Praise and Gripes + Leaf = Hand Roll...?

[triften]

I got Aquaria as part of the Humble Indie Bundle 2 bonus pack. I am in "The Body" at the moment and, I think, getting close to the bottom of things.

My Overall Impressions:
I appreciate the game's Zelda/Metroid feel (I suppose more Metroid than Zelda.)

I like the part of this type of game where some things seem to be part of the scenery but you have this odd feeling that it may be useful later. Some games make things obvious with unlit torches flanking a door you can't open. Obviously, you'll get a fire spell/wand at some point. Aquaria had a little of that (it's hard not to) but one particularly subtle one I enjoyed (mentioned in the specifics below.)

However, one aspect of those previous examples that Aquaria seems to be missing, is "training". It seems as though after a power is granted, it may go unused for quite some time or never really used at all. There was one power in particular which didn't occur to me to use on a boss (see spoiler labeled area below) because it had never been useful before. In Zelda, the whole dungeon is generally a trainer for the dungeon's item, while the Metroids regularly gave little "gauntlets" to illustrate use of a new power up.

Good game! I've enjoyed the challenge so far. Swapping forms in a frantic boss fight is merely difficult, not impossible. It's a skill to be built, putting the challenge level in about the right spot for me.

One more thing: I think it might be an issue with the nVidia drivers, but when I get severely injured, and the screen flashes red, I get slowdown. I like the life-flashing-before-your-eyes feeling of it and it gives me a moment to escape to the inventory screen to save myself. Does anyone else get that.


-Triften




Specifics below:
(Spoilers perhaps)







Beast Form:
I definitely liked the Beast form for overcoming currents. Initially, the game gives the impression that currents are just part of the terrain and are something to live with. Though I did get a little suspicious when there seemed to be some dead ends with current flowing out of them. I liked the subtlety.

Sun Temple Boss bug:
Once, when fighting the sun temple boss, it launched out of the water at a really low angle and slipped "through" the door. It got stuck on the far side so I couldn't hurt it and both Li and my blaster pet were clipping in the door, so their attacks couldn't get to him either.

Song to Boy Ghost:
You've probably heard this before, but that was a bit much... perhaps having the notes light up when played properly? I'm not completely tone deaf, but I wasn't able to catch that that particular tune was what the mother ghost was singing.

Golem Boss:
This is the one where I had to look up what to do. Back when I was a little kid with very few games, I had more of an inclination to hammer (har, har, har) away at a boss, trying out different attacks, because I had little else to do, and a new game wasn't coming until Christmas, if I was lucky. Anyway, I bailed on the Golem after two deaths and countless Tough Cakes to look it up in a walkthrough. The Beast form "spitting" attack never needed to be used until this. I hadn't bothered using it at all. (It did seem to be a little glitched: the blue bounce shots from frogs sometimes got spat out with 0 velocity.) So when I got to this part, it didn't even occur to me to try it. Granted, the Golem almost requires Beast form's speed to dodge, so that's a bit of a clue. But having the player face a small beasty immune to regular Energy form shots to demonstrate the Beast spitting would have been a nice intro to the power. There could be some sort of large (mostly inert) mollusk blocking the exit from the boss cave. Shooting it causes it to launch mostly harmless things to eat and spit back (while the game tells you "dash to eat things, right click to spit them out")

Spirit Colors Bug:
This is a bug... or something. I'm using 1.1.3 for Linux, and when I went to free Li, I said "Alright, no walkthrough for me! I can do this!" and I went through every sequence of the colors of the spirits around me... In the version I'm playing one of the spirits is green instead of orange so they were all wrong. R-O-N-G. The upside is at least I picked up on what I needed to do, I just could not have gotten the right colors.

[Aristobulus]

I had to look up how to get past the door in the sunken city, too. I understood the notes on the wall, just didn't quite realize the exact pattern it was telling me to sing, like I was trying different combinations of the 5 or 6 notes it seemed to be showing me, didn't realize what it was REALLY showing me.

The boss after that gave me some trouble, too, and I can't remember if I had to look it up or not, as well.

Though I did like how Aquaria wasn't as obviously linear and..."designed" as Metroid/Zelda games are - by this I mean how you said dungeon layouts in Zelda are all about using one specific item and then using that on the boss, and such, the way Aquaria was laid out just felt more natural. You get a power, and you use it when it's needed, and it may or may not be needed in a variety of places, not just its own clearly defined location in the game and the never again.

Despite that, I do think things like the song door and how to beat that boss could have been a bit clearer. Those are the only puzzles I thought were a bit much, though. The Frozen Veil boss is difficult, but it's entirely optional so I give it a pass.

But I mean, despite that the game does seem heavily Metroid influenced, I never had anywhere close to as much fun exploring in Metroid as I did in Aquaria, because Aquaria just felt so much more...alive. The layout of stuff being everywhere and possibly useful had a lot to do with that too, like I said.  Metroid feels like exploring obvious levels, Aquaria felt like exploring an actual world. It was just something refreshing you don't see a lot even in adventure games.

Also, that slowdown you mentioned when you're about to die - that's an intentional touch. I like it, personally. Really makes the moment feel more distressing, and the first time it happened was just such an "oh god what have I done" moment, and the way it slows down and flashes red...especially with the wounded line from Naija "I don't think I'm going to make it" I just felt so bad. Lots of nice touches like that are why I was really able to get into the game though

[triften]

Finished the game. Got the "real" ending. Kudos to Bit Blot.

I really enjoyed the end boss. It felt dangerous without being too frustrating. I was afraid it might turn brutal, forcing me to redo the previous 45 minutes (it seemed) of game since the save point, but it just required keeping one's wits to survive almost indefinitely while trying to figure out how to bring it down.

One major gripe on the graphics: I was shaken out of immersion when one of the first large enemies I encountered suddenly flipped about like it was a piece of cardboard. Gah! Naija just turns instantly, most of the tiny enemies do, and yet, this large crab thing is 2-D. It's just a very odd design decision, especially because it seems to have been applied inconsistently.

A much more minor gripe is that it seems that some tiny enemies die in a relatively huge flash of light (piranhas for example) while some larger ones vanish with minimal fanfare.

-Triften

Specifics (spoilers?)

Another item for the neat subtle thing list is how one gets past the large invincible angry white fish. When I saw little narrow passages, I figured "surely there will be some shrink or transform into a fish power!" but I hadn't suspected with those angry white fish.

Tasty Cake == best recipe ever. I was up to my eyeballs in... well, eyeballs. A cheap and easy Heal + 2. Though by time I got them, the game had given me a small stockpile of Arcane Poultices. Hot Borscht was also a winner.

[Ledgem]

Balancing it out, I felt it was fine as it was.  The little tips at the bottom of the screen often informed you of your new abilities, and then it was up to you to play with them and see their effects on other creatures or on the map.  That's part of the fun of games like these - if they gave you everything straight-out, it would completely remove the challenge.  A lot of the experience was about being observant and following your curiosity.

If I ever became stuck, I figured that I had either missed something or wasn't doing something correctly, and would back-track or try virtually everything that I could in every form.  Not everything was obvious, but I appreciated that.