[A New Duck]

So is the right thing to do to play the original or the remake for one's first time now?
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3DS/PokéMagic Friendz Code: 1289-8272-6032

[Lucaz]

I'd tell you to check which one you think look and sounds best and go for that one. Besides that, there are some differences, the remake's controls are more friendly, and it's slightly easier, mostly because it's more guiding at a few times, but it's still so hard you wouldn't know. Most other differences are layout and details that I suppose are there only to make it different for people who already played the original.
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[bza]

The remake doesn't compromise the intent or design of the original, it just feels like it's from a newer era than MSX. I'd say play the original and pick up the remake if you want to support Nigoro :)
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[Kitten ClanClan]

i am getting some really intermittent slowdown while playing this and i can't figure out why. any suggestions?
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[L]

[8128]

man i might finally be stuck

how the fuck do fairies work

no don't tell me

sigh
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[Lucaz]

Yesterday I had to check a let's play to get past a part I would've never thought talking to Mulbruk would be necessary to get the serpent staff.

[Schwere Viper]

I am actually getting places in the original version! Made a ton of progress today - got further than I ever have before and took down Sakit, Ellmac and Bahamut!

This feeling! I haven't felt it for so long!
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Blog: Machines That Sing

[Lucaz]

So just finished this, at 18.45 hours, which means I played about the double of that, which still like a fourth of what it took me the first time. It's the second time I do this, but the feeling of accomplishment is still there (mostly because I remembered almost nothing). Some thoughts on the remake

It's overall a bit easier, but minimally so. The changes in layout are very minor, and there are two or three new puzzles that are good.

The guardians are all quite changed, and and two are completely different. Most are changed for the best although Bahamut and Tiamat I prefer the original. The most important is that now sub weapons aren't unbalanced against them, so you can't just spam shurikens and flares. Sometimes the collisions are a bit confusing in that only section of the sprites hurt Lemeza. Last, Mother didn't come out so well. None of the forms looks as good, specially the third, and second and fifth are't that great. They removed the puzzle in the fourth form and that's pretty bad IMO. It's still a great last boss.



This aside, is anyone still playing? How you doing?
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[Schwere Viper]

Just finished playing through the original on Sunday, which was incredible overall. So far I'm doing okay in the new version at about five hours with the first four guardians ticked off. I'm really digging all the minor changes that have been made, especially with veterans in mind - I'm having to keep on my toes, even with prior knowledge!

The new twist on the treasure chest puzzle in Temple of Moonlight was interesting, and the lead-up to the Confusion Gate was just wonderful. It kind of caught me off guard at first; I thought maybe they had thrown in a new area for kicks!

Sadly, my traipse through there was short-lived thanks to a certain explosive surprise. Still having a blast, though. This game is amazing!
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Blog: Machines That Sing

[8128]

I'm gonna crack open the seventh ankh later tonight. i have a pretty huge amount of playtime, basically due to two points where i didn't take in hints that i should have and spent hours wandering around trying to do things that i had no business trying to do. i wonder if i'm missing anything else like that?
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[Bennett]

I played through up to the Dimensional Gate in the new one. I have to say, I think the first 10 or so hours of this game are incredible, but after that the puzzles cross the line and the game becomes too baroque. Even if you're playing with a stack of notes, and even if you read every tablet, even the ones in Mulanese, there are still some puzzles that most people could just never solve without a FAQ. I'm fine with the difficulty level of the platforming and combat, but the puzzles are a bit ridiculous.

I don't mind it being too hard for most people to get optional things like the chain whip or randc.exe but the puzzles to access certain mandatory items like the ocarina and the crystal skull are just too arbitrary. The prove you are small challenge is bullshit. The challenge where you break all the pots in the room at once is bullshit. I think a game like this should have a certain amount of bullshit but I think that they go way over the line in the second half of this game.

