I 100%'d Biomorph and it's... || Biomorph Review (4K)

[@LucidDreamsStudio]

We are truly humbled by the tier ranking we obtained. It means a lot for the whole dev team. Thank you so much for reviewing the game.

[@MetroidvaniaGuru]

My favorite MV content creator 👑 Thanks for putting this on my radar!

[@johanandersson8646]

Mine too! But a bandage on your wounds, you are my second!

[@MetroidvaniaGuru]

@@johanandersson8646 😆 💀

[@d00mnoodle24]

Legends respecting legends, how awesome. Mine's soulsborne seeker and gamingwithjoy, but the two of you come soon thereafter

[@PieInTheSky9]

I've been using your wonderful maps, and just found out you are a great reviewer and content creator as well!

[@DISCO-munication]

I liked the game a lot and spent 45 hours with it. At one point MVs will have to move away from Hollow Knight but it seems that time has not yet come and this one wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Though it has enough identity to stand on its own!

[@RyanKry]

Biomorph goes in my top 10 best (modern) Metroidvania games list. Taking the 5th spot, just above the Blasphemous games and Ender Lilies, to be precise. It is really good, highly recommended.

[@d00mnoodle24]

Above blasphemous really? Damn i wouldn't go that far but glad you enjoyed it this much

[@LaDeAlPakino]

Finally!! I got to play it. Loved it. I cheated my way with Wraith + Spider biomorphs ^^ when I clearly was not supossed to But didn't take away an inch of fun from the game tho, on the contrary, I wnjoyed it doubly as I love "exploity" sith that gives the player a sense of accomplishment (rather than an "iddle " type solution that doesn't involve gameplay) Again... loved it. Is not that everything that does is completely original, is that everything that copies, it does it well. Makes sense why is in the game and works wonders. With the contact damage... I love that for enemy diversity, how you can use that to make some enemies feel different. By making some enemies have contact damage fit within their design concept that is. If you see some spikey bloated sith coming at you ... should make you ponder getting out of the way ^^ (or engulfed in flames, electric sparkles, etc ) Great game. Great map. Thanks a lot Salu2

[@RyanHGames]

Great review!

[@Ro9ge]

A few questions you didn't talk about much - What was the difficulty level like? Was it leaning on easy or hard? While I prefer harder games, I don't mind easier, but it'll help to have the right expectations. Will it be overly grindy to try and upgrade every weapon, or do they intend for you to pick a few you like, and only upgrade them?

[@demajen]

Difficulty curve was pretty well tuned. I never felt I was doing too little damage, and the way enemies level up the more of them you Biomorph makes them get new attacks, not become sponges. It’s definitely not HK but some of the bosses took a few tries and a couple of 1% wipes. There aren’t any big purchases and fast travel is abundant, so you can be constantly upgrading and trying new stuff as you go. Resources are easy to come by. To get EVERYTHING in the game bought you may need to do a little grinding, but it really depends on how you play.

[@rogerbabin8175]

Love the tier list to help appreciate these reviews. Unfortunately you and I are mixed on what we love about this genre so its hard for me to gauge. For example I recently got Afterimage from humble choice and ultimately gave up on that game within around 6 hours because I just wasn't enjoying the combat. Grime is also one I quit early on. Ender Lillies was just okay. On the other side of things I put Guacamelee in S-tier. Biomorph is on my wishlist thanks to the quality of your review. I'll keep an eye on it when it goes on sale. Thanks!

[@samthefireball]

Wooo ya stopped after 18 seconds but glad to hear. You know what other Metroidvania is great? Minishoot Adventures

[@demajen]

I'd never heard of that one so I've just been and looked it up. Very Bullet Hell. I am NOT good at Bullet Hell. They take me a long time and I get really frustrated with them 😅 That being said, I'm gonna add it to the wishlist!

[@goblack3661]

Do you know why some portions of the map are empty and other have items in them? Black background means unexplored, and blue background means explored, and among those some are empty. Is it that they only include stuff if there is a place of interest there? It's a strange map if you ask me, but it does seem mostly usable like you said.

[@demajen]

It’s for landmarks, yeah. In earlier versions none of the rooms had any kind of visual difference. They were all just blocks. I assume they received feedback that it was hard to navigate. I have no idea if they planned to do images for every room, but considering the performance impact that might have it wouldn’t surprise me if this was either a balancing act or a “ran out of time to act on feedback” situation.

[@goblack3661]

@@demajen what makes it hard to navigate is that paths are not laid out but thank god the connections to the other rectangles are there.

[@goblack3661]

Picked up the game yesterday. Am overall enjoying it but having a hard time wrapping my head around the biomorph mechanic. The fact it disappears upon moving to a new room is a bit annoying. Do a lot of biomorphs have abilities with a fixed limit? There is one in particular that becomes useless in combat after the main (and only) attack reaches its limit. What’s your stance on those matters? I feel it limits/hinders that key feature to make us play a certain way and avoid overusing it.

