Let’s talk Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive). I’ve done two ‘A Quick Look’ posts about it, the latest one being this one. I have recently beaten the game once, which, like many rogue-lites/likes, is not the end of the game really. There will be spoilers all up in this post, so this is your official *SPOILER WARNING* for the rest of this post. I’ll do my best to keep it general, but I can’t say that I won’t let slip with a specific spoiler now and then.
I have been playing it a lot. That’s not a ringing endorsement of the game in and of itself because I will get absorbed in a game and play it compulsively, whether I like it a ton or not. That’s just the way my brain works. Once I’m in, I’m in. And I’m not saying that this is a bad game; it’s not. I’m just saying that how much I play a game isn’t necessarily correlated with how good the game is.
I also want to say that because of my dexterity and spatial issues, the game is harder for me than it really is. Oh, and because the target lock is frustrating and suspect. I get that this is two guys doing the work, so I’m not as harsh on it as I would be otherwise, but the collision dynamics aren’t great. It’s hard to lock on the enemy you want to lock on with everything running in front of you. Also, because there are so many things in the room that you can move about (props, essentially), and when the enemy runs behind the prop, the aim lock will break and latch onto the prop.
This is especially bad in a boss fight when the boss spawns ads. Which I’ll get to when I reach the end of the game big boss (who, spoilers, may be the reason I don’t play the game any longer). I have a lot to say about that fight–none of it good.
Back to the base game. There are three different floors and in every room, there is a secret that you can solve. Or, if you get frustrated like me, look it up. This is cool! I really liked that aspect of the game, even if I couldn’t always figure it out. When I did figure one out for myself, I felt so smart.
If you haven’t found everything in a room, there will be a purple question mark on your map until you find that last thing. The problem is that there are glitches in this game that means a purple question mark might not disappear when it should. As someone who can get obsessive about clearing everything up in a room, that’s frustrating. Sometimes, if you go out of the room and go back into it, the question mark will disappear. Sometimes, it won’t. And sometimes, you can’t do the thing you need to do in order to clear that room.
The latter is partly an issue that I mentioned earlier–the collision physics of the game. There are certain puzzles in which you have to throw things from a certain angle to hit something else in the exact right way. It works on the first time maybe half of the time. Sometimes, it takes several takes to actually work.
This is a waste of my time. And I get mad because my brain is wired so that I can’t just walk by the puzzle without doing it. Especially as I get XP for doing it. Or gold. Or some other prize.
Which, by the way, brings up another issue. This game is SO grindy. There’s a delicate balance to be had in how much do you make a player play the game just to get the stuff they need to make their character better? There is a divide in the roguelike/lite communities as to liking permanent upgrades or not. Some want each run to be pure with only what you pick up in the run making a difference. This is the Binding of Isaac (Edmund McMillen) approach to roguelikes, which is still the game I’ve put the most amount of time into. But, this purity is the reason that I really disliked the last update, Afterbirth was it? No. Repentance? Not sure. Rebirth was and is and probably always will be my favorite iteration of the game.
The other group likes the permanent upgrades between runs. This is the Hades (Supergiant) mentality, and this is quite possibly the best of the genre. I have not played the sequel yet beacuse I am waiting for it to be out of Early Access. I’m also worried because it came out a year before my medical crisis. I was able to play it, but just barely with my issues (spatial issues, dexterity, slow inputs). I did plat it, but I think that’s more because Supergiant integrated the plat so well into the game loop. By the time I had properly finished the game, I only had two achievements I had to do to get the plat. I thought they were going to be hard, but they were surprisingly doable.
Back to this game.
I just beat the game for a second time. This is one of those games that change when you beat the ‘final’ boss. In this case, the game adds a modifier to the three floors that makes the run harder. After beating the final boss a second time, it addls another modifier. You can take off either or both of these modifiers to go back to the vanilla game again. Weirdly, the second final boss was much easier than the first. I beat him in one and with less health than I had when I tried the first final boss the first time–and failed.
Here’s the thing. It’s the same boss with a palette swap. I could not tell if there were any added abilities with the boss. If anything, I felt there was less. But that could be because I was beefing up my own character to the point that I could fight better. I did upgrade my shield one or two times, which helped.
This is another issue with the game. The developer said that they wanted to give a lot of flexibility to the players and allow them to mix and match to their heart’s content. I get that. And there are several different spells. But there are only a few that I feel are worthwhile. Again, I’d like to say that I am well-aware that I have my limitations. Because of that, I will never use anything that is based on timing.
One of the four student factions is based on a spell that is basically a deflect spell. You hit an enemy with it as they are about to spell you, and it deflects back to them. As they are stunned, you attack them for big damage. You have to use this on a boss successfully in order to join this faction. I managed to do it on one of the easiest bosses, and I have not used it since. This is the student faction that has a boss-fighting arena in their area, and that’s how yoyu get all the outfits for their faction. Most of which are the cool ones (black). I will never do that, so it saddens me.
Part two tomorrow.