Recent reviews by Trigger

This is an always-online indie game that doesn't tell you it's always-online. If you're unlucky you'll find out it has a mandatory connectivity requirement when the multiplayer servers flake out and you lose your most recent chunk of progress -- and god forbid the Unity connection go down for any reason because you can kiss the ability to save the game goodbye. Just another indie studio mimicking terrible AAA design decisions without understanding why those decisions are bad. Indie is supposed to be better than this. No co-op game needs to run a mandatory cloud service to handle players' save data.

Custom game engine built to prioritize low input latency. Buttery smooth controls. Sublime music. Great boss fights. Appropriate adaptations to the roguelite formula (but there's still a "traditional" mode if that's your jam). And you can turn up the music to 200% volume to enjoy it twice as much.

This is the best Rockman game Capcom will never make. 10/10. Eat your heart out, Inafune.

Deus Ex meets Perfect Dark, giving us an excellently built world of conspiracy and secrets underpinned by an unusually inventive stealth game.

Normally I would criticize stealth mechanics as simple as the ones found in this game; the variable visibility and lightbar are good, but sound propagation is a crapshoot, and there is no evident volume difference between running, walking, and sneaking (you can easily tiptoe right alongside a guard, making what sounds like a huge racket, and never be noticed). Crucial elements like the ability to lean against a door to more clearly hear what's happening in the next room, are outright missing. But despite errors and omissions, the game achieves fundamentally engaging stealth gameplay in a different way than I expected.

Distracting guards is a critical ability in any stealth game's toolkit. NEON STRUCT allows the distraction of guards by tossing Geocache Tokens, the equivalent of ordinary coins used in other games for a similar purpose. The all-important distinction, however, is that these tokens are a limited resource that can only be obtained by thoroughly exploring each level in order to locate hidden geocaches. Per map, the player has access to five geocaches, each of which supplies one token, for a total of 100 tokens across the entire game. Locating geocaches is also tied to mission ranking, which, while purely cosmetic (aside from achievements), helps underscore "hey, you're missing out on stuff" if the player is skipping geocaches. These systems combine to encourage the player to thoroughly explore every map -- impressively, the geocaches are almost always hidden in places that are obvious to the exploratory eye, as rewards for seeking out and poking one's nose into every nook and cranny. Incentivizing exploration like this, helps reinforce the otherwise fairly basic stealth mechanics in a huge way.

The other impressive innovation of NEON STRUCT is the initially baffling choice to not put background music into most of the missions. But wait, doesn't the game proudly advertise its soundtrack, you may ask? Yes, and it definitely has one, and it's very good -- and it mostly plays between missions, in restful interstitial areas where the player isn't under threat and is free to roam, talk to locals, take up brief sidequests, buy food (or illegal substances and electronics) using money obtained during missions, and absorb the worldbuilding. These slow segments pace the game excellently, giving the player a breather between sneaky sections. Hearing soothing electronic tunes saturating the air after leaving a mission has an almost hypnotic effect. I quickly associated music with safety and freedom, and the interstitial rest areas became some of my favorite parts of the game. A local food truck will be playing the radio, or somebody will have a boombox in the local market, or some punk teens will be blaring a song while loitering about, or a tune will waft out the windows of the pub down the street -- it's a beautiful effect achieved seemingly effortlessly, by not putting the music into the levels themselves.

I can't recommend this game enough, for stealth fiends. Refreshingly original. Be sure to pick up the official expansion, "The Dulce Archives", from the game's Workshop page. It's free!

Howdy, folks. I am one of the biggest Mega Man fans you will ever meet, and I would like to take a minute to dissect Mighty No. 9. Yes, I backed the game on Kickstarter. Yes, I participated in the beta. Yes, I backed and played a few other Mega Man spiritual successors in the intervening time. Allow me to divulge what I know.


I'll tackle this first, because this is obviously the most important bit. Yes, you can jump. Yes, you can shoot. The basics are all here, and they feel pretty good. Where it all breaks down is the same place Azure Striker Gunvolt sputtered to an oil-on-asphalt engine-smoking halt -- the mechanical context in which said jump'n'shoot takes place.

MN9 is not about getting from A to B with skill and precision. It is not about defeating bosses and gaining powers. It is, like ASG, all about perfect runs. There's a score counter, you see. If you just shoot enemies to death you gain basically no score. In order to rack up the points, you must tag enemies with your blaster, then dash through them to kill them. This results in level layouts and enemy placements designed not around platforming challenge nor around teaching the player to deal with more and more combined hazards but around "figure out how to dash through as many enemies as possible". Beck also has infinite air dashes at his disposal, presumably to make midair dash-kills more viable. The combination of poor level design, poor enemy placement, and the ability to cross any gap effortlessly means that absolutely all levels are uninspired and unchallenging.

There is a good reason Classic Mega Man dumped the score counter after the first damn game -- Mega Man was never about high scores, and the fact that Inafune has gone two for two when it comes to reintroducing scoring systems does not bode well for the future of Comcept's Mega Man spiritual successors. (Even the Zero series, despite having a ranking system, weighted that system heavily in favor of skill, not arbitrary style points. Go fast, don't get hit, don't use Cyber-Elves, etc.; nothing in Zero's ranking system ever remotely approximated "build a score multiplier and rack up lots of points".)

