raocow's talkhaus

The reason I've made a section for this is because there's not one, not two, but three different mandatory areas you have to beat before you hit Gate 3, something I'll talk about later. For now, Central Control. It introduces the gimmick of the little...Pinch robots? I always just thought of them as drill robots, myself, but whatever. Quickly, it turns into a bunch of escort missions, but the actual section isn't that long, so it ends up being okay. There's the respawning rock I mentioned earlier (actually a shaft that drops them, now I've actually been past it to see) but that turns out to be the last escort mission before a boss.

I never actually bothered scanning this boss so I have no idea what the name is. There'll be a couple of bosses like that; I play on a laptop with a trackerpad and a usb mouse isn't an option because I'd have to use it left handed, so scanning an enemy is pretty much a synonym for 'take a cheap hit' in my case. Either way, it combines two things everybody loves: timed missions and escort missions! Yaaa...wait. Uh, yeah, it kinda sucked, not gonna lie. I couldn't really find much use for either Jerry's arrows or his bombs (other than the way they were intended) so this is purely a one skill fight. One thing I did notice is that if you're in a hurry to shoot a bomb in and get too close, you can hit the wall and your bomb rebouds, which, if it happens a couple times, WILL screw you. Other than that, nothing really stood out about this boss other than the fact it was more puzzle-y than straight up combat.

From there, we go on to the second area, where we're introduced to the idea of using two characters at the same time. It's an interesting mechanic, and a short area, don't get me wrong, but...why does this place exist? Why do we have to go there now? We won't be using the two character mechanic in the next gate because it's locked to Claire only, and there's no plot reason for it that couldn't be substituted by Jeremy saying 'Beep bop boop, I did magic, go to gate three.' There's also the fact that this is the second mandatory area we've done without actually getting any tangible reward, and a pretty unnecessary diversion which comes at a poor time in terms of pacing. But the area's pretty short and it introduces a new mechanic so...profit?

Now to the third area, which is the connecting area between central city and gate three. Not gonna lie, I was getting pretty aggravated by this time. The enemies here are really annoying, particularly the bees who have a habit of being in places where you can't deal with them and can't be handled at range because they resist arrows. Not only that, but this is yet another area without any tangible rewards except what we can forage for. In my case, that wasn't much; I found a heart upgrade for the Castlevania set and saw a heart piece that I could never get the bullet bills properly timed for, and that was it. On top of this, Jeremy and Jerry were helpfully making jokes about how long Claire has been useless for. Ha ha. The only problem with that is, because I'm not a great gamer, I take a while to get through areas, so the whole 'Claire is useless' thing has been going on for rather a lot longer in my perception than it has in plot terms, and stopped being funny to me about five hours of playtime ago.
To sum it all up: by the time I got to the Magic Forest or whatever it's called, my mind was telling me that I'd already done two whole things since we last made any real progress and that I should have been at Gate 3 right there and then without having to faff my way through a not particularly easy area full of annoying foes just to get there. Because of that, I spent the whole area being annoyed, and didn't enjoy myself...at all, really. That's probably me being hungry for progress more than the game's fault, but that's what I felt, and that's what I'm reporting.

So, finally, after like 12 hours of play and an area that made me want to drop-kick a baby, we get access to Claire. And what's the verdict? No. One thing I did appreciate was that her abilities are all gotten pretty early on into the gate; this is actually a really good design choice, since it took ages to 'unlock' her and I, as a player, really did not want to do a whole song and dance to get her stuff. I found her abilities to be pretty close to Jerry's Zelda set, in terms of usage; she has a physical, a ranged, and a bomb, all filling the same functions as Jerry's with a few quirks to set them apart. There are pros and cons to this. For pros, it means I've already got a little familiarity with how to use her; it's the same basic formula, so you don't have to relearn a whole different way of fighting, just some nuances on how to do it effectively. For cons, it means that the shiny new character we just got is not actually that different to the old one. For worse cons, it means that in terms of combat in single character areas, Claire is pretty much in 'competition' with Jerry as to who'll get used. This is not, I'm afraid to say, a competition where she wins. Although her dagger attack is nice and spammy with long range, her primary has a hilariously weird hitbox, and she has trouble attacking anything not on the same vertical plain as her. This is on top of the fact that, in comparison to Jerry, she handles like a boat, making simple jumps for him into death defying stunts for her. On top of that, my experience with the game so far indicates that anything I'd actually want to stay at long range and attack will either be resistant to ranged attacks (those bees, the skull totem things, etc.) or have ranged attacks themselves that can outreach my own. So, yeah. After twelve hours, all I've got is a character who I won't want to play as in any section where she isn't forced. First world problems, I guess!

Let's see...I've played a bit of the Castlevania stage. Since Metroidvania is a by-word for backtracking and exploration, I was surprised that the first half seemed like a linear combat-fest. So far as I'm aware, none of Claire's new abilites are good for enhancing our movement, and she doesn't platform well anyway, so honestly I don't think I'll be backtracking to old areas with her for treasure anytime soon. The Giant Bat 'boss' was...well, the same as its reputation would indicate in Castlevania games, I guess. Put it this way: I have died, multiple times, to every single boss in the game, save for that one. A nice breather fight, even if unexpected.

The wall of death platforming room took me a while to figure out the solution for, but once I did, I was surprised at how forgiving it was in terms of execution. It was really more of a puzzle than an action segment, which was welcome after what had been a long bloodfest through the earlier portions of the stage.

Next saliant point is the Dracula fight, which, with his little hitbox in his head, really exposes how ridiculous Claire's stupid whip attack is. And because she can't really aim any of her attacks like Jerry can, there's not really a better alternative when he starts resisting daggers a whole bunch. One fact that might be noted at around this time is that actually, I haven't played a lot of really 'older' games, at least not the sort DT3 references. My first consoles were a SNES and a Sega Megadrive (Master System in the US? I think that's what you guys called it. It was the one with Sonic 3 & Knuckles on it), and the games I had for the SNES could be counted as follows: LoZ Link To The Past, Super Mario All Stars, Mortal Kombat. That's all. So, when I read Dracula's scan saying 'This should be a familiar fight!', I chuckled. Every 'familiar fight' so far, including the re-used bosses from the Adventure of Link, are ones I've never actually played in their original form. Considering I haven't played any of the old school Megamans or Metroids either, I think that's a feeling I'll be becoming pretty familiar with in the course of the game.
So, anyway, back to Dracula. In terms of feedback, I have one really obvious thing that you've probably heard a million times from testers. Dracula uses rolling fireballs-->Dracula uses fire pillars--> I dodge the rolling fireballs--> Dracula teleports right on top of me whilst I can't move left or right due to the fire pillars and gets a couple of cheap hits whilst I try and recover. Totally not cool, and I hope it's one of the issues that's already been fixed in later versions.

