maps... I think I might have liked it less had I played the Vita version.
God damn, I loved the new Strider to death. My favorite game of the year, easily, and I'd kill for a Vita port. Based on this comparison I seriously need to get around to playing my copy of Blackgate.
You must not have played many games this year then.
I still can't get over how disappointing the game was. I finished up the speed run trophy/achievement and promptly deleted it from my hard drive. It's one of less than 5 games I disliked enough to write a negative review for on Steam. There are some franchises that get taken in new directions and it works out well (Metroid Prime, for example) and there are some that really don't (Strider and Blackgate).
To further expand for anyone interested in my disappointment with Strider, let's see if I can recall all of the issues I had with the game:
(1) The combat is brain dead and from the very beginning enemies are an annoyance instead of fun to fight. I like enemies that are interesting to deal with, but the most complex the enemies really get are the armored ones that require a charge hit before you mash x or the ones that require a colored hit before you mash x. There's some sort of "upward" or "launcher" attack on y, but you NEVER have reason to use it and I only used it in a few occasions where I liked the animation better for reflecting projectiles.
(2)There's no reward system, there's no reason to fight the endlessly respawning enemies. It works in the original Strider because that's how a side scrolling platformer works. But when you turn the game into a metroidvania of sorts, you need a reward system to keep the combat interesting. Symphony of the Night did this through experience and leveling, so you were rewarded for continuing to kill enemies. Guacamelee does this by dropping money which is used to purchase upgrades. Without this sort of system, the enemies just exist to slow you down and to give you something to fight.
(3) Speaking of the hordes of enemies, there's about 5 types of enemies total, not including bosses, in the whole game. There's not a lot of variety there to what you fight or how you need to change your tactics.
(4) Speaking of variety, the game didn't have a lot of variety in terms of the design other than the throwback to the flying cart traversal stuff. Most of it was in the city. There were some caves and stuff but it all kind of jumbles together and there's not a lot of distinct areas.
(5) There's no real difficulty, even on hard. I think I had 3 problematic areas during my playthrough that had me stuck for a bit (1) the first boss, because you have low health so you need repeated attempts to learn the pattern, (2) the gorilla boss, which was just cheap for the most part, and (3) the elevator ride to the final boss where you have to deal with that bigger enemy type up on the edges -- without the magnetic upgrade that puts them in stasis, that fight is ridiculously cheap. Otherwise, the entire game is pretty much mash x as you run in a direction and when you get to a boss, dodge and then call the robotic eagle.
(6) While the story remains pretty much true to the original game, the voice acting and overall script are painfully bad. It's not even like there are "jill sandwich" style camp lines which stick out as enjoyable, I just found it all very painful to sit through.
(7) While focusing on story/dialogue, I'll bring up attention to detail -- and these are more nitpick annoyances, but things that just bothered me and there were plenty of them, but the two that immediately come to mind are the anime style portraits with the dialogue looked out of place and didn't really fit anything else. and the fact that they give Strider's model a Kunai pouch from the very beginning and yet you can't throw kunai until you're about 40% into the game.
While Double Helix was truer to the character designs of the franchise than Ninja Theory was rebooting the Devil May Cry franchise, I think I have less issues and had more fun with DmC than I did with Strider.
I originally thorught the game wouldn't be good based on reveal footage and Double Helix at the helm... but I wanted it to be good so badly as a huge Strider fan that as the game neared release and I watched some of the PR stuff they were putting out, I bought into the hype and grabbed it for $9 or so. Now I advocate against purchasing the game for the most part as there are so many games out there that do Metroidvania style gameplay better than the new Strider.
Yep. And concerning physical copy, both Zaavi and Base don't have it anymore.
Good idea, but I can't find it on UK store.
You can't search Muramasa... you have to search by the name of the add on which -- for some reason -- doesn't have Muramasa in it.
