A closer comparison to Landstalker from the SNES pantheon might be Equinox. Still different games but much closer to each other than LTTP and Landstalker.
Landstalker is the better game IMHO but that doesn't detract from the enjoyment of Equinox.
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A closer comparison to Landstalker from the SNES pantheon might be Equinox. Still different games but much closer to each other than LTTP and Landstalker.
Landstalker is the better game IMHO but that doesn't detract from the enjoyment of Equinox.
Equinox is the sequel to Solstice on the NES, which is often speculated to have been at least a partial inspiration for the dungeon platforming in Landstalker. Landstalker is sooooo much more of a game, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jake Armitage
I really, really wish Landstalker had played more like Alundra.
Landstalker also plays much more like a RPG compared to Link to the Past, since you visit multiple towns in between the dungeons, there's a real story, it's linear, etc. I do prefer it to ALLTP, but then I think that game (and Ocarina of Time) are overrated. I like Minish Cap and the Oracle games, though. And yeah, Alundra is still better, but then Alundra's the best action-RPG ever made.
It came out 5 years earlier. The gameplay issues with Landstalker are probably why Alundra played so much better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lion
Alundra was also made by a team at least 3-4 times as big, for much more capable hardware.
I'm always impressed that Landstalker has over 600 unique 3-dimensional screens (many quite large) in a 2 MB ROM. Size was a huge issue for the game, which is why there aren't many unique enemies.
I do prefer Landstalker's bold attempt at an isometric perspective, though. I think it looks much better than Alundra's top down view. It's a given that there's no intuitive way to do controls in an isometric action game, especially one designed around 2-axis movement. But I thought Landstalker made a very satisfying attempt at it (I never even realized that people had a problem with the controls until reading the internet 20 years later).
I also think that, in terms of charm and sense of fun adventure, Landstalker is hard to beat. Alundra's story is very dark in comparison.
I just feel like Landstalker has untapped potential, and to me, Alundra is an indication of the heights it could've achieved with a bigger team and more time. Sure, the hardware is less advanced than the PSX etc, but even within the MD's limitations the game could've been so much more.
What improvements would you have liked to see in Landstalker?
Besides the obvious stuff, I guess just more polish in general. In my view, the game looks and feels kind of rough, and it's not really making optimal use of the hardware. Hard to get more specific than that, it's been a long time since I played it.
A shadow sprite that lets you determine otherwise invisible depth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gryson
I'm surprised that you say this. I find it so much more polished than most of the other 1992 and earlier Genesis games. I think (but would have to check) that at the time it had the biggest (and most qualified?) development team for a Genesis game. In terms of making use of the hardware, I'm not really sure what you mean. It plays as it was designed to (i.e. no slowdown - for the most part!).Quote:
Originally Posted by Lion
This wouldn't have really solved anything. The most annoying parts are where you're platforming over black gaps that wouldn't display a shadow, or you're 12 levels off the ground and wouldn't be able to see the shadow.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
By the way, as others have said in this thread, the number of times where you really can't tell the perspective of a platform are very limited. I feel like it's a bit exaggerated. For most of the game, the platforming is quite straightforward.
This is number one. Second would be making objects transparent and/or removing them when obstructing your view. I don't consider the game's "ha ha you can't see crap" aspects as fun puzzles or interesting gameplay. Third would be revamping the combat system; it's dull and quite dated, even for the time. Nigel needs more moves and enemies which can pose a challenge.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
Again, those are so few and far between (and most are just secrets) that I don't really think it takes away from the game. I always kind of thought they were clever puzzles within the limitations of the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Benjamin
Combat is definitely not good. Early previews for the game portrayed quite a more complex combat system where you could possibly use magic and other weapons. In the end, all that remained was the different swords you could get that don't really change the combat. Enemies are simple and generally follow the same patterns. I always kind of thought the enemies were just annoyances getting in the way of the more interesting puzzles, exploration, and platforming.
If the game would warp you back to where you jumped from, like respawning after falling in a pitt with some games, then it wouldn't be a problem. The backtracking that is sometimes required in some of those "few and far between" spots is painful and tedius to overcome and it kills enthusiasm for the game when you're punished for a mistake the designer made.
As I said previously, the only other major thing the game needs is proper boss fights at good intervals. The final boss in particular is super disappointing. The regular bosses barely feel like mini bosses. They're single square sized like the player and just move around like a regular enemy or defensive element/traps/obstacles in similar games. Besides feeling somewhat epic, they should have included a bit of puzzle elements instead of being braindead hack 'n slash fests.