I've moved a little further into the castle, to the point where it stops being linear anymore; now, the blundering commences. I have no idea where I'm going or where I am (starting to miss the little castle map in Aria Of Sorrow, the only Castlevania I have completed and apparently the easiest if certain comments are to be believed), but I've run into rooms that have random Medusa head generators. My comments on random enemy generators are, simply and succinctly: I think they're annoying, I don't think they're good game design, and I don't think they even can be good game design. In easy rooms they hardly even make a difference, and in hard rooms they completely remove any and all 'safe spots' the designer intended to exist and put the player in the hands of random chance as to whether an enemy is there when they jump or not. I don't support their use, and I think they're almost as much of a pox on gaming as when game designers overuse rngs. There, I said it, and I won't bother complaining about it again. Anyways, I found a room annoying enough that after all the random aggro of getting to gate 3, I just didn't want to continue any further today. So, more next time!

Edit: After a night's sleep and with a calmer mind, I realised that I'm not actually being very helpful, so here's a suggestion that you've probably heard before. In the abilities menu (i.e, the one where you can see all the bars for your weapon experience), would it be possible to make that menu default to the character and ability set that you're using? I think it would be one of those nice, subtle touches that makes a game more convinient to play and preserves the flow of the action better, since it reduces menu spelunking. Don't get me wrong, I love messing around in menus, but I think it'd be a nice thing.

Oh, that Medusa head room. What hilarity! I'm guessing even the creator knew how annoying that room was, since you put full restores in the room just past it. It says a lot that even with those full restores, I still got murdered a couple times on the way back by inopportune Medusa Heads. At first, I was underwhelmed by the monster guarding the mini-McGuffin, but later in the castle I would have ample reason to change my judgements on the Salem Witch. I'd stumbled upon the blue gem earlier whilst I was wandering around on the rooftops getting my face destroyed by the Cursed Skulls. Those skeleton dancer things were also a pain, especially on uneven terrain; if they're not on the same vertical level when they leap, they're as bad as homing missiles, geez. The huge staircase leading the gem deposit box was also a bit of a gauntlet, and I ended up growing to appreciate Holy Water a little more in the course of it. I was grateful for the free heals at the top, but unfortunately I'd already hauled myself up there without the gems whilst I was lost, and had to go back down again without the benefits. That was less fun. But oh well, because at the top of the grand staircase, we find something I really wasn't expecting to get until the next gate or so.
We got our dash back. All is forgiven. All. Is. Forgiven.

Finding the dash boots is really one of those moments of joy that just makes everything okay again. Unlike in DT1, where you start with the dash and never really appreciate it until you run into areas where you don't have it, it takes maybe fifteen seconds in DT3 to realise how much more powerful you are with a dash than without one. The game helps out on this by making it easy to casually dash out over the grand staircase, freefall to the bottom and skip the entire thing, which is a great, great feeling, and an introduction to a time-honoured Distorted Travesty tradition: using the dash to trivialise anything and everything that annoys you. The tutorial about the properties of dashing was also a lot better handled than in DT1, I thought, because you're already a way into the game and you aren't struggling to memorise all the other basic controls that DT1 just sort've infodumped on you in the first section. I also think it was a great idea to give Jerry and Claire different dashes; since Claire's defies gravity and is kind've more useful in platforming because of it, she now has an actual reason why you'd use her instead of Jerry, and it's a pretty compelling one. Not to say that Jerry's dash isn't cool (it's inspired by Megaman X, right? I only really know because I cheaped my way through the Megaman Zero series with an e rank in everything), but dat gravity. I suppose you could just kind've exploit his backdash to get roughly the same effect as Claire's dash, but that's too much bother and leaves you kind've defenceless.

So, onto the Skycastle. Here's where the Salem Witches start appearing more frequently, and start demonstrating their most fearsome power: the ability to float through the ceiling, go completely offscreen, and continue to snipe you through the walls whilst you can't do a thing about it. Annoying, but killing them asap solves the problem nicely in most cases, and dashing helps keep you alive until then. Whilst wandering around again, I stumbled onto the passageway leading to Death's Rib; I found the entrance to the hidden statue place, but I'm guessing I need some of the metroid equips to get to that missile expansion. (I found the heart, though.) Elsewhere, the room with Death's Rib in it is a classic case of a room that looks way worse than it is, particularly on the left hand side. Most of the maces there are completely ineffectual, even without the dash to help us out. The right side's mini-puzzle is also pretty easy to figure out and execute; the only confounding factor is that ghost, who can be difficult to see against the net background. That's been a running theme, actually: enemies being difficult to see. I remember that, in the central city section, it got incredibly hard to see the shots from the eggbots sometimes because they blended in with the background. The two salem witches were a bit of a surprise on the return trip, even though I guess I should've expected something like that. I ended up just grabbing the rib and allowing myself to die, since you keep it after death.

Comparitively, death's...eye (?) was easier to find and get, although the extra checkpoint surprised me once more. I just kept falling into those traps today! I appreciated the mercifully easy section after it, though, since I was worn down from the rest of the room; all I did to get through was practice patient, stand between the spiked crushy things, and knife spam in safety. It was a scare, but easy enough to get through, and a very interesting use of a new gimmick to prevent room trivialisation via death and respawn.
The hallway leading up to Death's Heart probably should've been a pain in the rear with all those enemies hanging around, but...a straight, level passageway full of enemies at regular-ish intervals? Begging to be skipped with the dash, and I happily obliged. You really, really learn to appreciate the dash in DT3. Dash dash dash dash dash.

And onto the boss, with free heals and ammo to boot! Menace is...Well, I'm not going to give him his own writeup heading, simply because in my mind, he's pretty much the easiest boss to date. The Giant Bat was at least unexpected and came at the end of a room, but Menace just doesn't have much of anything going for him. I found that, if you get the positioning right, you can rain a cascade of holy water down on his weakspot without much risk, and it just mauls the guy. Done at the start of the fight and with 95 hearts to spend on holy water, I took off more than a quarter of his HP in a few seconds. You can then quite happily sit back at the left edge of the room, wait for your hearts to refill whilst picking off the menace spawn, and see what position he's in: if it's a fortuitous one, holy water, and if not, knife spam, which he's also pretty vulnerable to. Even when he gets resistance to it later in the fight, he's so easy to hit with them, and so unlikely to hit you, that you can easily just sit there and out-attrition him whilst taking little or no damage. His laser sweep is the only thing about him that can catch you, seeing as it basically functions as an unofficial tutorial on 'hey, buddy, sometimes you're going to have to dash through an attack in order to not get hit by it', but once you have absorbed those words of wisdom it's a pretty meagre thing. (One thing I did appreciate about this boss, however, was the decision to make him weak against the primary whip attack. If Dracula showed off the limitations of Claire's crazy hitboxes, then Menace shows the potential; it's surprisingly easy to just sort've reach in and do a couple hundred damage to the guy. Admittedly, four out of his five attacks are pretty much designed to catch a hair-whipping player being greedy, but that's part of a charm. Luring new players to their death with a dangerous weakness is just as much a part of game design as repelling them with a strength. It also means that you have a risky but profitable activity to do if you don't feel like standing around whilst your hearts regen. A good decision, I'd say. I just hope this boss was a little harder in the game he was originally the end boss of...)

