Not Buying and Here's Why

[SuicideBunny]

Oddly enough I HATE JRPG's with a passion but loved Aquaria. I'm not sure if I entirely agree with the comparison. Or maybe I should try playing JRPG's again?

you shouldn't. the comparison is, at best, very flawed.

[Glamador]

Well, I like most JRPGs, but Aquaria is nothing like them.  There's no leveling up, no turn-based combat, no linear worlds nor a set storyline to uncover in a specific order through dialogue and cutscenes...yea I don't see anything that looks like a JRPG in Aquaria.  However it definitely reminds me of Metroid and Castlevania.  Huge open worlds to explore that sometimes require a new item/form to fully explore, insane boss fights that often require both skill and strategy to overcome, puzzling puzzles to work through, and that sense of isolation and purpose that only comes from a NEED to explore.  Sounds just like Metroid to me.

[DragonXVI]

It's Ecco meets Metroidvania, with elements such as cooking/combining...

The biggest complaints have been some of the puzzles (Too vague), the combat (Too Hard) and the sense of where you're supposed to be going, but in making the game a more linear "Now Go Here!" (As Metroid will often do), you lower frustration but you kill the exploration element of the game.

I like Aquaria because it's something that hasn't been done to death: The 2D Undersea Exploration deal, and I was a big fan (Still am really) of the Ecco series.  While it retains some elements of the Shoot-em-up and a bit of platforming on top of that, it's got a good selection of clever puzzles and scenery, and at the end of the day it was primarily done by two guys in their spare time, not a professional company.

Reguarding the comment about the gameplay being a glorified version of "Get Key and Open Door", you'll find that *EVERY* game follows this mechanic :p It's the simple 'Gate' principle of having to achieve something to proceed (If you've listened to the commentry on Half Life 2: Lost Coast there's a nice example of this - Defeat squad of badguys, Helicopter crashes into obstacle clearing it for you etc.), and you'll find Aquaria is one of the less linear examples - Whole areas of the game are optional, and several areas can be done in any order, the whole Food/Cooking thing is optional (but handy), optional bosses etc etc.

Also, your comment on the Gesture v HotKeys example from Darwinia? Aquaria already has examples of that.  Obviously there's a few tweaks the game can still have to make things a little smoother but for the most part the only things I can fault are fairly minor (And mostly put down to the fact I never used the handy cooking system so just made things harder for myself until I stuffed Naija full of spicy food and decimated the final boss)

It's odd because one of the hugest complaints about Oblivion was the game constantly tells you where to go with a nice big arrow.  Mods instantly appeared to kill everything on the map and have a true "Lost in the Wilderness" experience. 

And yes, despite perhaps some loose influences with the art style, Aquaria has about as much in common with JRPGs than I do with Captain Pugwash. 

[Cappy]

It's odd because one of the hugest complaints about Oblivion was the game constantly tells you where to go with a nice big arrow.  Mods instantly appeared to kill everything on the map and have a true "Lost in the Wilderness" experience. 

This was one of my favorite features in Oblivion. Oblivion featured characters that would go to different places based on the time and day.

Morrowind didn't have this and even though there wasn't a AI schedule I found it annoying not to have one. I don't find it fun to be forced to talk to 20 AI characters or wander the country side looking for a building. I do love exploring; I would walk or ride my horse and pick herbs as much as possible but I like when I at least have the option to fast travel (or the compass or other things that kill exploration).

Aquaria doesn't have a bunch of AIs you have to gather information from so I don't think it would be appropriate for the compass to be a game feature. Aquaria has too many areas and too much fun that would be missed!

[mugodz]

It does have a compass. Remember the White and Red Ripples on the minimap?

[Phatz]

Well OP, it's your loss. As for me, I like going from A to B and via C, D and E too, if only for the hell of it. 

  I highly doubt 2X copies would have been sold should the game have been truncated as you think it should have been.

[Alphasoldier]

I really don't understand why you came in here, registered and made a topic just because you didn't like this game. If I was Alec, I would've alreay banned you and ban you from buying this game just because you nag so much. This is just a simple vete like Sony and Nintendo, like Halo and Metroid, like Mario and Sonic and way more things, you just do or don't like this genre, don't annoy others with it. Like my old man used to say, if you don't have anything good to say, just stfu then.

This game is a classic game, it has bits of all old games combined into one superior classic super game. And like I have said in several topic on this forum. Alot of the hints in this game are almost unnoticable, small and require some logical thinking. I beat many bosses just with logical thinking. Which is why I like this game so much, just like Metroid.

I must say it's more worth then most newer games. I would've even bought it if it was 60$, and if there will be some sort of special edition with CD and box or poster I WILL buy that too, just because this game is that good. And I must say that I never ever bought a game twice just because it's that awesome.

So now you have 2 choices: be smart, leave. Or don't be smart and be hated and ridiculed cause you're making no sense with your posts and arguments, also to note that you haven't been giving constructive critisism from post number 1 to now, just been nagging over everything that was wrong according to you.

[FaeDyne]

I don't know how hard it is for most people, (I suspect it is) but I think cooler heads on both sides would have been better. (woulda, coulda, shoulda, but it isn't)

A suggestion to Alec, before giving the cold shoulder, perhaps a reminder that this is an independent game, and whether pandering to an audience is something you have no interest or not. I honestly wasn't sure if it was obvious that you were indifferent to the desires of the players or not. I happened to have known that it was an independent game, but you still can't make assumptions based on that.

and original poster, try not to assume intent of the creator(s). I noticed someone else saying how ludicrous it is that the creators would not want to sell more copies. and they were wrong.
I deal with the same problems of offering criticism to things I feel have more potential, but my opinion about where the potential lies isn't the same as the artist's, and you have to respect that. I don't know how many people who can't get along with others have poor social skills like me, but I suspect that's most likely. It's hard to overcome. I feel social skills will let me get along, but our opinions will still differ and we'll still be so isolated in our thoughts. Well, perhaps some artists can share the same visions...

uhm... LOVE! everybody!  <cue Groove is in the Heart by Deee-Lite>

[Alec]

You care about what people think and you also don't.

Feedback on bugs and features to improve the game can actually make the game better and be things that we didn't realize about the game.

If someone's like "I don't like this style of game", that's all well and good, but its not something I'm responsible for.

[RobertWalker]

I'm not sure why people have gotten so worked up about this. I can see that the original poster probably felt that he was providing constructive criticism, and I didn't really see it as a demand that the game be changed; merely some comments that the developers are free to consider or not.

He did, however, refer to some game design decisions as faults. It felt like he thought that these were issues that hadn't even occurred to the designers, when in reality it seems pretty clear to me that they were a stylistic choice. So this game probably isn't for him, and that's okay. I'm not a fan of country music, so Garth Brooks will never see a cent of my money. That doesn't mean I expect him to change his music, and it wouldn't be fair for me to refer to his choice of music genre as a flaw.

[Snaptrap]

Aquaria is too spread out for the amount of content it offers, but if there was more within the game, the length would be justified.

[Nakanja]

It didn't feel too spread out to me.  I mean, the maps are big, but it never seemed like there were any long stretches of the same thing without running into some new creature or different looking area or something.  I think it's more a matter of taste than being justified or unjustified. 

The huge world to explore is one of the things I like about this game that I was hoping for after being impressed by the size of the demo, which kinda makes sense considering my favorite series is The Elder Scrolls games (which might be a better comparison to Aquaria than JRPGs mentioned earlier, since while they have very different gameplay they both allow for a kind of play style in common of just like wandering through a large place without much of a set objective looking at cool landscape features or finding ingredients or whatever, and collecting costumes and treasures for your home base).