Oh man, I can't be happier to see Skautfold: Usurper getting some spotlight. Having played a ton of it, please allow me to explain why I love this game. * In general: This game is meant to be played in complete silence and fully focused. It's one of the hardest metroidvanias I've ever played. This game not only rewards your Perfect Parries, it DEMANDS it. One also needs to pay a lot of attention to sound cues of danger, and those few-frames animations telling you that you are in danger (like the red zoom-in for example, telling you that the character has used his last-resort and it at 1HP until you go back to rest). Playing this game on stream might have caused you to miss on some vital mechanics. Which is understandable, streamers have to keep up with the stream entertainment. * Stamina: As you saw, the stamina is a shield too, and it is 'restored' on every Perfect Parry. So the idea is to attack while trying to land a Perfect Parry in order to keep up with the offense. It's an aggressive and pretty punishing playstyle. Sometimes dodging is the wrong option, regardless of how intuitive it might be. Enemy projectiles get powerfully reflected back, which is excellent if you don't have long-range ammunition. There are subtle sound cues for incoming projectiles. * Progression: You just went in the a wrong direction. The first area was around the Toad Agent. Up and to the right (it's hard to see the path, I found it by mistake). In general, if an area is somewhat difficult, you are on the wrong path. Over the first area you soon find your first boss, one that you can't beat without Perfect Parries, the perfect introduction for the game. There, you'll get some important story cues too. Where monsters come from, what are the knights doing there, and why some monsters are friendly. * Why I love it: The game is as indie as it gets. There are some bugs, some issues, things that could be improved on and so on... BUT, the ambience is super oppressive once you immerse yourself in the game (it might be difficult when playing on stream tho, since this game requires silence and focus). The UI gets purposely messed up in a few places, the sound effects are gory and rusty, a bit visceral at times, and the environment itself evolves with the story and game progression, showing the problems of the present (early game) and the results of your struggles. I totally recommend this game to anyone with a bit of patience, tenacity, and an open mind to one of the very few and amazing horror metroidvanias around that do indeed succeed to scare, if you try to let yourself get immersed into it. The sudden deaths shown on this video happen to anyone new to this game, and overcoming them is just amazing.
Grim Guardians is more of a classicvania than a metroidvania, but it's so sick. Great art style/vibe, great music, simple but rewarding gameplay. Literally the only negative thing you could say about it is that the character's voices are annoying, but some people are into anime girls, so I ain't hatin'. Also, the character from that Skautfold game is just Edward from Full Metal Alchemist. 😭😭😭
Astlibra is an S tier hands down, beginning is slow, yeah, but then...Damn, this game have interesting story, great gameplay and music is so awesome that I keep it on my list even now! Highly recommend it!
100% agreed. Astlibra is such a slept on game, and probably one the best I've played in a very long time. But it is also very clearly a JRPG with action combat - not everything that is a 2d sidescroller should automatically be considered a Metroidvania. A 60+ hour game getting a 30 minute glance and reviewed from the perspective of the wrong genre is never gonna be an accurate depiction.
It's unbelievably quirky, jank, bizarre, just I dunno. That said, all of those things make it so charming and addictive. Worth it for the experience alone
I like how in Usurper, the human is called Saragat (surrogate). It might just be me making a stretch of a connection, but it seems likely given the whole parasite theme of the game
24:05 Curiously for the torch is not required to farm or grind anything. You need resin and wood. And those are physical objects you must search. NPCs give you hints.
Usurper is part of a series of games. Shrouded in sanity is the one i played. It’s just as odd but is more survival horror. I wish the mechanics felt better because its world seems really interesting.
One hill I'll die on is that every game with a map needs to give me one single button to press to see that map. None of this "go into the menu and hit R1" crap.
i forgot what game it was. but i played a metroidvania that had a map. and i didnt know until i finished it... i kept a map inside my head pretty much the entire game. because u had to go to the menu. and use an item called map.