Let's see...General stuff. So far, the discovery that death refills my red potion has had rammifications. It led to me exploiting the hell out of it in rooms that end with a treasure chest. Basic theory: use red potion on way to treasure chest in order to actually get it, get treasure, throw self into bottomless pit or commit suicide via helpful menu, respawn at the beginning of the room with treasure, red potion and whatever health I had when I began refilled! Profit has been made. I figure that my awfulness at actually playing the game means I'm allowed to cheap out whenever physically possible. Hey, if a featherweight was going up against a heavyweight, you wouldn't expect them to pull their punches, right? Right. (I have no shame. If a game gives me an exploit, I will exploit it with all my might, particularly if the game is hard.) I'm stopping here for now since I read in the dev comments a few bosses ago that Castlevania apparently had a boss that would cause me to tear my hair out, and since Giant Bat and Menace were quite easy and Dracula was supposed to be quite easy, whatever's coming up will be one of the bigger challenges thus far in the game. So, yeah, one of the meta elements of the game has caused me to shrivel up in fear. I don't know if that's good or bad. xD

Welp, due to meta elements and natter, I have been left in no doubt that the next boss is going to rip my spine out through my nose and beat me around the head and neck with it. It's at times like this when I say to myself, 'Okay, here's what the game's given you to accomplish this challenge. Now, what can you, as a player, bring to the table to help the process out?' Usually, in genres I know, that would be skill and experience, but not so in this case. In this case, the only thing I have to help me out is a total disregard for my death counter and near unlimited amounts of determination and patience. Plus time to prepare for the ass-whupping I am shortly to recieve. So, without further ado, I did what any rpg fanatic would do in this situation, and went grinding. This is a really clear example of how the meta can influence a player's decisions. Hopefully, in this case, it will make me actually able to beat the boss at all.
I'm taking this opportunity to discuss grinding, and to give a Creator Safety Announcement on it. It goes like this: Do not try to stop players grinding. Because (spoilers) it will not work. Ever. There are certain people who will level up to Lv99 on the first few screens of an rpg because it will mean that other characters join at Lv99 later. There are people who statmax until they can wipe out anything in one hit and who still won't be satisfied until all the numbers are at the cap. I'm not one of those people, but I play Disgaea games, and if I spend twenty hours levelling a party of ten characters to 5000 a piece and then spend another twenty building up their weapons to have 12 million attack, you cannot stop me suckerpunching Castlevania enemies until I'm nice and OP. If you reduced the AP gains, I would just go to gate 1:2 and koopahop combo for the multipliers until I got where I wanted. If you nerfed that, I'd go somewhere else.
In short, there are two basic things that will induce a player to grind: they have to think it's worth it (i.e, that the rewards for grinding will actually be worthwhile), and that the game is worth it (i.e., they're not going to invest two hours of menial work into a game that's rubbish to play). Plus, some people just like to watch the numbers get higher. Trying to stop grinding is a) basically impossible in any system with balanced experience gains, since they can be taken advantage of and b) will do nothing but make grinding more of a pain in the ass, which will reflect negatively on that player's experience. Usually, the best method of dealing with grinders is either make the game in such a way that grinding is never necessary or desirable (difficult to do, and probably not what DT3 is going for), or to just sort've...ignore them, really. They'll grind no matter what you do, so you may as well just discount the existence of them rather than bend already balanced elements of the system in an attempt to stop it. I don't think that, in the scheme of DT's upgrade systems, that it's really possible to grind for OP status anyways.

In this case, DT3 passes muster on value for grinding and the game itself being fun enough to grind in. It really does, however, feel like there's a need to grind, given how expensive everything is, and how hard the game is around it; you feel as if you need those advantages to keep up, and that you need to grind to get to them. It seems like you're trying to make the player pick and choose conservatively what abilities they want with high prices, but that doesn't work. It's difficult to explain, but it comes down to conservation of detail and a weird sort've shroedinger's cat of player psychology. It works as follows:

• -Player has many upgrade choices, and not enough AP to buy them. Player is fairly convinced that enough AP will not naturally occur during the course of the game and will not be a worthwhile time investment to grind for in light of the typically small overall bonus any one upgrade gives.
  -Player comes to the decision that all upgrades are equal but some are more equal than others, and makes plans to buy only those. So far, the prioritisation scheme is working.
  -However, the player now knows exactly how they'll spend their AP, and doesn't grind to get any more than they need for that plan.
  -Because the player will never attain them in the course of play and will likely not make any special efforts towards attaining them, all abilities not on the player's plan effectively cease to exist in realistic terms and are absolutely superflous to the game.

An example of this in play, if you're interested in it, would be FFX's sphere grid. You'll need to take a gander at it to get the full picture, but in theory, it's essentially a centralised upgrade tree: every character starts in their own area but may eventually have access to the entire thing and can benefit from all the upgrades there. However, it's too costly in terms of momentum and resources for a character to reroute to another's area of the sphere grid in normal, non-challenge play, so they're effectively limited to their own area, meaning that sprawling chain of potential upgrades looks a little bit more like this: a long, linear chain of all the upgrades that can be realistically actualised. Essentially, the system looks very intimidating and seems to have a lot of customisation potential, but in fact has barely any in actual play. It can be summed up as follows: Tidus CAN go to Lulu's section and get all her upgrades, but realistically he never will; therefore, Lulu's section may as well not exist to him. I feel like, in terms of both concept and execution, FFX's Sphere Grid system is very similar to the upgrade system in DT3, and that if you aren't careful, DT3's might suffer from the same weaknesses: seeming to contain a lot of customisation potential whilst most of that potential is, in fact, not realistically attainable, and seeming non-linear when in fact it mostly is. It's also worth mentioning that, as a guy who's played a whole bunch of RPG's with 'alternative' upgrade and levelling systems, I find FFX's to be one of the worst in terms of actual execution, no matter how impressive it may look; it only gets worse when, in postgame, they ask you to make use of the whole thing, and literally force you to do nothing but grind for hours and hours to attain that. The uberboss requiring it, Penance, is not actually that hard, but requires such a ridiculous time investment for such little entertainment that even most hardcore, uberboss slaying players don't actually bother. I'm praying that DT3 doesn't ape that and end up making bonus sections expecting full potential characters, because honestly, guys, the postgame to FFX is dreadful because of it (and a few other bass ackwards design decisions, but I won't get into it. Minigames for ultimate weapons, anybody?)
One disclaimer I want to add is that, just because I think that FFX's upgrade system is dreadful and that DT3's is close to it in concept, doesn't mean I don't think DT's is awful. FFX's level up system is literally everything about that game; it's basically the core of the gameplay. DT3's upgrade system (by which I mean the AP system) is supplemented by the various equips (ironically also close to their usage in FFX), but also by the weapon experience system which backs up the characters. As it is, I think DT3's system could maybe use a little work, but it's not core, and it doesn't make such a huge difference in terms of gameplay that it spoils anything. I'd hazard a guess and say that the game is techically quite completeable without any of the AP upgrades at all, but frankly I wouldn't try it. Leave that for maestros like NegativeZero.