Mega Man-esque games are about getting through an increasingly difficult multi-layered obstacle course from A to B, enduring hazards, and maybe taking a few knocks on the way. MN9, by contrast, doesn't care how good you are at platforming. Every mechanic is focused on going faster and getting more points. It's not a terrible game. It's a terrible Mega Man game. It's a speedrunner's paradise and a platformer's nightmare. The fact that two games share similar commands (jump, shoot, run to the right, use boss weapon, etc.) does not mean they are in any way mechanically similar. MN9 actively wants the player to try for a high score. It is designed to facilitate the struggle for higher scores. If the player doesn't care about score, the game's design breaks down completely -- and most of the Mega Man fans who backed this game and wanted it to be made weren't looking for a score attack. If you're wondering why there's such a glut of negative reviews, wonder no more. MN9 is literally not the product the backers wanted or paid for, and I've outlined precisely why above.

On top of the above problems, virtually nothing changed between the beta and the full release. I thought betas were for testing and making changes, but apparently, despite hordes of testers reporting countless problems (most notably complaining about the terrible level design), Battalion's stage (the only beta stage) remains exactly as it was in beta, with the addition of some extra voice work and cinematography. Even Battalion himself is exactly as he was in beta. This is unacceptable. The problems with that stage are myriad. It is not good enough as-is. Inafune still saw fit to release it.


I shouldn't need to get into this, but I will anyway. The former MN9 community manager "managed" the community into near nonexistence. She was hired via nepotism (her boyfriend was on the game's development team) despite an utter lack of PR credentials.

Dina, the community manager in question, had literally never played a single Mega Man game in her life prior to being hired (at which point, to her credit, she played a few), which in itself made her the absolute worst choice for managing a community filled to overflowing with some of the most hardcore Mega Man fans on the planet. She didn't know or understand the fanbase she was dealing with or the things they were passionate about, and since, by her own admission, all developer feedback from the official forum went through her and her alone, it's entirely understandable that a hell of a lot of backers weren't happy with the way things were being run.

It was then made apparent that Dina was a massive authoritarian SJW. She tried to get the game's protagonist genderbent solely because she wanted a female in the lead role (not because it would improve the game in any way). She actively banned people from the official forum for disagreeing with her slipshod management, no matter how polite the disagreements were. (Forum access, by the way, was a backer reward, which means this sort of thing borders on breach of contract.) She blocked countless people from the game's official Twitter account over differences of sociopolitical opinion. The list goes on and on.

Dina was finally removed from the team, but she was let go on good terms and her dismissal only occurred after the beta period had ended and the damage was irreversible.


Here's some fun data for you to consider.

Mighty No. 9

1. Kickstarter date: Aug. 31, 2013
   
2. Steam release date: June 21, 2016

20XX

1. Kickstarter date: Apr. 11, 2014 (you can find it under its original name, Echoes of Eridu)
   
2. Steam Early Access date: Nov. 25, 2014

Mighty No. 9 has already been beaten to the punch, ladies and gentlemen. It was produced too slowly and, compared to the initial Kickstarter pitch, it doesn't even include all the things the fans paid for. Most notably, the ability to alter Beck's individual body parts -- the one thing that would've made MN9 stand out mechanically -- has been completely cut.

Inafune has released an average platformer that resembles Mega Man on the surface but whose core strays so far from the formula it is attempting to bring back into the limelight that it can hardly be called a spiritual successor to the Mega Man franchise whatsoever. Meanwhile, a group of completely unknown developers (the folks making 20XX) has created one of the single finest Mega Man-esque games I have ever played in my entire life -- and they did it in less than half the time the so-called "Father of Mega Man" took to make his mountain of mediocrity, and with a tiny fraction of MN9's budget. (For the record, 20XX development predates the Kickstarter for MN9, as mentioned by the developers in their Reddit AMA.)


Inafune has no idea what made Mega Man great, and he has made something that bears only a passing, superficial resemblance to the franchise I love. If you're looking for a generic speedrunner/score attack, this might scratch your itch. If you're looking for more Mega Man, like most of the people who backed this on Kickstarter, avoid this game like the plague.

(Full disclosure: I backed both Mighty No. 9 and Echoes of Eridu/20XX on Kickstarter, and actively participated in beta testing for both games.)

My name is Trigger, of the Ruairi server. I'm well known in the community, even across servers, for effectively codifying the proper use of Mabinogi's Magic skill set with a comprehensive guide that underwent many, many revisions over the years (and which is still referenced and quoted to this day). I played for over six years and sank countless thousands of dollars into the game. Mabinogi is my most-played video game of all time by a nigh-incomprehensibly-large margin (just not on the Steam version, which will explain the lack of hours logged here). I've shrugged off changes that have made similarly-tenured players quit. And as a relatively respected player whose advice carried significant weight with newbies and old-timers alike, I have one thing to say.

Do not play Mabinogi.

