After all this time, after beating LM2 first, I finally beat this legit(ish). Final boss was surprisingly free compared to the other bosses in this game and the final boss of LM2. Thankfully, this game doesn't place as big an emphasis on combat as LM2, save for the Shrine of the Mother but that's understandable since its the final area. Wasn't a fan of the mantra puzzle, had to brute-force half of it. The scale puzzle tho...super satisfying to figure out.

La-Mulana is a tier of its own when it comes to Metroidvanias.

An incredibly memorable metroidvania. Wanna explore an ancient civilization's ruins? Want to feel like you're constantly treading around in unknown and unfamiliar territory and the fear and excitement that it brings? Then get out of my house and play La Mulana!!

Excellent music, wonderful pixel art, love how different and unique each zone is with their own style and gimmicks, love how they connect together in surprising ways but one thing I love that I particularly wanna point out is how the game really makes you feel like you're exploring somewhere unknown with it's puzzles. The puzzles in La Mulana can be tough to solve and sometimes require some out of the box thinking and hints for a lot of the puzzles are written on stone tablets that litter the ruins. So what do you do as an explorer? Well you write 'em down and keep a little journal of all your discoveries...except you're doing it in real life in a paper booklet or word document and it's so cool going around zones, noticing strange pieces of the environment or blockades and getting your note book out to try and see if there's anything to help you. I know this isn't the first game to do that stuff but it's a really unique feeling that I had with this game that really elevated it to me.

Also I really appreciate that despite how harsh and punishing the game can be to you, it still has a good sense of humour about itself so that it never feels like it's laughing at you sadistically and more that it's trying to sweeten the punishment that you've been handed. Whatever I've talked a lot about this: La Mulana is amazing. Play it.

La-Mulana plain simply hates you. it's also my favorite game of all time.

it feels like an AU where the genre evolved using Super Metroid core design elements, pushing them even further, rather than SotN shitty grindy 'find a new tool to sort this wall' design. based soundtrack

best metroidvania ever made.

This really is one of a kind experience. One that infuriated and baffled me like no game has ever before.
Maybe I should have stopped playing when I fell for an unannounced death trap after completing the entirety of the Endless Corridor. Or when I was expected to enter a pot like it was a mario tube instead of destroying it like every other pot in the game. Or that time when I had to redo a boss three times because in the room behind him was an upgrade that I only had one shot at getting.
I fear that my brain might have been permanently rewired to find connections between disparate pieces of text and obscure background details.
I wish I had never heard about "La-Mulana".





At least the OST was nice. Can't wait to play the sequel.

Saying this game is "difficult" is like saying getting punched in the face is "dangerous". La-Mulana is outright malevolent. The stench of Konami's decades-old offal will almost make you pass out.

However, I don't think this game's difficulty is the only reason to play, and, speaking frankly, I'm not even "hardcore" enough to think beating this game without assistance is worth it. By maintaining such a level of extremity, La-Mulana is funny like few other games, it is venerable like few other games, and it is certainly rewarding like few other games. Though not always positive, it will insist on leaving an impression.

A puzzle box of meticulous design, and it actually summons a Hellraiser.

Over time, this title's reputation started to seep into my skin and conditioned me to believe that it is bitterly unfair, that an element of clairvoyance is necessary, that hints to solutions simply do not all exist within the text.
This was my first replay after many years, and it served to prove to me that it's all true - the biggest clue is actually in the manual.

Very clearly inspired by Masacore indie titles, built top of its more direct Maze of the Galeous roots, La-Mulana takes the crown of the cruel genre by being one of the only entries with a beating heart. A sprawling structure that demands intuition and respect in regular doses. Fall out of line for even a second, and you're inviting your archeological gig to end prematurely in sharp, fiery death. Bosses use every cheap trick in the book. Fields populate with countless enemies that exist purely to halt all progress. Completely untelegraphed traps jump up and kill you with reprise. All this, made feasible with a generous checkpoint and teleportation system, it's kind of genius.
Soundtrack is a bop, too. Invites you to the challenge and remains a toe tapper throughout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rfhi6I84hM

Puzzle design like this remains unmatched in anything outside of a Cyan Worlds point & click game. Every single screen holds an element of a grander puzzle, each with an inspiring level of thematic relevance. Their biggest crime would be dodgy wording in places. There isn't another Metroidvania in the world where every single room is equally important. All this, and the final task is to fold the ruins in on itself like an Origami butterfly, opening up a whole new layer of appreciation for the painstakingly crafted world Nigoro has created.

