Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Passtech Games

Ravenswatch and onebro–back at it again

One more (last?) post about Ravenswatch by Passtech Games (for now). I’ll just keep writing about it until I run out of steam. I think they are tweaking as they go because I played as Beowulf and it was easier. In a sense. I still did not get my ult, but I beat the boss after several runs. Well, half-runs. Honestly, at this point, if I die before I reach the boss, I just started over. This is not an aspersion on the game, per se (though, it kinda is), but the boss is tedious enough to need all rezzes in order just to survive.

Let’s talk about the boss for a second. It’s tedious as fuck. It’s not interesting in any way. It’s a plant-like thing in the middle with several tentacles. It seems four that are attached and five in a circle around it. The deal is to kill each separate tentacle before going for the main boss. All the while the main boss is shooting out  bullets at you constantly and slamming its tentacles at you. Plus, there are times when the area around the tentacle turns red. That means run. Run immediately and as far as you can. Because the big boss is gonna one-shot you. The problem is, depending on where you are and what else is shooting at you (there are little circles that show up, meaning you’re going to be hit in those little circles), you may not be able to run anywhere safe.

I know they’re trying to make you feel like you’re trapped but actually have ways to escape, except, my reflexes are so shitty. And I have terrible spatial realization. It’s funny. I have learned how to find the holes in a crowd in real life. But in a game, I can’t find those spaces.

So, yeah. I’m not going to finish a run if I die early–especially if I die twice. I only deal with that shit in real life. (Continuing the same ‘run’ if I die twice). Now I want a shirt that says something to that effect.

“Shadows die twice and so do I!”

Anyway, the boss is just a hot mess. It’s very bullet hell-y, and I’m so not good at that. My way of dealing with it is to have enough health to just outlast the boss. In this case, you have to be able to react instantaneously to the boss, which is not my strong suit.

Back to the gameplay. I feel like they’ve cut down a bit on the hordes, but it’s still too much. I eschew any of the timed events because it’s just not possible with one person. I haven’t come close to doing the three little pigs’ requests. It’s getting 20 of whatever they need (rock, straw, or…brick? Whatever the third one is) in five minutes. I haven’t even gotten close. It’s not as simple as finding the material and bringing it to them. You have to kill enemies before you can pick up the materials. I have gotten half of the resources and up to 13 in the time allotted. There are also other timed events with mini bosses and such. I’ve failed all of them as well.


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A Quick Look–Ravenswatch by Passtech Games

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.


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