Landstalker: Treasure of King Nole

From Sabre Wulf to Batman and Head Over Heels, the micro scene thrived with isometric puzzle-platformers, and some of them or their spiritual sequels also had moderate success on consoles: I think to Equinox / Solstice, Altered Space or Monster Max. In all these games you are restricted to four direction movement, but you have access to all four directions from the get go. It never takes too much to adjust your gameplay to the isometry orientation, it's not necessary a specially tilted pad: i often tilt mine to the corresponding axes on screen.

Landstalker Is the only instance I met in which the player isn't trusted enough to being given four directions at his/her command, and I think that's a step too far in defense of tight controls.

To be clear, I'm not advocating a Landstalker with eight directions as in Light Crusader. But one with proper four-direction movement.

(By the way, the review you quote about the Animaniacs game fails to mention that you can switch from isometric to direct control in the pause menu, which Is why I brought that one up).

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Originally Posted by Aleste

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?

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Originally Posted by Aleste

From Sabre Wulf to Batman and Head Over Heels, the micro scene thrived with isometric puzzles, and some of them or their spiritual sequels also had moderate success on consoles: I think to Equinox / Solstice, Altered Space or Monster Max. In all these games you are restricted to four direction movement, but you have access to all four directions from the get go. It never takes too much to adjust your gameplay to the isometry orientation, it's not necessary a specially tilted pad: i often tilt mine to the corresponding axes on screen.

Landstalker Is the only instance I met in which the player isn't trusted enough to being given four directions at his/her command, and I think that's a step too far in defense of tight controls.

To be clear, I'm not advocating a Landstalker with eight directions as in Light Crusader. But one with proper four-direction movement.

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You have access to all four directions in Landstalker, also - you just push the diagonals. It's more intuitive than having to learn some arbitrary "Up = Up-Left" system that was known to confuse players. Just look at Rings of Power on the Genesis - it overlays a giant controller on the screen to explain the d-pad mapping because it's confusing. The number of complaints about Landstalker's controls would be 10x worse if it adopted that kind of system.

The best way to enjoy Landstalker is to use a gamepad that has easy-to-push diagonals on the d-pad.

Lady Stalker, the not-really-sequel to Landstalker on the SNES, adopted a hybrid system - each d-pad direction maps to an in-game direction, AND the d-pad diagonals map to the corresponding in-game direction. The problem there is that it's easy to accidentally change directions if you're using the diagonals.

To me, the isometric has a "bad" input method (Light Crusader, Skeleton Krew) where your cardinal directions aren't mapped to the isometry (forcing you to play all diagonals just to play straight), and an ideal one which is adopted by Solstice, Equinox and the likes. The two Marble Madnesses on MD offer both and refer to the first as "normal" and the second as "grid". I suppose the advantage of the "normal" input is that it gives the illusion of "freedom" in exploring the environment, while the "grid" system of course greatly enhances precision.

SFC Ladystalker also seems to perfectly adhere to the "grid" method. I don't know why Naughty Dog went to the overkill move to display a giant pad on the screen to show directions: It quickly becomes second nature to anyone willing to immerse in the game a bit. (I think they were smart however, to give the option "diags: off", because in these games four inputs are all you really need. Snakes Rattle 'n Roll by Rare also absolutely nails the "grid" method, and I'd say a Landstalker with those controls would be a major improvement.

Does the fact that ladystalker quickly adopts a Solstice-like input (And Alundra drops isometry altogether) means that Landstalker remains unique with its input method?

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Originally Posted by midnightrider

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.

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Ummm... why would it only be under Nigel? Light Crusader is played from the same perspective and it has shadows under platforms as well. It's super helpful.