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[Adam Prime]

Sweet, I just beat the first boss, I feel cool.

It took me about an hour, but I think I FINALLY understand things now...

 

[Chorazin]

Sooooo anyone else feel like the game is futile. I've been playing for hours now, beaten a few bosses, but unlocked nothing that changes the fact that I start with the same dudes with the same powers over and over and over again.

The unlock of more Heroes should have been done much differently, IMO.

 

[Adam Prime]

How many have you unlocked? I just got the second unlock, the Fat Mexican (it's okay to say this, because I am a skinny Mexican).

I am really really enjoying this game! And is it just me or does the game get harder on each unlock? After getting the second unlock I noticed that the first battle of the first stage, was harder - the enemies had more stamina bars. I actually lost on that first battle, before restarting and getting through it fine.

Overall I think this is great - but I am curious at what point does it get "you better had gotten the right spells and items" at this point or everything is going to be crazy hard and you probably won't make it. I'm on the 3rd stage after the 2nd unlock and it got really hard. I'll give it another pass tonight and hopefully make it further, but the enemies have so many stamina bars and I don't feel like I am equipped with enough good spells to take down that many stamina bars at once.

... You can actually save scum the battles in this game, if that's not already obvious. Before you take the final death blow just Home Menu > Quit and restart, you'll be back at the same battle.

EDIT: Also, I'm so happy someone else posted in this thread to bump it. I just got it on Friday and I'm super super enjoying it. But the 3 page thread tells me that this isn't going to be a mega-hit, which is too bad. It's $10 Switch version at GameStop right now, new! Definitely worth everyone giving it a shot, and it has a trade-in value of like $8, so you're only out a couple of bucks if its not for you!

 

[AlexFlame116]

Bought the game yesterday. 10 bucks for Switch! I'm excited!

 

[Adam Prime]

Bought the game yesterday. 10 bucks for Switch! I'm excited!

Play the game until you get game over a couple of times, then watch a YouTube tutorial video, go back to playing, read some Tips and Strategies online... and it'll all make sense. This is a game you definitely have to LEARN and spend some time away from it reading/watching to learn.

After playing, dying, and watching some tutorials... everything clicked with me and I've had a lot of fun with the game!


It helps a lot to have someone play the game and talk out loud all of their decisions, you'll learn it quick that way.

 

[Glajummy]

I've owned this game since launch since it came with my Switch bundle but never played it due to the bad reviews and having so many other awesome games to play at the time. Things have died down now and I understand the game has had a few balancing updates by now. Is it worth really digging in to?

 

[Adam Prime]

I'm really enjoying it. I've only played a few hours so far, here's my stats:

 

[Adam Prime]

I don't feel like paying C$30 (well, it was actually $15 in trade credit, but I could have gotten $30 for anything Switch-related as part of an EB Games promo) was too much for me. The only game I've spent more time with on Switch has been Zelda.

I'm still enjoying it. I don't think it's especially hard to start, but it gets tougher. I've been trying to get to the end of the "level" I'm on now for quite a while.

What level are you stuck in? I had a breakthrough today and got through the 4th Area and unlocked the

Spoiler

Tiger character

. I think what really really helped me a lot today was fully utilizing the back stab attack. That helped me out SO much. I look for a back stab attack at every opportunity, especially enemies with high stanima. I know I beat one enemy today with like 4 Stanima bars, and never depleted his stanmia once, I whittled him down (he was slow) with back stabs the entire time and never attacked him directly once. Also was getting serious multi-kills on back stabs as well.

I feel like I "leveled up" my play today just figuring out how important that attack is, and combo'ing my lightning and water spells together. It may also not be obvious but you can definitely save scum in this game on battles. If I take too much damage in a fight or feel like I'm about to be KO'd you can Home Menu > Quit and reload the game back to the fight you were just in. That way you don't feel like a long run was just wasted, or you had a bad fight and lost a lot of HP/Stanima and want to redo it.

I've also done a few runs of just the first and second area purposely only trying to get new items/spells and then starting over a New Game. Definitely the only sucky thing about this game is that you don't know what Spell/Items do until you pick them up once, I wish they would change that.

 

[SickBoy]

I've unlocked two characters beyond that. The runs are crazy long now and I need to remember it's not a good idea to try to complete one in a sitting.

Last night I accidentally stayed up far too late on a (3-ish hour) run and got to the very end (which is better than usual) but couldn't beat the end boss because he threw a ton of stuff at me as I was trying to work towards the final hit on him.

EDIT: Ugh, and thinking about it now, I realize overcoming my one weakness probably would have won me the fight -- I totally could have saved myself by using a soul orb or two. But I just sit on those 90% of the time.

 

[Chorazin]

Game is ok, but I'm stalled out on it. Never unlocking anything and starting over from scratch every damn run is becoming incredibly boring. And I'm not having enough fun to do all the research you guys are mentioning.

Got my $10 out of it, but I think I might just be dumping this soon.

 

[Adam Prime]

Game is ok, but I'm stalled out on it. Never unlocking anything and starting over from scratch every damn run is becoming incredibly boring. And I'm not having enough fun to do all the research you guys are mentioning.

