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Chaserjoey

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,611
Oh good, the user who said the PS5 demo would just be the PS4 version was wrong. There are two demos on the store, one for PS4 and one for PS5.
 

Lucreto

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,631
Watched some of the demo as I didn't pay much attention to the game when it was announced.

I get a bit of a Puppeteer vibe from it with the moving backgrounds and changing costumes.
 

Chaserjoey

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,611
Alrighty, 4.985 GB download for the Immortals: Fenyx Rising DLC and then it's on to downloading Balan Wonderworld and feeling what this game is really like.
 

digreyfox

Member
Nov 7, 2017
457
Cute bomba.

EDIT: but seriously, everything about it looks stubbornly like Nights or that particular era's Sega's dalliances in the 3d space, which is probably a tiny niche's dream materialised but seems entirely unappealing to the current market at large.

After gazing longingly at a box for Nights and it's Saturn remote at a Video Rental store's window (a video rental store was a shop where you could rent movies and games for a set amount of time, on cartridges and magnetic tapes which held the film), I not only ended up never owning a Saturn and also finding Nights a supremely mediocre game when I finally played it a couple of decades later. So no hype for this one.

That being said it's great that there's room and market for niche projects like this (no sarcasm).
 

Randomless

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,588
The Gematsu demo gameplay looks fun. It seems like the movement is somewhat less floaty than it looked from the earlier trailer, but definitely still floaty. I am curious to see how it performs on Switch but the performance looked fine for PS4.
 

alphacat

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,931
It's up in the NZ eShop

performance on switch is atrocious, I honestly can't recommend getting it there if you have access to other machines that can play it
 

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost
Administrator
Oct 27, 2017
30,349
It's up in the NZ eShop

performance on switch is atrocious, I honestly can't recommend getting it there if you have access to other machines that can play it

Honestly, it's not perfect on a Series X...

Not sure if it's framepacing or what but there's an amount of judder for sure.
 

lordy16

Member
Oct 28, 2017
102
Never heard of this until a moment ago and just watched the gameplay video from Gemastu. Had a few takeaways:

- The running animation looks weird without the character's torso moving
- I saw the tornado character break rocks and they just kinda, disappeared? Felt a bit un-finished.
- The sounds of the character jumping and attacking became annoying quickly.

Overall, it seemed close, but there is a heavy level of polish that still isn't quite there for me to be interested in this, despite having a soft spot for Banjo-Esque platforming collect-o-thons.
 

J-Soul

Banned
Nov 11, 2020
406
Does the demo have dual audio or is it English only?

Neither, its gibberish only, lol.

I played the demo wanting to like it... but couldn't. The transformations are very one-dimensional, many of them can't even jump. Switching power-ups is slower than I would like, there's lots of running back and forth to unlock powerups and then back track to the places you had to use them, etc. Disappointing lack of understanding of the strengths of 3D platformers, in my opinion. Moving your character and interacting with stuff isn't fun, and then on top of that the levels are tedious if you actually want to collect stuff. And you better make sure you NEVER get hit or else you lose your powerup and have to go ALLL the way back to where you got it, in some cases that means another level entirely.
 

Gradon

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,464
UK
The co-op is kind of atrocious, both Player 1 and 2 share a screen, and there's no good reason for it. Player 2 is constantly falling off of the screen because of Player 1's camera movement. I really wish devs would implement better local co-op than this.
 

Katana_Strikes

Unshakable Resolve
Member
Oct 29, 2017
10,723

Thanks saved me a download. Looks fucking atrocious. No interaction with the environments which look very generic and the movement is sluggish. I've seen better designed PS1 platformers at their worst. Be interested to see reviews, because unless the games gets massively improved from the second level onwards this could be the worst game since Cyberpunk. Very odd game. Who the hell greenlit this?
 
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Dec 31, 2017
1,430
I have a feeling this game will bomb but I'll be buying it anyway, love the art style and Nights vibes it gives and I really wanna support Yuji Naka on this so I'll be paying full price for this no matter what.
 