Astlibra is pretty slow to get going, but when it does, man... I think talking about the story without finishing it is not really fair, because the plot is probably WAY different that what you're expecting. It gets pretty insane. The soudtrack also ranks among the best I've heard in any game
Personal favorite Metroidvania is called An Untitled Story, made by the same person who made Celeste. It's free, and they made it out of high school. Check it out!
I'd say ASTLIBRA Revision deserves a longer visit as the story and the game mechanic develop really slowly. The story isn't amazing but it gets a bit better later on and the combat/growth system is the gem! It gets better and better every chapter all the way till the very last one.
It's a travesty to give it a C lol. That game is a real hidden gem. But I enjoy a decent story too, so maybe if ya don't care about story it wouldn't be for you.
6:16 I dunno man, are you sure you even like Metroidvanias? Gating the double jump early means there are plenty of areas that you will have to come back to explore, some areas you don't even realise you can double jump up til you get it etc, and it generally makes you stronger in combat by being more nimble. That's part of the magic of Metroidvanias to me.
I would have to agree with your take. Double Jump gives so much utility as well as accessibility. It'd be interesting if there was a mechanic that could take it away sometimes. like if it was linked to your health or mana, Perhaps the area makes it less effective with increased gravity. Perhaps a game lets you start with everything and slowly takes away your abilities as you progress to the end. Perhaps making certain choices in the story harms your ability to traverse areas later as the protag get withered down. Cave story kinda does something like this. Perhaps..............
I bought astlibra because the graphics seemed interesting. I turned into one of my favorite games of all times. I ended up 100% the game in 50 hours, i ended up kind of cheating, because i wanted to complete the whole tree before the last fight, which by hand would have probably taken me 100 or 120 hours at my rate. But on my second run now, and i've enjoyed it a lot. Definitely in my top 3 games of all time. While the story might be choppy at times, and definitely not a top 10 story-wise, for a game that was made by a single guy back in the day, and now made by the same guy again into a new engine that he had to teach himself just to make a game he liked, is amazing, specially now that we have the DLC coming who knows when
I know this is an old video and nobody likely cares, especially given how poor the try out for it went, but whatever. "Usurper" is the 2nd game in the "Skautfold" series. It's the direct sequel to the first game, "Shrouded in Sanity", literally taking place a year later after a sequel hook. In fact, Waltham appears as your contractor in the first game and Saragat, the Fourth Knight, was one of the bosses there. There are two other games to my knowledge. "Into the Fray" where you play as Hito, the Third Knight, and "Moonless Knight" where you play as Gray, the Second Knight. Both of whom were also bosses in the first game as well. Funnily, you can kill all of them there but obviously that doesn't end up being the true route that the subsequent games follow. Every entry also plays differently, being part of different genre styles. The 1st game was an 2d-ish hack-and-slash, the second is obvious a 2d action platformer, the 3rd is an isometric shooter since Hito uses guns, and the 4th is similar to the 3rd but more melee focused. But all of them follow the same general ideas and overarching mechanics. It definitely is not the most polished series, at least in regards to the first two entries that I played, but it is still interesting. A lot of effort was made into telling a continuous and evolving story while also injecting some fairly unique mechanics. If nothing else, it follows Lovecraftian methodology fairly closely so you can get some very out there concepts and imaginary.
Pls strimmer play the new dead cells return to castlevania dlc, there are so many references and callbacks to castlevania in og dead cells so imagine the dlc lol it’s incredible
Looks cool overall. I'm specially interested in Grim Guardians. I'm baffled to see death pits in really standard metroidvanias, though. I'd get it in a mixed one like The Messenger that you expect Ninja Gaiden and you get a metroidvania. But when the game really looks like Metroid or SoTN, I really want to jump in every pit.
Calling a game, A metroidvania is perfectly fine. we use to call all FPS's Doom clones. And for around 15 years. there where only a handful of these games half of them being Metroids . And one castlevania. :)
I wouldn't exactly describe Fortune Summoners as unknown (though it's kinda niche outside the doujin game community) but it's a pretty fun Metroidvania-ish action RPG where you control 2 characters with different specialties a-la Portrait of Ruin.