I would still recommend the game to anybody, but with the caveat 'play until you need to read a FAQ, then stop'. Maybe they designed La-Mulana to be played with a FAQ, or with friends, but to be honest I don't think it's much fun when you play it that way.

[Schwere Viper]

I finished playing the remake a few days ago myself, having played through the original game a week or so prior.

The remake is far more accommodating to new players and gives far more leeway in learning how the game works and getting accustomed to its peculiar sense of humour. While the graphics and sound seem to be fairly dividing, I think the new graphical style works well by presenting the game in a 16/32-bit era style in contrast to the original's 8-bit look, and while personally I do much prefer the original's MSX chip instrumentation I can't say I was offended by the new music. Puzzles remain mostly the same throughout the game and still require you to be attentive to both the information given to you as well as your surroundings. New and slight reimaginings of some puzzles pop up where you'd least expect them, but most of them still fit in with the rest of the game very well. The bosses and sub-bosses both gain new movesets and in some cases complete overhauls thanks to the new game engine, and they remain as challenging as ever. I like this remake, but there are some questionable choices made, and unfortunately I'm going to sound very nitpicky pointing them out.

At two points in the game you are required to perform a specific action that makes no sense in relation to the rest of the game's logic. In the Gate of Illusion there is a section where you must find hidden warps in order to proceed deeper into the field. At one point, you must destroy a pot and then stand on top of where it was standing and press down to descend into the ground Mario-style and warp to a previously unreachable area. Now, with absolutely zero visual cues to even hint at that action being an option, I have to call bullshit on this. I will concede that it makes more sense when you have to do it a second time (where you must press down to descend INTO a pot and warp to a completely different section of the ruins), but the first time really left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.

Another thing that got me was that for some reason the designers decided to make certain treasures - quite a few of them actually! - equippable and usable. Now for the most part this works out quite nicely and adds quite a bit to certain parts of the game since the player has a hand in making pretty big things happen. However, there are a few places where it becomes an outright annoyance. One example that comes straight to mind involves the Pochette Key and Palenque, the guardian of the Gate of Extinction.

When you start the battle with Palenque, you need to use the Pochette Key to start your small aircraft in order to actually begin the battle. If you don't, Lemeza slides off-screen, the screen fades to black and then fades back in on him standing in Palenque's chamber with the ankh gone, requiring you to either reload your save or run around getting the Ankh Jewel and summoning the ankh again. Now this wouldn't be so irritating in itself if there were some sort of cue letting the player know that they need to perform this INCREDIBLY SPECIFIC ACTION RIGHT NOW, but there isn't! It also doesn't help that this is the only guardian in the game that requires you to use an item aside from the Ankh Jewel to truly start a battle. Why don't I have to unlock a seal on Tiamat with the Infinity Key, for example? This is made even more confusing when I don't have to manually use the Medicine of Life on Mother's broken likeness during the endgame!

I could poke at some of the information-related puzzles I had a lot of trouble with as well, but in all honestly they all ended with me slapping my forehead and realizing it was my fault for either not paying attention or not exploring enough. Again, I like this new version, but for the reasons I've detailed among a few others - mostly those of personal taste - I think I'll always prefer the original.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I finally got into the original after several false starts over the years and it is a downright excellent game no matter how cryptic you find it and I wish I could think still long enough to say the things about it I want to say, but fuck the motions necessary for using the grapple claws. I like the concept of the item but that shaft in Inferno Gate is just a pain in the ass even after you realize the flames don't reach across the whole way.

[remote]

Haven't been able to play for a few days because of work and stuff, but after today I've got a three-day weekend and I look forward to digging back into this. Even now, the music is stuck in my head. I guess I'll be one of the relatively few to play through the original after this remake. Thing is, while the original clearly has better music I am a pretty big fan of how this newer one looks. This game is definitely giving me that feeling — that magical feeling you get from the best of videogames.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Felix]

I've played the remake (never played the original) about three times now for about an hour each and I still can't figure out how to make any progress at all. I'm pretty impressed, but not with myself.

