This review contains spoilers
-me perusing through my steam library of 400+ games and stumbling across crypt of the necrodancer-
"oh hey! i remember this game. i played it like, way back in 2016 and i just kinda stopped. i wonder why i bounced off of it?"
-10 hours later-
"oh. that's why."
i'll admit that i didn't get very far on my earliest runs of the game. i'm not the best at video games now and that fact was doubly true back when i first played crypt of the necrodancer. its the sort of game that is simultaneously very easy to pick up and very easy to put down.
i'll get the parts i do like out of the way. it's got a great soundtrack, of course, and a number of the characters are actually quite fun to play. the zones get kinda samey but enemy behavior is varied enough that it never gets too repetitive
at least if you're doing well.
part of why i bounced off this game twice before actually completing the game was because losing in this game is miserable. you don't have to start all over from zone 1 (by default, anyways) but the experience of losing repeatedly means hearing the same songs with the same repetitive motions with the same enemies that just keep killing you because you keep putting yourself in bad positions.
it gets dull. really, really dull.
it's not just a "im bad at the game" thing. other rogue-likes with semi-complex gameplay loops like this one don't tend to make me feel bored in the same way, and i think it has to do with the core concept.
see, crypt of the necrodancer is a "rhythm game/dungeon crawler." all of your actions, which would normally be the dungeon crawling, are forced to follow the song's bpm. it's a novel concept, and one that got me interested in the game to begin with.
the thing is, i feel like the game designers spent a lot more time designing the "dungeon crawler" part than the "rhythm game" part. most of the difficulty emerges as a result of an enemy's specific design as opposed to how hard it is to hit notes. for most characters, you don't even need to hit all the notes unless you want to keep your money multiplier.
there are a couple instances where the rhythm element is focused on. that being bolt/coda, king conga, and the tempo up/down buttons, but all of these examples are sparse.
tempo up/down is basically just forcing you to either move faster or slower, either giving you less time to react or more time to react.
king conga is the only song in the game where the beats are not perfectly and evenly spaced out. i really, really wish more songs utilized something like this
bolt/coda is basically a living hyper tempo up button. you hit twice as many beats as normal. all this serves to do is to remove the strategic element of the game and forces you to act on impulse unless you're a top tier player of the game. i don't think most people are, frankly.
that's mostly it. most songs in the game have their notes be perfectly and evenly spaced out from one another. most runs are just mindlessly tap, tap, tapping to the rhythm. the only variation is in the songs themselves.
frankly, i think this is a wasted opportunity. give the actual rhythm part some significance! having more songs playing in different time signatures would go a long way to making the gameplay feel less monotonous. have it be so that maintaining your rhythm rewards you with more damage rather than just a coin multiplier.
but this is mostly why the game would be a soft 3/5 stars as opposed to a more solid 4. because the game, as is, is mostly solid. so why am i rating this 2 stars?
Enter: Aria
i cannot fathom Aria. in what world do you design a roguelike's story mode and have Aria be a required character to beat the main story? Imagine playing The Binding of Isaac and in order to see all of the main story content you have to play as Isaac, then Judas, then THE LOST and you can't finish the story unless you beat the game with all three characters. it's not impossible but why the hell would you gatekeep the last third of the story behind one of the hardest characters in the game?
i grit my teeth playing as Aria. it was baffling to me already but i powered through it and assumed it'd get easier as it went along. it did, to an extent. going from Zone 4 to Zone 1 meant that the difficulty waned a bit over time.
unfortunately, there was little I could do to prepare for the fight with the Golden Lute.
genuinely one of the worst final bosses i've ever had the displeasure of facing. Cadence and Melody had fights against the Necrodancer himself. while not ridiculously easy, it was the sort of difficulty i could practice my way out of.
The Golden Lute is not so simple. I practiced that fight over a hundred times and could only win a quarter of them, even when I knew what I was supposed to do. let's just ignore the fact that the best way to fight the Golden Lute is by playing the fight in the most boring way possible. y'know, once again having to do the monotonous "tap, tap, tapping" against a bounce pad so the boss happens to land next to me because Aria dies if you miss a note and thus normally you have to constantly move.
again, let's ignore that.
the boss's erratic movement patterns, the fact that most of your runs are dependent on a green skeleton knight not spawning in, and the esoteric method to actually landing a critical hit on the boss makes the entire fight a long, ridiculous chore. let's not forget that you have to complete the fight after a whole zone's worth of enemies while playing as the second-most fragile character in the game. but even when playing as a less fragile character the fight is only marginally less cumbersome.
also, whose idea was it to make the final boss move like a BAT
the dam broke when i fought the golden lute. all at once i had the thought of "why the fuck am i even doing any of this?" i was having mild fun, but the game spat in my mouth and told me i'd be having way more fun playing the game with my skin flayed off.
what's that? the amplified dlc? yeah, it's alright. i don't understand why some basic QoL features that werent dependent on dlc content had to be locked behind the dlc, but whatever. nocturna is pretty powerful, which works well for the difficulty of the dlc. frankensteinway and the conductor are both very difficult final bosses, but im not playing a character made of paper. zone 5 works well as an evolution of the dungeon crawler aspect of the game while, as per usual, not doing much for the rhythm game aspect. it's fine, like i said. more fun than the base game.
i think the song's about to end, so i'll just let it run out and ill drop into a new rogueli--
SONG ENDED!
