Recent reviews by Swidge

cracked

go for 100% uptime

you can shoot and dash on the same beat

--*BIG EDIT*--

I have now hit endgame LETHAL DIFFICULTY *WOW* and spent some time there so i am now able to dump on this game, there are alot of reviews here and most of them are dumb and wrong in the context of giving people all of the information they actually need to understand if they want to purchase in the context of a long term rhythm arpg

For non spoiler summary for the people who want to experience game mechanics themselves; this is a great game with considerable problems, its fully worth the price provided you go in understanding its flaws IF you can eventually accept them. Good luck, they are not small flaws

---SPOILERS AHEAD---

More depth:

-The game has 142 songs and requires you to complete 102 of them to unlock either of the final two difficulties, in a game where most enemy variants dont even show up on the first two difficulties it is stock standard poor pacing of arpgs and coop games in general expecting players to require far more time then necessary digesting new systems and mechanics, do not play 3-4 songs and expect anything other than very simple zerg enemies, the Big boys/healers/snipers/swirly turrets come later

-Many properties/prefixes/whatever you want to call them on your gear range from ridiculously powerful to literally detrimental, this creates scenarios where some items are ruined by poor prefixes and others are made unbelievable powerhouses from just one (of up to five), this has the huge positive advantage of not just tying worth to only itemlevel and creating a large positive identity for your guns/melee weapons causing them to perform and potentially even feel vastly unique, but means you'll have to accept that not all item prefixes are born equal and you will be hunting the specific properties that any gun/melee type needs to succeed for some very simple non spoiler examples you may feel the boombox requires more range if you are big scared, you dont like weapons that dont have chain lightning etc

-The core gameplay is a bit wonky, being able to dash and shoot in the same beat is easily the most fun part of the game but it creates some serious balance issues amongst the cast of weaponry

-The beatmaps of some songs will feel off and that is mostly because the game needs to give you a consistent beat all the time so gameplay doesnt stop while many songs do not necessarily provide the beat to your ears at the same volume or even pulse, and in some cases will disappear entirely, this is a much bigger problem with imported tracks since most of the music that was picked for this game is fine and is extremely varied in taste/pace/genre so pretty much everyone will have tracks they like and dislike, but its important that if you want music to feel correct you will either need to get used to using audacity to fix it or live with it

---BIG SPOILERS AHEAD---

Dont read if you aren't happy being told exactly how combat works and the values/power of item properties:

-The beat as far as I am aware has NO restrictions on your actions beyond a set duration, melee attacks and dashing cannot be animation cancelled into ANYTHING else and lock you in until the beat ends, but shooting can be cancelled into EITHER of these, this gives you two major options on any beat (unless you use an automatic weapon then you have a third inferior poo option) unless you absolutely want to just shoot and keep walking which is fairly rare and usually doesnt involve combat; shooting and dashing inside of your current beat as your defensive/positioning option, or shooting and meleeing which restricts your movement significantly but obviously gives you massive damage and especially massive burst (at least before any specific item properties)

This is a massive problem when comparing your options for play since any automatic weapon (burstfire/sixteener etc) has the gigantic penalty of LOSING damage anywhere from 20-80% depending on how fast your fingers are, what the bpm is and how fast the gun fires, IF you also want to dash in the same beat. Since these weapons are balanced around shooting for the entire duration of the beat and usually even AFTER the beat has ended, if you want your dash or your melee in combination you have to give up shots for it. These weapons are NOT balanced to have to compete for this, and numerically cannot make up for the gap at all, you would need some insane positive properties on an automatic weapon to make it more valuable than a non automatic weapon if you are willing to sit on an APM where you can comfortably shoot+dash/shoot+melee every beat. This take completely ignores that with many weapons (quarterizer is the best example and one of the best shoot+dash/shoot+melee options in the game) can shoot TWICE (or even THRICE in the case of low BPM songs) if you have decent timing and are willing to fire slightly offbeat and probably ruin your ears a bit

The obvious retort is well ignore all this stupid high apm sweaty meta garbage and the guns are pretty close right? no sorry dumb and wrong because in this game legendary armor can roll with a property that gives you INFINITY dashes meaning you can dash every single beat and another ONE of your five armor properties gives you a spastically high 50% damage amplification for the entire next beat after dashing on beat. You can keep this up permanently if you decide to shoot+dash the entire map without thought or decisions while still allowing you to dump massive burst damage with shoot+melee following a shoot+dash. Automatic weapons get to abuse NONE of this and it further skews the problem that if you aren't using a weapon that has synergy with dashing and melee you are giving up both massive dps and mobility, most weapons are not automatic and dont have this problem but its important to mention that if you see automatic weapons in the promotional material for this game and that is why you are buying it that you need to understand that they really suck RELATIVE to other options because of how animation cancelling, the beat and item properties function in this game

-Some properties like arrythmic are straight up awful, reducing your bonus for playing on beat and reducing the penalty for playing offbeat, which you never want to do, the times you would ever consider playing offbeat are almost always a scenario that you put yourself in and are ALWAYS negative and to be avoided. This property is not just a wasted slot it straight up makes anything it touches worse, there are other examples of poor properties but this is by far the most egregious, likewise for weapon procs stuff like chain lightning's raw dps is better in almost every case than lifesteal or fire damage over time and usually even delayed damage. There are nowhere near enough instances of a large target with a huge health pool to allow any of these dumb slow procs to deal any damage, and for those that exist swapping to a secondary specifically designed to kill bosses/large single enemies is not a healthy way of balancing chain lightning, it will always be superior until it isnt and you'll just swap to the next best single target option. Bad

I could write a billion more words on the prefixes that are problem children but arrythmic/on-beat dash damage amplification are the two that make the most waves, doubletime (eighth note swings instead of fourth note, or in human speak you attack twice for I think slightly longer animation time, this is completely mandatory if you want to use melody's sword in the late game efficiently) is another good example where no other prefix comes even close to its level of dps, if you care at all about the arpg side of this game you'll need to decide for yourself if having properties on your gear be this polarizing is a good thing or a bad thing

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have fun reading all that lol good game i will continue to play id give mixed review if steam didnt suck fat c

Vault of the Void stands tall by itself alongside Slay the Spire and the best of every other roguelike deckbuilder to grace valve's money printer

If you are looking for an experience that gives you a ridiculous amount of control over every run and demands you take advantage of the pieces in front of you this is easily worth the base price

wtf is happening

Quen simulator 2015