Whatever floats your boat, I suppose. But in my view, the color selection was drab and the pixel art unappealing. Granted, the palette limitations of the system were always a problem, but even within those strict limits, more could've been done.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gryson
My understanding is that the developers very intentionally made the few (yes, few!) perspective-lacking platforming parts because they were running out of ideas as to how to make the game challenging. That turned out to be a pretty bad design mistake, though, and they took a lot of flack for it in Japan where the game was super popular. Everybody complained that it was too hard. So yeah, leaving that out would have been a good move.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
Well, color was definitely a limitation, considering the entire field had to be made with 16 colors. But I think the result is impressive:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lion
http://u.cubeupload.com/gryson/9whd8Or.png
Beautiful :love:
Landstalker is one of the prettiest and most colorful games on the Genesis, so I don't see how it would have been better with a larger staff or more time / money. The team was already really large for the time. In the end, somebody is going to lead the art team, whether it's for characters or towns & dungeons. If you don't like the style, you don't. That's not going to change if there are more people doing it, since they're going to go for a unified look. I always thought the game played great, all things considered, and the parts that are actually frustrating are few and far between. Climax must have liked the isometric view, since they reprised it in Dark Savior.
I do like Alundra even more, but that's mostly because of the surprisingly dark story; the top-down view does make it easier to navigate, but it's not as striking visually.
16 color BGs are indeed a nightmare if you wanna do anything that looks even remotely decent. So yes, all things considered, they did a good job.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gryson
Very true, and indeed, I don't like it. It's not because I dislike the designs though, I'm very fond of those. And I think they would've been much better served by the Alundra approach.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jules Walter
that damn final sword (Gaia?) that interrupts gameplay EACH TIME you press the button! It's way more annoying than the cop car in Streets of Rage (which is cool the first 3-4 times you launch it and then just gets in the way of your fights)
The Gaia sword only disrupts the fight when it's used fully charged. Then it triggers the earthquake magic. It shouldn't slow you down in the heat of battle if you keep swinging it and don't give it time to fully charge.Quote:
Originally Posted by chilled
Dunno how the Gaia sword "gets in the way if your fights" when it usually clears the screen of enemies. Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly
I believe he's complaining about the pause that occurs when you use the Gaia sword's magic. It never bothered me in the slightest personally.Quote:
Originally Posted by Genesis Knight
I have a feeling he's mis-remembering how it works. As you said, it only causes the pause when it's fully charged.
the pause was long. Long as in Sonic CD time travel transitions, that is. And the sword fully recharged itself very fast. The earthquake it caused didnt do that much damage to tougher enemies...
Honestly, that thing can destroy the final boss without getting near it. If it has one issue, it's too overpowered. However if that pause bothers you, you can always switch back to another sword.
I played through this one recently, maybe 3-4 months ago. Would have loved knowing then that Greenmaze is a 3x3 square block, where you start in the middle of one row. That took me a while. Also the end game wasn't as bad as I recalled. My first time, I thought I fell down a bunch of floors with a really long way back up, but it wasn't like that at all the last time I played it.
Also, emulation won't do it justice, unless you're using a good 8 direction round D-pad like the Genesis. I know some complain about how the controls work, but the 8 directional D-pad makes a difference here. (that or you could look over the romhacking forums for the patch that makes each D-pad button move Nigel in a different direction, if you need to make up for a lack of diagonals)
I always switch back to another sword obviously. Yes, the controls are good enough, the complains come from people not putting it enough effort. Well, that and those moving platforms where you cannot know where they actually are until you try and fall back some floors at least twice... still my personal favorite game on the system, at least if you count the time where it was published (first 16 meg game!)
Decided to give it a go out of the blue. Seven hours in I've just got out of Duke's dungeon and I can't make up my mind about this game. It alternates between being 10 out 0f 10 and being so frustrating I want to punch a kitten in the stomach.
Just beat it and my stance hasn't really changed.
I mean, overall it's a good game. Great even. But by Lord is it frustrating.
And it's not really the difficulty, I only got killed once early on and once I figured out what is what I barely had to do any grinding, but it's just the little things that can drive you nuts
Like, it has the same bullshit "You're standing near a wall so you can't swing your sword" idiotic bit of realism that would later plague Dark Souls
You are knocked back whenever you get hit and if you go to a different location and there's an enemy spawning right in front of a doorway, they can knock you back into the location you just walked out of and it's really grating
But of course, the biggest source of frustration in the game is its camera. The isometric perspective screws real hard with your ability to tell where everything is, at least some of which was clearly intentional.
And some of the platforming... it reminds me of a Stephen King quote from his novel "Desperation":
And that honestly is the biggest flaw in the game. Otherwise? Fantastic presentation, gorgeous music and the writing is a ton of fun.Quote:
You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand. Do you know how cruel your God can be. How fantastically cruel? Sometimes He makes us do timed isometric platforming without drop shadows.
The absence of a shadow really does hurt the platforming, and it seems so easy to put in and is a wonder why it's not there. You do get used to it, but that doesn't make it a good thing. In most areas you can reference other objects to help determine your position, but that last dungeon where it's just a couple of small floating platforms in a void is maddening. It's one of the games from my youth I think I'd like to go back and replay like Ecco, but then I think about it some more and it's like, nah. I don't think I have the patience for that these days, at least if I'm to play it directly on my Genesis. I'm sure it'd be manageable with save states.
Kan Naito, the game's programmer, said recently on his Youtube channel that they did implement shadows at one point but they just didn't work well. Most of the more difficult platforming sections are so high off the ground (or over black pits) that a shadow doesn't really help.