[Lucaz]

Something I've notied about the music, is that although my favorite songs aren't that special in the new soundtrack, the ones that I liked less, mainly GIGA-MAGMA/Tower of Ruin and M.U./Chamber of Extinction, are better in this version.

Tried playing Hell Temple. Too much. Just too much.

[Bennett]

[analogos]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

when you read one thing from a FAQ or wiki, you are not actually required to read all the rest of the material present.
I've been seeking answers only for certain specific things that baffled me and I am still hella enjoying the game!

I'd invoke the designer's clear attempt to mimic old MSX games and stuff like Tower of Druaga, where if you couldn't figure something out you'd keep trying random shit and telling other people what random shit you tried, but I'm pretty sure that falls under "authorial intent", which generally doesn't hold a lot of weight here.

I'm also not really sure why you would prefer the game to be "hardcore action" but I guess that is your deal, not mine.

[analogos]

mmm. i was only ever talking about seeking answers to specific things in my case. even then, i still think it would frustrate me / undermine the point. i wonder if i'm going to be not lazy and actually explain this. guess not.

anyway in dark souls there's a lot left unsaid. very close to none of this is likely to actively impede your progress though so much as it is texture and ephemera that can be optionally explored at one's own discretion. that's fine. i don't really look up Souls wiki content either, but i do appreciate what you're saying as i find the communal sussing out of mysteries and mechanics say, in our very own thread, really fun to participate in.

it doesn't sound like that's so much the situation here, though. i mean i don't care about a puzzle you only get one chance to solve that had a neat trinket in it or whatever, but if i can't get past this progress door because of infinitely abstruse series of actions required, then nah.

i really liked fez. :( i want more of that.

[remote]

Agreeing w/ DAIS itt. I can see how a handful of really silly puzzles or hidden doors or things like that might seem like they undermine some of the more thoughtful archaeology, but I agree that it helps to keep in mind these obstacles are there to evoke a particular oldschool videogame aesthetic. I guess some are going to appreciate this and some aren't, but I don't see it as something that should keep anyone from playing and enjoying the game overall. There is a lot you can do without any sort of guidance. Most of it, if not all of it. Yeah, there are some pretty obscure secrets and puzzles, but I think that if you're relentlessly searching every detail of every room you can probably even do it entirely without outside help. I mean, somebody had to at some point. And yeah, the whole community participation aspect this game encourages is definitely where it's most similar to Dark Souls and such (Tower of Druaga, obviously). I'm pretty into that.

Bennett's idea that the game could become more G'n'G-ish as you progress is interesting, but that sort of very deliberate action and platforming is present from the start and, I mean, I dunno, I wouldn't expect this perilous place to suddenly welcome you as you approach the heart of it all. If anything it makes more sense that you're going to encounter the meanest puzzles later in the game. The bottom line is the game is just really fun to play, its challenges actually are interesting most of the time, and it looks and sounds wonderful.

(I do wish I could play Fez, too.)
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[analogos]

i will probably give in and do it anyway. it's just something that can tend to bug me "on principle" in certain types of games, and would be a point of resistance.

[Lucaz]

[haze]

I think I slightly prefer the original fake-MSX version, not only because of the style, but the boss and miniboss fights. I feel like the increased difficulty in the remake stalls the pacing a little too much at times. Instead of feeling like an unexpected test of skill, breaking up the cerebral parts of the game, I more often feel like "ehh, I'll come back later when I have better weapons and more life points" so it just becomes another puzzle.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

yeah, one of the most wonderful/amazing/intriguing things about this game is the notably different experiences that people will have will the game in terms of what they find/solve in what order/when. That's not just uncommon in the Castlevania and Metroid games, or even many of the old MSX games La-Mulana is patterned after, it's pretty exceptional in the genre period. I totally missed the Throwing Knife until I read the earlier pages of this thread. I just assumed it would be something that came at some unknown point in the future, but all I needed was to be a little bit more thorough. It's not like I hadn't seen collapsing platforms elsewhere!

