• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Crypt of the NecroDancer |Release OT| Kick off your early access shoes

yatesl

Member
Bought it in EA when it was just zone 1 & 2. Got my fill, decided to wait for release.

Zone 3 is wrecking me, son. And sorry Danny, but FamilyJules' version of the soundtrack is so good
 

zashga

Member
Fantastic game. Bought this in early access last year, and it was well worth the money then. Now, with the fourth zone, more bosses, and two whole extra soundtracks (!), it's amazing. I can't overstate how great the music is. The art and mechanical design are excellent, too.

And hey, I made it to #5 on today's challenge board!
I haven't looked in a few hours, so don't tell me how far I've fallen.
 
I usually don't care for this genre, but the gimmick is more than enough to make up for it. It feels like a whole new genre, even though it's a pastiche of many things I've already played. There is plenty of content to be found, and the structure and the ability to import music basically turns it in a game with infinite gameplay that allows me just to go in a trance and melt time away. Basically this is my new Audio Surf.
 
I adore this game.

I bought in early access and it was worth the price then. The fact that so much good content has been added since then just makes it even greater.
 

patapuf

Member
i didn't expect being able to adapt to the movement so easily. 15 min in i was loosing coin combos all the time. After only 2 hours i barely miss any.
 
Having some trouble keeping beat at times when maneuvering for space, but much less than the dreaded Monkey-Dragon Combooooooooooo of Dooooooooooooooooom.

hmm... I can't the game to work after the update. Seems like a memory leak issue.

I had this too but it didn't strike in windowed mode.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Zone 2 is giving me a hard time so I can't imagine how zone 3 and 4 will go.

Zone 3 isn't much of a difficulty jump, if at all.

Zone 4 is a bitch though. Got to the boss once thanks to the godlike rifle weapon, but lost to the confusing at first boss. Thank god you get to practice against bosses after you see them once, but I'm still having a hell of a time getting back to it.
 
I bought it yesterday, I actually hadn't heard of it before. I saw it described on Steam and I was sold. I'm having a lot of fun with it. I played for a few hours with my own music, it works so well! I just wish the interface for custom music was a little easier to navigate. I wish I could create playlists and assign those playlists to levels, not create a playlist for each level separately which gets reset once I select a specific song.

Pop music works surprisingly well! As long as it has a good bop. :D
 

Nymerio

Member
Wow, the multiplier based items are amazing. Got the torch and a spear and killed the zone 1 boss with three hits.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Just finished the game with both the first and the second story characters. Second character is probably easier than the first, but good lord, winning with this third character is going to be difficult.
 

zashga

Member
Just finished the game with both the first and the second story characters. Second character is probably easier than the first, but good lord, winning with this third character is going to be difficult.

Yep. Second character is has limited damage, but
the lute
breaks the challenge for a lot of enemies since being "one off" of their pattern is no problem.

The third character is probably an insurmountable challenge for me.
Playing the dungeon in reverse order is cool, but it's super challenging with a dagger and half a heart. They seem to have toned down the zone 4 enemies a bit, which makes me wonder if they made the "earlier" zones harder somehow.
Plus side, the guitar mix of 4-1 is pretty badass music for the first level.
 

Vlad

Member
Is there any way to beat the enemies that move every beat (like the wraiths) without guaranteeing that you break your chain? Depending on how they spawn, I have a 50/50 chance of being in a position that I end up right next to them on a beat and can kill them on the next one, but if there's a one-square gap between us, it seems like I have to just sit there for a beat (or dig a random wall or something) just to let it get closer.

Of course, the penalty for missing a beat really isn't that severe, but it just feels weird to have to sit out a beat.
 

flowsnake

Member
Is there any way to beat the enemies that move every beat (like the wraiths) without guaranteeing that you break your chain? Depending on how they spawn, I have a 50/50 chance of being in a position that I end up right next to them on a beat and can kill them on the next one, but if there's a one-square gap between us, it seems like I have to just sit there for a beat (or dig a random wall or something) just to let it get closer.

Of course, the penalty for missing a beat really isn't that severe, but it just feels weird to have to sit out a beat.

Hitting a wall to wait isreally useful. Try not to feel too weird about it. You don't lose your combo or anything as long as you can dig the wall (sometimes losing your combo is necessary to avoid death though).
 

Vlad

Member
Hitting a wall to wait isreally useful. Try not to feel too weird about it. You don't lose your combo or anything as long as you can dig the wall (sometimes losing your combo is necessary to avoid death though).