Got my $10 out of it, but I think I might just be dumping this soon.

Lol yeah you get $8 trade-in value from GameStop if you're a Pro member. Essentially making this a $2 rental when you're done with it! That's when I plan on doing when I pick up my next Physical Switch game - Mario Kingdom Battle.

How many characters did you unlock?

 

[Chorazin]

Lol yeah you get $8 trade-in value from GameStop if you're a Pro member. Essentially making this a $2 rental when you're done with it! That's when I plan on doing when I pick up my next Physical Switch game - Mario Kingdom Battle.

How many characters did you unlock?

Zero. Which is my problem, I'm not getting anything for the amount of time I'm giving it. The game doesn't explain unlocks, so I don't even know how I would go about it. I get garbage spells most of the time, so I get crushed by the second boss. By that time I've spent a half hour on it and just feel like I wasted my time.

 

[unrealist]

This game kinda reminds me of Darkest Dungeon, brutal and unforgiving... anyone who likes Darkest Dungeon and would recommend this game too?

 

[Adam Prime]

This game kinda reminds me of Darkest Dungeon, brutal and unforgiving... anyone who likes Darkest Dungeon and would recommend this game too?

I wouldn't even call this game brutal or unforgiving. It literally teaches you the bare minimum of how to play the game and then throws you in the deep end. Once you learn how to play it, I don't find it brutal at all. It's incredibly strategic and it feels so rewarding to overcome its challenges.

Zero. Which is my problem, I'm not getting anything for the amount of time I'm giving it. The game doesn't explain unlocks, so I don't even know how I would go about it. I get garbage spells most of the time, so I get crushed by the second boss. By that time I've spent a half hour on it and just feel like I wasted my time.

Nah, there are no garbage spells... that's not your problem. This game is like being handed a really good board game and someone telling you "IT'S AWESOME." but there are no instructions for the game. This game's Prologue is ridiculous. I know it's supposed to be "You'll discover and figure it out yourself, it's fun!" but yeah... it's not. The actual game is a lot of fun, once you understand how to play, but I don't think the "figuring out" of playing is actually fun itself.

Anyways, I found this video tutorial to be super helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsH3SNaRFTE&t=1121s

I watched about 20 minutes of that 30 minute video and it helped A LOT. There are more videos after that in this series, but just watching someone else play the game and provide commentary was all I needed to understand it.

 

[Icedburden]

This game kinda reminds me of Darkest Dungeon, brutal and unforgiving... anyone who likes Darkest Dungeon and would recommend this game too?

DD is miles better than this game. I've tried my damnedest to like it, but fuck is it hard to get into. I'm fine with my hand not being held, but this is crazy.

 

[SickBoy]

When I was deciding whether to actually preorder the game, I wound up watching a little bit of Nintendo's Treehouse stream about the game and the 5 or 10 minutes I spent trying to decide whether it was even worth a shot seemed to teach enough to give me a good start.

 

[Impeccable]

This game is in contnention for my GoTY.

Bought it one a whim because rogue like games are becoming my favourite genres now because they are quick and have nice lewrning curves.

This game. It is brutal until it clicks and then you feel like a God. I have beaten it four times now and unlocked a bunch of characters and countless items. Each time you play you have to decide early what character you want to do what like your team is a puzzle. The map is a puzzle and every fight is a puzzle. I have only felt like the game was bullshit twice on my fourth play throughs when I got to the last map and the normal battles overwhelmed me. Then I had to focus harder and learn more nuanced parts of the game like the spell buff slots.

I can't speak highly enough of this game. It is crack, makes you think the whole time you play and is never the same.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

My Switch arrived last week & I grabbed this, Splatoon 2, and Zelda. So far, I've spent the most time on Has-Been Heroes. I haven't even gotten to Zelda yet, because I just want to play more Has-Been Heroes. Definitely a contender for my GotY - I haven't been this impressed with a puzzle/RPG hybrid since Desktop Dungeons.

 

[Primate_Ryan]

Yeah, this game is great. Once I bought it I played nothing else for a week (this was after the first decent patch though, don't know how the balance was before that one) and took my Switch everywhere with me to play it. I poured around 80 hours into it before I got tired of it, because by that time I had unlocked most of the interesting stuff and beat the full path several times.

Just take the time to get to grips with the mechanics and the controls. It requires a bit (really not that much, about an hour or two?) of investment on the player's part before it gets really fun. It's just so satisfying to go from really weak characters to spell-flinging, screen-killing murder machines. The item and spell combinations can get insane.

My only real complaint is that most of the enemies are some type of skeleton. They can be distinguished by their clothes and weapons/items and you do need to learn which to prioritise, but it would have been more appealing to have some more variety in that department. Guess there won't be a sequel or expansion to fix that though.

 

[Nelo Ice]

This game is pretty freaking awesome. Got it during the GS sale but only got to playing it this week. After countless tries I finally got the first ending. Besides reading some advice in this thread I went in this blind and through trial and error figured out how to fight.

Anyway this will definitely be one of my handheld games to play alongside Isaac and MK8D. And god damn I absolutely just love all the switch game I've bought thus far.