Paprium: The Official Thread Mk 2

[axel]

The backgrounds are the most impressive part. I counted at most 4 enemies on screen, that is acceptable for this kind of game. But uh... what am I even seeing on some of these frames?

paprium.jpg

[stika]

Man, that's a lot of jank there

[chilled]

I see on French forums lots of locals are also getting the game tomorrow, definately check those out, they'll surely be twitching even the arrival of the courier from their windows.

[SEGA-Jorge]

Some of these enemy designs and sprites are just a mess. This is exactly what I was talking about back when they started this project. You can't 'love' and 'passion' your way into a good beat-em-up. Playing a bunch of brawlers doesn't necessarily make you good at designing one.

So much of what I saw in that short video was bad. Why was he taking so much damage when he looked like he was in a blocking pose? Why do the jump-ins all seem to knock down on hit? Is there a jumping + down + attack equivalent that will allow for combos?

I take it that the basic mashing combo is the 2 punches > uppercut > kick (with crazy long recovery) can I jump-in and still get this? Can I break at the uppercut, (crazy hit stun on that) and grab?

Do all single enemy hits cause a knockdown?

All the proportions of characters and enemies is all over the place. And the idle animations on the character select screen? Are we serious right now?

More things I noticed:
- Saw a cool little person walking in the foreground. That's a nice touch.
- Screen shake is good
- UI is saying nothing. When he drinks, nothing.
- They seem to have two idle animations, neutral, non-drink, then the version where they are pumped up.
- Maybe they have super-armor when they take the drink? So maybe they are not blocking, they are just taking damage but not getting put into hit stun.
- Walk animations for enemies are independent of walk speed, they can cycle the animation, but not move much. This looks weird, you can see it when the player exits the condo, the first guard looks like he's floating.
- Single hits do and don't knock the player down. They took 2 hits in a row from the guard enemy.

[smurdd]

At this point I'm much more interested in the soundtrack than playing the game I preorderd years ago.

[DrLight99]

Regarding the video, it reminds me of back in the days before youtube when I would watch videos of people at IGN and Gamespot attempt to play games and they'd make games look worse than they were because they sucked so bad at playing them and clearly only pretended to be gamers for the job. The youtuber equivalent to that today is Jim Sterling lol

But anyway, slow, hulking characters are always gonna be the worst characters to showcase a game lol (imagine if streets of rage 2 only allowed you to play as Max rofl). So in the video right before the guy mashes a bunch of buttons to go to to the stage select/difficulty screen, it says "arcade mode" "original mode" and options. I really wish the person who made the video at least showed what was in the options menu. Also, i wonder what the difference is between arcade and original mode?

Secondly, on the character select screen it shows 3 playable characters (and there is a Press Start thing on the top right for a 2nd player to jump in which i know some people were wondering about). One character i remember is supposed to be unlockable. Were there 4 characters or 5 characters that are supposed to be playable? Maybe there's two unlockable characters?

The combat reminds me of a mix between Streets of Rage 2 and Rival Turf. A lot of people hated Rival Turf but I actually really like the game so i don't mind some jankiness to the combat lol. I want to know how many enemies can appear on screen at once and how many different stages there are.

vlcsnap-2020-12-16-14h52m23s123.jpg

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[SEGA-Jorge]

Regarding the video, it reminds me of back in the days before youtube when I would watch videos of people at IGN and Gamespot attempt to play games and they'd make games look worse than they were because they sucked so bad at playing them and clearly only pretended to be gamers for the job. The youtuber equivalent to that today is Jim Sterling lol

But anyway, slow, hulking characters are always gonna be the worst characters to showcase a game lol (imagine if streets of rage 2 only allowed you to play as Max rofl). So in the video right before the guy mashes a bunch of buttons to go to to the stage select/difficulty screen, it says "arcade mode" "original mode" and options. I really wish the person who made the video at least showed what was in the options menu. Also, i wonder what the difference is between arcade and original mode?

