hydrophilic attack
Member
I love this game.
The level design is consistently great and always true to what it sets out to do. 2-2 has you going through an actual mine, complete with a confusing as hell tunnel system. Don't like it? Fuck you, this is what going through a mine is like. 3-1 has you going through a scary prison where everyone has gone mad. All the corridors look the same (but don't get complacent or you'll fall through a crack in the floor), the tortured screams of the inmates have you going mad as well. You really feel like you are in that prison. And fuck you if you don't want to. You have no choice. Ever wonder what going through a poisonous swamp in a plague-ridden valley is like. Well, I don't care if you don't want to know. 5-2 will give you that experience. Yes, it's not fun. It's not supposed to be fun. This game doesn't give a fuck. You are going to experience the same despair your avatar in the game world does, and both of you are going to come out of it stronger for it.
I love how the bosses always contain some unique idea, and how the arenas become an integral part of how the battles play out. Maybe not all bosses are super challenging, but they all explore some new interesting concept.
I love how the game plays a bit like Mega Man. So every area seems super hard to impossible on your first visit, but maybe if you manage to push just slightly into one level, you'll find a weapon or spell that will be just what you need to proceed in another level. The crescent falchion can help you through the high-defence enemies of world two, where you'll find the dragon longsword, which with its fire damage will be a huge help through worlds four and five. Until the end of the game, you always have four or five different levels to choose from, which leaves the order of progression through the game fully up to the player, which is much preferable to the relative linearity of later Souls games.
I love the creepy atmosphere created by the NPCs that are all not quite there, further underlined by the erratic and offsetting script and voice acting. The soundtrack adds to this as well. Many of the tracks don't sound quite finished. The instrumentation sounds slightly too limited, and the melodies often aimless. Musically, it would be easy to argue that the soundtrack is not great. But the quirkiness of the soundtrack is just a perfect fit for the atmosphere the game is going for. The tracks sounding unfinished and weird, adds to the sense of wrongness and insanity in the world. Ironically, the soundtrack's imperfections make it into the perfect soundtrack.
The game is in many ways unpolished, and certain areas are not really fun to play. But the uncompromising design of the game, the ways in which all the little things come together to create an unmatched atmosphere, and the way in which the game introduced groundbreaking gameplay systems which established an entire sub-genre of its own, together with all the vivid memories this game left with me, all the emotions it let me experience, through its gameplay, makes it my personal favourite game of all time.
The level design is consistently great and always true to what it sets out to do. 2-2 has you going through an actual mine, complete with a confusing as hell tunnel system. Don't like it? Fuck you, this is what going through a mine is like. 3-1 has you going through a scary prison where everyone has gone mad. All the corridors look the same (but don't get complacent or you'll fall through a crack in the floor), the tortured screams of the inmates have you going mad as well. You really feel like you are in that prison. And fuck you if you don't want to. You have no choice. Ever wonder what going through a poisonous swamp in a plague-ridden valley is like. Well, I don't care if you don't want to know. 5-2 will give you that experience. Yes, it's not fun. It's not supposed to be fun. This game doesn't give a fuck. You are going to experience the same despair your avatar in the game world does, and both of you are going to come out of it stronger for it.
I love how the bosses always contain some unique idea, and how the arenas become an integral part of how the battles play out. Maybe not all bosses are super challenging, but they all explore some new interesting concept.
I love how the game plays a bit like Mega Man. So every area seems super hard to impossible on your first visit, but maybe if you manage to push just slightly into one level, you'll find a weapon or spell that will be just what you need to proceed in another level. The crescent falchion can help you through the high-defence enemies of world two, where you'll find the dragon longsword, which with its fire damage will be a huge help through worlds four and five. Until the end of the game, you always have four or five different levels to choose from, which leaves the order of progression through the game fully up to the player, which is much preferable to the relative linearity of later Souls games.
I love the creepy atmosphere created by the NPCs that are all not quite there, further underlined by the erratic and offsetting script and voice acting. The soundtrack adds to this as well. Many of the tracks don't sound quite finished. The instrumentation sounds slightly too limited, and the melodies often aimless. Musically, it would be easy to argue that the soundtrack is not great. But the quirkiness of the soundtrack is just a perfect fit for the atmosphere the game is going for. The tracks sounding unfinished and weird, adds to the sense of wrongness and insanity in the world. Ironically, the soundtrack's imperfections make it into the perfect soundtrack.
The game is in many ways unpolished, and certain areas are not really fun to play. But the uncompromising design of the game, the ways in which all the little things come together to create an unmatched atmosphere, and the way in which the game introduced groundbreaking gameplay systems which established an entire sub-genre of its own, together with all the vivid memories this game left with me, all the emotions it let me experience, through its gameplay, makes it my personal favourite game of all time.
