Gunstar Green wrote:I've just spent a few hours with this game and it's very impressive. It's exactly the kind of thing I want to see more of these days, beautifully rendered and animated 2D graphics.
The voice acting is good enough, the writing is clever even if the story is nothing new (though I still find it pretty engaging so far), and the combat is incredibly fun if not a little shallow. It's not exactly unexpected for a Metroidvania game to have simple combat though and I feel it works great.
Dust himself is just so well designed and animated and the other characters are mostly pretty adorable. There's loads of things to see and do as well.
For fans of the genre this is $15 well spent. Hats off to Dean Dodrill. He's either a genius, a madman or both to make a game like this on his own.
Totally agree, though I actually love the combat
According to the game stats, I'm a little over halfway through the game with ten hours of game time. Based on what I've played so far, this game's a perfect ten. The combat is awesome. You can go all melee with dodges and combos, or all magic. It depends how you choose to build up your character. Or you can do like me, and have a combination of both while letting your defense and health stats go down the toilet. I like playing offensively in this game.
It's utter chaos when you let the magic spells loose in this game with the dust storm ability. The screen lights up with magical projectiles, columns of fire, and lightning storms as your combo meter goes through the roof and bodies fly around. You can also mix in melee attacks, and have your character flying around the screen with mid-air attacks and combos while your spells are going off. All this stuff happens onscreen without any slowdown, frame rate drops, etc. At least not any that my eyes can see that is. It's all fast paced and crazy and I love it. The dust storm ability is bad ass and nothing is more satisfying than unleashing a bunch of magic attacks with it, then standing still waiting for the bodies that you've sent into the stratosphere to fall back down to earth with a thud and then getting a big experience bonus for stringing together an over 100 hit combo during the battle. I also love using explosives in the environment against enemies, or deflecting attacks from the big shield wielding enemies. The fights aren't challenging, but they are very fun and there are higher difficulty settings. I'm just playing on normal for now.
The platforming elements are pretty well done too
Oh, and the jokes just keep getting better. I'm doing a side quest where I need to round up some sheep for a guy. I walk over to one and hit up on my analog stick. The sheep disappears and Fidget goes, "Did you just put a SHEEP in your inventory?" to which Dust says, "yes." Then Fidget says, "ooookay." The game pokes fun at gaming conventions at every opportunity. Fidget is a lot like Deadpool in how she's the one character who is very much aware that she's in a video game, while no one else seems to be. I very much like that kind of humor. Lollipop Chainsaw kind of does that at times too, poking fun at its gaming conventions and occasionally breaking the fourth wall. LC and Dust: An Elysian Tail are probably my two favorite games of 2012 so far
Looks like I picked a good one!