/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.4288739]

Why are the spells in this so terrible? The two Spirit spells are really good, but literally every other spell (excluding transformation ones) sucks.

>Dark Metamorphosis
8hp per hit, only on bleeding enemies (which aren't that common), and only if the blood touches you. 8hp is basically nothing after the very beginning of the game, and a lot of great weapons (like the Holy Rod) don't even let bleeding enemies bleed.

>Soul Steal
Pretty solid damage and a decent heal... IF you're on a screen with a shitload of weak enemies and candles everywhere. Anywhere else it's dogshit. It's also the trickiest Spell input, and the pickiest, not to mention the absurdly high Mana consumption. The ONLY practical use of this spell in the entire game is Granfaloon, and that's one of the easiest bosses.

>Hellfire
It's crap, plain and simple. It does mediocre damage, takes too much start up time to be a decent evade, and takes so long from input to cast that you're never going to hit anything mobile with it, and the things you WILL hit can just be damaged a shitload more in less time with your sword.

[Anonymous No.4288740]

>>4288739
Sub-weapons are really poorly balanced, too. Axes are great a majority of the game. Knives are fantastic because their DPS is insane and they're very versatile. Holy Water absolutely melts anything it can focus on. The Bible is a great shield and has broken damage output. All the others are trash.

>Stop Watch
It consumes 20 hearts? Twenty fucking hearts? For a few seconds? It only freezes a small percentage of enemies, and slows the rest. The fucked part, though? There are tons of things it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING against! It's just bad... so, so bad. Sure, it cheeses the Doppleganger, but so do knives, and they're a HELL of a lot more useful literally everywhere else.

>Pebble
Insanely situational, and in those few situations it's even remotely practical it has shit damage. You are better off with literally any of the four GOOD sub-weapons in 90% of the game... and you're probably even better off with the next shit one.

>Salt
We'll take the Holy Water, then make it useless. Yeah, it spreads out more, but the damage per tick isn't any better and seem a LOT slower by comparison. It also has a hideously low hitbox, so you can literally only hit enemies that are actually standing on top of it. It's good on slimes, but so is Holy Water.

>Lightning
It can completely melt several threats in the game, but it drains so many hearts it negates any practicality in taking it over a different sub-weapon, ESPECIALLY given how rare this one is so you're going to have to carry it a while. And since the game is so easy it's not like you're going to NEED a sudden burst of God-like damage.

[Anonymous No.4288757]

>>4288740
Oh, I also forgot the Cross. That's a weird one since it seems to only use the Crash version for Alucard and it consumes like 100 hearts. It's a full screen wipe basically, but... that's a lot of hearts, and it's just as rare as the lightning so again, you have to carry it a WHILE to get any practical use out of it, which in and of itself is impractical.

And the damage isn't even enough to stomp bosses for the most part.

[Anonymous No.4288760]

>>4288739

>soul steal
reliable healing as places with lots of enemies and candles aren't at all rare

>Salt
only drops in like one spot so who cares

>Lightning
fun as hell, looks cool, totally worth draining hearts

>Pebble
awesome to use in tight corridors, fun to bounce around and hit distant enemies.

Not going to try and defend the rest, though. Sorry you can't just enjoy things OP and instead need to fill your life with things like making a thread quibbling over the minor problems of a 20-year old game that is still a masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.4288779]

>>4288760
>salt
Salt drops in many, many locations. It's one of the most common ones there are. It probably pops up more than the axe, in fact. Hell, there's like two of it in the Clock Towers alone.

>soul steal
Soul Steal just isn't practical for the mana cost and high input time/difficulty. MOST rooms with tons of candles and enemies are full of piss easy ones, so you likely won't even be hurting too bad in the first place. But I guess if you're a long way from a save point, have plenty of mana, NOTHING to heal yourself with, just so happen to have a nearby room full of enemies/candles that are slow enough to pose zero threat, and you REALLY need to keep going it could give you the perk up you need.

