I too was a bit disappointed when I first played it and reached ending A, thinking that was all there was. I continued months later to try the different mechanics and realised that they are not endings, but more or less just chapters/acts.
It’s honestly a really weird decision to present the game like this, especially since route A is the least interesting one (IMO).
FYI (with slight spoilers):
not sure where you got the 5 times, but it’s very incorrect: you play through the first part of the story twice, once with 2B, the second time with 9S with a couple of additional scenes. The second half of the game is made of entierly new events that happen after the first part.
For me it’s any roguelike (or roguelite) I try. I may find the premise of the gameplay interesting, but having to replay the run from the start (while very likely not learning anything new, because I can’t repeat the situation that gave me trouble before) ruins it pretty quickly. Even the ones I kinda like (Rabbit And Steel and One Step From Eden) can’t keep my attention for long and I end up playing them very rarely.
Metaprogression in roguelites makes it even worse because I know that the runs are gonna be unfair from the start to make the upgrades work.
I agree. I’m not someone who is interested in the singleplayer modes, so my opinion probably means nothing here, but since the gameplay is inherently dependent on a human opponent, I feel like they need to be more than just VS matches against the CPU, to either experiment with the gameplay or introduce you to the story and characters.
I mean… I’m not saying it’s good, but considering most games wouldn’t get free characters as updates (I think only MBTL did it, and it’s probably because most of the free characters are from Fate), I think it’s better to be able to optionally buy a set of characters if you want to play them, instead of having to buy a whole new version of the game to continue playing.
That’s not what I meant.
The article mentions paying for cosmetics instead of characters. With how f2p/live-service games are currently designed, I’d imagine that means things like battle passes (which are present already in some games like SF6 and GBFVS), rotating stores and/or lootboxes.
I honestly don’t see how single player “content” could be of any help. Sure, situational training like Strive and a few other games have (UNI I think had it?) would be nice to have, but I think the main obstacle for a lot of players is the (gameplay) interaction with another real person. I can’t say how other genres fix this (or if they even do), but my guess is that the mechanics themselves are less restrictive and a bit more forgiving.
Also, personally, I prefer buying characters for relatively cheap rather than having the usual f2p predatory crap. They should obviously be free for training tho.
I hadn’t been following it as I don’t like tag fighters and don’t trust f2p games, but what’s wrong with it in terms of gameplay? I was under the impression that the initial reception (even when it was in beta) wasn’t bad.
I have an 8bitdo Ultimate 2 Bluetooth (so the switch version) and it works well. I had to add the line manually to the SDL DB, as I was using the beta firmware. Default firmware works out of the box.
I’d suggest the Ultimate 2 Wireless instead as it should have full SteamInput support.
I couldn’t get the customization and update app to work under wine. It’s not a huge issue, but if you want that functionality you need to boot into windows.
Xbox Series X controller works out of the box on USB. Haven’t tried Bluetooth, but I couldn’t get the proprietary wireless dongle to work (it should work with the xone driver)
I hadn’t considered unlocking difficulties as metaprogression, but yea in that case I think it’s a fair mechanic (to be clear, I tend to drop these games when I get to the inevitable difficulty spike at the final area/boss, so I haven’t really experienced it, as the only one I can clear is Rabbit and Steel which has a traditional easy/normal/hard/harder selection).
Unlocking content to ease players in I think is weird and counter productive, as often even failing gets you further in the process and you might not have learned what the game was trying to teach you by delaying something. You might then be in a slightly harder game without having progressed as a player.
What I really don’t like are the permanent leveling/modifiers you find in games like Hades. I feel like they go against the basic idea of a rougelike/lite, since you can/need (depending on the game) to grind.