In the interest of sounding unbiased, it's definitely imperfect. Lots of iffy collision, a trial and error, and sheer leaps of logic are afoot. The later bosses are cruel to comedic degrees. All of these are astoundingly valid reasons to despise or drop this game..................... I just think it's uniquely satisfying to overcome the trials regardless - a nailscraping crawl to a victory that you need to fight tooth and nail to earn. To the last, I grapple with thee. from hell's heart, I stab at thee. for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

Modern videogame design sensibilities dictate that a good videogame should always telegraph in advance the presence of traps, because trial and error is inherently a frustrating endeavor that doesn't give the player the opportunity to overcome the odds and be rewarded for it. It states that subjecting the player to long stretches of backtracking and being lost without knowing where to go is a sign of poor game structure, bad pacing and lazy level design that does not do enough to inform the player on how to play the game. It also suggests that required puzzle solving that gates progression should be easily understood as such and shouldn't be obtuse, elusive and hidden into the background in such a manner that in order to figure it out you must remember a hint you misinterpreted as flavor lore text 10 hours ago.

La-Mulana's ability to repeatedly laugh and spit in the face of what the collective videogame machine has evolved into over the years is the game's ultimate defining characteristic and statement, and while clearly inspired by retro classics of old, its meticulous and labored world map combined with an insurmountable obsession with lateral thinking puzzle solving makes it stand out as a one of kind experience in the medium that is as new and fresh as playing Demon's Souls for the first time in 2009. Indifferent to whatever whims the common player might bring into it, stages are never truly beaten, simply becoming part of an ever increasing tapestry of interconnected threads left hanging until the very last moments of the credits, and as you quickly realize the importance of details and minutia you have been conditioned to ignore by years of gaming, La-Mulana gains a level of dimensionality to its deceptive sidescrolling origins that turn most 3D ventures into cardboard cut-out playgrounds in comparison.

La-Mulana is definitely unfair, but it is so by design. And that unfairness is easily appreciated when it constantly displays a clear labor of love and wonderment for the unique power of discovery and conquest videogames excel at, utilizing its cruelty to exploit comedy out of the player's expense and turning every small note taking, picture drawing and logical leap of faith into a victory for the unlimited human ingenuity and perseverance. Even if you find yourself abusing an online guide, it is worth taking the La-Mulana journey, if only to see how every dungeon feeds into each other and witness the absurd mental gymnastics the game requests of your wellbeing. When the final puzzle brough me all the way back to one of the first brain teasers in the game, I reached nirvana. And I'm not ashamed to say it, I soyfaced.

Completing La-Mulana without a guide must be akin to surviving a Vipassana meditation retreat, a life changing religious experience that fundamentally shifts the way you perceive the world around you. In order to do so, you just have to get past your biggest misgivings as a human being, learn to shut off the white noise in your brain, accept the uncomfortableness of your body and mind, and bash your head into a indecipherable stone mural with retractable spikes that knock you 2 meters back into a pit you have to climb back from again while you heavily breathe in and breath out.

One day, La-Mulana 2.

First of all, it should be made clear that La-Mulana is not a game for everyone. Its level of difficulty is enormous, extremely high, only affordable for people not only with great skill, but (and this is the most important) with observation abilities, intelligence and perseverance. La-Mulana demands much more from the player than other video games: like a good Indiana Jones-style archaeologist, the user must not only be able to defeat enemies, overcome fights and overcome platforming challenges, but must also be able to think.

Some of the most cryptic puzzles in video game history can be found in La-Mulana. I am talking about puzzles so enigmatic and difficult that they manage to surpass some of the most complicated ones that have been seen in the most infernal classic point and click adventure games. Why does this happen? Because La-Mulana achieves what it sets out to do: it turns the user into a real archaeologist.

Often, a pencil and a notebook will be our best (essential) allies to write down the different clues and clues that are scattered throughout the ruins. For the player to be able to successfully complete this title, he or she will have to dedicate many hours to the enigmas, and this is one of the things that makes La-Mulana great: we have to take it not as a video game, but as our job: we are archaeologists and we are exploring ancient ruins, and thats all. In fact, the laptop that Professor Lemeza carries on his back (an MSX) allows us to install various applications that have essential utilities in the ruins, such as helping us to decipher hieroglyphs or visualize maps, for example.

