Too many metroidvanias have abilities that work more like keys - they open a door that gives access to a new area of the game. A better ability is something that changes how the game fundementally plays, or makes old areas feel fresh.
Starting the game with sufficient movement is a big one. Hollow Knight starts with too few movement abilities, and the beginning is slow.
Is this development cost or marketing cost, tho
Alongside the Buddy Bot, Frost Giant's implementing game modes to appeal to players who are interested in RTS gameplay, but might not seek out the intensity of 1-on-1 competitive RTS matches. In addition to a story campaign that can be played with three players, Stormgate will have a separate 3-vs-AI mode, custom games, and a competitive 3-vs-3 mode where each team has to defend a single, large base structure.
As the typical RTS enjoyer who only plays singleplayer, this type of paragraphs make me less and less interested in this game.
This is unfortunately typical of visual novels. The line level sentence-to-sentence prose is rarely even adequate, and often what they choose to describe is already shown as an image on the screen. The best ones, I feel, simply omit the prose and have only dialogue, and if they choose to describe an already-visible image, the description ought to tell what isn't already available as visual information.
Thank you for your informative comment. I know I'm almost a month late, but I'm about to start my vacation and needed a nice city building game to try.
Finland also isn't in Scandinavia.
There were already some rumors about bad working conditions during the Dark Souls titles, now more with Elden Ring: https://www.ign.com/articles/elden-ring-developers-compare-working-at-fromsoftware-to-playing-dark-souls
Even with some negative accounts, other FromSoftware employees said working at the studio has been a great experience. One employee even likened it to FromSoftware's own Dark Souls, saying, "There's a lot of struggle to get things right, but if you get over the hump it is very satisfying. It's just like you defeated a boss in Dark Souls."
I'm not sure if we should be approaching work like Dark Souls.
The second half is worse indeed, but still worth playing.
This works in Mount & Blade, I suppose, at least for the first x hundred hours. The difference is that Mount & Blade makes grinding actually fun and you don't notice to be grinding for a good while.
What I find interesting is that every generation of gamers has a different original hype disappointment moment. For some, it was E.T. next, maybe Daikatana. For me it was Spore.
Great to have a new RTS, but I'm with what I assume to be a majority of the playerbase and worried they will prioritize online play / PVP instead of story and campaign.
Absolutely. What I'm talking about is something like Bloodstained, where honestly the upgrades simply meant you now get to proceed to the next linear area in the game, where the area now can use the ability you unlocked, but lots of older areas have no use of it.
An example of a "key" like ability in Hollow Knight is the rocket dash. It's only ever used to bypass an obstacle you normally wouldn't be able to cross, but at the other side of the obstacle, you have no more use of that skill. I suppose it can be used in rare instances to travel around the map faster, but only if there's a straight path.