I appreciate the response and by no means was not trying to attack anyone. Didn't really expect the person who made the design call to chime in. So apologies for that. I still don't agree with a number of your comments and still stand by the game being heavily broken in the back half of the game. I posted earlier in this thread when I was playing through the beginning and was glowing at how good it was so I'm not some bitter gamer who just wants to bitch and moan, I was just severely disappointed at how a game could achieve such highs and slump to such lows as the game progresses.
First off in regards to reviews/feedback: I'm not alone in this sentiment, multiple people in this thread alone stated that the game is a chore and a slog to get through once you hit the Volcano. Additionally some of your most glowing reviews often don't even address the gameplay mechanics past the Snake form. While I don't want to sound like some conspiracy lunatic here, as someone who has had my own reviews posted to Metacritic, the benchmark to review is incredibly low, and most writers are often submitting review after only a few hours played. It should be no shock that this game has amazing reviews because the first half of the game is very well done, and the charm of the visuals and music makes the package seem incredible.
However, it falls apart around or right before the Volcano level as stated due to inconsistent puzzles, obtuse design, and extremely frustrating combat. I'll list out my grievances:
- Combat and Hitboxes: This should be no surprise and is probably the major criticism of the game. Two design problems, 1) limited attack mobility that emphasizes horizontal or downward attacking but lacks of diagonal and vertical attacks. This made all flying based enemies absolute trash to combat against. The freeze mosquitos and scythe throwing ghosts are the best example of "simple" but cheap enemies that can drown your health out basically because you can't position yourself easily to attack them. 2) No projectile attacks until you hit the dragon form (no the Snake spit does not count, the homing staff is unreliable, and the Pig form doesn't work because of lack of item drops) means you have to rely on an extremely small attacking device such as the pigs fist, snakes tail, or the horizontal blade against inconsistent hitboxes that leaves you constantly vulnerable to touch hits that do far too much damage. Additionally at times attacks are not even registered, if you want to even test this IN GAME go to a fire waterfall and attack while jumping towards it and it never registers your ice sword. You have to stand next to it, then jump up stationary, and swing and then it will freeze the waterfall. I understand you're trying to make a difficult game but the combat is not advanced enough to warrant the difficult at times. I beat Dead Cells 100% which is by far much more difficult game than this, but I was never angry or frustrated with the game because it punishes you fairly. This game does not.
- Defenses: Your defenses within 80% of the game are far too low compared to the enemies of where you're at meaning you'll frequently take 2 full hearts of damage from relatively easy enemies This wouldn't be a problem if you had solid combat (see Dead Cells) but as noted above we don't and are left in awkward combat situations where you'll be berated by low level mushrooms or bats that can take out half of your life in a blink of an eye.
- Lack of Item Drops: The two issues above could have been band-aid fixed through more regular item drops. But nope. 95% of all item drops are… single currency coins. Which does jack shit. Countless, countless times I am stuck deep in a dungeon, locked at a save point, with ~25% of my health only to have to either reset and warp back to an item shop or just trial and error my way through on basically no health because no fucking enemies ever drop hearts or pig ammo. This is extremely pronounced in the Volcano, Cloud, and Haunted Manor (despite their central heal portals) because you have long winded sections that have dozens of enemies that you have to force your way through with shitty combat and low defenses. Combine this with how long it takes to accumulate wealth in the game and item drops become nearly worthless. I constantly found myself broke and debating whether I should buy a backup potion because I felt like I was wasting money as I wanted to buy new armor and items but they were too costly relative to the frequency of currency obtained within the game. Thank god for the infinite fireball guy in the southwest section of the Volcano as I literally just spent an hour attacking it over and over to get 20 coin drops and just buy everything out. That was annoying as hell too.
- Saving: the game actually does a pretty decent job at having regular save points to prevent having to retread lots of gained ground. The problem is the game consistently falls into frustrating trial and error bullshit. There were so many times that I hit a check point ahead of a difficult spot with full life and a potion only to get royally pummeled by a long string of overpowered enemies and either ended up finding some "secret" (say a Music sheet or Pig upgrade) that gave me a new save but then I die and get sent back to the original save however now with the reduced life I had when I hit the secret. Making the progression through this area now to be repeated over and over again with little to no life, or I would have to back track/warp to an item shop to heal and get a potion.
- Abstract and non-intuitive puzzles: I get it, you probably consumer play tested this thing and people of all ages came in and were able to progress but confined, forced "section" research is often biased as it forces users to look within the confounds of the immediate area or what they just played through. The demon language setting is a perfect example of how a normal player would see this as broken, bullshit gameplay. If I play the entire game that is built around item collection and it tells me I need to look for a way to translate the bosses gibberish, I'm automatically going to assume there's an item that does this for me. So I back track through the game thinking I missed something only to have wasted hours and hours of my time because someone along the line thought it would be funny to break the 4th wall (not at the beginning of the game mind you, but almost at the end of the game!) and trigger a menu setting that no one would ever think of doing. If you want to break the 4th wall, do it at the beginning of the game like Conker's Bad Fur Day and make it a recurring puzzle throughout. Other instances of this include having to use fire against a jumping fireball enemy to make it bigger to then jump on and access a hidden music sheet. No where within the game have we ever been able to manipulate enemies through weapons, and now in some hidden room I'm expected to assume I can increase the size of this enemy by throwing my fire on him? The entire Haunted Manor expects you to manipulate light that "carries" over to other rooms when up until this point no other dungeon has had puzzles impact other rooms. Do you see how broken that is? Nintendo is an ace platformer designer because they anticipate confusion or unexpected assumptions from players by easing players into new mechanics in the game that force you to try them. Monster Boy does not do that and repeatedly I was left frustrated not knowing what the hell I was supposed to be doing.
- Weapon/Item Progression: This was more of just a let down. Early on the game gives you a bit of a Zelda vibe with the pig items but it actually follows a lot of the same problems that players have with the early Zelda titles that you get a new, cool item, that is used extensively for a one dungeon and never used again. This is 100% the case with this game but is actually worse as the use time is even less (see Iron Boots) or the weapon variety is pretty shallow (there's really not much difference between any of the swords). Or the items just don't really provide much variety at all such as the bracelets and shields, which felt like a wasted opportunity.
There's more I could go on and on about but every single one of these is magnified exponentially in the Volcano and Haunted Manor sections as the enemy count increases, combat becomes more important, levels become more narrow or allow for less movement/safety, and puzzles become more contrived and logic is thrown out the window. Am I being overdramatic when I say "fuck this game"? Probably. But as mentioned before, when games like Dead Cells and Hollow Knight exist on the same systems at a fraction of the cost I would never recommend this game over them. That's just reality.
