Three Metroidvanias to get your mind off Elden Ring

Come one come all, watch me review three Metroidvania games that I've played in the past year and have a lot to say about. Aeterna Noctis, Salt and Sacrifice, and Souldiers, three large games with large personalities and large problems.
Edited by Korsei ► / korsei_
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[@LetsBuildThatApp]

I find myself agreeing with you on Noctis. I really enjoyed it and put in 70 hrs to get to the final boss. That said, I would not recommend this game to anyone that doesn't enjoy difficulty.

[@iancharless]

Aeterna Noctis was great. The platforming is what made it so great. Great soundtrack. Beautiful scenery and hand drawn art. It has everything hollow knight has and more. I'm all about difficulty. It makes the game last and makes earning things more worth it.

[@PregnantAdamSandler]

I'm surprised that Souldiers did not (as far as I know) offer class switching. That seems a no brainer for longer games with actually different (but still silent) main characters.

[@JJ_040]

Personally I like that there is no character swapping. It makes it feel like you are actually playing as an established character with a past.

[@nikkothegoblin]

I can see this not doing as well as the challenge runs so I just wanted to say your work on this video shows! Great editing and pacing as usual, I'm happy to have watched

[@ingeniousclown]

You can thank Korsei for the editing, but I'm happy you enjoyed it!

[@Grizzfor]

YT loves to label channels so this one will be Elden Ring channel for eternity (in case of views). Clown should create another channel for not Elden Ring related videos. Interesting thing is that subscribers are not important. Usually people subscribe to the channel and do not look into subscriptions page so they do not see videos from channels they subscribe to. You can check the bell to get notification but it works if you subscribe just few channels without being annoying. I can not confirm this but I think KZbin unchecks bells for channels you don't go to through notifications. That's just wild guess but I believe I do not get notifications from channels where I am sure I checked bell. So it is better to have less subscribers while you videos are doing well to be promoted to people on main page.

[@alexorr6348]

Forcing down the challenge runner, that's actually kinda sad.

[@BluThundr]

Soulders being much easier now is exactly what i needed to hear as someone who often sucks at but wants to play these kinda games, instant buy.

[@KittenChaos90]

I'm currently playing through Souldiers right now and I do feel the dungeons overstay their welcome. I'm at the Pyramid and I kinda want it to be over at this point. But I like how tight the controls are. I'm playing with The Scout which is heard is the hardest one to start the game with.

[@williammuirhead6927]

On Aeterna Noctis: I’m glad I played it, and its highs were matched only by Hollow Knight. I did a full completion play through first - all collectibles, 100% on save file. The difficulty far exceeded Hollow Knight, with the exception of Pantheon 5 with each binding and all radiant bosses (completed on Xbox and Switch). Then I went for the achievements. Some, like the lore tablet one, did not go through but worked on my second playthrough. Others also had issues. The one where you have to intercept 15 eggs during Wormorok did not work across FOUR playthroughs. I found this annoying, and even though it never ended up working, didn’t bug me that much since it’s early game and not super difficult to replicate. Now for the sour part. The hitless bosses were hard, although I got through most. Then came the Emperor, the most soul-crushingly difficult feat I accomplished hitless. When THAT achievement didn’t work, what I felt was in an entirely different universe from frustration. When 2 days (probably 15 hours in game time) go by and the achievement doesn’t work, I felt nothing short of unbridled fury. Upon contacting the team on discord, I got nothing more than “New games have bugs quite often. Try to understand”. Despite having only slime queen and Queen of light to do (aside from emperor) hitless, this experience left such a sour taste in my mouth that I stopped playing since then. If you’re going to have such achievements with ridiculous difficulty requirements, the LEAST you could do is have them work. I don’t do it for fun, I do it so I can earn the shiny thing on my profile because completion makes me happy. With that, I recommend the game to anyone with a lust for difficulty. However, most of these people also care about achievement hunting. Without these issues, I would happily place the game on the same pedestal as Hollow Knight and Ori 2. Until then, I’m in agreement with you. It’s good and most certainly not great.

[@dtPlaythroughs]

I LOVED Salt & Sanctuary. I didn't know Salt & Sacrifice is so different. What a let down. Will still play of course. One game I'd like people to check out is Death's Gambit. I thought it was a phenomenal game and that was before the new update that pretty much remade the entire game to be more of a Metroidvania. I just don't get how that isn't more beloved. I think it's a really warning to indies to start strong because Death's Gambit came out and it was jank. Word of mouth tanked the game. It went to Game Pass, after many patches, and I gave it a shot and loved it. So, so good.