Some of those portraits in astilibra are ripped from other games. The bald bearded man's portrait is Radius from Chrono Cross. Your fire emblem complaint may actually hold some weight lol
Okay but when are you gonna play Ponyvania (it's actually a pretty good game for being a My Little Pony game [it's actually pretty difficult at parts but that could have just been me being bad at video games ....I also realize that I haven't finished it, I got stuck on a bonus boss that went kinda crazy] Anyway it's free, I think it's worth trying)
I gave Usurper a bad review on steam after getting to the final boss before deciding the game wasnt worth my effort and I was fed up with it's bs. The developer tried to argue with me in the comments about my review and tried to get me to change it lmfao.
Needs more Minoria or Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. Vaguely weeb-looking games like Grim Guardians (now called Gal Guardians for some reason) but far superior games.
grim guardians seems to heavily borrow from portrait of ruin? 2 chars. but also megaman X3 i believe. where u can swap X and Zero who are also range/melee. and yeah i really like these games. will definitly check them out. except the dog one.
I want to like dark light so much, but I don’t know if there’s something wrong with the game or just me? The character seems to move way too fast, and as far as I can tell, you can’t slow him down and end up running over things to pick up too easily
Dark Light is wack on Steam Deck. It plays awfully. The game is also not that good on its own. A game similar to that, that is actually great is Ghost Song.
as a weeb. i dont approve that disgusting weeb shit either. if you agree with lolis you should spend less time infront of the screen and more time in the gym
Omg strimmer man you forgot [insert another obscure metroidvania game]
Damn maybe next time
@@dr4gonblitz dead cells return to castlevania?
"Why can't I use the crowbar for murder?"
DB asking the important questions.
0:42 Dark Light
7:16 Skautfold: Usurper
16:59 ASTLIBRA Revision
25:09 One Dog Story
31:10 Grim Guardians: Demon Purge
fixed the description. forgot to do that before hitting upload lmao
I have to highly recommend Timespinner. Really hit that classic igavania itch!
This dude really thinks hes listing 5 metroidvanias I might have missed LMAO
Oh man, I can't be happier to see Skautfold: Usurper getting some spotlight.
Having played a ton of it, please allow me to explain why I love this game.
* In general:
This game is meant to be played in complete silence and fully focused. It's one of the hardest metroidvanias I've ever played. This game not only rewards your Perfect Parries, it DEMANDS it. One also needs to pay a lot of attention to sound cues of danger, and those few-frames animations telling you that you are in danger (like the red zoom-in for example, telling you that the character has used his last-resort and it at 1HP until you go back to rest).
Playing this game on stream might have caused you to miss on some vital mechanics. Which is understandable, streamers have to keep up with the stream entertainment.
* Stamina:
As you saw, the stamina is a shield too, and it is 'restored' on every Perfect Parry. So the idea is to attack while trying to land a Perfect Parry in order to keep up with the offense. It's an aggressive and pretty punishing playstyle. Sometimes dodging is the wrong option, regardless of how intuitive it might be.
Enemy projectiles get powerfully reflected back, which is excellent if you don't have long-range ammunition. There are subtle sound cues for incoming projectiles.
* Progression:
You just went in the a wrong direction.
The first area was around the Toad Agent. Up and to the right (it's hard to see the path, I found it by mistake). In general, if an area is somewhat difficult, you are on the wrong path. Over the first area you soon find your first boss, one that you can't beat without Perfect Parries, the perfect introduction for the game.
There, you'll get some important story cues too. Where monsters come from, what are the knights doing there, and why some monsters are friendly.
* Why I love it:
The game is as indie as it gets. There are some bugs, some issues, things that could be improved on and so on...