Oct 31, 2017
14,991
Yeah ngl this game looks bad. It looks like a 2003 game but with half of the charm.

it's strange that I'm saying this considering the fact that I'm probably the biggest CG cutscene whore on the internet, but it seems like the game's budget went towards the CG cutscenes. I mean there's 2 per chapter alone, and for the cutscenes including the main character there's literally a variation based on what design you chose. So literally 4 versions of a single CG cutscene. That's bananas.
 

HorseFD

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,021
Melbourne
It does seem very slow, but I'm going to give the demo a shot.

Not that there's any real connection other than maybe stylistically, but this makes me want a new Klonoa game.
 

RedDevil

Member
Dec 25, 2017
4,121
Played a little bit on Switch(it's already available on the japanese eShop too). It's interesting, when the world first loaded there was some texture pop in but became less noticeable later, the character "run" feels a bit slow but not too much. It's interesting that all four face buttons can be used for jump, it worked for Sonic I guess.
 

lunanto

Banned
Dec 1, 2017
7,648
I have been playing the demo for a while on my Series S (up on NZ store) and I am really pleased with it.

We all know, it is not going to set the world on fire but if you take for what it is, you are going to enjoy it A LOT. Yes, it is full of that nostalgia and charm of early SEGA 3D games and you can see it is not a high budget production, but is it a bad thing? Not at all.

I remember the thread here with people absolutely bashing the game for the running animation and once again, people are proven stupid. The game plays perfectly fine. In fact, there are some interesting gameplay ideas. It is basically a collecthon in which with the default "costume" you can just jump (all the front buttons do this), but with each costume you get the action you can perform with that button is a modified jump, allowing you to attack mid-air, stretch your legs, stomp on enemies, etc... From what I have seen so far, it seems like it would have certain dose of backtracking. You may need to go back to older levels to get collectibles you firstly missed for not having the appropiate costume to reach it.

I think it is a Series S optimised game, but I don´t care if it isnt, I think it is beautiful to look at. Colorful and some designs gave me strong KH vibes. The design of Balan, the character is supercool too btw. AND GUYS, the soundtrack. Oh my god, it is really good. Every level seems to revolve around an individual who was a certain problem (in the first level you help a farmer whose harvest is being ruined by tornados) so theres certain background to what is going on.

To sum up, good vibes games are always welcome, especially in challenging times.

I will buy it sooner or later, that much is sure for me. And if you feel like me in the slightlest you should follow suit, cause baby this is an endangered species we have here.
 

Ravenwraith

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,349
You can download the demo off the eshop right now if you have an account.

I was really excited for this but walked away extremely disappointed in what I played. It needs another few layers of polish before I can really recommend it to anyone and even for it's own niche it's not great.

The biggest problem is the movement, which just feels way too slow and sluggish no matter what suit you have on. Spotting something off the beaten path, running to grab it and heading back feels like it takes 3 times as long as it would in other games. I can't for the life of me figure out why they made the walk speed so slow other than trying to make the small levels seem longer than they really are.

The levels were generally more complex than I gave them credit for initially. New paths open up when you get new suits from the earlier levels and come back. Finding all of the trophies in each map is at least kind of fulfilling even if if the pacing issues make the process take way too long.

The commitment to one button action is admirable but feels like a misread of the appeal of Naka's earlier works. Jumping and rolling in a Sonic game has a lot of depth in the ways it can be used, but here almost every action is so binary and simple in how it can be leveraged. The fact that you can carry more than one suit could have gone some ways toward adding more complexity but switching between them such a clunky process that it feels flat out wasteful to not map some of these actions on the controller. The player can carry multiple suits with them but the time it takes to swap between them is just enough to be grating.

Enemies and bosses seem designed to be beaten with any of the suits so there's not much to it. Even during the level that was supposed to be deeper in they didn't ramp the difficulty up any. considering the standard of bosses in the genre I was surprised how little there really was to it.

Lastly I played it on the switch visual glitches and frame drops were frequent. I was a little surprised since the game doesn't seem all that visually taxing despite having a nice artstyle. I thought it hit a sweetspot that would do perfectly on the Switch but it seems poorly optimized.