Well, like I said, I'll dig a wall if I remember and I'm near one, but these rooms seem to be getting somewhat larger as I go (just got to zone 3 yesterday), and it just feels weird to have to drag an enemy all the way over to the wall in order to spend a beat hitting it and then killing them.

Yeah, I figured that there are times that losing your combo is unavoidable, which just seems odd in a rhythm game. I get that that's the way they want to design it, but after hours and hours of the Rhythm Heaven series, having to deliberately miss a beat is something that hurts my soul.

Of course, the lack of penalty for not staying on the beat makes the King Conga boss, as neat as it is, kind of silly, since it ends up not really mattering if you do something on the 8th beat.
 

flowsnake

Member
There are circumstances (character or powerup) where you're not allowed to miss a beat. Too hard for me at this point.
 

Vlad

Member
There are circumstances (character or powerup) where you're not allowed to miss a beat. Too hard for me at this point.

Hmm, I haven't gotten there yet, but I could see that being a bit much.

One thing that I'm starting to wish the game had is a "force move" button. There are times when I'm trying to move to get away from something chasing me, and even though there's an empty tile where I want to go, I don't actually move because attacking with a whip/broadsword/etc takes priority. For example, if I'm trying to move down, but there's a mushroom in the space to the lower-left or lower-right and I'm carrying a whip, I'll destroy the mushroom instead of moving, which seems to always result in damage. Something like holding Shift would work nicely.
 

Vlad

Member
Whoa! Wild.

Side note: zone 4. My god. So difficult.

While that's where I'm currently stuck, it feels like zone 4 is a little easier than zone 3, at least potentially. There's
No enemies with overly weird patterns like the goblins, no enemies that charge at you on every beat like the wall pushers, and I'm finding crowds a lot easier to handle in the smaller rooms of zone 4 vs the open layouts of zone 3. I often just open a room, stand back, and let the enemies squeeze through the bottleneck.

Oh, and if you haven't saved the guy in the cage in zone 2 yet, make that a priority. I didn't do that until yesterday (and they apparently released a patch after I did it that makes it even easier), but having him available gives you a HUGE leg up on a lot of your runs. What he does is
sell you equipment for your next run in exchange for diamonds. I started a recent zone 4 run with a titanium bow, compass, and plate armor. Ended up just making a mad dash straight for the exits. I still died in 4-3, but it was still a VERY overpowered run.
 

Jintor

Member
I finished my first run with Cadence finally and woaaaaaah now I gotta do it all again. At least there's a different OST this time and Melody's ability is super powerful, though I'm not looking forward to Zone 4 again.

Game's pretty good, after the first hour or two I was trying to browse GAF to an invisible beat in my head

/edit Needs more beat changing OSTs, Conga Gorilla was the first boss I was super enjoying, the rest were fine though (had to practice against Dead Ringer a bit)
 

Vlad

Member
/edit Needs more beat changing OSTs, Conga Gorilla was the first boss I was super enjoying, the rest were fine though (had to practice against Dead Ringer a bit)

King Conga's a neat idea, but since there's really no big penalty for screwing up a beat (especially once you get up to a boss), it kind of deflates the challenge.

Dead Ringer, yeah, I keep screwing up on him every single time. I've beaten him a few times in practice, but I get stomped on when I get to him at the end of an actual run.

Is it just me, though, or is the boss selection somewhat skewed? I've gotten Coral Riff and King Conga a bunch, Death Metal a few times, but I've only gotten Deep Blues once.
 

unround

Member
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vadv99r-y0M (spoilers for the last unlockable character I guess)

Holy crap,
Coda
look absolutely ridiculous. I guess it's basically
Aria (can't take damage, can't miss a beat) combined with Bolt (double speed) and Monk (you die if you pick up gold).
I guess the devs weren't kidding when they said that it was almost impossible.
 

flowsnake

Member
What happened to the Daily Challenge being three consecutive games with Cadence, Melody and Aria? Did that just get scrapped before release?
 

Jintor

Member
Unlocked Aria, took one look, NO THANKS. Played a few rounds anyway but yeah, I don't have the patience for it. Ah well.