[@feraldrgn]

I didn't know Death's Gambit wasn't successful, I just grabbed the Afterlife version recently & I'm stuck deciding on a 1st class that would be good until NG+20. It's a shame you can never change the 1st class, only the 2nd.

[@BlondeMcGuinn]

Your Bloodstained video was in my feed today (the first video of yours recommended to me in a long while), so I watched it again lol and then got recommended this. Perfect. I love Metroidvanias and Souldiers looks pretty good. Aeterna doesn’t sound made for me as I can’t stand doing platforming gauntlets as a part of backtracking. A few Metroidvanias I’ve played recently that I dig are Death’s Gambit, Guacamelee 2 and Fallen Order. I recommend all of them. Great video man, hope you’re doing well.

[@SefricFrampus]

Thanks for the video. I'm pretty sad with how salt and sacrifice turned out. Salt and Sanctuary is one of my faves and I was hoping for a great sequel while waiting for the end of the epic exclusiveness. Now they took everything I don't like from monster hunter and mashed into it... sad. But at least now I'm sure to check Souldiers. It was on my list for some time but I was reluctant. Btw, have you ever heard of Valdis Story Abyssal City? Highly recommend, very nice metroidvania rpg.

[@ingeniousclown]

Many people have suggested it to me over the years and I've tried it on three or four separate occasions but could never get into the combat. Maybe it's about time I try it again lol

[@enrymion9681]

Souldiers does seem quite interesting, recently I got struck with the urge to play some metroidvanias and I did look at Aeterna Noctis and I think Souldiers was just about to release at the time but in the end went with Astalon Tears of the Earth which I like quite a bit now and my plan was to get Monster Sanctuary or Phoenotopia Awakening after that but ended up getting distracted so thanks for the reminder to continue with that and to potentially include Souldiers too.

[@Neopolis3]

Good to see more review/analysis video from you, clown! Let's hope the algorithm agrees🤞

[@fwenny]

first game giving me MAJOR Wings of Vi vibes, one of my favorite platformers. I am definitely checking it out.

[@starscorpia4005]

Soulders should have had a legacy mode and the current mode as is for less skilled players like me honestly....i found souldiers unfun with how hard it was

[@canniballollocaust9174]

alt title: Can I Make A KZbin Video That Is Not A Challenge Run?

[@ingeniousclown]

More like will KZbin let it succeed

[@DarkinBladeGaming]

Been waiting for you to do another video on metroidvanias, since that's what I initially subscribed for. Nice coincidence that your first one in a while also happens to be on my birthday. Hope you make more!

[@joelhatterini6392]

This is the content I subscribed for. Too bad KZbin hates it for some reason.

[@SFotakos]

I can't really understand how a game becoming less difficult can make it drop so steeply in your ranking. It's like you said, all the good parts are still there, just the pacing through the level changed. Also I played Souldiers on the hardest difficulty this year and I can see it being easy for people that enjoy pixel perfect platformers but some of your complaints about health scaling don't seem to apply to the current hardest difficulty. Enemies could still kill you in a few hits, they still took a few hits to kill, they just weren't mini bosses anymore. I 100% agree with the duration, and UI issues. That's my 2 cents, thank you for the review!

[@randomnobody660]

It's surprisingly not as different imo. I really liked the game. I started around when master came out and liked it so much (or was so bored) I did 90+% with scout and 100% w/ the other 2. Then I grabbed an old copy and tried the old difficulty. The most major differences are that early game you get actually 1-2 shot rather than just feeling like that while actually tanking like 3-4 hits, and that I learned the summoner is absolute BS and I completely stat checked him the previous few times. Other than that the enemies you learned to fight basically feel the same. Most things still feel fair to formulaic, the game still doesn't feel like it's balanced around you finding every healing upgrade, esp once coins stop being an issue, etc. I haven't gotten there but I also imagine the final boss still isn't not designed around you having the 7 full heal + 7 half heal fruits saved across the entire game. Oh and the clone guy's room bugged out on me and the room got stuck thru reloading somehow WITHOUT SAVING. I really just wanted a 100% og difficulty victory lap and this completely killed my enjoyment. Anyways it's been many months and I think I'm ready to try again. If anybody else wants to do this I highly HIGHLY recommend playing on PC and backing up saves.

[@pibbles_]

Late to the party but here's an algorithm boost comment, I like your challenge runs but all your videos are great and I wanna help keep you from being forced down a particular path

[@deedd4401]

exploration first.. combat second... ohh gaaawwd ... how i wish there were more people makin vids like you do

[@ingeniousclown]

idk if that was sarcastic or not lol

[@deedd4401]

@@ingeniousclown hell no ... I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS RULE!!! and i don't think i've seen anyone to say it before you . ... no joking.

