PixlBit

Unfortunate. This looked alright.

That's totally fair enough. I'd actually love a more whimsical approach to dark souls, maybe in the redwall universe or something.

Idk if this is what you you're looking for, but amazon is generally the place I buy stuff like this from.

If you do and struggle with them, send me a pm and I'll offer some help And answer wuestions. They can be a bit obscure for newer players, and I think that's where a lot of the difficulty of the first few games lie.

So I'm not alone in thinking Gaucamelee is actually a terrible metroidvania. Good to know.

Id actually argue that zero mission comes pretty damned close to Super Metroids level construction. It's just a touch on the short side so the Alternate routes don't have 

 I actually didn't think about that until now though. Most indie games of this type are terrible about secrets. I was wonderiNg why a lot of titles don't quite the same quality as metroid but couldn't quite put my finger on it.

 Hollow Knight has a hell of a lot of secrets. A lot of them do boil down to noticing a wall is a slightly different and hitting it or finding key items and figuring out what to do with them (it definitely takes a lot of inspirations from dark souls), but there are a lot of secrets involving the games abilities too. In fact to get the true ending you have to go to a secret area to find another secret area to find more secrets that unlock more secrets. I was a pretty dedicated explorer  first run but was surprised that even though I got the true ending I still missed two entire areas and like 5 bosses.

And I mean it's a 30 hour game that can be finished in less than 5 hours fairly easily just by knowing where everything is and the alternate routes to finish them without any speedrunning shenanigans. Once you realise you can do certain things without the developer intended abilities, it opens up a huge array of options. One in particular feels akin to the Super Metroid "oh shit you can wall jump from the start?!" moment.

I personally agree that not all games are made for everyone, nor should they be. I don't necessarily think from should make an easy mode, or that they really need to. I was just doing this for fun.

 One of the points that get brought up regarding difficulty is that books and films don't arbitrarily shut you out of them based on skill, but I'd argue that both mediums sort of do to a degree. There are works of literature that will lock people out of them based on their proficiency with the given language, and certain films are built for people with buolt in knowledge of the medium. I feel like difficulty in games is similar: those games are made for people who Have been gaming for a long time, not for those just starting out. Much the same as you wouldn't give someone who just learnt to read a copy of A Song of Ice and Fire or Hamlet.

Road Redemption is a spiritual successor to road rash. It's only on pc at the moment because it was in early access for a while, but it's fully released on pc and console versions should be out soon if they aren't already. 

 I loved road rash for the ps1 and this captures the spirit quite well imo. It's not the best graphically but it's a hell of a lot of fun.

It's only on switch and pc at the moment. The dev team said they'd think about releasing on PS4 and  but it won't be for a while unfortunately.

True. I found loot either makes a drastic difference or no difference at all, and it's a whole lot of time between drastic difference loot. The good stuff is the talismans and the weapon runes, as they actually change gameplay. The rest is a bit meh.

Youre right, I feel like this is a weird mix or The Last of Us, Zelda, and Dark Souls in terms of gameplay.

I think his arc is pretty strong, but I do agree on the acting and him feeling like a 2018 kid. I feel that's supposed to make him more relatable and differentiate him from kratos, but they could have handled his dialogue a bit better.