Not only are the combos sexy: the fact that you sweep down low on the floor and propel yourself forward while performing them means you can use them to dodge a lot of attacks by moving under or past the enemy hitbox! And they cost no FP, so you can spam them without investing in the blue bar.
Farron Greatsword is just the GOAT weapon imo, so much fun to use. And yeah, built in parry because why not.
Yeah it's a bit of a shame that Artorias is kind of not that hard. One of my dream games is a full Dark Souls 1 remake where they keep the world as-is, finish the areas in the last third where they ran out of money and time and just threw shit together and upgrade the bosses to modern FromSoft DS3/ER level movesets.
Something like that would be near-lethal doses of absolute cinema.
DS3 is great, you should definitely play it! Well, Road of Sacrifices and the obligatory Miyazaki-says-fuck-you Poison Swamp truly are horrendous, but besides those it's a great experience! It's a shame it doesn't have the sprawling, open exploration of DS1, but what it does have is great level design in the areas that are there, fantastic visual design and several amazing bosses.
Plus one of FromSoft's best ever boss soul weapons. Look up the Farron Greatsword and its moveset!
People didn't call Dave the Diver an indie game. The Game Awards nominated it in that category, and rightly got a lot of shit for it.
Indie is a fraught and vague term in whatever genre of culture it gets applied to. During the early 00s indie music era you had tons of mass produced "indie rock" pushed out by big labels too.
Everyone kind of knows what it's supposed to mean: small budget, small crew, independent of the major commercial publishers/labels/whatever. But there will always be edge cases in both directions.
I agree with your take. The definition of what an "indie" is is very vague and subjective, but given the budget and resources and circumstances of E33's development it seems outside the scope of what seems to be the "spirit of the award".
Blue Prince should have gotten the award to begin with.
I know it's simple and sort of classically edgy and I might be swayed by the lore, but Knight Artorias will always be one of my favourites. First time playing that fight was just so awesome.
DS3 has some bangers too, hard pick for me between Dancer and Abyss Watchers.
Okay fine I might succumb to this. The Darkwood 2 announcement led me to some video essays absolutely raving about how good Darkwood is, so maybe I need to try it.
Is Seance of Blake Manor the first Blue Prince-like? I'm very hyped about it too but I'm still waiting for more than -25% off. Let me know how you like it, Blue Prince was my GOTY so another game to scratch that itch is enticing.
No idea, but probably? Might have to do some wine fuckery but on the surface it doesn't look like the sort of thing that should be impossible on Linux.
My plan to work on my backlog this fall has utterly failed. Instead I've not been playing any games at all for the past month and a half, instead just working on a mod for STALKER Anomaly. Consequently I know in my heart of hearts that the right thing to do is not spend any money this sale. However, I am still looking at:
I played Mandragora this summer. Liked it quite a bit. It's not going to change your whole world but it's a solid Soulslike Metroidvania. Compared to other entries in the genre it's extremely light on platforming (which for me was a plus), so keep that in mind if you play these kind of games for the precision platforming. The platforming is there as part of the level design and traversal, but don't expect to be challenged with long sequences of difficult platforming if that's what you're after.
Otherwise it's a lot of fun, the PoE-inspired skill tree is great and lets you do some fun multiclassing by moving over to adjacent skill trees to find combos and synergies. Some of the spellcasting classes can be pretty broken though, so keep that in mind if you don't want to make the game a cakewalk. Chaos magic in particular was pretty busted, at least when I played.
Exploration is good, it's exactly what you'd expect from a Metroidvania: new stuff opens up in old areas when you unlock new traversal abilities. Also the game is very pretty to look at.
Yes, absolutely be aware that as far as I know the only person who was involved in making Disco Elysium and still works on ZA/UM is Anton Vill (who drew the art for the Thought Cabinet).
That being said, if you're the type of person who likes achievements and recording your playtime on Steam then this is the type of deep sale you still can buy and not feel too bad about.
No, I really don't. That's why after forcing myself through doing one task I'm immediately tempted to switch to some activity that does give gratification.
Not only are the combos sexy: the fact that you sweep down low on the floor and propel yourself forward while performing them means you can use them to dodge a lot of attacks by moving under or past the enemy hitbox! And they cost no FP, so you can spam them without investing in the blue bar.
Farron Greatsword is just the GOAT weapon imo, so much fun to use. And yeah, built in parry because why not.