[@Akrioz]

Was kinda excited for Aeterna Noctis before I realised that it is a White Palace: The Game. Have you played F.I.S.T. Forged in Shadow Torch? One of my favourite metroidvania last year?

[@ingeniousclown]

I gave it a try around its release date. I can't remember any specifics, but I didn't stick with it. Didn't grab me.

[@raymondbenito1405]

Getting near 100% in Aeterna Noctis in 46 hours on the OG difficulty is super impressive. I’d love to see one of these on the recently released Haiku the Robot, Islets and HAAK, and the upcoming Moonscars and Ghost Song

[@ingeniousclown]

I wouldn't mind doing more but KZbin is making sure that these aren't profitable for me :(

[@HansAlRachid]

I bought Aeterna Noctis a while ago after watching this video and I can't help but agree with you that its scale is the game's biggest problem. That and the genuinely shitty controls for the arrow aiming - Ori handled that concept much better and I can't help but wish they'd tweak it to make it smoother. Souldiers sounds great as well, I'll give the highest difficulty a shot when I get around to that game. I'm always thankful for some metroidvania recommendations, that genre is so damn overcrowded that it can be impossible to find the good ones in the pile.

[@flucke1000]

Dont let the algo shoe horn you into a category! You go man

[@ThisChannelIsNoLongerActive777]

I would love to see you play and review MARROW on steam. Nice video :)

[@hide1986]

When you said salt&sanctuary, i was like nooooooo!!! Like mistress ching saying nooooo!!!!

[@satoshinakamoto9597]

My friend you’re right. Very good game with “from software” difficulty, my only issue. It became so difficult , I began just exploring and listening to the awesome soundtrack …..esp the green path. I can’t wait for silk song but one can already assume that it will also be one of souls like difficulty.

[@m4jqp]

I appreciate that Salt and Sacrifice insight. I really enjoyed the first one, but this second one doesn't seem quite like my cup of tea, which is a bit disappointing.

[@raymondbenito1405]

Man Souldiers should’ve been so great, but the devs bungled up post launch support really badly.

[@ingeniousclown]

We'll have to see where it lands after all the patching. At the moment it does sort of feel like a mess of band-aids but at least they're trying to please the community. It makes me really hopeful for the possible sequel, too.

[@DevTwoThousand]

Souldiers has been on my radar for a WHILE now, and this has convinced me to buy it, bless. Man, can you believe how old that ring was, btw?

[@frylord666]

Rant alert, beware! Salt and sacrifice is incredible. It somehow managed to combine the worst parts of both metroidvanias AND monster hunter games. I played trough it completely with daggers (big mistake since greatsword attacks faster and does more damage) and it worsened my mental state considerably, especially the final area with those goddamn chairs. Firstly the metroidvania parts. No fast-travel, gotta backtrack constantly, the hub is weird, tedious and grab heavy enemies plus your movement abilities are pretty boring compared to sanctuary. flipping gravity, walljump and invisible platforms get replaced with clunky grapplehook, invisible platforms 2 but worse and the most useless glider in videogame history (You can't even glide with the stupid thing). The glider could have been so fun but nope, you can only use it in wind tunnels. And for the monster hunter parts. The armor does nothing, no one gives a crap about elemental resistance in any monster hunter game. You know what people care about? Armor skills. Yes you can equip a single dagger, amulet and 2 rings with unique effects, but that's so barebones it may as well not be there. I had no desire to craft any of the mages armor after I got a boss set from the stable guy, cause it looked cool (unlike 80% of mage armor) and actually protected me. Just for comparison on armor skills I'm gonna bring up monster hunter rise examples. Mail of hellfire (Magnamolo armor) reduces my health but gives me more attack, dereliction (Gaismagorm armor) constantly drains my health and offers bonuses in return, status trigger (golden Rathian armor) triples the status power of my weapons after dodging and foray (golden Rathian and Espinas armors) deals more damage to monsters under a status effect. These are the main skills of my sets and only specific armor sets have these, so I have to make a build around them. In addition to these I have skills that give crit chance, attack, defence, faster potion drinking, reduced cooldowns, extra elemental damage, more weakpoint damage and so much more. In salt and sacrifice my build was, 10% more damage (corpsemage dagger), 10% more stamina regen (aeromage talisman), 10% defence (kineticmage ring), faster grappling (fungalmage ring). That's it. Some will say well your armor skills are your levels and that's another issue. You introduced levels and stat requirements into a HUNTER GAME. See all this cool stuff you can make with from this mage? You can't use any of it. The daggers I used needed 3 daggering and 5 arcane.... But I have 5 arcane? Oh no that's 5 holy arcane you leveled up you silly goose, you needed 5 dark arcane. THANK GOD there's some respec mechanic. Also you can't freely respec in a HUNTER GAME where you are usually encouraged to make DIFFERENT builds for different encounters. Give us like 5 skill tree loadouts so we can switch between them please. Overall they released some patches so the game went from aggressively rip my hair out to just rip my hair out. 2/10 they're lucky epic doesn't have user reviews yet. Also sorry for the long rant, I was really looking forward to this game and bought it despite what others warned me about, cause I wanted to give it a fair chance. Don't make my mistake people.

