|
 Leila, a recent member of the Vigil, an order of elite warriors, receives a letter from her twin sister Daisy asking her to come back. The night refuses to give way to the day and to make matters worse, the lands are infested by monsters, cultists and humans who lost their minds. Join Leila’s adventure as she one-woman armies her way through hordes of Lovecraftian foes, uncover ancient secrets that leads to many more questions and sometimes, manage to even save people. Vigil could be described as a little bit of a 2D soulslike, a little bit of a metroidvania, but it is not afraid of deviating from those formulas when appropriate. Character progression is handled via skill treas. You get a skill point for every level up rather than stat points and stats are increased mainly through equipment. There is one big twist to the formula though, which will not be seen until new game+. Most skills are weapons based and give Leila new abilities or modify old abilities. The controls are tight, both platforming and combat feels great and work well in unison once you get the hang of it. The setting is rather compelling, it takes place in a medieval Lovecraftian world where the night is endless. Both the monsters and the cultists do a great job of portraying just how wrong things are and the a lot of the in game artwork is gorgeous. Despite the night theme, as the title suggests, the developers prioritized visibility over realistic darkness and everything is easy to see. The game does have major balancing issues though. You can get armor that would be the Dark Souls equivalent of a giant armor with 4 times the defense stats and the weight of chainmail. You have to pretty much beat the hardest challenges to get that equipment, so it not that bad for the first playtrough, but new game+ is absolutely busted. New game+ also narrows the number of good builds. I intend to show nearly 100% of the game. There are a crapload of items and pieces of equipment and a lot of them are garbage that I won’t bother to track down, but I will get everything that's useful or contain interesting lore. I will also go through all areas and all bosses and throughout show off every weapon type. Finally, I will explain the game mechanics, a lot of them that are known by a very few players. Updates: Episode 1: Looking for two girls Episode 2: First dungeon delving Episode 3: Delivering bad news and getting bad news Episode 4: Trial or rescue Episode 5: We did it? Episode 6: Finishing preparation Crystalgate fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Mar 20, 2024 |
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 18:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:36 |
|
|
Looks like a pretty interesting game. Would you be willing to sit on the dialogue screens just a tad longer? I manage to read them, but only barely.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 21:58
|
|
|
azren posted:Looks like a pretty interesting game. Would you be willing to sit on the dialogue screens just a tad longer? I manage to read them, but only barely.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2024 17:57
|
|
|
I'm not sure I can buy the bleak atmosphere in a game that contains names like Daisy, Tangerine and Dickbuttshire. Diegetic tutorializing honestlydoesn't help either. I think it's a common issue with most of the cargo-cult-souls games: aping the style without actually understanding what makes it work. Take the first boss - the Craving Terror is a very sously name, but what does it crave? It's not a description ("Gaping"), it doesn't seem to be a part of its story ("Covetous"), it feels like a completely random bit of characterization. Or the item descriptions that mostly seem to tell you things you should be able to tell just by looking at it. Game still seems really interesting, looking forward to seeing more.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2024 23:30
|
|
|
Re. anilEhilated's comments - another thing that I find common in a lot of these 2D souls-likes is... And this is going to sound dumb, but I don't know the correct language - is that the animation is rather 'weightless' - from what I can tell, each character model is made by a combination of body-head-limb all connected together. I guess that it makes animation a lot easier (not everyone can individually animate every type of entity like in Hollow Knight), but it does make the way they move look very 'floaty', and makes the lack of a turn animation more evident. Not that this game is uniquely guilty of this, I want to reiterate that. But am I correct it is a technique used to aid in animation? Onto the game mechanics - is that evading slash basically the same a dodge, i.e. it grants I-frames, while also dealing damage? Also, if you don't mind me asking, where do you come from? I can't quite place the accent.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 07:47
|
|
|