I guess once I 'finish' a roguelike I lose interest. Might play again on Metal OST just for the hell of it, buy the OSTs in a Steam sale and wrap up. Definitely a great game though, glad I played it.
 

flowsnake

Member
I think Aria would be physically possible for me. Bolt? I can barely start. I wish the music sped up, as half-beats are incredibly hard, the music just doesn't feel designed for it.
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
That's awesome but a) capcops will probably take it down and b) that's not the correct music :(
 
I've probably done Zone 4 as Aria a hundred times and I've only reached the boss room twice just to die in it. I mostly die in the 2nd room and rarely reach the 3rd room. The enemy that's the biggest pain in the ass to deal with are those lich variations that reverse your controls.

I should probably quit trying to play as her but I feel like I'm making a breakthrough with every attempt. Almost every time I fuck up in this game its because I fold under the pressure. I pretty much got every enemy's pattern to heart but keeping 3 of them chasing me in check is pretty tough.

Then there's the bosses. I'm actually surprised how easy it is to deal with them with just a normal knife. Granted it took me like 30 tries to find a pattern to beat King Conga as Aria but once I found it he became a joke.

Aria is a strange character. She can only take one hit, will die if you miss a beat, and can only use a normal knife. Despite all this, she probably has the best pool of items available in her runs. There are 5 items she can find that can absorb one hit, has access to a large amount of equipables that increase her strength, and there's no real downside to grabbing glass item as her. No dud items appear in her runs, such as all the different variations of weapons and armour she can't use. Picking up a black chest is almost always rewarding as a result. It's not rare to come by a karate gi and glass jaw in one game.

Playing her demands near perfection at the game but they give you a a lot of leeway with her in a twisted way.

LATE EDIT: I just beat Zone 4 as Aria! So pumped with adrenaline right now.
 
v1.06 got dropped a couple of hours ago.

Here are the changes!:
- Made Aria start with a potion, and made players not able to pick up a second potion if they already have one
- Add subtitle option for cutscenes
- The game is now localizable! You can make localization mods, but we’ll soon have official translations too
- Fixed some more replay desync issues
- Fixed some harpy and goblin bomber behaviors, especially while the player is phasing in a wall
- Fixed bug where coin multiplier would always be lost on Necrodancer music transition
- Made some changes that will hopefully solve problems for people who were experiencing gameplay stutters
- Added goblin sentries to zone 4 starting rooms if the player has no shovel
- fixed a couple instances where shrines were dropping unusable items for certain characters
- fixed bug where wraiths could appear right next to the player after picking up monocle/glass torch
- fixed issue where particle images would cause crash when loading a mod after having played
- fixed issue where "you'll lose progress if you restart" popup wasn't working properly in deathless mode
- fixed bug where spells were disappearing at start of Necrodancer battle
- fixed bug where bomb switches were acting strangely after having bombed Necrodancer
- fixed bug where blunderbuss could become unloaded when entering boss rooms
- disallow traps from appearing in exit rooms
- allow Dorian to reload weapons in Necrodancer fight
- added ability to change cutscene videos with mods
- Slight tweak to description of transmute scroll
- Slight wording change on reassign keys screen, as some people weren’t realizing that they could switch to assign keys for player 2
- disable high scores when a mod is active that changes the music beat data
- fixed issue with hole in the wall in Melody Necrodancer battle
- Added more score cheat detection

Aria getting a potion at the start is pretty much a game changer.
 
Thanks to that patch, I managed to make it to Zone 1 as Aria. I was fortunate enough to face Coral Riff (ie the easiest boss) on the last 2 zones.

I just encountered the
Golden Lute boss
for the first time and got my ass promptly beaten. I'm nearing the end of all this madness.

EDIT: Manged to beat it using a shield scroll. What a great fucking game. I'm gonna start doing all zones mode as Monk.
 

Miker

Member
Are people here playing with controller or w/ m+kb? I'm not sure how I feel about the two direction combos to activate items, but I've only played about an hour. I imagine a d-pad and face button layout would work rather well.
 
Are people here playing with controller or w/ m+kb? I'm not sure how I feel about the two direction combos to activate items, but I've only played about an hour. I imagine a d-pad and face button layout would work rather well.

I play with an xbox gamepad, you still have to use two directions to activate items though. But the real way to play is with the official DDR pad haha
tka0nbv8pjvk9fp1lk2c.png
 

Vlad

Member
Are people here playing with controller or w/ m+kb? I'm not sure how I feel about the two direction combos to activate items, but I've only played about an hour. I imagine a d-pad and face button layout would work rather well.

Well, the mouse is pretty much useless, so I just use the keyboard. I did rebind some of the most-used direction combinations to other keys, though. I've got bombs on X, reload/throw on Z, etc.
 
Top Bottom