BUT, the ambience is super oppressive once you immerse yourself in the game (it might be difficult when playing on stream tho, since this game requires silence and focus). The UI gets purposely messed up in a few places, the sound effects are gory and rusty, a bit visceral at times, and the environment itself evolves with the story and game progression, showing the problems of the present (early game) and the results of your struggles.
I totally recommend this game to anyone with a bit of patience, tenacity, and an open mind to one of the very few and amazing horror metroidvanias around that do indeed succeed to scare, if you try to let yourself get immersed into it.
The sudden deaths shown on this video happen to anyone new to this game, and overcoming them is just amazing.
Grim Guardians is more of a classicvania than a metroidvania, but it's so sick. Great art style/vibe, great music, simple but rewarding gameplay. Literally the only negative thing you could say about it is that the character's voices are annoying, but some people are into anime girls, so I ain't hatin'.
Also, the character from that Skautfold game is just Edward from Full Metal Alchemist. 😭😭😭
Good stuff! Really dig the new content style, you're enjoying it and it shows in the work!
Astlibra is an S tier hands down, beginning is slow, yeah, but then...Damn, this game have interesting story, great gameplay and music is so awesome that I keep it on my list even now! Highly recommend it!
100% agreed. Astlibra is such a slept on game, and probably one the best I've played in a very long time.
But it is also very clearly a JRPG with action combat - not everything that is a 2d sidescroller should automatically be considered a Metroidvania. A 60+ hour game getting a 30 minute glance and reviewed from the perspective of the wrong genre is never gonna be an accurate depiction.
It's unbelievably quirky, jank, bizarre, just I dunno. That said, all of those things make it so charming and addictive. Worth it for the experience alone
Dark Light seems pretty neat
I like how in Usurper, the human is called Saragat (surrogate). It might just be me making a stretch of a connection, but it seems likely given the whole parasite theme of the game
24:05 Curiously for the torch is not required to farm or grind anything. You need resin and wood. And those are physical objects you must search. NPCs give you hints.
Astlibra is high key underrated man
Usurper is part of a series of games. Shrouded in sanity is the one i played. It’s just as odd but is more survival horror. I wish the mechanics felt better because its world seems really interesting.
DUST. I dont know where to get this game anymore but it was absolutely a masterpiece Metroidvania.
An Elysian Tail? It's on steam. Damn, it turned 10 this year...
I understand what DB means about Grim Guardians story. It is a visual novel style. It used to bother me when a game did that but I am already used to.
One hill I'll die on is that every game with a map needs to give me one single button to press to see that map. None of this "go into the menu and hit R1" crap.
i forgot what game it was. but i played a metroidvania that had a map. and i didnt know until i finished it...
i kept a map inside my head pretty much the entire game. because u had to go to the menu. and use an item called map.
Astlibra is pretty slow to get going, but when it does, man... I think talking about the story without finishing it is not really fair, because the plot is probably WAY different that what you're expecting. It gets pretty insane. The soudtrack also ranks among the best I've heard in any game
Loving these Edits
Great video! Even find what to play myself x)
Excelent reviews dude! Congrats. I'll try the Dark Light for sure!
Where the peepeepoopoo algo squad at?
Majin bukkake for the algorithm
Man, what a fantastic video, I need more of those!
Personal favorite Metroidvania is called An Untitled Story, made by the same person who made Celeste. It's free, and they made it out of high school. Check it out!
14:15 the 'guard / attack' system you're talking about is from Punch-Out from 8-bit NES
It's great looking at random games with ya buddy. This is a fun format.
I'd say ASTLIBRA Revision deserves a longer visit as the story and the game mechanic develop really slowly. The story isn't amazing but it gets a bit better later on and the combat/growth system is the gem! It gets better and better every chapter all the way till the very last one.
It's a travesty to give it a C lol. That game is a real hidden gem. But I enjoy a decent story too, so maybe if ya don't care about story it wouldn't be for you.