"oh hey! i remember this game. i played it like, way back in 2016 and i just kinda stopped. i wonder why i bounced off of it?"
-10 hours later-
"oh. that's why."
i'll admit that i didn't get very far on my earliest runs of the game. i'm not the best at video games now and that fact was doubly true back when i first played crypt of the necrodancer. its the sort of game that is simultaneously very easy to pick up and very easy to put down.
i'll get the parts i do like out of the way. it's got a great soundtrack, of course, and a number of the characters are actually quite fun to play. the zones get kinda samey but enemy behavior is varied enough that it never gets too repetitive
at least if you're doing well.
part of why i bounced off this game twice before actually completing the game was because losing in this game is miserable. you don't have to start all over from zone 1 (by default, anyways) but the experience of losing repeatedly means hearing the same songs with the same repetitive motions with the same enemies that just keep killing you because you keep putting yourself in bad positions.
it gets dull. really, really dull.
it's not just a "im bad at the game" thing. other rogue-likes with semi-complex gameplay loops like this one don't tend to make me feel bored in the same way, and i think it has to do with the core concept.
see, crypt of the necrodancer is a "rhythm game/dungeon crawler." all of your actions, which would normally be the dungeon crawling, are forced to follow the song's bpm. it's a novel concept, and one that got me interested in the game to begin with.
the thing is, i feel like the game designers spent a lot more time designing the "dungeon crawler" part than the "rhythm game" part. most of the difficulty emerges as a result of an enemy's specific design as opposed to how hard it is to hit notes. for most characters, you don't even need to hit all the notes unless you want to keep your money multiplier.
there are a couple instances where the rhythm element is focused on. that being bolt/coda, king conga, and the tempo up/down buttons, but all of these examples are sparse.
tempo up/down is basically just forcing you to either move faster or slower, either giving you less time to react or more time to react.
king conga is the only song in the game where the beats are not perfectly and evenly spaced out. i really, really wish more songs utilized something like this
bolt/coda is basically a living hyper tempo up button. you hit twice as many beats as normal. all this serves to do is to remove the strategic element of the game and forces you to act on impulse unless you're a top tier player of the game. i don't think most people are, frankly.
that's mostly it. most songs in the game have their notes be perfectly and evenly spaced out from one another. most runs are just mindlessly tap, tap, tapping to the rhythm. the only variation is in the songs themselves.
frankly, i think this is a wasted opportunity. give the actual rhythm part some significance! having more songs playing in different time signatures would go a long way to making the gameplay feel less monotonous. have it be so that maintaining your rhythm rewards you with more damage rather than just a coin multiplier.
but this is mostly why the game would be a soft 3/5 stars as opposed to a more solid 4. because the game, as is, is mostly solid. so why am i rating this 2 stars?
Enter: Aria
i cannot fathom Aria. in what world do you design a roguelike's story mode and have Aria be a required character to beat the main story? Imagine playing The Binding of Isaac and in order to see all of the main story content you have to play as Isaac, then Judas, then THE LOST and you can't finish the story unless you beat the game with all three characters. it's not impossible but why the hell would you gatekeep the last third of the story behind one of the hardest characters in the game?
i grit my teeth playing as Aria. it was baffling to me already but i powered through it and assumed it'd get easier as it went along. it did, to an extent. going from Zone 4 to Zone 1 meant that the difficulty waned a bit over time.
unfortunately, there was little I could do to prepare for the fight with the Golden Lute.
genuinely one of the worst final bosses i've ever had the displeasure of facing. Cadence and Melody had fights against the Necrodancer himself. while not ridiculously easy, it was the sort of difficulty i could practice my way out of.
The Golden Lute is not so simple. I practiced that fight over a hundred times and could only win a quarter of them, even when I knew what I was supposed to do. let's just ignore the fact that the best way to fight the Golden Lute is by playing the fight in the most boring way possible. y'know, once again having to do the monotonous "tap, tap, tapping" against a bounce pad so the boss happens to land next to me because Aria dies if you miss a note and thus normally you have to constantly move.
again, let's ignore that.
the boss's erratic movement patterns, the fact that most of your runs are dependent on a green skeleton knight not spawning in, and the esoteric method to actually landing a critical hit on the boss makes the entire fight a long, ridiculous chore. let's not forget that you have to complete the fight after a whole zone's worth of enemies while playing as the second-most fragile character in the game. but even when playing as a less fragile character the fight is only marginally less cumbersome.
also, whose idea was it to make the final boss move like a BAT
the dam broke when i fought the golden lute. all at once i had the thought of "why the fuck am i even doing any of this?" i was having mild fun, but the game spat in my mouth and told me i'd be having way more fun playing the game with my skin flayed off.
what's that? the amplified dlc? yeah, it's alright. i don't understand why some basic QoL features that werent dependent on dlc content had to be locked behind the dlc, but whatever. nocturna is pretty powerful, which works well for the difficulty of the dlc. frankensteinway and the conductor are both very difficult final bosses, but im not playing a character made of paper. zone 5 works well as an evolution of the dungeon crawler aspect of the game while, as per usual, not doing much for the rhythm game aspect. it's fine, like i said. more fun than the base game.
i think the song's about to end, so i'll just let it run out and ill drop into a new rogueli--
SONG ENDED!
ElectroBiscuit
1 month ago