[@ingeniousclown]

Damn, SaltSac did you dirty, huh. I don't think it's quite as bad as your rant, but I also didn't go in with quite the expectations that you had.

[@frylord666]

@@ingeniousclownYeah I was playing next to a friend and he said he saw me slowly descend into madness. I don't know how long after release you tried it, but I tried it day one and it was an experience. Like you would get grabbed by invisible enemies still getting spawned by mages. It is in a tolerable state now at least. kzbin.info/www/bejne/n2ayY4uggLikn5I&ab_channel=Phemeto. You can see the player get hit multiple times by a enemy still spawning in at the very start of the video and this was every mage for the whole game. I'm gonna stop myself before I start ranting again. Great video btw. I would have probably liked souldiers before the patch. It really reminds me of Vagante, which is basically the same game but as a Spelunky type rougelike.

[@ingeniousclown]

​@@frylord666 Souldiers is still pretty good and worth playing I think. How easy it is to me _now_ could very well be a product of how "gud" I was forced to "git" under the original oppressive difficulty. AFAIK the devs are still trying to patch it and make everyone happy, so it's worth keeping an eye on at least.

[@guillermoreyes9054]

Hello. Talking about metroidvanias, are you planning to talk about Metroid Dread in the near future? I'm really looking forward to your review and analysis :)

[@gigaganon]

Damn, i had no idea about souldiers patch, i'm glad i finished it in hard mode before it was launched... the devs should give the option to play the original version (in the steam parameter, beta and stuff)

[@ingeniousclown]

Last I heard they're working on a patch to appease the people who liked the brutality of the original.

[@TheAtmaNex]

Sacrifice's mage chasing was annoying. I had to put the controller down and play something better. Sanctuary was so much better.

[@Phirestar]

Looking forward to playing Salt & Sacrifice myself, despite all the negative reception I’ve been hearing about it. The disjointed levels change to the world does sound disappointing, but oh well. Lack of fast travel, I’m not really bothered by, considering I don’t think Sanctuary did a good job of implementing that either. I’ve never actually used a single one of the between-areas shortcuts in 100 hours of playing Salt & Sanctuary, due to the over-abundance of Guide statues. It was pretty much just the same as playing the later Souls games after DS1, where you can just teleport to everywhere important that you need to go. Less of a downgrade / improvement from S&S 1, and more just a rearranging of the flawed pieces, I guess. As for the rest of the criticisms, I’ll just have to see it for myself. None of it sounds particularly bad, to me.

[@ricardorien]

Souldiers is GOLD

[@magicalspell3399]

That aeterna worth to play like hell. I was sure I am able to beat the game but at the end I did . What an incredible experience with a unique environment 👏. Also hollow knight the man who made this game is a genius

[@TotalRaMpAgE981]

Salt and Sanctuary is one of my favorite souls likes; Sacrifice just has a lot of ideas that could work but are were poorly implemented. Too many of the ideas in it makes just seem under-baked or not well thought out. I'd love to see another game try to do something similar and focus more on what makes the genres it incorporates fun.

[@kobunnight]

Really disappointed to here about Souldiers. Just hearing about it now and I'm super curious what it feels like to play, or at least was. Really wish I knew about it sooner. And with no preservation of previous versions, I'm sad I might never get to play the game in it's release, despite it's issues. 😞

[@daggerdude]

I hope this does well enough for it to be worth making, i love the elden ring content, but thisnis great too.

[@ingeniousclown]

So far it's performing as well as expected: extremely poorly. :(

[@daggerdude]

@@ingeniousclown hey man, theres always a balance between passion and profit, if you keep doing what works, people that enjoy what you do out of passion will alsp start gathering, theres loads of people that enjoy elden ring and metroidvania, so even if the algorithm shows them the elden ring challenge run, maybe they'll check out the rest too, i know i did. Keep your head up, the grind is hard but theres a method to the madness :)

[@mrw3951]

Two things for Souldiers: 1) I need Anubis DLC. That plot beat got dropped too quickly. 2) I agree with you about the difficulty spike plummeting. I got all the way to the last 3 bosses and stayed on 1.0 the whole time on purpose, just to see if I could do it. But I was already pushing 45 hours in and I thought I was going to crack my molars from how mind numblingly hard that Dra. Was. To me, personally. When the patch was implemented I legit bulldozed it in 2 tries and I felt honestly terrible for giving myself that much of an out. I felt like I'd cheated myself out of something special. I knew it was a nerf but I didn't realize a boss that had me stuck for 2 hours would go down that quickly. An extra thought: getting stuck out of experiment 0.5's questline on Ver. 1.0 and it DIDNT GET FIXED in the patch really put me off the game.