Samovar posted:Re. anilEhilated's comments - another thing that I find common in a lot of these 2D souls-likes is... And this is going to sound dumb, but I don't know the correct language - is that the animation is rather 'weightless' - from what I can tell, each character model is made by a combination of body-head-limb all connected together. I guess that it makes animation a lot easier (not everyone can individually animate every type of entity like in Hollow Knight), but it does make the way they move look very 'floaty', and makes the lack of a turn animation more evident. Thank you for bringing up the part about the animation, there is actually something regarding that which I want to show. This game does definitely animate the different body parts separately since the amount of combinations would be exceed a million otherwise. Evading Slash is indeed a dodge with damage dealing on top. It costs more stamina than dodge and it's easier to accidentally roll off a platform with Evading Slash, so it does not replace dodge entirely, just usually. It's also a great boon for a beginner, though a crutch as well. There's the thing with panic rolling for souls-likes that you tend to do as a newbie and then gradually learn to do less and less as you get better. However, panic Evading Slash is far more likely to work out well for you in this game since it has a good chance of killing the enemies, so it can take a lot longer to unlearn it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2024 22:44
|
|
|
Episode 1: First dungeon delving We explore the first real dungeon and the training wheels slowly starts to come off, so we get a better taste of what combat is like.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 20:43
|
|
|
I have to admit - having one of the regular items be called 'Blood Souls' is a bit on the nose, even for me. Edit: Hang on, am I understanding the mechanics of the fall damage correctly? If you swing your sword just at the very end of a drop, you won't take damage because it re-sets the distance? Samovar fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Feb 23, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2024 17:49
|
|
|
Yes. If you fall long enough, the game will not allow you to swing your weapon though, so reset your fall distance before you reach that point.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2024 22:17
|
|
|
Honestly the fall damage is the most bizarre part of the game design for me. This game is appreciably Metroidvania-ish and it does expect leaps of faith from you so having fall damage is really weird. The skill system is also a giant mess, especially if you're into heavy weapons. I had to skill myself out of them, it was just such a shitshow.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2024 22:56
|
|
|
The polearms are IMO the hardest close range weapon type to use. The skills are also a mix of "sounds cool, but not really useful", benefits that should have been available by default instead of requiring skill points and skills that have a very low return past the first point. I do find it perfectly playable and enjoyable though and I can clear any content with them except for two specific bosses who I just use Mechanical Bow + Giant against. Anyway, a new update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCmEiOpY_X8 This video is mostly tying up loose threads in the town.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 18:25
|
|
|
New update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r30XC5xq2MA We're back on action for this video. There is a out of bounds glitch that I didn't really show off because I wanted to go trough the dungeon normally. I will show it off the next update.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 17:55
|
|
|
Really good music in the dungeon, more games should include acoustic guitars in their soundtracks. e: Although I gotta say, the level feels kind of... empty? Like there is a lot of space with nothing in it? I've seen this in Metroidvanias before (Timespinner being the worst culprit here) and I think it's a wrong lesson taken from the 'vania part: in the OG Metroidvanias (as well as most of the Good Ones released afterwards), every room offered a unique challenge with its mix of obstacles an enemies. This obviously takes a lot of work design-wise and isn't immediately obvious to the player so a lot of devs end up just ignoring this aspect and it's always to the detriment of the game. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Mar 6, 2024 |
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2024 18:08
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Really good music in the dungeon, more games should include acoustic guitars in their soundtracks. It's for two reasons 1) This is still part of the gam's tutorial land 2) Due to the Soulslike difficulty it's expected some players will have a tougher challenge with enemies (and especially the boss) so the difficulty of the actual environments is greatly muted.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2024 20:24
|
|
|
New update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd_hCO9P29w The prologue has ended and the main game begins and with it, enemies become stronger. That said, this video is more about dialogs than combat as the town has to be explored anew.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2024 17:41
|
|
|
I actually got a decent bit of use out of the eyeball necklace. It was a good way to avoid stupid deaths from fall damage.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2024 08:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:36 |
|
|
New update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsTqY69hVYk Next update will be a huge dungeon. I'll see how many videos I'll need for that one.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2024 19:15
|
|