Voltgloss wrote: ↑4 years agoMajor spoilers for the sequel:
There is only one area in the sequel inspired by Hell Temple, and it was made much easier than the original. Including the spike drop, thanks to vertical scrolling allowing you to get enemies out of the way first before making the drop (without them respawning) and no hateful fireball horse.
I've heard they've fixed it in a later update but that bullshit spike room was insufferable when I reached it. If you fail the room then you have to fight a miniboss and not a simple one. (The wolf dude from Ragnarok whose name I seem to randomly space every freaking time I talk about the game for some reason... Edit: Fenrir. I don't know why I can never remember his name when I'm thinking of the game's boss.) And at that point in time it would respawn every single time you failed. It's actually the entire reason I dropped the game when I did.
Otherwise though Zephyr is mostly on the right track. The constant upgrading of enemies largely made most upgrades feel utterly pointless. Upgrades are supposed to make it easier to get around but due to the constant upgrades of enemies in a given area, it very rarely actually felt like that. Also there's a lot of traps whose only purpose is simply to serve as a gotcha moment. They may or may not drop you into spikes but they're placed in the most likely place you're going to land a jump and will drop you down into another screen or something forcing you to take a detour. And they're common enough that keeping track of them is a pain in the ass.
By themselves this wouldn't be a huge issue but between the enemy spam and the gotcha traps it makes navigating around a very obnoxious task. Especially when you've just solved a puzzle after re-exploring the entire ruins only to immediately get stuck again having to re-explore the entire ruins one more time. It really doesn't give you time to think or anything. For the most part a given area should only be such a pain the first time through it. Afterwards it should be easier. And while that is technically true here for the most part, the other issues (the annoying gotcha traps and adding more and more enemies throughout the game) just end up making it feel far more tedious.
And just to be clear, I'm not just shitting on the game. La-Mulana, despite having its own flaws, is still one of my favorite games ever. And other than the bullshit spike room clone form Hell Temple (and one glossary entry I got permanently locked out from) I 100%ed La-Mulana 2 before I dropped it. I only even dropped it a few rooms before the end of the game too. After the spike room there's like 2-3 largely empty rooms, a save iirc, and then the final boss. So despite all my frustrations with the sequel I still tolerated all the bullshit basically until the very end which is vastly more than I would tolerate from just about any other game.
It just really felt like the devs ended up missing what made La-Mulana fun and, especially with theming the entire final area after it, ended up coming across like they took the most frustrating parts of La-Mulana as the biggest inspirations for the second game. (With the added downside of Hell Temple at least being optional while Spiral Hell is required.) Once I got more than like 2-3 hours into the game I just left every single game session feeling frustrated and like I'd accomplished nothing regardless of whether I'd made any progress rather than enjoying the game at all.
Otherwise though Zephyr is mostly on the right track. The constant upgrading of enemies largely made most upgrades feel utterly pointless. Upgrades are supposed to make it easier to get around but due to the constant upgrades of enemies in a given area, it very rarely actually felt like that. Also there's a lot of traps whose only purpose is simply to serve as a gotcha moment. They may or may not drop you into spikes but they're placed in the most likely place you're going to land a jump and will drop you down into another screen or something forcing you to take a detour. And they're common enough that keeping track of them is a pain in the ass.
By themselves this wouldn't be a huge issue but between the enemy spam and the gotcha traps it makes navigating around a very obnoxious task. Especially when you've just solved a puzzle after re-exploring the entire ruins only to immediately get stuck again having to re-explore the entire ruins one more time. It really doesn't give you time to think or anything. For the most part a given area should only be such a pain the first time through it. Afterwards it should be easier. And while that is technically true here for the most part, the other issues (the annoying gotcha traps and adding more and more enemies throughout the game) just end up making it feel far more tedious.
For the most part while I didn't enjoy Icefire Treetop very much at all, I thought that area was largely fine. Once you get the ice shoes that part becomes a nonissue. If I were to complain about anything in that field it'd be the swinging blocks (because of enemies being placed in the single most infuriating possible spots so trying to navigate those rooms is very tedious) and the poison lava which starts showing up basically the moment you finally nullify normal lava making the ice cape feel completely pointless. (Same issue with the scalespehere and ice water but that's a lesser issue since it's nowhere near as dangerous as poison lava.)ZephyrBurst wrote:I've seen this reasoning before about the sequel and it's almost always about the mid to late game enemy spam. It definitely could use slightly less enemy spawns.
The other are the acrobatics required in the game, which I feel are a natural occurrence of having better control of the character. Other than one segment of Icefire that you can cheese past anyway, it all felt acceptable.
And just to be clear, I'm not just shitting on the game. La-Mulana, despite having its own flaws, is still one of my favorite games ever. And other than the bullshit spike room clone form Hell Temple (and one glossary entry I got permanently locked out from) I 100%ed La-Mulana 2 before I dropped it. I only even dropped it a few rooms before the end of the game too. After the spike room there's like 2-3 largely empty rooms, a save iirc, and then the final boss. So despite all my frustrations with the sequel I still tolerated all the bullshit basically until the very end which is vastly more than I would tolerate from just about any other game.
It just really felt like the devs ended up missing what made La-Mulana fun and, especially with theming the entire final area after it, ended up coming across like they took the most frustrating parts of La-Mulana as the biggest inspirations for the second game. (With the added downside of Hell Temple at least being optional while Spiral Hell is required.) Once I got more than like 2-3 hours into the game I just left every single game session feeling frustrated and like I'd accomplished nothing regardless of whether I'd made any progress rather than enjoying the game at all.