I'm a vibration enjoyer :v
Dude good stuff with the Evil Zone Training stage music
I really want to try out grim guardians
6:16 I dunno man, are you sure you even like Metroidvanias? Gating the double jump early means there are plenty of areas that you will have to come back to explore, some areas you don't even realise you can double jump up til you get it etc, and it generally makes you stronger in combat by being more nimble. That's part of the magic of Metroidvanias to me.
@dr4gonblitzdaily likes metroidvanias
I would have to agree with your take. Double Jump gives so much utility as well as accessibility. It'd be interesting if there was a mechanic that could take it away sometimes. like if it was linked to your health or mana, Perhaps the area makes it less effective with increased gravity. Perhaps a game lets you start with everything and slowly takes away your abilities as you progress to the end. Perhaps making certain choices in the story harms your ability to traverse areas later as the protag get withered down. Cave story kinda does something like this. Perhaps..............
What about this SUPER SUPER obscure game : it call Metroid?
Love your videos Dragon Blitz always a pleasure ❤️🫡
I bought astlibra because the graphics seemed interesting. I turned into one of my favorite games of all times.
I ended up 100% the game in 50 hours, i ended up kind of cheating, because i wanted to complete the whole tree before the last fight, which by hand would have probably taken me 100 or 120 hours at my rate. But on my second run now, and i've enjoyed it a lot. Definitely in my top 3 games of all time.
While the story might be choppy at times, and definitely not a top 10 story-wise, for a game that was made by a single guy back in the day, and now made by the same guy again into a new engine that he had to teach himself just to make a game he liked, is amazing, specially now that we have the DLC coming who knows when
Thanks much for that video, it really help to have a good idea about the game. Great job
I know this is an old video and nobody likely cares, especially given how poor the try out for it went, but whatever.
"Usurper" is the 2nd game in the "Skautfold" series. It's the direct sequel to the first game, "Shrouded in Sanity", literally taking place a year later after a sequel hook. In fact, Waltham appears as your contractor in the first game and Saragat, the Fourth Knight, was one of the bosses there.
There are two other games to my knowledge. "Into the Fray" where you play as Hito, the Third Knight, and "Moonless Knight" where you play as Gray, the Second Knight. Both of whom were also bosses in the first game as well. Funnily, you can kill all of them there but obviously that doesn't end up being the true route that the subsequent games follow.
Every entry also plays differently, being part of different genre styles. The 1st game was an 2d-ish hack-and-slash, the second is obvious a 2d action platformer, the 3rd is an isometric shooter since Hito uses guns, and the 4th is similar to the 3rd but more melee focused. But all of them follow the same general ideas and overarching mechanics.
It definitely is not the most polished series, at least in regards to the first two entries that I played, but it is still interesting. A lot of effort was made into telling a continuous and evolving story while also injecting some fairly unique mechanics. If nothing else, it follows Lovecraftian methodology fairly closely so you can get some very out there concepts and imaginary.
dark light definitely the mvp of this list
Pls strimmer play the new dead cells return to castlevania dlc, there are so many references and callbacks to castlevania in og dead cells so imagine the dlc lol it’s incredible
Anime (derogatory) - as an anime fan, I understand that description exactly.
'don't think you can win from me'
Inb4 100k+ views. Claiming it now
I was just watching dB's video that he ranks metroidvanias
So much better than that dragon blitz daily guy. Actual editing and scripting. Such quality. Much wow.
Grim Guardians purged
Ender Lilies is my favorite Metroidvania.
Yes, RUclips, DB totally played Silksong throughout the whole video. >_
there's a subreddit for everything...
Looks cool overall. I'm specially interested in Grim Guardians. I'm baffled to see death pits in really standard metroidvanias, though. I'd get it in a mixed one like The Messenger that you expect Ninja Gaiden and you get a metroidvania. But when the game really looks like Metroid or SoTN, I really want to jump in every pit.
Grim Guardians isn't so much metroidvania as newer classicvania. Think Rondo.
