Consider this video description to double up as my critique on the game as a whole I guess. Keep in mind I am a pure survivalist so my comments about the game's misc mechanics might not be too nuanced.
On game mechanics:
- DDC resource system is cool but the stages clearly weren't designed around it. There are sections with tons of items but no break in the spawns to allow you to PoC, forcing you to bomb. There are also sections (see: post-s1 midboss) which has massive breaks in the spawns but nowhere near enough items to even get you a 0.5. (No, not even 2 waves worth of items gets you a bonus.)
- Game is too generous with bombs, and you don't fail spell bonuses by bombing. I get that they were trying to go for a GFW-type system but at least in the game's current state, this is basically just press X to win for both survival and scoring. The fact that you can hold up to 5 bombs at a time, unlike in GFW where you can only ever have one freeze ready (not counting bombs), means there isn't much strategy involved either. (No you don't get any special bonus for capping spells without bombing, and you'd probably want to bomb them for the speedkill anyways.)
On shot types:
- Reimu throws wet tissue paper at enemies. Seriously. If you're off-center and only the homing shot hits the boss, the healthbar goes down at the rate of a few pixels per second. It's that disgusting.
On stages:
- If we disregard the aforementioned issues with not being able to PoC, the stages are actually pretty alright. I like how you can and sometimes need to use the upper half of the screen and/or your back shot.
- Stage 3 has cool routing as a whole, but the deathfairy sucks and gives me no reason to actually dodge it in the middle.
On bosses:
- Bosses move too frequently, and they move randomly instead of following you around. They can go really far off sometimes (see: Noah on the s2 final). This is really annoying because both shots do approximately no damage if not under the boss.
- Akita Triple Deluxe doesn't feel very well-telegraphed with the aimed giant bullets. The sound cues are easily missed and even if you know they're coming, you might still get hit anyway because you didn't move far enough.
- The stage 3 midboss is a hideous abomination. The green triangles' spawn locations have nothing to do with the boss's position. If you're unlucky (and this happens more often than it should), you can be forced to keep alternating between the two sides of the screen while the boss chills somewhere and you can't deal damage to it. To make things worse, the black lasers can get in your way and completely wall you off while you dart around trying to not get memed on by the triangles.
- Valentine's opener is a bit overtuned. I like the dodging but the bubbles feel a bit too big (you die if you touch anything past the black border) for the kind of confined squeezing you have to do here. If the hitbox was shrunk I think it would be fine.
- The delay between waves on Reaper Runway feels a bit too low. If you get pushed to the side while trying to dodge the leftovers you might not be able to get back to the middle in time.
- Valentine's second non is just inconsistent, sometimes you get an unreadable wave and sometimes you don't really have to dodge anything. It would be better if you could deal with the aimed and random stuff separately.
- Quotation of the Great Old Ones is an alright spell that gets ruined by the random mentos.
Misc. bugs and observations:
- Stage practice spawns you at 2.5 power. Why. :(
- Visibility issues and render priorities. Stage 3 has quite a few of them:
= The gray kunai on the second half of the stage are really hard to see.
= The small bullets on the deathfairy seem to render under or over the mentos depending on which spawned first. Bullets that drift over from the other side of the screen tend to get hidden under the mentos and they can catch you off guard. I'd suggest making the mentos always render below everything else.
= The purple needles on Reaper Runway blend in with the dark background, and if that wasn't bad enough, they render under the spawn circles of the next wave. I've died because a needle popped out from under the wall and surprised me point-blank.
= The purple amulets on Starlight Breaker are also really hard to see.
- Game crashes if you press retry after completing a stage in stage practice.
- Actual clear time on the final spell of each stage seems to be consistently 2-3 seconds longer than the in-game clear time, even though I wasn't lagging. Not sure if it was factoring in the boss explosion animation as part of the time as well.
- If you die while PoCing, you get no bonus but the item count is stored. The next time you PoC, these items contribute to the bonus.
- Items can spawn offscreen and instantly despawn. A good example of this is if you kill Valentine's first spell when she's at the bottom of the screen.
- Stage practice high score saves your last run, not the highest score.
16 сен 2024