Okay, now that I'm done ranting on that front, time to actually give some details, put some context into my Death preparations. I found a nice money grinding spot outside the Medusa head room leading to the gem in the Castlevania section and spent a while filling my wallet, then bought Force Armor to help me out in the eventually killage. I also bought the extra bottle, and filled both my bottles with Miracle Fluid; I won't be able to use it in the boss fight proper, but if I'm gonna be grinding for money anyways, I may as well fill up my pots capacity. I'm toying with doing the extra gate for the Zelda section, but the rewards from the Mario extra gate were so paltry, and took so much effort, that I honestly don't think it's worth my time at this juncture. I was considering grinding my way to Perseverance in terms of AP, but I just got the third level of expertise and called it a day. I might still get the third level of Pulse since that's 21 grand closer, and I could use the subweapon spam, but I get the feeling that Claire's subweapons are going to be of limited use in the next fight as a method of making it more difficult, so I might instead go for Charm. Other than that, I've been to the teleporter outside Death's Hall, and am just about ready to get my face murderised. I'll probably post a full list of my skills, where I'm at, and how many deaths I have before and after the Death fight, because it seems to be the single biggest 'thing' in this demo, and maybe that info will come in handy somehow.

(Additionally: I haven't commented on it so far, but man, the music for the first section of Castlevania is badass. I'm guessing it's a remix of the original. Does anyone have an MP3 or something? Because I could really just sit around and make Claire dance to that music all day. It makes me sad, though, that Jerry has a subtle 'looking up' animation and she doesn't. Gender equality, guys! Women need to boogie too! The music for Death's Hallway is also pretty rockin'.)

My relevant stats before the death fight are as follows:
7 Heart Containers (One piece of heart towards the next one)
100 Subweapon Hearts
1205 deaths (they become me)
~19hrs playtime
AP Bought Skills: Quick recovery 3, Expertise 3, Charm 2, Stab 2, Cool Whip 2, Pulse 2, Burn 2. AP Level = 17, with 3332 AP left over after all those skills and ones relevent only to Jerry.
Weapon Exp: Whip lvl 2, Dagger lvl 2, Holy Water lvl 2
Equipment: Force Armor

Brief first Impressions on Death: Oh dear. One thing I like about Death is that even as early on into the fight as I am, you can tell straight up that this guy is fair. No tricks, no Konami codes-- just a bare-knuckle gaming beatdown. You wanna learn his pattern, you wanna practice until you get it spot on, you wanna figure out a way to handle him, and then he'll still be difficult, but he'll be beatable. He's one of those rare gaming bosses that test the fibre of the player rather than the character they're controlling, and I like that.

He is, of course, ventilating me with vast and ineffable fury. The first part, with the scythe to hair combat, I can handle pretty well. Easy tells, a little bit of time to react, maybe some random flying sycthes to make perfect play a little more difficult, but I feel like with enough practice, I could reliably do that stage without incurring damage.
However...there are many types of game that I suck at, but of all those types of games, I suck at danmaku the most. I can play Touhous on normal, but only up until the difficulty ramps up at Stage Four-- and actual danmaku games give you a lot more concessions than DT danmaku attacks. Get hit? Lose a life, which is terrible, but the attack ends. Feel threatened? Bomb like a mad fool! Feeling hemmed in? Well, you can use the entirety of the screen! Not registering the pattern? Well, you can see the entire screen too! STILL not registering it? Replays! Not sure where you should be to start the attack? Bottom of the screen's a good bet.
None of this applies to DT danmaku attacks. I have no idea where I should be positioned for the start of the patternless danmaku wave, no idea where I should be by the end of it, and no idea on how to find out that information. Then, when the pattern comes, I can never see the same safe spots twice because my positioning is all wrong, and it's difficult to decipher the pattern because the sycthes aren't 'clean' projectiles like bullets and such.
All in all...At this early stage, I have no idea how to handle the danmaku. At the very least, I eat four hits in that attack, two on the patternless (which I have no idea how to dodge with my limited aerial movement skills) and two on the pattern. I'm getting the feeling that I can't afford to be eating four hits. At all. Sure, by the time he uses it he's at half health, but I have my suspicions about this fight, and I don't think for a second that it's going to be a one-phase boss. That isn't Death's style.

So, yeah. At the moment, I absolutely do not have the required secondary skills to dodge danmaku attacks, and I feel like I won't get any further in this fight until I do. Methinks this is going to take a while..I don't know, though. He just feels so fair. At first, I was worried that he'd be hard enough that I'd never, ever be able to beat him, and that my journey through DT3 would be stopping here. But having been halfway through his lifebar, I'm feeling that although I'm going to have to work very hard in order to pull it off, he IS within my realm of possibility. That's a good way for a boss to feel: hard, but not impossible. He might be Death Incarnate, but I'm the player, and I've got infinite lives and I'm always improving. Like all the best bosses, it's only a matter of practice, of patience, and of time.

Post-Death Weigh in:
1232 deaths (Probably closer to 1500 due to user error)
I eventually decided to splash out on Charm 3, since I was close to it. I was looking for another level of Cool Whip to go with it, but alas, my AP level had grown too high and made AP farming too much of a hassle.
To be updated when/if Death becomes himself

Oh that danmaku attack of Death can be dealt with pretty good. Believe me, there is a pattern to dodge it perfectly. There are two things during the first circle scythe attacks: You might want to slowly walk under the scythes while they spawn above you, none of them will hit you. During the second circle you want to walk to the left in the samw directions as the scythes spawn WHEN they are ABOVE you. When their spawning point is lowered and moves to the left you want to position yourself on the left edge of the screen and simply jump over all the scythes or duck under them. During the third danmaku attack you want to wait until the scythes spawn and then dash through the walls of scythes.

Wow...Thanks, Slit! I took a break a little while ago but I've been trying to visualise the pattern even in my off time, and even with all that I still didn't have a 'way in', so to speak; I wasn't quite getting what the game was asking me to do. I'll be honest; I did try staying under the circle as best I could a couple times, but I was running around pell-mell. It never even occured to me to not move at full speed. It should've, though, since in most danmaku situations you have buttons specifically to slow yourself down. Obviously, it'll probably take me a long time to be able to put all that into practice, but this might just be the 'way in' I was looking for.

(I understand that taking help on the hardest boss in the demo might somewhat affect my feedback of it, but I think of it this way: if DT3 were a full game, right now, this would be about the point at which I'd start fishing around on message boards for pointers. I don't think I'm unjustified in doing that; even with this, I'm still betting that Death will take a hell of a beating.)

NegativeZeroZ wrote:

TheVulpineHero1 wrote:Leave that for maestros like NegativeZero.

Oh I whole-heartedly endorse overpowering the hell out of yourself. A three-heart run of DT3 is theoretically possible though. Zephyr made it possible to skip heart containers, but pretty much said "it's the player's funeral if they do," since the damage curve will make the late game a no-damage run.

TheVulpineHero1 wrote:I found a nice money grinding spot outside the Medusa head room leading to the gem in the Castlevania section and spent a while filling my wallet

It sounds like we use the exact same spot. Is it the room where the store is?

Yeah, it's that room. I just kill the two bone pillars, the ghost and the invisible man, then hightail back to the Medusa room and re-enter. I love how the Invisible Man AI just can't seem to handle stairs and just hangs around shuddering until you put it out of its misery. It's cute. I'm not altogether too surprised you also use it-- it's a pretty great spot! Decent AP rewards, decent chance of 5 internetz drops, basically no threat of death...Man, that spot has it all. Castle Corridor E for great victory!

Also, a three heart run? I don't even. I take more than that on basically every screen, even now. Even in the Mario segment.