I've been wanting to try out Dark Light for a while and this has cemented that want
"This game surely has anesthetic " hmm a game that has pain killing properties lol
Haiku the Robot - shocked me - 10ish hour indie, you likely would like
Calling a game, A metroidvania is perfectly fine. we use to call all FPS's Doom clones. And for around 15 years. there where only a handful of these games half of them being Metroids . And one castlevania. :)
I wouldn't exactly describe Fortune Summoners as unknown (though it's kinda niche outside the doujin game community) but it's a pretty fun Metroidvania-ish action RPG where you control 2 characters with different specialties a-la Portrait of Ruin.
Team? Usurper was made by one dude.
nice job good vid
Came here to watch and drop the obligatory "pee pee poo poo" from @Dr4gonBlitzDaily
Souldiers is pretty badass too. I don’t see many people talk about that game.
Some of those portraits in astilibra are ripped from other games. The bald bearded man's portrait is Radius from Chrono Cross. Your fire emblem complaint may actually hold some weight lol
Astlibra C tier...... well that's a take.
Okay but when are you gonna play Ponyvania
(it's actually a pretty good game for being a My Little Pony game [it's actually pretty difficult at parts but that could have just been me being bad at video games
....I also realize that I haven't finished it, I got stuck on a bonus boss that went kinda crazy]
Anyway it's free, I think it's worth trying)
31:11 This game makes “Waifuvania” a new category.
Astlibra Revision... definitly isn't a metroidvania, it's more of a 2D Side Scroller A-RPG like Odin Sphere.
I gave Usurper a bad review on steam after getting to the final boss before deciding the game wasnt worth my effort and I was fed up with it's bs. The developer tried to argue with me in the comments about my review and tried to get me to change it lmfao.
That dark light is exactly like dead cells or is dead cells like dark light which came first?
Grim Guardians is called Gal Guardians on steam for some reason?
Have you tried Haak. It's quite good metroidvania. It has quite challenging precision platforming sections.
35:41 is that weird grid filter part of the game?
No people who watch my stream can cause different effects to change the way the stream looks
Needs more Minoria or Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. Vaguely weeb-looking games like Grim Guardians (now called Gal Guardians for some reason) but far superior games.
what is your controller type?
Xbox 360
@@dr4gonblitzbrother ewww
You ever played Castlevania Lecarde Chronicles 2? It's very good imo
grim guardians seems to heavily borrow from portrait of ruin? 2 chars. but also megaman X3 i believe. where u can swap X and Zero who are also range/melee.
and yeah i really like these games. will definitly check them out. except the dog one.
if you haven't played it yet shadow complex remastered fun playing it on steam
I want to like dark light so much, but I don’t know if there’s something wrong with the game or just me? The character seems to move way too fast, and as far as I can tell, you can’t slow him down and end up running over things to pick up too easily
where is the bow? thats the thing you are the bow XD
Blasphemous is a metroidvania. Certainly surprised me with how much I enjoyed it. Has a mixture of dark souls elements included on death's as well
Brain in a jar! How solipsistic
Hello
hi
stretch the definition all you want, just dont call a rougelike a metroidvania
The Usurper game looks like it needs to be put back in the oven until it's done...
i try to play dark ligth pirate but the game stuck in the inicial menu 9/10
Laughing about how a character looks in a game is not nice. Makes me wanna throw a pokemon ball at ya!
That thumbnail man. Totally disagree.
Pee pee poo poo
pee pee poo poo
Grim guardians is not a metroidvania. Is a classicvania. The NES style castlevania. A clunky mess.
Dark Light is wack on Steam Deck. It plays awfully. The game is also not that good on its own. A game similar to that, that is actually great is Ghost Song.
weak light is made of one of the worst companies and most boring untested messes i played with the tag metroidvania in the last 4 years
Hollow knight is not a good game and is only shilled by people who have never played a real metroidvania. Prove me wrong.
as a weeb. i dont approve that disgusting weeb shit either. if you agree with lolis you should spend less time infront of the screen and more time in the gym
are you a homosexual?
Poo poo pee pee
pee pee poo poo for the algorithm
Pee pee poo poo