[haze]

I'm kind of proud of how far I've gotten by myself. Only part I was lost on was where to find the Helmet, which someone helped in this thread.

now I have access to three more bosses, in the giant, water, and pyramid areas. should I continue attempting to fight them now, when the only weapons I have are the whip and shuriken? should I instead keep exploring that place where the Helmet was, whatever it's called?

it's kind of strange how the progress is made here. getting new items is hard and rare. I can go into an area and mess around, solve one or two puzzles, and feel like I accomplished something.... then I realize all I did was find the map and open one door, maybe. then later on I find an ankh jewel, allowing me to fight a boss that I'm not even ready for, so that feels like a dead end to the exploration.

I'm still enjoying it though. It hasn't defeated me yet!
I haven't found a single ROM combination, though. I was expecting hundreds of weird minor secrets from collecting them, and that got me all excited when reading the manual, but so far they all seem worthless!

[L]

There are 30 ROM effects, and 84 ROMs.

P.S:

[alice]

[mauve]

[Clueless Gamer]

[haze]

current progress: beat the Inferno Cavern boss. explored a bunch of new areas. the Confusion Gate was actually kinda fun, ironically the puzzles made more sense to me than the rest of the game. I think I did everything in the Endless Corridor, and I explored most of the Twin Labyrinths. 3 weeks of playing this and I'm guessing I'm only halfway through.

is there any way to light up that pitch-dark area? none of the items in the manual seem to do it, so am I supposed to blindly stumble around for some light switch?


man this game is amazing. more of certain people here should play it, they'd love it. it's like playing Castlevania 2, only with the confusing puzzles and items done right. it's that kind of Metroid 1 confusion, where you reach a dead end and wonder, am I supposed to be here? do I come back later with a new item? or maybe I haven't been looking hard enough? or maybe it's nothing more than a dead end!

the items in this game are such teases, it's like that Owata Jinsei game done on a longer scale. I get the grapple claw and YES I CAN FINALLY CLIMB WALLS, THIS'LL BE USEFUL, but it's only slightly useful for certain jumps. I get the feather, which the manual says lets me double jump and WOO THIS SHOULD OPEN UP A LOT OF PATHS, but the double jump is barely more useful than the normal jump. it's infuriating at the time, but I can look back and laugh each time at the joke. The feelings of achievement mixed with all the feelings of disappointment, I love it.

[mauve]

It can be lit up permanently later on, you'll know how when you get that far.

The tablets there seem to imply that you can use flares at certain points to light things up, but I haven't tried it myself. Take the lower path from the Temple and look around for a tablet in the darkness if you want to try it.

[alice]

so I've been looking at those video walkthroughs and I'm missing some stuff. Anyone know how to get the glowy staircases in dimensional corridor leading to shrine of the mother to show?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA5_Uo01wio (spoiler sorta)

[haze]

you mean the bit in the Endless Corridor right at the beginning? the glowy staircases appear after talking with the sages


right now I'm at the final boss. it kicked my ass on the second form. I admit I had been cheating A LITTLE to figure out where to find items near the end. maybe I can finally end this.

[alice]

Thanks. that helped

[haze]

finished the game! a little over a month after I started. whew.... I feel like I deserve a T-shirt or something for that.

final time: 30 hours

come on, get more people playing this! fans of oldschool Zelda/Metroid/Castlevania don't know what they're missing!

[Deets]

I was under the impression that all or most of the people interested in playing did so earlier in the thread!

[haze]

well I kinda mean in general. this could be a little bit more popular.

they want to delete its wikipedia page for not being notable enough :(

[Intentionally Wrong]

[mauve]

[haze]

well...... I guess you're right. only the most serious of retro fans would want to endure it. there's no way it'd get similar acclaim as Cave Story, that isn't what I meant at all.

still, I can't believe how many people I met out there trying to play through Cave Story with 3 HP and things like that. obsessive completionists/masochists like those are the perfect audience for this, ha ha. I know, I did it myself...

emphasis on "a little bit more popular"

[L]

Bumping this because now is a good time for a La Mulana renaissance.

To refresh your memory, here are some screenshots.

[cassievania]

La-Mulana is one of my favorite games. Sadly I was never able to finish it.

It has good music too:







I still have a lego lemeza I built somewhere in my room. :s
_________________

[L]

Buy it now!!

[another god]

I just tried buying this game. I got billed twice and both times I received a Internal Server Error. Um...
_________________
interdimensional

[sponkmonkey]

I had to wait a little until the server recovered before I could register, but after that it worked fine for me.
_________________

[another god]

Looks like even if you have a server error, it'll still get processed to your account. Just go into "my account" and you can find a download link.
_________________
interdimensional

[Felix]

I wasn't planning on it, but I think all the enthusiasm has gotten to me. Probably buying later on today. Do they basically just give you a non-drm'ed exe, or what?

[sponkmonkey]

It's just a zipped folder with the exe plus readmes etc. in it, yeah.
_________________

[internisus]

I am extremely close to hyping myself into this purchase.

Do you guys have any impressions yet?