Carrying on the upgrade tangent I was on earlier, are there any plans to allow you to respec your character like in DT1? After I thought about which upgrades I'd skip, I concluded that Jerry's bomb upgrades and Claire's holy water upgrades are actually pretty inconsequential. It'd be nice to take them back down to the minimum level I need for the other upgrades in the chain, then spend all those valuable AP on more Charm skill without having to restart my game file ( which would be defeating the purpose somewhat). I'm guessing the answer is no, but a guy can dream. I can see the problem with doing that, of course; you get guys like me who'll minmax the hell out of it and walk into every boss fight with only the skills they need and then respec them straight away for a more general set to deal with the rest of the game, which makes forcing the player to prioritise pretty much moot.

I beat Death. From now on, I cannot say I absolutely suck at DT3, only that I mostly suck. x3

Hoo boy. Well, due to a bit of derpage on my part, the post-Death weigh in death counter doesn't actually mean anything. I accidentally clicked 'Load From Last Save' instead of Restart From Last Checkpoint when I took a break yesterday, meaning that maybe 1-200 attempts didn't get factored in there. Just going to say: once Slit had given me that nudge on the danmaku, it all came together. I still can't get through it reliably, but a couple of times I breezed by with no damage and onto the second stage of the toe-to-toe fight.

My thoughts on the first 'phase' of the Death fight: this is such a good boss. You need to learn him, and you need to practice him, but the way his difficulty works really rewards that. The start and finish of the fight are challenges, yes, but he's never got anything you can't cope with. He's got four attacks and some environmental hazards; he's not filling the screen with fire or anything ridiculous. He feels like, as a boss, his abilities are matched to the character's, which is what makes fighting him feel so rewarding; it really is a knock-down-drag battle for both sides, rather than just throwing bombs at a machine or something. He just demands as close to flawless play as you can manage since if you get hit once, you're probably going to fluster and miss the rest of his three hit combo (plus eat any flying scythes he's got on screen). The way it all scales and comes together is just...Well, it really is something special. Once I'd managed to assimilate what the game wanted from the danmaku, it took me sub-thirty attempts to move on to the second phase. Even when I knew the entire Dracula or Menace fights, it took me longer than that to beat them. And that's after a night's sleep and no 'warm up' time. Just something that shows how skill based Death is in comparison to some of the other bosses, I think.

One thing I did notice, and it's been something that's bothered me for a little while, is how...well, useless the scan data and hints are in this battle. For some reason, the scans overall just seem way less helpful in this game than in DT1; they're interesting, due to the dev comments, but not actually that informative. One of the bigger breakthroughs I made when fighting Death was actually to ignore Jeremy's advice about him and start using my subweapons intelligently; even though he does get resistance (and the knives are totally worthless), he doesn't get it right away, so you can still unload maybe seventy heart's worth of holy water into his face at point-blank range for some pretty massive damage in a short space of time. I got into the habit of timing it with his health so he'd switch to his danmaku phase before using his 'perfect night for a curse' attack. That was a big help overall.

Really, I can understand why everyone was warning me about the Death fight, and Slit's advice really did put me over the edge, but I think that if there was maybe something in the game to help with that danmaku-- like, maybe the hint on the game over screen changes after 100 deaths or so to give a tip about it-- he would be literally one of the more perfect bosses I've ever faced. If ever another version of the demo comes out, and my save file didn't transfer over, I would actually look forwards to fighting Death. That's pretty much the biggest endorsement I can give.

His second phase is...Well, I think those respawning pots are an excellent idea, since his first stage is so demanding in terms of play, but honestly, apart from the 'oh no, it doesn't end' factor, it's a joke. Weak against knives? Big enough to spam them against? Only really dangerous part is getting over/under him and switching sides? Sign me up. Less than ten deaths for that entire phase. After the first phase, it is a welcome and enjoyable breather. Still, those pots really are essential. I came through the first phase of Death with literally half a heart left, and having to no damage run a whole other phase would have been very painful.

My overall thoughts on the Castlevania section: just like the Zelda section, I adored it. Although it was a little bit of a shaky start due to my impatience to start using Claire, it's really well made, atmospheric, and save for that Medusa head room, very fun. It does go on for a while, though, but that's only a minor thing. The music selection is good too-- Simon's Theme is my favourite, but Vampire Killer and the Death's Hall music are also just fun to listen to. I'm looking forwards to whatever's in the game next-- I am, however, going to cordially continue skipping the extra gates and do them at the end when I'm nice and OP, because really, too little reward for too much work, at least at this stage in the demo when the instruments don't actually do anything.

Phew...Again, thanks to Slit for the advice and NegativeZero for the encouragement. It was really helpful. (Hm...that reminds me. Would it be possible for, if a player gets x amounts of deaths on a certain boss or screen, to have Chao do the game over screen instead of Jeremy? Ooh, and then Jeremy could mock you for it the next time you get a 'real' game over screen. That'd be pretty cool. It'd remove some of the ire from Extra Gate 1 Room Three, where being asked if you've played games before after losing 200~ times to very small mistakes eventually gets quite annoying. I'm just throwing out ideas here. I also think it'd be cool if, in the beginning where Jeremy makes that comment about Jerry being used to falling into pits, if you had a DT1 file on the same computer, it read out how many deaths you'd had. That'd probably be really hard to program, so it's probably a bust idea. Still, it'd be a nice little easter egg for returning players if it could actually happen.)

Great job on beating Death! Being prepared for the remaining Extra Gates is definitely a good decision, especially with regards to Extra Gate C. Don't feel obligated to do it if you don't want to, since it's been edited quite a bit since the last demo. If you do, though, definitely don't go in there without some Miracle Fluid. Even if you suicide after using it, it will still be useful.

Awesome good job on beating him. As Zero said, it might be good to just hold out on Gate C, it's pretty awful in the demo. The chapter 7 dungeon has also had a lot of changes after the demo, but it's at least playable.

About Death; The last few Castlevania games that Death appeared in, he's been very underwhelming and disappointing, at least to me. It's always been a shame as he's has always been my favorite encounter in the series. I knew right away that I wanted Death as the antagonist in that Gate. And he had to be frightening. I figured what could be scarier than being forced to go toe to toe with Death himself. That was the big idea that determined everything that went into making that fight. There's also this 'Dance with Death' saying we all know. This was the inspiration for the scythes he spawned in. (Of course that's also how he fought in the Castlevania games.) While you're busy trying to keep at Death, the scythes interrupt what you're doing. It's shown very clear what backing away does, so I tried to enforce the player to dash around him to get away from the scythe.

I also like Legion and I wanted to find a way to incorporate that into that Gate. Legion has always been a super easy encounter, the imagery is just weird. I figured a way to make Death appear scarier than he was, was to have him continue on past that first encounter. Of course the second part is easy, but it's that first moment of dread that I was going for. Even with the Checkpoint popping up, it still feels (I hope) like this awful thing has just happened when the player will most likely lose to Legion due to low health remaining. It's also the first time that DT3 (and the series itself) has ever had a 2-part boss encounter.