The gameplay, in fact, will develop even when the console is turned off. We will try to decipher the puzzles in front of our notebook, we will think about them during the lunchtime and we will even get up in the middle of the night to turn on the game because the solution to a puzzle has suddenly occurred to us. And the best thing is that although almost all the puzzles are very difficult (I put special emphasis on this), they are never impossible to solve without outside help. They all make sense, and in all cases sufficient clues are offered and the player can always reach their solution without the need to resort to guides. In fact, although in a lot of forums you can read that it is impossible to beat La-Mulana without guides, I insist that this is completely false (and I can vouch for it). The game is very complicated, but it is never unfair and the solutions can always be reached. It requires a lot of thinking outside the box and the puzzles are a far cry from what we're used to in video games (all that experience in titles like Zelda is useless here), but that's not a problem at all: everything makes sense and the developers are never unfair.

The ruins are huge, gigantic, and as we are facing a metroidvania, we will have to take many detours and explore numerous rooms, especially considering that here it will be necessary on more than one occasion to review the clues of the first areas to solve certain puzzles. Not only is the background of the game scattered throughout the ruins in the form of stone tablets and we will have to pay attention to their engravings to understand it (as in Metroid Prime), but La-Mulana works as a whole. Solving an enigma in an area at the beginning can serve to open a path in one at the end and vice versa. Likewise, a clue from the entrance can be essential to solve a mystery from the depths of the ruins.

The title is inspired by Super Metroid when it comes to outlining the exploration: given that Professor Lemeza's equipment was requisitioned at the airport (an absolute nod to the genre), we will have to find objects in the ruins to help us access new areas, become more powerful or defeat certain types of enemies. As in the Super Nintendo classic, the items help us to access new paths that in turn lead us to other puzzles.

That leads us to think that La-Mulana is perhaps one of the most difficult video games of all time: it not only requires skill and exploration skills, but also a good brain to overcome its cryptic enigmas. The feeling that we are always stuck never leaves us, but that leads us to be forced to reason to overcome the puzzles. However, the game punishes the player a lot for not being skilled or smart enough, but also rewards him for doing things right: and is that, as good archaeologists, we must be attentive to the traps of the game, because if we solve a puzzle wrong, we will suffer the consequences by dying or suffering damage. However, the 99% of these tricks can be predicted: if we stop and think before acting, after having studied the environment well, like good archaeologists, we will not fall into the traps and we will overcome each enigma that is put in front of us successfully.

All this makes it perhaps one of the most hardcore titles on the market. The player is alone in front of the "greatest mystery in the history of mankind", which as a good archaeologist will have to discover and solve. For this reason there are great references to the mythology of numerous civilizations, all after an excellent documentation work by the developers.

La-Mulana, moreover, exploits like few others the concept of absolute open world in 2D: since there are so many parts open from the beginning, every run is different and every user will get stuck on different things. There is no fixed thread: the important thing is to get to the end and discover the secrets. The order in which we do it and the form is the least important thing.

If you are looking for a title that challenges you to the maximum, in which you are the absolute protagonist and that absorbs you like few others, you must try La-Mulana. However, its difficulty is not suitable for everyone. It is only focused on users with intelligence and the desire to enjoy an unforgettable adventure.

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Antes de nada, hay que dejar claro que La-Mulana no es un juego para todo el mundo. Su nivel de dificultad es enorme, extremadamente elevado, solo asequible para personas no solo con una gran habilidad, sino (y esto es lo más importante) con capacidad de observación, inteligencia y perseverancia. La-Mulana exige al jugador mucho más que los demás videojuegos: al igual que un buen arqueólogo al estilo de Indiana Jones, el usuario no solo ha de ser capaz de derrotar enemigos, superar peleas y superar desafíos plataformeros, sino que ha de saber pensar.

Algunos de los enigmas más crípticos de la historia de los videojuegos pueden encontrarse en La-Mulana. Hablamos de rompecabezas tan enigmáticos y difíciles que logran superar a algunos de los más complicados que se han visto en las aventuras gráficas clásicas más infernales. ¿Por qué ocurre esto? Porque La-Mulana consigue lo que se propone: convierte al usuario en un arqueólogo de verdad.

A menudo, un lápiz y un cuaderno serán nuestros mejores (esenciales) aliados para anotar las diferentes pistas e indicios que hay repartidos por todas las ruinas. Para que el jugador logre superar con éxito este título, tendrá que dedicarle muchas horas a los enigmas, y esta es una de las cosas que hacen a La-Mulana grandioso: hay que tomárselo no como un videojuego, sino como nuestro trabajo: somos arqueólogos y estamos explorando unas ruinas antiguas, con todo lo que eso conlleva. De hecho, el ordenador portátil que el profesor Lemeza lleva a cuestas (un MSX) nos permite instalar diversas aplicaciones que tienen utilidades imprescindibles en las ruinas, como ayudarnos a descifrar los jeroglíficos o visualizar mapas, por ejemplo.