Mabinogi's combat was originally, at its core, a rock-paper-scissors system. Normal melee strikes are deflected by the Defense skill. Defense can be broken with Smash. Smash is not as fast as normal melee and will always be trumped by it. This, combined with many different enemy AI patterns, required players to be able to read the enemy's movements well in advance and react with appropriate timing, because all attacks carry some degree of stun and enough consecutive attacks will knock a player backward. In the original release and for some time thereafter, tanking was completely non-viable because player health was vastly outclassed by enemy damage potential, requiring every combatant to be adept at reading and reacting to enemy movements and encouraging the then-commonly-espoused battle philosophy of "don't get hit".

In the early game, this system is still mostly apparent and functions as intended. But a number of problems have cropped up over the years that make the game's overall combat functionality less strategic and as a result less unique (and if you've not played Mabinogi, yes, its original combat system literally has not been replicated anywhere else, despite its brilliance). I will attempt to outline what I view as the most egregious of these problems below.

Power creep is part of Mabinogi's story. There is an in-universe justification for the player's rise to near-godlike power, although I won't spoil it on the off chance you disregard my advice and play this game anyway. But despite power creep actually having a treasured position in the lore (and despite its being a damn good plot point), it has still negatively impacted the game in more ways than one. Nearly every subsequent flaw I list is in some way related to power creep.

The difficulty curve is a joke. The combat system underwent an overhaul back in the summer of 2012, which you may read my at-the-time opinion of here[www.purifierunit.com]. It was an inherently good update, and I thought it would force Nexon to consider their poor handling of the difficulty curve more seriously. Sadly, they've done nothing but exacerbate the problem. More and more skills keep getting added to the game with absolutely no substantial increases in content breadth or depth to match. Since almost all skills grant permanent stats when upgraded, and since many skill sets rely on the same stats as other sets (allowing indirect upgrading of already-maxed skills), and since there are so many skills now, there will come a point at which a player is no longer challenged by anything the game has to offer. In a game whose combat was originally defined by strategy and skill, and wherein a properly skilled player could take out a far bigger and stronger monster with ease, "difficulty" is now represented by monsters with bigger health bars and higher damage output, and virtually all of them can be laughed at upon reaching a certain power threshold, completely removing all strategy requirements from combat and reducing it to mindless grinding.

Enemy AI is a hopeless shambles. It served its purpose well in the original release -- for instance, bears and goblins were both notorious for using deceptive tactics to bait players into reacting incorrectly. Most enemies can handle melee, magic, and archery attacks with relatively good reaction patterns. Attacking an enemy more than once with a bolt spell or a normal bow shot, for instance, will almost always cause the enemy to charge at you directly, reducing the effectiveness of spamming, especially in the cases of fast and ultra-fast monsters. Once alchemy was added to the game, the original AI crumbled and never recovered. Enemies have never once had their behavior patterns updated to handle new offensive techniques or new skill sets. They are still operating on their original AI, all of them. If you start out focusing on melee skills initially, you'll receive a decent portion of the game's original challenge level. If you choose something like Puppetry or Dual Guns, you will completely outsmart the AI merely by virtue of the weapons and skills you'll be using. It isn't a total slam dunk, as most skills start out with low damage and the AoEs all start with relatively small areas of effect, but the enemy AI will still have no idea how to handle them.

The early game has been nerfed to hell and back. This was unfortunately necessary, as the constant piling on of more and more skill sets left newcomers hopelessly behind the curve of the experienced players (and since this game has no level cap and no class system, there was no way for them to ever catch up). The changes to leveling speed have aided everyone, though, not just the newbies, and thus the problem remains unsolved, having merely shifted in a certain direction. Newcomers can attain a decent power level much more easily and with far less fuss than they could originally, but by the same token the old dogs can effortlessly blaze through new skill sets in a week or less, leaving anyone beyond a certain point utterly content-starved. The endgame has been killed thanks to poor design choices focused on making the early game easier.

In case you didn't catch this in one of the previous paragraphs, there are far too many skills in the game now. Most of the new skill sets have been added for very little reason other than bigger, badder, flashier attacks (going hand-in-hand with the attempt to shift the game's demographic from fantasy fans over to lovers of everything vapid, flashy, and hollow), and as already mentioned, enemies simply can't handle the newer stuff. Anything designed with previous content in mind is always outclassed by the next batch of skills.


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That about wraps up my deconstruction of Mabinogi's many current flaws, all of which contributed to my leaving the game and none of which have thus far been addressed. I don't expect any of them to ever be addressed, either, because Nexon's Korean development team basically just develops for the Korean users, and the players on the North American servers get whatever Korea gets. If you play this game, know that you have absolutely no voice in the game's future direction. You will exist merely as a cash grab for Nexon.

There are other major gripes I could have laid at Nexon's feet here, including their horrendously overpriced cash shop, their habit of releasing a bundle of new outfits in gachapon and calling it a "content update", their poor community management, their childish and completely amateur banning practices[www.purifierunit.com] (of which the linked blog post is hardly the only example), and much more besides. I tolerated all of the above for over six years because Mabinogi was once a giant among MMORPGs, schooling the rest with unique mechanics and satisfying gameplay. It's now a shadow of its former self, and it does not deserve your attention.