I have been playing more Another Crab’s Treasure (Aggro Crab) and talking about it in the RKG Discord. Here is part one in which I did a very brief overview of the game (plus some random ranting).
Spoiler, kinda? This is about accessibility, and one way Aggro Crab made it easier was they added a gun. Yes, a gun. It one-shot kills everything (and is a shell, which is weird. I don’t know what happens when it breaks. It’s very hardy. Maybe you have to ask for another), and I have started a new playtrhough with it–a gun run.
In roughly an hour, I have gotten to where I am in my main playthrough. Which has taken me four or five hours. Or more. Probably more. I will say a sizable chunk of that timme was me not knowing what to do next because I simply do not think in the same way as the game devs. That’s when I gave in and finally looked it up. It really annoyed me, and I made a promise to myself that if I keep playing the game, I’ll nrot wait so long to look shit up.
I want to say upfront that it’s a solid game. It’s bright and colorful, and the humor is on point. I appreciate what they were going for and I love that they went whole hog (crab?) for what they envisioned. I much rather have a game that sticks to its gun (heh) than one that is all over the map. This game knows what it wants to be, and it’s very confident in tone/approach.
That being said (and you knew this was coming), there is just something missing. I’ve been chatting about it with a few other people in the RKG Discord, and I’m relieved that I’m not the outlier when it comes to my frustrations with the combat. Here’s the thing. FromSoft is almost pristine when it comes to the combat. There are jokes about hitboxes (which are valid) and about the camera (also valid), but the response is tight.
Where many soulslikes fall flat is that they are too squishy on the responses. In a hard game with brutal combat, you have to have thatt shit on lock. A few that had spongy responses: The Lords of the Fallen (the new one); Steelrising; The Lords of the Fallen (the OG one). And I may be one of the few, but Lies of P had weird response times. It’s actually something that From does itself that is irritating–varies the response time so that you have to just memorize the attacks–which I cannot do. Skill Up mentioned this in his Stellar Blade review that one thing he liked about the game was that there were no delayed attacks by the enemies so the parrying was easier.
I don’t know if that would help me or not, but I really hate how weird the attack patterns are in From games. It really stands out in Sekiro because it just makes it twice as hard for me to deflect as it is to parry in the other games. Lies of P did the same thing. There was no way for me to guess when the attack was actually going to happen. I hated that about the game.
With Another Crab’s Treasure, it’s a different problem with the combat. Or rather, problems with the combat. One. The camera. From fans joke about the camera being an enemy in the From games, but there are ways to mitigate that. The camera is terrible in ACT (hey! just realized that’s what the initials spell). If you lock onto an enemy and then go behind something, the camera will keep locked on, and you can’t see anything. This is terrible in a combat situation, especially a boss fight. I have had so many isuses with the lock on and the camera, it’s been really frustrating. I have said “CAMERA PLEASE” (plus swear words) more times than I can count.
Two, the response time is spongy. It’s weird. It’s clear that they are trying for Sekiro combat, which means you need snappy response times. But I also feel like they want to be more generous to players so they have a bigger response window. What actually happens, though, is that I’m more confused and more frustrated because I feel like I should have a better chance of getting the parry, but then I still miss.
When I do get the parry, it’s completely by luck, and I don’t know what to do with it because you have to pay for the riposte (in umami points. Don’t ask). I don’t have it yet so while I can get the stagger on the boss, I don’t know what to do next. Just whale on them?
By the way, this is something I don’t understand. From has always had the immediate riposte to a parry. There has been no building up of the parry responses, but it’s become a thing. And it’s in this game. And it just frustrates the hell out of me.
The boss fights are both overwhelming and underwhelming. I mentioned yesterday that they have one-hit kills. I should say that they have certain animations (a red crab flashes on the middle of the screen to indicate this is a death attack) that will take off huge chunks of your health or flat-out kill you, depending. Then, there are aggro attacks that flash a blue crab which…ah…oh, yeah. It’s an unblockable attack and you have to dodge. I can’t see either of them in real time because the boss fights are so frenetic. I think you can block the red one? But don’t get grabbed by it? I’m not sure.
Oh. Ok. I just read up on it. The red ones are unblockable and you can’t parry them. Blue ones are unblockable, but you can parry them. *sigh*. Great. Another way to make the game harder and for me to have to think on the fly. By the way, you have to buy the parry skill. You don’t just have it. Which I think is bogus as well.
Ha. That was not about this game, but I think it’s the same? Or not. I may have to go into the game and look. It would make sense, though. I remember vaguely that the blue one is about aggression and the red one just kills you.
It’s frustrating because the game is solid and juuuuuuuuust misses the mark for me. There are an array of accessibilithy modifiers that I have not tried because I’m not sure any of it would really help with my specific problems. I just keep wanting it to be about 10% better than it is. I think I might have to admit that it’s not for me and be fine with it. Whether or not I keep playing it.