Overall it feels like something that has all of the aesthetic of an old SEGA title but none of the substance. I might still get the full release but it'll have to be at a discount. It has potential but it seems like it needs another pass that it's not going to get.
 

Geode

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,455
Before watching the Gematsu videos I was hyped for this, but after the videos some of my hype has died down. It seems like another modern collect-a-thon 3D platformer. I'm tired of collecting tons of orbs, jewels, coins, gems, boxes and etc in these games, especially all multiple colors and types. I think Mario does it best by keeping it simple, you need only moons to progress and any additional stuff is just extras or they don't feel like you're collecting a ton of this stuff. It keeps it short and sweet. Coins help you buy things if you want them but you don't have to get all of them in a stage, you can get the world coins if you want but you really don't have to and if you want the moons from the coins they're pretty cheap. Also you don't have something like 200 coins per stage collect.

Anyway, I may wait until it goes on sale before picking it up, unless the demo really clicks with me.
 

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,700
Will try it, but as others have cited, movement looks really slow... and the running animation looks a bit odd too.
 

thankyoumerzbow

Prophet of Truth
Member
Dec 8, 2020
8,396
doesn't look that great but i'll give the demo a go. i'm afraid this is closest we're gonna get this gen to a new ape escape.
 

wrowa

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,372
Movement feels stiff, too slow and the human form of the protagonist is way too limited - you can literally do nothing but jump. At least in the beginning, hopefully you'll unlock additional moves throughout the game. I only played the first mission so far, but it feels rather randomly stitched together and doesn't make a great first impression as an introduction to the game.

I played on Switch in handheld mode and the game's really ugly. I don't understand how you can develop a 3D platformer of all things but halfass the Nintendo version, but alas. Gonna try the PS5 version tomorrow (or rather later today). Hopefully the game will make a better impression once I played a bit more of it.
 

ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987
watching the Gematsu footage, if you told me this was a kickstarter game, I'd say it looks decent. but this being funded by Square Enix? I mean, I get companies doing indie-esque games for publishing, but this is a game that's not even meeting Yooka Laylee levels of polish

also I hate the whole unfolding world thing. it's ugly
 

ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987
you get so many powerups but switching between them looks so cumbersome. too much to ask for a radial menu it seems. you only seem to press one button in this game? the dancing animals is.....strange. and the rolling world seems to be used for the ball rolling parts, which is an interesting way of doing things. still don't like it
 

PLASTICA-MAN

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,560
So there is a separate PS5 demo.
this is technically the first and only PS5 demo right now since Maiden is a separate prequel game for RE8 like Beginning Hour for RE7 and Captain Spirit for LIS2.
 

Kouriozan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
21,062
Sad it's looking to be a really bad game, I remember this has a Chaos Garden like feature to it, but maybe it's good and just like Sonic Adventure 2 I would spent 100+ hours on this alone.

Oh yeah it's not a good looking game but I don't mind that much.
 
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Giga Man

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
21,209
Damn the movement really is super slow lol it doesn't look fun to control
It's not fun. Downloaded it on a JP PS4 account. The character's legs look like they're running fast, but they're practically running in place. Every button does the same action. All four face buttons and all four shoulder buttons. All you can do is jump in human form and the first couple of power-ups, and the jumping doesn't feel great. Balan can also show up to do some random QTE minigame with zero context.
 

ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987
If you were a higher up at Square-Enix in a meeting room with Yuji Naka pitching a platformer you'd be a fool to say no. Very easy to imagine a strong initial pitch for a game like this.
I have a hard time imagining as to why you would say yes, and then not give them a budget. SE funding/publishing, Arzest developing, Yuji Naka directing. and we get....this.
 

Annabel

Member
Mar 22, 2019
1,677
Was this a game built for mobile then ported to consoles because it really feels like one.

I don't mean in just the visuals but the control scheme and level design as well.
 

Goddo Hando

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,713
Chicago
i have a japanese eshop account but gonna wait til it's available on the ps5 tomorrow.

i really didn't like NiGHTS on the wii (loved the saturn obv) so i don't really know what my expectations for this are. The plan is to just vibe out to the demo a little and wait for this to price drop