On Death: I can understand the reasoning behind that. Although the only Castlevania game where I've actually faced Death is Aria Of Sorrow, which I'm told was easy principally because of the fact that Soma is deliciously overpowered in comparison to most Castlevania protagonists, I actually don't remember the Death fight in that game. It was that underwhelming. I think there was a Legion fight in there somewhere, too, which I believe I may have had trouble with in some fashion? I got his soul first time through, though, and was quite surprised to learn it had weird conditions to get. Really, the only fight in that game that I really remember was Julius Belmont, with his ridiculous resistance to the Claimh Solais and his equally ridiculous weakness to the Waiter Skeleton's curry barrage. But yeah, I think you definitely got what you were going for with Death; I will admit that even though I found his second form almost laughably easy (and actually called it beforehand, to a certain extent), stumbling into it with half a heart and without any warning besides meta knowledge from previous videogame experience? Yeah, you did get a little bit of an 'oh bugger' out of me. Now that I think about it, however, I actually really like (narratively) the impact of his Legion-form. Since Jeremy's info mentions him being less focused, it's almost a villainous breakdown of sorts; Death's losing control, and one of his major strengths in his first battle was that he tried to control the player's movements through zoning and shutting down any attempts to fight him with anything but the whip. Once that control is gone, he's ineffectual. I know it's just a silly bit of fanwank, but I like it.

I will probably skip gate three, since you guys are saying it's effectively still under development; if it's going to be entirely different anyway, there's not really a whole lot of point in providing feedback on it. I took a tiny peek inside, though, and the shadow gimmick looks really cool. It might be a few days before I can carry on giving feedback, though; unfortunately, me devoting a bunch of time to DT3 has left my other hobbies wanting, and now the people on teh fanfictionz websites are after my blood. Plus I recently started to learning how to program in Python, and I'd like to take some time to dick around with it a bit. Sorry about that!

Welp, I'm finally done with my backlog, so back to DT3! I have to say, I like the Begonia soundtrack and aesthetic a whole bunch. After a fast-paced section, like Castles of the vania variety, it's nice to have a slower, more explorey area to balance it out.

It's at this point that Claire, as a character, really began to make sense to me combat-wise; I find her forward dash a lot more useful than Jerry's in most situations, and since the areas where you can use Jerry's bombs with a non-zero percent chance of hitting are essentially mapped out by the designer, her Holy Water is much appreciated. The longer range from her hair is also starting to come good. Still, resistances and such make Jerry still worth using, and his tighter platforming controls and slightly enhanced movement options make him the explorer of choice in most circumstances. I think the decision to have them come out in tandem here is a really good one, and enhances the depth of the gameplay a fair bit.

Probably the big 'thing' of the Begonia region is the Tyrant mid-boss. The actual location of the battle caught me by surprise, and I had to do it with all of three hearts to my name. I think it was foreshadowed in the text, but...I think I skipped past some of it without reading too deeply? Considering I play RPGs and I know that hammering the button to get through the text faster usually results in losing an hour of gametime down the road figuring out something that the game's already given you the clues for, I end up doing it far too much in this game.

My thoughts on the Tyrant: he's a fun little mini-boss, provided you use Claire and not Jerry. He's sort've laughably bad at dealing with them, what with his short range, his arrows being partially or fully blocked, and a bomb that will never hit anything ever without a lot of help from the terrain. The tactic of getting Claire close and then unloading a metric tonne of holy water into its face works just as well as it did with Death. It's worth about 50% of a Tyrant's hp, and her longer range for primary attacks and dashes makes dealing with a Tyrant pretty easy, all things told. (My first though when I saw the sprite was, 'Gallantmon? Really? Who's the next boss, Charizard? Maybe I'll have to beat up a Suezo or something?' I really wasn't expecting to see 'mons genre spirtes in this game. xD I actually love the little reference, though-- Tyrants are agents of The Virus, and in his home 'verse, Gallantmon is technically a Virus-type digimon. Clever!)

After the Tyrant, most of Begonia sort of goes without much notice at this point; the underwater section is cool with the new current mechanic, and the enemies are tame enough (and in nice enough locations) that you don't really get too stressed. It's really a nice breather area.

The Mountain Temple is a whole other matter. The first room is pretty okay. It serves as a nice tutorial to the idea of 'Silver Knight has attack wave that ignores terrain', since pretty much the first thing I did was to see if I could cheese the one near the entrance by just hiding behind the wall and punting bombs over until it eventually ran into one. The second room is also more tutorial-esque, with those weight switches, but still pretty manageable, considering you don't have to worry about conserving HP too much since there's a heal point at the exit.

Mountain Temple C is where I stopped for today, since that room is frankly annoying on a personal level. It's the return of the characters-splitting-up mechanic that we got taught about in our last let's go babysit Megaman X section. It basically reuses the same premise as the last time we used it-- one character takes the high path, the other one takes the low path-- except each character has to fight a Tyrant at the end. None of this annoys me. Instead, what annoys me in this room is a trifecta of Giant Monster Bats, Jerry, and room length.

The Giant Monster Bats become highly annoying in this room, where you're constantly having to deal with obstacles and the terrain is unsafe. They reprise the nasty floating through solid terrain for limited invulnerability tactic, too. I don't think it's a coincidence that I've found every singe enemy thus far who could do that incredibly annoying, even if I was on a dash high when considering the Salem Witches. Their habit of occasionally running away also makes it harder to position them reliably. The rest of the obstacles in this room are pretty easy to do without damage once you've learned them, but the bats will occasionally hit you and mess up an otherwise damageless run simply because they get you in an area where the terrain is an ass. Maybe that's the purpose of their placement, but it's still pretty annoying.

Jerry's part in this puzzle is that, and I'm aware I'm repeating myself here, he's just not that suited for taking on Tyrants. Despite the game giving you gentle prods all throughout the last sections to pick the best character for the job, you're forced to use him against an enemy that Claire would be far better disposed to cope with. Again, this, on its own, isn't that bad.

What makes it bad is part three, the room length, which is really the reason why I'm finding this room super annoying. Although this room isn't substantially longer than any we've seen before, it is way too long to have two mid-bosses in it. Let's not talk jive here: Tyrants have good AI, do good damage, and can occasionally create attack patterns that are pretty hard to dodge. Jerry's got short range and poor potential for doing quick damage; it becomes a battle of endurance, which is actually a bit of a challenge to win for a player of less than average brain (i.e, me). To be honest, although I can beat a Tyrant pretty easily with Claire (occasionally without even getting damaged), I can't yet beat one with Jerry even if I go in at full health. Doing ALL of that room again for the chance of a refight? A room that you can't rush through because you have to lure those stupid bats to places where you might actually be able to kill them before they become a problem? Huge pain in the arse, especially when the signs point to there being even more level before the next exit after you've beaten the Tyrants. It's worse when you consider that, not so very long ago, ONE Tyrant was worth its own boss checkpoint.

So, yeah. I stopped here for today, not because I feel that the room is especially difficult, but because it's simply not a fun room to play. I hate to say it, but the section itself is actually a bit tedious once you've figured out the obstacles, with only the bats to make themselves an annoyance, and replaying it again and again because I screwed up on a challenging-ish midboss isn't entertaining at all. It's just a really unendearing room, I'm afraid.

