devonrv

I saw the reviews for Hob saying that it’s basically just switch hunts, but I got it anyway, and…yeah, it’s basically just switch hunts (at least for the first hour and a half). Part of the reason it took me so long to make this post is cuz I just didn’t wanna play it again cuz of how boring it is. There is combat, but you can just run up to enemies and tap the attack button to stunlock them to death. There’s a teleporting enemy that can break from stunlock to attack you, but even that one doesn’t stand a chance since it drops health pickups on death that’ll heal you back to full, and you can kill it before it kills you just by doing the same strategy. There are environmental hazards (electric floors), which is more than can be said for other hack ‘n’ slash games, but they’re only next to actual walls, thus making little difference. The first area doesn’t even have a boss or anything; it just loops back to the beginning where you’re given your next destination. Since the game hadn’t shown promise after nearly an hour and a half, I stopped playing it and moved onto the next game in my backlog:

  • Escape From Tethys

    4 hours playtime

    9 of 15 achievements

This is a metroidvania. Left/right move, A jumps, X shoots, B uses your subweapon, Y cycles your subweapons, and R does a dash once you get the upgrade. Standard stuff, except your gun only fires a few units ahead before your projectile ceases to exist (and I never found a Long-Beam-equivalent), so it’s more of a close-range weapon.

Level design is pretty bland. The dark forest part gets a bit trickier since it introduces bubble walls that can only be eliminated by shooting the nearby green warts, but then you make it to the underwater section afterward and it just goes back to bland level design. Really, the only things that make the underwater section worse are 1) the harmful blue cones that are the exact size and color of background objects and 2) the increase in large, open rooms making it easier to fall onto an enemy or hazard before you know it’s there.

Also, I have issues with the map’s layout as well. First, the game does that thing where you’ll go down one branching path, getting past enemies and hazards, only to reach a progression-based roadblock, forcing you to go back through what you just did. Why do metroidvanias do this? I could almost understand if there’s an optional powerup or something right before the roadblock, but there’s no excuse when it’s effectively just a dead end.

Not only that, but there are there TWO separate times where the game loops you back to a previous area, forcing you to go through earlier rooms and go down each unexplored path until you happen upon the one that gives you the powerup you need to access other areas. There are teleportation rooms, but they’re just spread out enough that you’ll be redoing the same rooms a lot. And yes, you have to reach a teleportation room to teleport to another teleporter; you don’t get the item that lets you go straight to a teleportation room from anywhere until right after you get the ability that lets you reach the final boss.

Speaking of, you have to fight the exact same boss three different times with no variation (even Explodemon had some variation with its repeated boss). As the first boss, I thought it was a decent start due to the short range of your default weapon; the second time, I thought there might at least be some new attacks, but nope; and as the final phase of the final boss, I was disappointed. The previous boss (the red missile frigate) was more challenging than the final boss, though that’s partly because it has an attack where it just vomits missiles that you can’t dodge if you’re in-range to attack it.

I will say one thing I liked: you can tell with path leads to a save room or teleporter room because there will be green tiles around the entrance…for some of them. Other save/teleporter rooms don’t have this indication at all, and I don’t know why it’s inconsistent (it’s not even a late-game thing; it’s seemingly random).

Overall, I wasn’t too impressed with this game, though maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the Ori games. If you’re interested and you didn’t get it when it was free, wait for a really good sale.