Yes, this is my third post for my official review of Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive). Why? Because I still have things to say about it. Here is the second post in my trilogy of review posts. This will probably be the last one, but who can say for sure? At the end of the last post, I was talking about the final boss. Also, about the stripping of artefacts in the boss fights for the harder versions of the school. Which, once I actually looked at the wards, it wasn’t that the artefacts get stripped, but the leveling of the spells? I think? It’s unclear from the description. At any rate, I’m not a fan.
Back to the final boss. Again, *SPOILER WARNING* for the rest of the post. I mentioned that the lock-on is one of the most frustrating in the game. Because of the physics of the game and how many things on the screen that you can lock on to, it’s really frustrating when you’re actually trying to lock-on to an enemy–especially a boss.
By the way, I’m crurrently doing a vanilla run (without the wards turned on) because I want to try to get the clothing for the fourth student faction. That’s the faction that is based on *sigh* parrying/deflecting. Which is another thing that irks me. That’s the thing that devs are taking away from Sekiro? That parrying/defelction should be the main combat choice? I really hope this trend dies out soon beacuse it’s my least-favorite FromSoft trend ever.
To be clear, I’m not mad about parrying/deflecting being a part of a FromSoft-like game. I am mad about it being the only combat option in a game (looking at you, Lies of P. No, it wasn’t stirctly the only way to play the game, but the other way was not fun at all). And I hate that it’s bleeding into my cozy games. Yes, this game is a rogue-lite, but I would still consider it a cozy game. Or cozy-adjacent. Adding a whole student faction based on it is, ah, a choice. Yes, it’s a lot more forgiving than Sekiro, but it’s still annoying as fuck.
It’s a spell that you need to cast as the boss is casting their spell. If you do it right, you will stun them, and then you have to attack them and kill them while they are under the spell. If you do so, they will go back to home base, er, the…uh…schoolyard? I think? And then you can fight the bosses in the boss arena in that student faction’s area. Which, no thanks. I just want the outfits. No idea how to get them. I’m assuming I’ll have to fight the bosses in the arena, which does not excite me at all. Sadly, the outfits for this faction are my favorite ones. Bleah.
Back to the game itself. In my vanilla run, I’m blasting through the floors. I have beaten the first two floors with very little sweat. I did not get hit on the first floor, and the only damage I took on the second floor was when I was trying to get the deflection spell to work on the boss. I don’t think I managed to do it, though.
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