Well, after a whole bunch of playing, I managed to get through the dual Tyrant room without using a miracle fluid. I've no idea how to get the internetz on the top path, unless there's some screwy method of 'Shoot arrows into the wall with Jerry and then stand on them.' (For the record, I used Claire for the top path since I found her dash much better for dealing with the boulders, and Jerry for the bottom one because...well...hax?) I think the big stumbling point in 'learning' that room is figuring out that you need to take a character over the top path first, the plonk them point blank next to the fireball shooter and switch to the other one. Once you get that, the obstacles go from 'wtf are you expecting from me' to 'manageable but annoying.' I'm glad to hear that one of the Tyrants has been taken out, because seriously, that room is long enough and hard enough without another Tyrant to complicate things.

I did end up, however, using a miracle fluid on the next room because of the third Tyrant with the boulders, simply because I'd limped there with all of two or three hearts to my name. As usual, I tackled it with Claire and a Holy Water barrage, which really helped since it speeds the fight up considerably and gives the boulders less time to screw you over. Honestly, though, I think that fight would have been incredibly annoying if Death hadn't taught me about the power of point-blank Holy Water. With that done and the adorably useless mermaid's curves in my possession, I blundered my way into the underwater area of the temple...

Holy hell. At first I didn't think it was so bad, but I soon got proved wrong. It's a nightmare. Claire's better in combat at this point because the principle enemies are vulnerable to her stuff, but she effectively has no dash at all underwater, and piloting her floaty controls through those minefields, especially with the currents complicating things, is not a thing I'd want to be doing. However, I found that, with enough memorisation and a little luck, the first two rooms weren't unbearably hard to get through. (The second room was annoying in the section where you had to use momentum from the fans to platform, but eh.)

Mountain Temple G is the second time in this temple alone where I took a deep breath, calmed myself, and said 'Screw this noise, I'm doing something else.' I don't even this room. I'm not even kidding. The little bullet-spam section in the top right-hand side. How? I get that you're meant to hit the switch with Jerry's arrows, get Claire caught by the fan and use her inactive character bubble shield to block off the two top rows of shots. I understand that. But, unless you get the right timing, the bubble shield isn't quite big enough to cover both, so oftentimes one or the other will keep being a problem. Because you're drowning and there's no source of oxygen that doesn't require you to expose yourself to bullets, you have no time to fiddle around with the positioning. In order to get the platforms you need to ride across the top, you'll need to dodge bullets that are pretty difficult to dodge. Then you need to somehow luck your way through a bullet-spam section which has bullets flying on both from the left hand side which you can't shut off and the ceiling which you also can't shut off, whilst dealing with the Trident fish which is difficult enough to dodge WITHOUT having the bullets to worry about, with lessened mobility, and did I mention the drowning and the whole 'will there be a viable air source there when I'm done platforming' worry? And then, if you do all that, there's another 2/3rds of a room to do after it? With that 2/3rds of a room including even more danger of drowning, another minefield drop, and then it looks like some kind of key puzzle afterwards? With the keys not even staying in your inventory if you die whilst holding them, unlike sets of switches or key items, so you MUST do the entire room in one go?

Seriously, I've got a bottle of Miracle Fluid left, and although I haven't been able to find/get to that many optional heart pieces, I still have eight containers. I think the minimum at this point is six? With the miracle fluid, I have more than twice the amount of life you can bank on a player to have at this point, and I absolutely do not think it will be enough. I think if I had another bottle I could brute-force it, but I can't go out and get that bottle without losing all my progress in at least the last two sections (which, although I may have glossed over them, are far from negligible in difficulty), and possibly without having to trek all the way back through Begonia too. Even if I did go back out, stock up, and come back, the 'uncomfortably hard room' thing is becoming a running theme in this Temple, and for all I know there's an even harder one coming up. Oh, and Room G suffers from the same problem Room C had with each attempt taking ages at a time, because you need to stop and wait for oxygen or die horribly.

...Phew. I'm going to be really honest here. I'm worried. I'm beginning to think that Mountain Temple may well represent the 'roof' of my abilities as a player, and even if it doesn't, it is perilously close. My patience is already tested by the length of the room, and I can do without 200 retries at a room that takes 5 minutes to clear anyway. I'm not a good player. Patience is all I've got, and it's not working.

I'm going to try again tomorrow, and if that doesn't work, I'll exit, get every single health container and breath upgrade that I possibly can, fill my miracle fluids, minmax to hell and back, and then give it another shot. If that doesn't work, well, I'll keep trying, but that might well be the last feedback I'll be able to give on the demo in its current form. I know that my impressions will be a little bitter at the moment, but my view on the Mountain Temple as a whole, so far? It isn't fun. Like, at all. If I beat it, and that's looking to be a sizable if at this point in time, I don't want to do it again in its current incarnation. Ever. Might sound like I'm over-reacting or being whiny, and I probably am, but...yeah. I'm really sorry, but as much fun as the game's been so far, if the rest of the game is going to be like Mountain Temple, then I don't think there's any point in me playing it. I simply will not have enough skill to enjoy it for what it is, and that kinda makes me feel worthless as a player.

Blarg. Stupid human emotions getting in the way of an objective assessment. I want to be a robot when I grow up.

Well, after finally getting through that room, the next room was a doddle, ostensibly, although I was running low on health as always and bit the bullet at pretty much the exact time as the last Silver Knight. That happens surprisingly often on kill rooms. Maybe I just play sloppily, I dunno.

The boss here is...relief. After a section where combat was relatively light and took ages to get to, a room where you can just waltz in, pimpwalk over to the boss and start slapping it around really does take the edge off. I think the whole 'prod people into choosing the best character' design of the fight works pretty well; it feels pretty organic to be switching in the middle of the boss fight, if only because the boss can be divided into 'stages' (Jerry to kill the shoulder pad stage, Claire to damage the main body after that, then missile spam, then desperation stage, and so on). I remember taking a few hits I felt I shouldn't have, mainly due to jumping close to the wall to get atop platforms, the hands tracking me...and then instantly clenching into fists and doubling their horizontal hitboxes with little warning. That was probably player error (what was I doing so close to the walls anyway?) but it took me unawares a startling number of times.
This boss also introduces infinite range persistant homing missiles, which are a pain to dodge, but that's pretty much their point. At least they're dash-through, so you have some leeway in figuring out how to make them complode themselves. It was a learning experience that would come in handy on the next section.
(I also found you can pretty much entirely skip the part of the fight after his missile spam by air-comboing with Jerry. You can pretty much kill him before he has chance to do anything else.)

After some more chinwag with X, we're onto the next section...Begonia, again, but this time with rocks falling all over the place. Man, that first avalanche screen is a pain, what with the monkeys who have the uncanny ability to jump off nothing and the rocks that have the uncanny ability to be rocks, but in the end it's more memorisable than it looks. I had to grind for health on the crab in the next screen, though. Beyond that, the avalanche is actually no big thing, surprisingly.

Next salient part: X's virus bomb keep away thing. I was surprised to learn in the bios that the bottomless pits in that area were meant to be a legit threat, because I pretty much never died to them. The bigger problem, I found, was that those wasp copters were pretty aggressive with their hitboxes. There were a few times where they just piloted themselves into situations where I couldn't get around them and the virus was escaping, so I had to just grit my teeth and take 2-3 hits going through their hitbox with my invincibility period. Other than that, the section wasn't a problem.