I want to paste some fascinating stuff that was said about this game over in the Indie Games Depository thread a little over a year ago. Much like Fez and, to go back to one of the strongest early examples, Wizardry, the idea of a game that you can take extensive notes on and draw maps of and effectively study as you explore and realize it gets deeper and deeper in meaningful, rewarding ways is really appealing to me. I imagine trying to play the original La Mulana might be an endeavor I would give up on and return to repeatedly over the course of years, consulting old notes each time to return to where I left off. It sounds wonderful.

The thing is, it also sounds incredibly intimidating, and it's definitely a micro-hobby that I can't commit to right now. I wonder if I would be ruining the possibility of tackling the original MSX-styled game sometime in the future by trying out this new, more accessible version? What do you think?

[Touran]

Well, I played 95% through of the way through the original and I will be buying this remake to support the guys.

It isn't quite on the level of a Wizardry, so don't hype yourself up too much with ideas of notes and maps.
_________________
Man, I'm sorry.

[Lucaz]

I'm very doubtful about this. La-Mulana is one of my favorite games, but I don't know if I want to buy this, considering the graphics and the music are below the original imo. And checking some of it in youtube, I'm not sure I'm into the changes (they took away the puzzle from the last boss' fourth form). So it's wether I should replay the original or the new version that I distrust but may be different enough to be worth playing
_________________

[8128]

yeah what how are there no impressions from anyone playing the new one here yet

will you guys hurry up and make up my mind plz
_________________

[mauve]

[Lucaz]

Yeah. That was, to me, one of the best stuff in the game, the way it keeps being mainly about puzzles 'till the end. Although maybe I'd like it less if it wasn't that I got through sheer luck at the second try, without knowing how to solve it.

I wonder what they changed in the Hell Temple? At the very least now you probably don't need to get 120.000 score in Gradius. Not that I finished the Hell Temple.
_________________

[Lucaz]

Played it for a few minutes, just entered the ruins and fooled around in Guidance Gate. The most obvious difference is that the whip is much faster, both at attack rate and time between pressing and hitting, so it's much friendlier. Xelpud sends mails about the things you see around. Hope that doesn't go overboard, 'cause it's pretty uncalled for.
_________________

[OffalAl]

really loving the remake so far
_________________
♟♟
♝♞

[cassievania]

[haze]

I've only finished the first boss, and I gotta say the remake is REALLY nice. stuff has been added and stuff has been taken out, but if you have any confidence in the original creators you can believe that they were all careful deliberate decisions.
the graphics surprised me, it's much sharper than the blurry youtube videos led me to believe.
the game uses sound cues nicely as well. I'm playing with headphones on, and it made me smile when I pushed a switch and heard the grinding of stones far off to the right. one common complaint about the original was that it was hard to figure out what changed in the dungeon when you did something right, but now the feedback is much more intuitive.
controls are a lot smoother, even the delay before jumping is removed, but some enemies have been made stronger to adjust for that. I still have to get used to not pressing Up to jump.
I can't complain too much about the constant emails from Xelpud, because it's a lot of great advice for beginners who are totally new (e.g. DON'T JUMP IN THE WATERFALL). I assume there'll be less of these hints as I go on. sometimes the emails are just used for little bits of humor.

so yeah, if you know someone who tried out La-Mulana but gave up after 5 minutes, get them to play this version.

also: on Win7 64-bit there's some bug if you installed it to the default Program Files directory, and you won't be able to save! just move the game to any other folder and it'll be fine.

[Schwere Viper]

Having never finished the original I'm leaning more and more in favour of going back and playing that and THEN coming back to finish this version. As much as I like the graphical style and MOST of the new music I find myself missing the original aesthetic way too much. The mails from Xelpud are adorable.

Anyway, I bought a copy for myself and a copy for my friend, so I have the fuzzy warm feeling you get from supporting the cool dudes at NIGORO. And that is worth more than what I paid. ;_;7
_________________
HeavyViper@Twitter ~~~ HeavyViper@Soundcloud
Blog: Machines That Sing

[Lucaz]

Already fought the first two bosses. Both where slightly different but not much. The most notable change so far is that it controls a lot more fluidly, which you might like or not, and bats are easier. So far, if there is any meaningful differences in the layouts or puzzles I'm missing them.

My main issue with it aesthetically isn't the graphics, although I do prefer the darker and textured MSX looks, but that the music is less interesting, it isn't as dense or powerful as the original. It's enough to listen to Inferno (Inferno Cavern) or Giant's Cry (Graveyard of the Giants) to know what I'm saying. Although it does works in some cases, like Ancient Machine (Palenque), or the more adventure-y songs like Fearless Chalenger (Guidance Gate).
_________________

[launchcodemexico]

i found the music a bit cantankerous, which is my only complaint of the game.

so the FEZ soundtrack is played instead.

[bza]

I decided to do a playthrough of the remake since it's been so long, hopefully someone finds it entertaining and/or educational:



I'm loving the remake so far, every change feels purposeful

[haze]

I've beaten the original game 3 times, but now in the remake... I'm actually stumped!

-- I think I see the bronze mirror, but I have no idea how to get to it --

-- also I can't figure out where Isis is supposed to be --

spamming shuriken at the bosses is not quite as effective as it used to be

[8128]

man fuck if this isn't the best thing
_________________

[remote]

So I guess Steam denied this game...?!
_________________

letterboxd | last.fm | steam