[@feraldrgn]

Aeterna Noctis sounds like my worst nightmare, I love the longer metroidvanias because I lose interest once I finish a game but if that playtime is spent with tediously difficult platforming gauntlets I'll *hate* it. I'm more of an explorer than a fast reflexes gamer, an interconnected world helps. I enjoyed Hollow Knight but some of the platforming segments to find later abilities were frustratingly difficult to the point of lessening my enjoyment of the game overall. Ah, what a shame about Salt & Sacrifice, not sure what they were thinking by lessening the metroidvania aspect that they got so right in the 1st game & focusing on hunting & crafting instead. I grabbed Souldiers (on the Switch) just recently because of the patch notes about reduced difficulty, I'm not one for insane challenge but if it ends up too easy then I guess for once I'll stick it on the highest difficulty. I'm somewhat cautious about playing it though as I've read a few things about your save file randomly corrupting. Another metroidvania that is worth getting is Death's Gambit Afterlife, though similarly to Souldiers I've read a couple of posts about save corruption.

[@aussiedigger1441]

Unfortunately my saves stopped working at the fire temple. So I did a 10hr stint to end boss without saving at check points & my switch crashed on the loading to end level and lost everything back to the very start of fire temple? Shame because it's a beautiful game!

[@kachet-kl7me]

I really liked SaS 2 in some moments, but yes, it loses some variativity and fun. So unless original SaS i play each year, Sacrifice is single-time game for me. Unless Steam release improve online segment of the game so at least we can have some fun PvP. I tried it on release and really liked it.

[@Inferno-sx1ry]

Played Aeterna Noctis on XSX for more then 20 hours. There were 3 times when saved game was corrupted and I started to play from 5%. Lucky I could restore last save from cloud a few times. But last time after 60% of completion the game the corruption of save files was unrecoverable! It just pissed me off! And I'm not alone! There's few years of error existance and no developers reaction! Just deleted that! Never again! But the game was good. But for those who loved "The path of pain" part in Hollow Knight. Really hard platforming sometimes.

[@dragonclaw4159]

Ingenious clown gaming, quick question: your challenge runs are getting heavily recommended by the platform because elden ring is popular at the moment. That on top of challenge runs being a very popular topic, and youtube wants people to see it. At least that's my theory. If that's the case, what happens when the hype around elden ring dies down?

[@fpsgoku4207]

The achievements in souldiers are so buggy, i eneded up beating that game 9 times just to get every achievement

[@knate44]

Yes, more Metroidvania is always good

[@kingoppsanti5830]

Soulders or vigil the longest night?

[@colorgreen8728]

I can take the challenge run KZbinr title off your hands don’t worry

[@richa8855]

I do enjoy challenge runs. But I also appreciate a critique on lesser known metroidvanias, and other videos like it. Thanks for doing these too, I hope you can continue to produce them.

[@rafresendenrafresenden.1644]

still waiting for that Souldiers patch to make the master mode more dificult (probably next month I hope) and I can't agree with your philosophy about reducing the health of the bosses, you have to feel what the character is feeling, that is a great form of immersion. Souldiers has a Discord you could try talking to the devs directly "net working" is really impontat you need to try it more. By the way good video, glad to have you back.

[@elnogal9298]

I sadly think you didn't do justice to Aeterna Noctis, particularly, I've been playing and while the game is difficult, I didn't find map traversal as tedious as you say like not at all, the tp bolt is one of the best traversal mechanics I've used in a game plus you have a dash and a TRIPLE jump. So you have plenty more maneuverability than in other Metroidvanias. It sure is difficult and has lots of platforming challenges but it's literally the point of this game. They tell you how brutal and unforgiving it is, so you not liking those things doesn't make the game fall short from great but for you is not that good because you simply don't like the kind of challenge it offers .-.

[@ingeniousclown]

Bro I play Kaizo Mario ROMhacks for fun, I love these sorts of challenges. It's been a while since I've made this video but what made the traversal tedious was having to do the challenging platforming over and over and over again as I was exploring backtracking for upgrades or, especially near the end of the game. The challenges are fun the first time. There are many areas that are just plain annoying once you go through them the 4th or 10th time. The extra maneuverability alleviates the tedium, but not enough.