I think that's the kind of thing that Igarashi was trying to tap into when he came up with stuff like the souls in the Sorrow games (or item drops in general), but it really didn't work out the same way. You can't just dice roll for what the player is shown next. They have to tap into their own sense of discovery.and experimentation

[Bennett]

[Schwere Viper]

[bza]

There are only two points in the entire game where you need to use that technique, and it totally caught me off-guard too! In fact, I discovered it accidentally...
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[8128]

[haze]

hrmm, I think I found it because of how the screen is laid out. in the entire Gate of Illusion, there's almost no empty space anywhere, because everything is taken up by floors and hallways. so this one inaccessible block of wall seemed suspicious to me, and I tried everything I could around its edges. also, you had to do something similar in the original game, climbing an invisible ladder, twice.

MORE REMAKE COMPARISONS: I like how most of the Chamber of Birth was changed to be given more of a unique identity, instead of looking like a repeat of Gate of Confusion. and the Tower of the Goddess being so much easer to climb. and Eden being blocked off at first does wonders for the game's pacing at that point.

[remote]

I couldn't help but notice the Michael Jackson glyph in the Moonlight Moonwalker Temple. It changes poses every time you return to the screen.

Still playing this, making my way through the Confusion Gate (aka Gate of Illusion, but I like the old name better). NIGORO have talked about how they view 2D games not as a "retro" thing, but as a once-forgotten form of expression differening from 3D games that had made a bit of a comeback in recent years, showing that the demise of this style was premature and there are still things to be done with 2D games. Even though they started out with a reinterpretation of a classic MSX game, with the remake I feel like I can buy that. That they also chose to make and then totally revamp this game that so clearly celebrates classic 2D games and have it be all about archaeology and forgotten legends is pretty interesting as a tidy little thematic package. It begs the question: what will they do next?

This image is probably one of my favorite screens in the game so far. Evokes a feeling reminiscent of everything from Castlevania and Super Mario Bros. 3 (there's even one of those bone-chucking skeletons that collapses and reanimates) to the Tower of Latria in Demon's Souls. I am really digging this game more and more as I keep playing.


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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[remote]

There's a pretty cool Borges reference in the Tower of the Goddess, where beings called the A Bao A Qu pursue you up spiraling staircases and whose translucent bodies are revealed only once you've reached the top and found the Eye of Truth.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[wourme]

This is now out for Wii.

I hadn't turned on the Wii in about a year until tonight. I discovered that I already had enough points for this game, and then I remembered that I had added those points specifically for this game way back when it was originally supposed to be released.

I haven't played this before in any form. I'm intimidated by the rumors of its difficulty, but that was also the case with Demon's Souls and Dark Souls (even after I had played Demon's), and those ended up becoming some of my very favorite games.

[8128]

oh man dude it is the best game
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[remote]

Don't be afraid of resorting to youtube LPs or FAQs or whatever if you find yourself stumped. Just playing it is pure goodness.
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[Schwere Viper]

This is now super-cheap and has the original music included!

http://la-mulana.com/en/blog/new-release-information.html
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Blog: Machines That Sing

[remote]

Man, I would like to know what the fuck Valve's deal is, but I might grab grabbed this new release anyway. Good on GoG.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[luvcraft]

boughted. Will also buy on steam. Probably.

what does SSCC mean?
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[Schwere Viper]

[wourme]

I've beaten three guardians now. I like this game a lot.

Although some of the puzzles are kind of ridiculous and would require a lot of aimless wandering without using a guide (reminds me of attempting to burn every bush and bomb every rock in Zelda 1), I'm trying not to spoil too much for myself because it's great to stumble upon a puzzle solution or a new area. I felt the same way about Demon's and Dark Souls.