Also: may sound callous, but ever since I first saw him in raocow's DT1 lp, I always had X pegged for a die-er. Still, awesome music.

Wow, X's abilities! Well, one of. The buster is a lovely little thing, like having Claire's knives as a primary weapon, except possibly even more spammy. The charge shot is pretty meh, though, for a number of reasons. Firstly, rapid fire just does damage way quicker, and secondly, through absolutely no fault of its own, the charge shot was kind've gimped for me. Like a lot of PC's, mine can only register a very limited number of inputs at any one time, and like a lot of PCs, there is a seemingly random priority assigned to each key. This has odd effects whenever I have to hold one key down for any reason. X's buster in this game provides an example of that: due to key priority weirdness, I cannot forward dash whilst charging the X buster. Since I don't think that's a programmed limitation (why would you take away my forward dash whilst leaving my backdash untouched?), I can only conclude that it's PC shenanigans. So, yeah, that may be a thing to watch out for; you might want to consider putting in some sort of auto-charger accessory/ability in the game if you haven't already as a kind of 'work around' for those of us who don't have totally boss gaming machines. (Usually, whenever I'm playing old Megaman games on large flightless australian birds, I just take a second to map my controls to something that'll let me pass the section [generally by mapping two actions to one button], but DT3's control scheme is sort've intensive for that.)

A few decisions kind've surprised me in this gate; the first was, of course, the decision to limit the player to a single character again after spending the entire last section of the game prodding them into switching characters efficiently, but whatever. It's not like Claire would be especially useful in this gate anyway, since Jerry's non gravity-defying dash gets exploited for all it's worth. The other one that kind've surprised me was the fact that it was pretty much impossible for the player to backtrack once they passed the first real screen, and also no way to teleport out of the gate, meaning anybody who left their miracle fluids at home is SOL (although, to be fair, the segment wasn't hard enough to need them).

I think my favourite screen of this section was the vertical hall filled with horizontal smashers. I don't know quite what it is about that place, but I just found that room quite fun.

The boss at the end is an interesting case. He seems like he should be pretty easy, but he ends up being medium difficulty due to a lot of HP and the fact that a lot of his attacks restrict your movement a bunch. It seemed like one of those boss fights where it's easy to get yourself into a situation where attacks are unavoidable if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Having the spiked walls was an interesting decision, since a lot of the bosses in ye olde Megaman X series rely on the player using the walls efficiently.

Other than that...what can I say? It seems like not a lot of Gate 4 is actually in the demo, so there isn't much to comment on. I enjoyed what was there, though.

Generally, I really enjoyed the demo, with a few notable exceptions *coughmountaintemplecough*. Still, if we ignore those areas since most of them are being/have been changed, it's overall a very fun game that could certainly eat up a lot more of my time. I think the biggest overall weakness of the game thus far is that, often, there are pretty specific methods of handling a room to avoid getting completely raped, but those methods are sometimes pretty unintuitive and don't suggest themselves readily. It leads to a lot of situations where the player just doesn't know what the hell they're expected to do to pass a room with the options they have. Whether that's a valid weakness or what you were aiming for is a different story, but it was a common enough occurence that I thought I should make note of it.

Other than that, there's the upgrades system (which I've already touched upon) and the pacing, which sometimes feels pretty weird in relation to order of unlockables. Like...I still don't quite know why the split character section in Central City exists, since you don't actually use that skill at all until the Mountain Temple, which is a whole (fairly sizable) Gate later, which gives you plenty of time to forget that, say, your inactive character barrier stops projectiles-- especially since there's no way to review that information after you've done the section. I'll also say, straight up, that there's basically zero incentive to do those extra gates at anywhere near the intended strength. One of the reasons I've skipped by evaluating the Extra Gate B is because frankly I wouldn't have bothered with it at this point. A single quiver upgrade and a secondary MacGuffin that I probably won't be able to use until endgame doesn't even come close to persuading me to go through a whole gauntlet, at least not without having unlocked the rest of the equipment slots and bottles first. I mean, relating back to RPGs, I only take on optional dungeons right away if I think there's something in them that will make the next stretch of the game easier. Generally, I do that because if I wait, whatever's in there will lose value as I get equips that surpass it. However, in DT3, a quiver upgrade is a quiver upgrade whenever you get it, and there are enough of them to go around, so there's no point hurrying for that one.

Other than that, yeah, my impressions of DT3 are almost uniformly positive, despite the fact that I was in no way prepared for the difficulty. I look forwards to the next demo release, and I hope some of this feedback has been at least a little useful.

The Tyrant for Jerry has already been taken out. ;)

I never figured out either of these, mostly from drained patience. In the latter case, I just kept one character on an air vent at all times, so it was always readily available and drowning wasn't an issue. I also got all the breath upgrades from the Water Temple in one go, so I also had that going for me. At this point, I believe I had 9 hearts, and I didn't need a Miracle Fluid for the room you're in (I had Force Armor though, which reduces damage from all sources by a quarter heart). By the way, you're practically at the end, and that in my opinion is the last "difficult" room in this chapter--actually, the whole 2.1 demo, probably.

I don't think that the third room of the Mountain Temple is all that hard. It is just carefull observation.
But let me assure you that Gate 4 isn't that hard as it doesn't involve hard enemies to fight, but rather concentrates on platforming. Chapter 9 is a breather and Chapter 10... well is Chapter 10.
BUT... the game will become harder of course, you cannot have the game stay on the same difficulty level until you reach its end. The endgame will be plain brutal so yeah... Then again the majority of people who play DT 3 have already played the first two games.

using an inactive character's barrier at the top of the fan in order to block the shots?

Was that an actual solution, or was it a red herring? Because, uh, the moment I stopped trying to do that and took NegativeZero's advice on placing one character on an air vent, I went on to beat the room on my second try (with a bottle of miracle fluid to ease the pain, of course). That is...weird. I could have SWORN there was a psuedo-puzzle there and that I had the right answer, since there was a switch and a fan deliberately placed there to facilitate that exact solution, but...Did I get duped into making the situation harder than it had to be?

(Also, yeah, I now agree that, if you ignore the fan and the switch, the room isn't that hard at all. I think it may have just been gross player error there due to my previous genre misconceptions. I keep saying it, but the games you play decide how you play games and how you deal with the challenges therein; in an 80+ hour RPG, any time limits tend to be in the region of ten minutes or more, and tend to have at least three to four minutes of leeway you could easily do without. When you take a player who's used to that leisurely style of gameplay, and then put them in a situation where they only have 21 seconds to get whatever they need done done, their little peanut brains fry and they begin to make stupid mistakes that they shouldn't be making. This is my way of saying I am a fool and I apologise for making a rash declaimation of the room I was stuck on. As soon as the worry of drowning got taken away, it suddenly felt a lot more reasonable. So, yes. My bad entirely.)

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event
for object oPlayer1:

In script characterStepEvent:
In script playerTechStart:
In script playerTechUse:
Error in code at line 118:
playerAttack=instance_create(x+tOffsetX,y-tYadjust,oMMXbuster)
^
at position 46: Unknown variable tYadjust