La jugabilidad, de hecho, se desarrollará incluso cuando la consola esté apagada. Intentaremos descifrar los enigmas delante de nuestra libreta, pensaremos en ellos durante la hora de comer e incluso nos levantaremos en mitad de la noche a encender el juego porque se nos habrá ocurrido la solución a un puzle de repente. Y lo mejor es que aunque casi todos los enigmas sean muy difíciles (pongo especial hincapié en ello), nunca son imposibles de resolver sin ayuda externa. Todos tienen sentido, en todos los casos se ofrecen pistas suficientes y el jugador siempre puede alcanzar su solución sin la necesidad de recurrir a guías. Que de hecho, aunque en un montón de foros podáis leer que es imposible superar La-Mulana sin guías, insisto en que eso es completamente falso (y puedo dar fe de ello). El juego es muy complicado, pero jamás es injusto y las soluciones siempre pueden alcanzarse. Requiere pensar mucho fuera de la caja y los enigmas se alejan un montón de a lo que estamos acostumbrados en los videojuegos (toda esa experiencia en títulos como Zelda no sirve aquí de nada), pero eso no es problema alguno: todo tiene sentido y los desarrolladores nunca son injustos.

Las ruinas son enormes, gigantes, y como estamos ante un metroidvania, tendremos que dar muchos rodeos y explorar numerosas estancias, más teniendo en cuenta que aquí hará falta en más de una ocasión revisar las pistas de las primeras zonas para resolver ciertos puzles. Y es que no solo el trasfondo del juego está desperdigado por todas las ruinas en forma de tablillas y tendremos que prestarle atención a sus grabados para entenderla (como ocurre con Metroid Prime), sino que La-Mulana funciona como un todo. Resolver un enigma en una zona del principio puede servir para abrir un camino en una del final y viceversa. De la misma forma, una pista de la entrada puede ser esencial para resolver un misterio de las profundidades de las ruinas.

El título se inspira en Super Metroid a la hora de esquematizar la exploración: dado que al profesor Lemeza le requisaron el equipo en el aeropuerto (guiño absoluto al género), nos las tendremos que ingeniar para encontrar objetos en las ruinas que nos ayuden a acceder a nuevas áreas, ser más poderosos o derrotar a ciertos tipos de enemigos. Como ocurre en el clásico de Super Nintendo, los ítems nos ayudan a acceder a caminos nuevos que a su vez nos llevan a otros puzles.

Eso lleva a pensar que La-Mulana quizá sea uno de los videojuegos más difíciles de todos los tiempos: no solo exige habilidad y dotes de exploración, sino un buen cerebro para superar sus crípticos enigmas. La sensación de que siempre estamos atascados nunca nos abandona, pero eso lleva a que nos veamos obligados a razonar para superar los puzles. Sin embargo, el juego castiga mucho al jugador por no ser lo suficientemente hábil o listo, pero también lo premia por hacer las cosas bien: y es que, como buenos arqueólogos, hemos de estar atentos a las trampas del juego, ya que si resolvemos mal un puzle, sufriremos las consecuencias muriendo o sufriendo daños. Sin embargo, el 99% de esos trucos se pueden predecir: si nos paramos a pensar y a reflexionar antes de actuar, tras haber estudiado bien el entorno, como buenos arqueólogos, no caeremos en las trampas y superaremos cada enigma que se nos ponga por delante con éxito.

Todo esto lleva a que quizá sea uno de los títulos más hardcore del mercado. Está el jugador solo frente al "mayor misterio de la historia de la Humanidad", que como buen arqueólogo tendrá que descubrir y resolver. Por esa razón hay grandes referencias a la mitología de numerosas civilizaciones, todo tras un excelente trabajo de documentación por parte de los desarrolladores.

La-Mulana, además, explota como pocos el concepto de mundo abierto absoluto en el 2D: dado que hay tantas partes abiertas desde el principio, cada partida es diferente y cada usuario se atascará en cosas distintas. No hay ningún tipo de hilo fijado: lo importante es llegar hasta el final y descubrir los secretos. El orden en el que lo hagamos y la forma es lo de menos.

Si buscas un título que te rete al máximo, en el que seas el absoluto protagonista y que te absorba como pocos, debes probar La-Mulana. Sin embargo, su dificultad no es apta para todo el mundo. Está enfocado solo para usuarios con inteligencia y ganas de disfrutar de una inolvidable aventura.