>lightning
Hell yeah, it's fun. Once you get the Duplicator and basically infinite hearts it's among the most fun you can have... but this isn't about how FUN or cool it is, it's about how practical it is... and it just isn't. It's really, really bad in that regard.

>pebble
In tight corridors it's still not useful because the damage is so low. You could literally just toss a Holy Water, knives, or axes and get more out of fewer hearts and less effort. I could see having FUN just playing with the angles and things, but again... this is about how GOOD it is, not how fun it is to play around with.

And I have a shitload of fun with SotN. That's a big part of WHY these bother me so much, because if they were even remotely decent they'd be so much more fun and expand the play variety even more. When you've played the games all the way through literally countless times, collected every single item more than once (including the Duplicator), explored literally every inch including the glitch-only areas, and tried basically EVERYTHING the game has to offer... you start looking for other things to keep it fresh, and unfortunately a massive percentage of the game's content just isn't worth bothering with, or in Lightning's case it's just way too pricey.

[Anonymous No.4288798]

Use soul steal on Beelzebub.

[Anonymous No.4288804]

>>4288798
I guess that WOULD work. So two practical uses, neat.

[Anonymous No.4288860]

>>4288739
the IGvania's entire design philosophy is to just throw as much crap in the game as possible. It's about quantity rather than quality.

Nothing in these games are balanced, it's a toybox of different tools

[Anonymous No.4288994]

>Soul steal, one of the most notoriously overpowered abilities in all of video games you can easily spam your way though the game with once you have a decent MP pool, is terrible

[Anonymous No.4289000]

>>4288739
you do know that you can teleport with hellfire and actually change it to meteor balls instead of cheap fireballs

[Anonymous No.4289028]

>>4288739
>>4288779
>high input time/difficulty

how about getting good?
I hope this is bait.

[Anonymous No.4289657]

>>4288739
You underrate Soul Steal. It's the most OP thing by far. Pay with 99 luck and see how you much you love that thing.

[Anonymous No.4289658]

>>4288779
You use soul steal to chip at bosses, not bullshit candles and ghosts.

[Anonymous No.4289682]

>Hellfire, that allows invincible teleportation and letting you deal a lot of damage to any enemy just by popping in at them and letting the meteor balls hit them a billion times, is crap
>A simple button combo is difficult to perform and takes too long

[Anonymous No.4289771]

>>4288798
And Doppleganger after a time freeze. Think it KOs him after two.

[Anonymous No.4289860]

>>4288739
DAAAHG MEDEMOFIFIF

[Anonymous No.4290787]

Why does the Alucard and shield rod combo attack exist? It's basically a "fuck you I win" mode.

I do like the one combo with that one shield where there's booty, though.

[Anonymous No.4290846]

>hard input
At least people admit they are shit at video games

[Anonymous No.4290919]

>>4288760
>SOTN
>masterpiece
not OP but le3ts not get ahead of ourselves. SOTN as well as most of the metroidvanias are overrated & pretty boring.

[Anonymous No.4290934]

>>4288779
>>4288739
Folks who didn't play fighters. If you have an easy time doing it, Soul Steal is pretty great and fun to use.

Also let's remember that the biggest flaw the game has is being too easy. A lot of what you can do isn't as practical as nuking everything with the shield rid or crissagrim, but that's what makes it fun.

[Anonymous No.4290937]

>>4290919
>overrated

Way to invalidate what you're saying.

[Anonymous No.4290974]

>>4290937
>backtracking: the game
>not overrated

pick one

[Anonymous No.4291109]

>>4288739
Hellfire is perfect the way it is. It's not meant to be any good. Think about it: it's the move Dracula always does and it always gets him killed.
Every hundred years he does this. He is so in love with how cool his signature move is that he can't see that its ruining his entire fighting plan.
As Alucard you try it out in immediately think 'this is a terrible move' and thus prove that you have none of Dracula's stubborn vanity.

[Anonymous No.4291475]

>>4288739
Soul Steal is OP as fuck, how bad are you at this?

[Anonymous No.4291491]

>>4288739
>IF you're on a screen with a shitload of weak enemies

Try it against Legion.