Common Landstalker criticisms are "the controls are too difficult" and "the perspective is confusing" but these are basically the very limitations of trying to make a 2D isometric game.
There is simply no single "great" way to do isometric 4-direction character movement on a d-pad. You either do a mismatch where pushing up causes the character to move either up-left or up-right, but that is not really intuitive, or you rely only on diagonals, which is hard on the thumb, or you do something like Landstalker did (which I think works better) and use the diagonal to shift the forward-facing direction. I'd say Landstalker's solution is the best of bad options. The same goes for the platforming. There's no easy way to capture perspective when doing 2D isometric tile-based graphics.
Basically, it's easy to criticize these aspects of the game, but the developers were well aware of the limitations and worked around them the best they could (and, personally, I think they did a great job; I've never once had a problem with the platforming or controls).
If they had abandoned the isometric perspective, I think the game would have lost a lot of what makes it special. It's so rare to see a large 16-bit isometric world like this in a Japanese game, and I'm totally glad we got this attempt at it (even if it does highlight some of the limitations).
Another game that of course has to be mentioned is Light Crusader. Treasure had several years to overcome Landstalker's limitations, and the results are not necessarily better. Light Crusader went with 8-direction movement rather than 4, and it added shadows to the player character and platforms. But the decision was made to simplify the platforming, and I don't find Light Crusader's platforming quite as fun as Landstalker's.
I actually didn't mind the directional controls in Landstalker, they just take a bit of getting used to, but once I did, it was a smooth sailing and by the end none of the corner jumps were a problem to me. But while the controls between it and LC are a subject for a debate, I don't think just having shadows is "simplifying it". More like "making it fair". I do like to know where the hell I'm going after all.
I don't mean the shadows simplify it -- I mean the platforming in Light Crusader is just generally not as complex as Landstalker (regardless of shadows). Landstalker has a lot of rather complex platforming sections with big falls that take a bit of time to work out, while Light Crusader's platforming feels much lighter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Allard
I didn't have much trouble with the jumping or perspective either. The game is pretty much as good as it possibly can be, in my opinion.
I listened to the arranged soundtrack on YouTube a few days ago and found out Kan Naito put a message on it. Does anyone know what he says?
https://youtu.be/aowfJ1h3hGQ
It's been a while, but I think he gives some hint about one of the game's secrets (probably the monster race?). I can't listen to it now to verify, but I'll try to later.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zebbe
By the way, this message comes from the CD single that was given away to people who pre-ordered (it's a mini-CD). It's not on the actual OST as far as I can recall.
A shadow would be useless anyway, since it would only be under the playable character(Nigel in this case, but I'm speaking on isometric games in general) the whole time. How does it help you find where to land a jump if you won't see it until just before he lands?
If you want to destroy the challenge of a game like this, you'd need something of a compass-like image around the character, or an arrow in front of their feet, that shows where they'd land about 3-4 steps ahead if they jump in that direction.
Why both couples of cardinal directions (left-right and up-down) move the character only on one axis before you basically switch the axis by pressing a diagonal? This has nothing to do with isometric.
That way doesn't require the diagonals to be constantly held down, which was a concern with the Mega Drive d-pad. With Landstalker, even if the player fails to maintain the diagonal push, the character will keep moving in the same direction. The diagonals only have to be pushed to change the movement axis.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aleste
It's not perfect, but again: there is no perfect control scheme for an isometric game like this.
People are quick to blame the game for bad controls, but if they tried the alternatives, I think they'd realize it's the better of bad options.
Hmm. I'm not sure. Have you tried Warthog's Animaniacs Lights! Camera! Action! For GBA/DS?
What I can't really fathom Is why at any given time two directions on the dpad must correspond to just one in the game. Is there another isometric game using such a method?
We're working on a licensed port of The Immortal for Intellivision right now and I'm hoping that the 16-directional disc makrs it feel more natural to play.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gryson
Of course the stakes are lower as there isn't any platforming, but there are deadly obsctacles all over the place.
I haven't played it, but it looks like it has 8-direction movement, which makes it more like Light Crusader than Landstalker. And I assume it also has Light Crusader's control flaws: it's very easy to accidentally change directions, which sucks for platforming.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aleste
I found this review of Animaniacs:
Landstalker is meant to be played by constantly pushing the diagonals. The alternative, where e.g. pushing Up = either moving up-left or up-right, is unintuitive in an action / platforming game, because it's too hard to remember what d-pad direction corresponds to what in-game direction. The problem with Landstalker is that if you're using a shitty d-pad (or god forbid, a keyboard), it can be too difficult to hit the diagonals easily.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Next Level
In Landstalker, if you just push a single d-pad direction, you are confined to a single in-game axis. This is a carefully thought out decision, because it makes it difficult to accidentally change directions. Platforming would be much worse in the game if there was a constant risk of changing directions mid-jump due to a slight change in d-pad pressure. As it is now, you can be sure of what direction you'll be going in as long as you're facing that direction. Of course, changing directions mid-jump becomes more difficult.
That's a good point - one solution to the isometric control problem is a specially made diagonal d-pad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger