Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: official review

Spells & Secrets–my official review, part three

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.

Continue Reading

Spells & Secrets–my official review, part two

I have talked about the game, Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive), before. In fact, I have, apparently, done an official review of it. This will be part two of that now that I have officially beaten the game. The first part of the review (which I have no recollection of writing) is here. I’ve also done two quick looks at it, so, obviously, I have lots of feelings about it.

Let’s just get something out of the way. It’s obviously influenced by Harry Potter. That’s all I want to say about that, but the similarities have to be noted. We can move on from that now that I have made the comment.

At the end of the last post, I was talking about one of the things that’s a bit misleading with the game. The devs have said that they want to make it so that a player can make their wizard be anything they want. Which, in theory, sounds great. But, and again, I fully admit this might just be me and my limitations, what it meant for me was that I just kept using the same spells over and over.

Here’s my thinking. I suck. That’s not me being self-deprecating; that’s me being realistic. Oh, and *SPOILER WARNING* for the rest of the post. I know that anything that is timing-related will not work for me. That means I don’t ever touch a few of the spells. The deflect one and the switch one (you switch places with the enemy) are the two I’m thinking of especially. 

Then, there are ones that are a bit more generous with the timing, but they’re still timing-based in a way. Or can be with modifierss (artefacts). An example of that is the spell, telekinesis. It’s not time-based in and of itself as it just moves objects/enemies from place to place. But, there are modifiers such as one that snaps the objects that you move into the direction you’re moving them. I figured out that if you don’t touch the left stick as you do it, you don’t get the snap motion, but it took me too long to figure it out.

Then there are spells that just take too damn long without the modifierrs. Bombard (hurling a fireball) is one of them. It takes forever to actually load up and itas too easy to be interrupted while doing it. Which is a shame because fire is my jam. I wanted to be a fire and ice wizard. Ice in my left hand; fire in my right. That didn’t last very long, sadly. Also, I know how true RNG works. I know this means that every time you get an artefact, you get an equal chance to get each one. But. I don’t like true RNG. I don’t know if this game had it, but there are some artefacts I haven’t gotten. And there are some that I seem to get every other run.


Continue Reading

Spells & Secrets–my official review

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.


Continue Reading