[@elnogal9298]

But you have a way to return back to teleports and many of them to move around, I'm doing a playthrough right now and I haven't found tedious returning for upgrades or anything, I don't know if you didn't use the purple potions that get you back to checkpoints but I sincerely can't find the tediousness. TPs aren't that far from one another except for some special cases and you have almost 0 sec CD on your dash at that point in the game, plus the triple jump makes everything so easy, but well, I suppose different people different experiences n.n @@ingeniousclown

[@elnogal9298]

Like I don't remember any "challenging platforming" I had to do more than one or two times. So I can't know which areas are plain annoying for you sadly.

[@qwormuli77]

The biggest problem with Souldiers' difficulty in my opinion wasn't that it was too high, but the completely ludicrous spiking every now and then. 80-90 percent of the rooms were from easy to manageable on my first run (scout, medium/hard at launch?) and ~10% were hard. It was the last 5% were the problem, being randomly insanely difficult to a silly degree, unironically being like a third of the entire (almost completionist) run. That, in addition to the balance being generally wack in other areas too, are the reason that I can't recommend it in good faith, but instead offer the original version to Metroidvania fan friends as a prank. And the easy mode patch then ruined the rest of the game, turning the tense into tedious. The game was carried by the challenge, but couldn't handle it well.

[@qwormuli77]

Oh, and if you're looking for Metroidvanias to try (based on the video you're watching) I can heartily recommend Grime. Not well known, but easily in the top five I've ever played, possibly even top three.

[@qasderfful]

By the way it just occured to me that your channel somehow doesn't have any video for Phoenotopia: Awakening. Or I didn't find it. It's something you should look into. I will say that: despite its clunkiness in places, it's a masterpiece of the same magnitude as Hollow Knight and CrossCode.

[@ingeniousclown]

That's been chilling in my library for quite a while. Been meaning to play it

[@DannyHauckTTV]

This video makes me smile. :)

[@philflick_]

Great video. Salt and sacrifice was such a dissapointing game, like they could've made a great sequel to salt and sanctuary that improves on some flaws off the first game, but unfortunately that's not what we got with salt and sacrifice. Also i would highly recommend grime and unsighted, they are both great metroidvanias

[@ingeniousclown]

I've heard great things about GRIME

[@l0rdfr3nchy7]

Unsighted so good, like Crosscode without the grinding. Grime is ok.

[@robinvanrossum4522]

your thoughts about a bare fist only elden ring run?

[@ingeniousclown]

This poor soul already did it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/lZOVnaSjn5WWe9k I never will, it's just too much.

[@gaberobert4117]

Comment for the algorithm

[@CARLOSHUAYTA]

You know what's a funny coincidence? Two of the three games here (Aeterna and Souldiers) had less than stellar launches on consoles with load problems and minor crashes on Switch and save corruption bugs on PS4/PS5 and sometimes in Xbox. The difference between those two games, however, is that the Aeterna team is still working on fixing those issues (they still shouldn't have released their game on consoles with the save corruption bug) and has been communicating with costumers(there is still some frustration with the bugs) and will release what they promise to be their biggest optimization update + new content in the next months. The Souldiers team, however, has pretty much been dead silent for half a year except for the ocassional comment every few months. No updates, no fixes to the save issues in PS5 even though they promised to fix them, they don't even have plans to fix the extremely long Switch times or the crashes. People have been wanting refunds or some kind of acknowledgement for months now. Pretty disappointing, imo. I'm still in the process of playing Aeterna, but I have more confidence in the future of that game than Souldiers, because there is still some kind of communication between players and devs. Souldiers devs have left their console players to deal with their issues across every platfrom and have stained their reputation, at least for many of those who played it.

[@ingeniousclown]

That's disappointing. I liked Souldiers a lot and thought there was a LOT of promise for the devs, hopefully they're just nose-down working on console fixes (that stuff can be very difficult)

[@LeoStaley]

I'm new here. I loved the video but I felt likit could have been edited down much shorter, to its benefit. You repeated s bunch of your points about each game.

[@ingeniousclown]

New? It says you've been subscribed for three years.

[@LeoStaley]

@@ingeniousclown oh. I, uh... Guess I'm just shitty fan/subscriber. I'm disappointed in myself for that. I still appreciated the video, still hold my opinion that it should have been shorter, and also appreciate that editing any writing or script down is a whole lot of hard effort and I don't want to be... You know what, I've made a fool of myself, and I'm just going to shut up. I admire you for actually getting out there and writing scripts and making videos, while I just dream of it.