[@demajen]

To address your thoughts in order: 1) As far as I can tell, your morphed form disappears on changing room so you don't get yourself into any unintentional situations. It also incentivises actually using equippable forms, as well as hunting them down so that you can unlock them, rather than simply trekking from one area to another with the form you want. I've seen a few people mention the dropping forms thing on the Steam forums and it honestly never occurred to me that it would be an issue >_< 2) Attacks with a fixed limit are only for equippable biomorphs, and there are mementos that you can equip too to change the limits. I assume this is a balance thing so that they aren't horrendously powerful, just like how a lot of your ranged weapons have limited ammo. I did 99% of my attacking as Harlo with the Phoenix Fists and Needle Gun (can't remember the actual name) so didn't really experiment with the morph forms in combat too much. About the only time I noticed charges run out was as the jawfish. 3) I think you're spot on in terms of the devs' reasoning for the limitations. Some attacks are clearly MUCH stronger than others. You could trivialise the game if you could have infinite Shroomo attacks, for example. In my opinion, games with lots of weapon options don't tend to be very fun if there is clearly one absolutely superior option to others, but I know a lot of people don't agree. Those are my thoughts, anyways!

[@goblack3661]

@@demajen thanks for taking the time to reply. What you said pretty much "proves" my point. You quickly realised fighting with biomorphs wasn't such a viable option due to the limitations they put in place. And yet the game is named after that whole mechanic, so I think I won't be the only one bringing that up. There might have been a missed opportunity here. With that being said, once you understand what the mechanic is (and what it isn't), the game we are left with is still a very enjoyable one, I won't argue with that.

[@goblack3661]

How were you able to play it if I may ask? Access to an early build? It's coming out in 2 days right?

[@demajen]

Hi! Yes, I saw a retweet on twitter from the PR firm representing Lucid Dreams Studio (the devs/publishers) saying they were open for key requests for content creators, so I filled out the linked GoogleForm and they approved it. It is indeed out on 5th April. Not sure the actual release time, but it's probably the same time most games come out on Steam (which is around 5pm or 6pm GMT for me).

[@zaccaz153]

How difficult is the game? I couldn't get through Hollow Knight because im a baby. Are the difficulty options?

[@demajen]

Difficulty curve worked fine for me as a reasonably low-skilled gamer. Most bosses took 2-5 tries but were enjoyable. Couple of deaths in the open world were due to new enemies and me getting overconfident and not healing. Upgrades to health and attack come frequently enough if you’re exploring and bosses usually drop one or the other. Definitely not HK difficulty.

[@thetwinz4297]

Is it non linear? and are the abilities are unique not your generic ability like double jump or dash?

[@demajen]

I mean, you can turn into a magnetic puddle of goop to stick to certain surfaces (like the spider ball in metroid) or a ghost that can move through a spectral version of certain areas to toggle certain walls and obstacles on and off, but in terms of "unique" that's relative when you've played as many MV games as I have. Everything in most MVs I've seen in at least one or two other places, but I'm not sure I've seen as many of them all in one game as I have with Biomorph. As for non-linear, I'd say no. There's a reasonably straightforward critical path that sends you all over the map and areas and paths are gated by other abilities. Plenty of stuff OFF that critical path if you want to explore, but I don't think you're going to be doing any sequence breaking.

[@EdgarGarak]

It looks like youtube's algorithm just proposed to me what's look like a solid youtube channel! Lucky me! Now I'm off to rest of your content.

[@demajen]

Hello! I hope you find some stuff you like! There’s a lot of variety here, and some of it is vaguely good (in my somewhat biased opinion). 😅

[@Dudeman715]

Oh looks fun.

[@danielrozenek18]

Its on PlayStation???

[@demajen]

Coming to PlayStation in Q3-4 of 2024 according to their website. I never thought to check or mention that in my review. Apologies. I don’t do many review videos. Making notes for next time, if I do another. :)

[@csl9495]

Just got done playing Prince of Persia, Fist forged, and Haak. Games i immediately enjoyed. 20min in this game and im not getting that same enjoyment. Feels gemicky with the power absorbtion thing. Its sort of pointless, so far it only works in its area on the map - meaning you would expect to be using the monster ability to probably move around in that room specifically. Its also lame in the sense that it just takes you away from enjoying the characters main combat system. Also dont like that the games mentioned when you die in a boss fight you basically start back at or very near the boss fight. This game so far it has that annoying hollowknight death-respawn mechanic. I also dont like the visiuals, the colors and overt details just feels distrscting to me. Also coming from those games with voice acting, this one doesn't, now i find myself just skipping through dialouge

[@VAVORiAL]

Game is way too easy, ruins the whole thing for me unfortunately

[@oddie84]

I dont know the sutuation about this game difficulty settings but... previous game from this developers Legends of Ethernal was also easy on easy difficulty. But to obtain platinum trophy you need to complete game on hardcore difficulty and it was pretty hard, especially some bosses. Maybe here the same situation.