I have been playing a game called Ravenswatch (Passtech) that is in Early Access on Steam. I was hyped about it because it’s based on fairy tale characters and…well, that’s pretty much what I knew about it. The look is that of Diablo (which I always call Derbler for some reason) with the same basic layout. Grimy fields that you traverse through and kill hordes of enemies. The four starting characters are Scarlet, Beowulf, The Snow Queen, and The Pied Piper. Scarlet has an interesting characteristic in that she turns into a werewolf at night, who has a completely different skill set.
Ian got the code before it came out, and he really enjoyed it. I was so into it. I liked the looks of it and the concept behind it. Then I started playing it and….I didn’t love it. The enemies were plentiful and so damage sponge-y. The easiest of the enemies took three hits to kill, which was tedious. It has a MOBA feel to it like LOL or something like that. Beowulf is the tank, Scarlet is the rogue, The Snow Queen is the mage, and The Pied Piper is, ah, another rogue? There is no healer, by the way, at least not that I’ve unlocked. Remember, it’s in Early Access, which means it’s still in development. There is one chapter with one boss. You start with four characters unlocked, and I know you can unlock two more.
Passtech’s previous game was called Curse of the Dead Gods, and it was hard as hell. Light was a big part of it, and I could not see anything. I gave up after an hour because while I like difficult games, it has to be a certain kind of hard. Ian and I were talkinga bout which roguelikes we liked. For me, it’s Hades (Supergiant), Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Edmund McMillen), but NOT anything after that (including Afterbirth and Repentance), and Dead Cells (Motion Twin) up to the final boss. For Ian, it’s Spelunky (Derek Yu), and he liked Hades, but did not love it. He acutally played BOI before I did, but stopped at Rebirth.
He mentioned for Ravenswatch that he did not like it for the first few hours. Not until he was able to get to level five and unlock his ultimate did it really click. Once I started playing, I understood what he meant. Everything felt so plodding to me. As I mentioned, the enemies were damage sponge-y, and I would sigh in frustration in seeing yet another horde of the screaming women who got their health back by screaming before they rushed through me. By the way, they are very reminiscent of FromSoft characters, which is not a surprise.
Passtech is terrible in explaining things. I know that is rich coming from me, given that I love FromSoft game and they are not great with tutorials, either. However, I don’t mind because I know how From games work by now. Each is slightly different, yes, but the basics are the same. In a game like Ravenswatch, there are some things I can take for granted, but not nearly enough for my comfort. I am using a controller, but it acn be done with kb/m, of course.
Their is a written guide, but who reads those? I love reading, but I’m not going to read pages and pages before trying a game. I just am not. I decided to take out Scarlet and just see what was what.
In the beginning, you are in this big circle with raven feathers fluttering, and the Sandman is selling you shit. Honestly, he reminds me of Charon, which might be on purpose. Charon is the shopkeep in Hades. Of course, I cannot buy anything at the start, so I just hit LT to get to choose one of two skills. I have no idea what they actually are, so I default to choosing the higher-tiered one. Then, I went on my merry way.
I have to say. The game was not fun at first. I had no idea what I was doing, which was fine, but I just did not enjoy the loop. I messaged Ian, asking if I was doing something wrong. He said, no. He found the first few hours painful and baffling, too. Until he finally got to the fifth level (and the ult) with Beowulf. That’s how he beat the boss, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
There’s an interesting day and night cycle in the game. The boss, called the Nightmare, spawned within four day/night in-game cycles. There are many things you can do in the game, and you have to decide which to do. If you want to beat a mini-boss, it’ll take off a quarter of the final boss’s health. But, it’ll probably cost you at least one rez. You get four. It’s like in Sekiro where you can wait for the enemies to lose interest and then pop up again. Unlike in Sekiro, it actually works that way in this game. In Sekiro, no matter how long you wait, the enemies never completely lose interest. In this game, you can move as you’re dead to better position yourself.
I found that I would go straight for the health upgrade and the chests so I could get better-tiered skills. I did not want to engage with the millions of enemies that were just spawned over and over and over again. This game is meant to be played co-op. I counted. One standard thick enemy took over twenty hits to kill. Even if it’s doable, it’s not fun. It really isn’t.
The Snow Queen quickly became my main. She is ranged and does not need to get all up in the fray. Her main atteck (X) is a frost lance. One off the upgrades you can get is twin lances. Er, lance, meaning a dart, basically. LB is an iced dash that freezes the enemies. You can get a clone for this that distracts the enemies from you. One you ice ’em up, you want to hit Y to, ah, explode them? I think? I’m not exactly sure, but there is an interaction between LB and Y. B is a defensive skill and RT is another ranged attack. A powerful one, but not exactly sure what it is. These are the buttons for The Snow Queen, by the way. They are not the same for each character.
You can carry over the unlocked skills into a new run. Meaning you can find them in a new run. Which is cool. That’s like BOI–and it’s the way to drive a new run. Here’s the thing, though. Each run is like twenty minutes to half an hour only to get killed by the boss.
The boss is clearly meant to be a co-op boss. Clearly. The guides I’ve read and Ian have all told me that you need to unlock the ult in ord er to beat the boss. I have yet to reach level 5. It’s also bullet-hell-y, which is my least-favorite thing. The first time I met the boss, I got instantly smeared off the face of the planet. Here’s the thing. You have four lives or four rezzes. If you have them all when you reach the boss, great. If you don’t, well, sucks to be you.
The boss is called the Nightmare and is just a bunch of cancerous growths. One big one in the middle with five (or six?) separate tentacles. You know what? This is getting long. I didn’t even mention my onebro run in Dark Souls (FromSoft). I’m up to the Capra Demon, which is my personal nemesis. Only because of the two damn dogs and the fact the arena is the size of a postage stamp. I may try the cheese of bombing him from outside the arena. There is a raging argument in the community as to what is cheating in a onebro run and what isn’t, but WTF cares? You do you. The point is to have fun. One of the guys in the RKG Discord summoned for the Capra. I’m probably not going to summon, but I may if I can’t get over a hump. So far, I got the Asylum Demon in one, the Taurus Demon in one, and the Bell Gargs in three or four. I think four. I had a Battle Axe +5, so once I got rid of one, it was cake.
I need to go to the Depths to rescue Laurentius, otherwise, I would probably skip to Blighttown. I have the Master Key, so I don’t have to go down the arduous way. I may want Power Within, but I can get it from going backwards UP the scaffolding in Blighttown.
For me, it’s just to get through the game without leveling up. That means I can upgrade my weapons as much as I want. I can buy all the consummables I desire. I can level up my pyro flame and anything else that isn’t me. There was a thread on the Reddit arguing that using pyro is easy mode. I just had to shake my head and laugh ruefully. How sad that your masculinity is so fragile, you have to gatekeep onebro runs (which are already difficult enough). There is definitely scoffing as to summoning, but here’s the thing. Unless you’re summoning NPCs, you’re limited to players who are also onebros or near to it. In the first game, there is some weird limit cap to who you can summon, which I never pay attention to. If you’re playing normally, the summons are just whoever you can get.
I’ll leave this here for now and pick up the dual threads again tomorrow.