[@ingeniousclown]

Naah don't feel shitty over it, it's mostly KZbin's fault for making being a subscriber relatively useless as far as showing you a creator's videos goes. The platform hasn't been terribly generous to me. And hey if making videos is something you wanna do, it's never too late to start!

[@jandavidsernaesquerra3443]

Great vídeo man Honestly i hate the souls effect, making great games increíble hard which to me is unecessary. I respect people who likes that, but I'm the man with no time to put a lot into this dificulty thing. I'm the man who just wants to chill out playing a great Game. Peace folks.

[@surestrange]

Aeterna Noctis is indeed difficult and a huge game but I think it’s awesome. Vigil The Longest Night was another one I came across that was pretty similar but not as difficult

[@kingoppsanti5830]

How you like Vigil? Better than death gambit after life?

[@surestrange]

@@kingoppsanti5830 man, that's a tough one because I like both a lot. If I had to pick one or the other i'd pick Vigil. All things being equal, visually Vigil is awesome. The bosses are way better in Vigil, and the mood of the game is darker and feels more real. Love Death's Gambit also tho

[@saiemkhan1329]

aeterna noctis is amazing.

[@OldyAlbert]

Aeterna Noctis was legit my favorite game this year. It's janky at times and i agree that i can't recommend it to most people, put for people it clicks - it does stronger then any Hollow Knight. Imposing your "what i think Metroidvania should be" is a liming way to judge. I played it after patches but on default hard mode, even killed optional super boss that was maybe too much for me. Each time some cool game came out game critics rush to call it "not fair", "tidious", "not real difficulty" or something like that. But i can't remember last time i had so much fun exploring level AND killing bosses AND upgrading my character and thinking about builds. Difficulty bring up the depth of every mechanic, guard it from trivialization that most games have. Teleporting NPC is bull tho, it's the only quest i never finished. I also amost teared my asshole playing the big planet challenge for a dark arrow. I specifically used keyboard for that one challenge, since it's too wierd not to follow the angle of movement with analog stick. Souldiers is a funny game. I never played it, but it seems that half of the audiece cryed it's too hard, they made it too easy and other half started to cry it's too easy. I downloaded the old version totally legally tho, so maybe i'll try the original version one day. That situation give me even more respect for AN that left original balance in tact. I can't respect the devs that not respect their vision themselves. Will try new Salt when it's on Steam.

[@JJ_040]

Dude there was no reason to show the Brigard boss fight, you just spoiled it for me :/

[@ingeniousclown]

sorry :(

[@JJ_040]

@@ingeniousclown haha oh well, no problem. Good video btw. Thanks for the other recommendations.

[@TreeWiseBig]

Salt and Sacrifice was a weird expreince for me. I have finished Sanctuary for like 7 times, Sacrifice 3. My biggest gripe with Sacrifice is traversal tools. They unlock new areas but do nothing more. Probably because of Multiplayer. No air dash, no double jump, no new moveset. Which makes traversing the World boring. Most of the issues I have with the game can be fixed easily, however I think it would lower the quality of the multiplayer. Which is, I guess a trade-off. Other than that ng+ versions of the game becomes hard as hell and I had more fun with ng+. I stopped thinking about it like a metroidvania and more like a rage platformer/fighter game since everything either one or two-shotted me.

[@Noumakara]

I agree. This game is too platformy for my taste

[@poentecontentejoga]

iishh! Didn't know about Salt and Sacrifice beeing so different from the first game (which I really liked). That's a huge turn off for me. Not a fan of monster hunter stuff

[@colorgreen8728]

I love salt and sacrifice, it’s a great game and I’m proud of the devs

[@MAX-yd2bs]

noice

[@sebastercats6123]

I'm surprised there's no one complimented Salt & Sacrifice here. Well, as a fan of this game and played the game for more than hundreds of hours solo, I can definitely comment on why this game has its charm. Although, I never played the first game, Salt and Sacrifice, since I didn't got the time to play it before. To start of, I feel like if you play this game with a metroidvania perspective and mindset, you will be SORELY disappointed. As you know, this game is like Dark Souls + Monster Hunter WITH a metroidvania look and feel. So, obviously this game is more suited for DS & MH fans, which I'm also a fan of. If I had to guess on the genre balance, it's 60% Monster Hunter, 30% Dark Souls and 10% Metroidvania genre. So it's totally understandable why people are frustrated and disappointed by this game, because the game targets a different audience. Now, to explain why Salt & Sacrifice is "fun", if you ever played MH or DS, obviously it's about the combat and the hunting. Just like Monster Hunter, you hunt monsters, they run away mid-fight, you bare with the difficulty, jankiness and the stupid hitboxes. It has all the essential for a Monster Hunter game, while also having Dark Souls mechanics (Bonfires, hub world, weapon variety, etc.) People say the game is tedious, unfair, clunky and lacks a storyline. Well... THAT'S THE POINT! Playing and embracing all of these flaws is what the game intends to give, the MH & DS vibes! The point of the mages running away is to prolong the "thrill of the hunt" same as with MH, the combat and dodge rolls with the weapon variety is the foundation of Dark Souls combat, the unfair difficulty gives the feeling of "growing pains" same with both MH & DS. Again, it's all about the hunting and grinding aspect, the materials of the hunt results in better weapons and gear, which is the most stimulating part of these kinds of games. I get that it's not very exciting at first, I've been there before myself, but once you play it for a long time, you'll learn to accept this and have fun with what the game offers. Basically, it's a MH/DS game that blends well with the 2D Metroidvania genre, this kind of game shouldn't work, but the devs somehow make it work but suffers from the limitations of being a 2D game. Though, I'd argue that's the beauty of it, through all of its flaws, you gradually tolerate and find "fun" while playing the game. I know it might sound masochistic, but that's why I like to call it "growing pains" instead, honing your mastery of hunting and combat while also bearing with the frustration and unfairness. Overall, this game really feels like its own game, and not a successor to Salt & Sanctuary. The disappointment comes from people who expect something new and better, except that "new" is entirely different from everyone's expectation and is totally not for its original fans. A shame for metroidvania fans but a gain for MH/DS fans (Maybe more towards MH fans), I'd say.

[@awang8811]

How about blasphemous

[@stinkyratman]

comment algorithm

[@Strill_]

Salt and Sanctuary was one of my favorite metroidvanias. I was super hyped for the sequel, and incredibly disappointed. No combined world. No environmental storytelling. The mages are just shoehorned into some arbitrary location with no relevance or impact on the environment. You don't get to learn how they each came to be mages or why they look so strange. The mage hunting system is gamey and breaks immersion. You have to find some arbitrary spot to go into "Mage Hunting mode" instead of just stumbling across a mage in a set location like a real metroidvania. There's some silly gamey pointer to direct you to the mage, instead of getting to actually follow a trail left by the mage. Worst of all, no secrets, and barely any lore. The skill tree of all things is jam-packed with lore that is incredibly tedious to read, while there are barely any lore tidbits when exploring the world. They could've just stuck that lore all throughout the world and it would've been vastly improved. Huge disappointment.

[@qasderfful]

You know, we don't mind if you'll bring metroidvanias back to your channel. Not at all.

[@ingeniousclown]

Yeah well watch the views on this video VS the challenge runs. It's not my audience that's forced me away, it's the stupid platform

[@qasderfful]

@@ingeniousclown That's due to Elden Ring being extremely popular, I guess. But I understand. At any rate, your analysis and reviews, especially for the metroidvania and, perhaps, zelda-like genres, are always welcome.

[@paulm2518]

Aeterna Noctis could have been great but for some reason the devs wanted to make it the FromSoft metroidvania equivalent. It's constantly punishing from the outset for no reason. Learning bosses by repeatedly dying is tedious and the reliance on constant one hit deaths is just plain boring.

[@mathewhosier9739]

I disagree, whether it's a souls game or a metroidvania, combat should be #1, character progression should be #2 then exploration is #3, as important as exploration is in both these genres I feel like combat and character progression are still more important

[@Incalor]

I found Hollow Knight easy, even Path of Pain. But I stopped playing Aeterna Noctis after finishing 6 areas, 5 trial doors, 5 bosses hitless and getting 30 odd glass shards through the platforming sections. Because I realized the game is just one spike area after another. You could get through them after 20 odd tries or so, but with so many new games left to play, I don't have time to put in 5-6 hours everyday just to make progress through 2 screens. I think these devs are way too caught up in their own "grandeur" and forgot to make a fun game. If they had restricted the hard platforming to just the trials and made the main path more interesting, gating items and progression behind minibosses instead of platforming similar to the trials, it would have been fun. It's a bullshit game, despite some great boss designs. It also doesn't help that though I am not bad at platforming, I hate games like Celeste and Super Meat Boy that entirely focus on it.

[@shineymcshine435]

"...My favourite metroidvanis since Hollow Knight, now it's just okay? I guess? " "Don't get me wrong, Souldiers is a good game". I'm getting mixed signals here, which is it; a begrudging 'it's okay' or good? It can't really be both. I kind of feel sorry for developers, poor bastards can't win. Community whined that it was too hard, so they fixed it. So now the community whinges that it's too easy, so again, they fixed it. So, of course, the community whined about that. I think developers should just stick to their own vision for their games, and not try to please everyone, all the time.

[@byakazyaka]

I'm just gonna assume recommending these three is a joke