Secondly, on the character select screen it shows 3 playable characters (and there is a Press Start thing on the top right for a 2nd player to jump in which i know some people were wondering about). One character i remember is supposed to be unlockable. Were there 4 characters or 5 characters that are supposed to be playable? Maybe there's two unlockable characters?

The combat reminds me of a mix between Streets of Rage 2 and Rival Turf. A lot of people hated Rival Turf but I actually really like the game so i don't mind some jankiness to the combat lol. I want to know how many enemies can appear on screen at once and how many different stages there are.

vlcsnap-2020-12-16-14h52m23s123.jpg

vlcsnap-2020-12-16-14h53m06s403.jpg

If someone that knew what they were doing with Max play SOR2, it would look incredible, because that game is great. Max is a monster in SOR2.

[DrLight99]

If someone that knew what they were doing with Max play SOR2, it would look incredible, because that game is great. Max is a monster in SOR2.

Not if you use the code to play on "Mania" difficulty, he gets completely obliterated on that and that's the mode I always play lol

[axel]

Secondly, on the character select screen it shows 3 playable characters (and there is a Press Start thing on the top right for a 2nd player to jump in which i know some people were wondering about). One character i remember is supposed to be unlockable. Were there 4 characters or 5 characters that are supposed to be playable? Maybe there's two unlockable characters?

I remember seeing five selectable characters in the 2018 build too. Even the character select screen was a flickering mess. I said at the time it would be better to concentrate on fewer characters, make the ones you have look and play well. When a project is overdue and over budget it's time to cut features, not add more.

With 100 months of development time I expect a game to look and feel incredibly polished. Still, at least it's finally getting released, which is more than I expected.

[djcc]

The first scene is pretty jank. Break the door but can't leave. Player moves are weirdly animated and don't give off the impression they're really connecting with enemies. The enemies when held in the air are animated bizarrely. That little charge-up vertical beam is pretty lame looking for what it's supposed to do, which to be honest I'm not sure what.

The graphics are really nice, though. And we all know that's all that counts.

[Gadispalembang]

Not if you use the code to play on "Mania" difficulty, he gets completely obliterated on that and that's the mode I always play lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iKE4ikwS2U

[Stifu]

I told matteus I was expecting a playable tech demo.
I guess I'll not be disappointed.

No kidding. This shit is obviously still in alpha state. Fonzie must be like "Ha-ha, I got enemies to render and move, take that, haters!"

I guess the only nice things about Paprium were the parts not made by Fonzie. So, like, the musics and graphics (despite the fact it's a bit on the amateur side when it comes to proportions and consistency, it still looks fine overall).

[cleeg]

I have to say, just looking at that video, that I am quite impressed. I mean, it's a Mega Drive game, anyone with any gumption has tempered their expectations regardless of the unbelievable hype from Fonzie from day one. There really is only so much that can be done with this hardware after all.

If this video dropped in a different universe with no other back story we would have gone nuts, and quite rightly, it does look good and there are some neat looking touches there. I suppose it depends on how able / willing you are to look objectively and divorce your outlook from the crap we have all experienced over the years.

Not easy, but taking that video on its own merits, and IF I get this in my hands I am a little excited once again. Before anyone jumps on this, I have all expectations very much in check.

[Gadispalembang]

Shit looks really bad

Don't they know it's better to just produce a single frame damage animation in such a manner
that would work well with both tall and short player characters hitting them?


Unless it's like River City Ransom where you can punch (high) or kick (low) enemies, and that
NES game has a frame for both types of hits.

[Kamon]

Some observations from this footage I've made:

-At the starts of the footage he gets locked in the doorway buy two or three grunts, typically after about 3 or so jabs in SOR you would be sent into your knocked over animation to reset and get a little breathing room. Not sure if him taking a blu pill interrupted it or not but I hope that doesn't happen too frequently. It also looks like the game lacks a desperation move in favour of the blu pill mechanic so getting out of situations like that may feel hard to do

-A lot of the enemies zipping around the screen is typical flanking behaviour you'd see from the ai in SOR. The problem here is that it's so damn fast it looks wrong. To be fair this guy did choose very hard so maybe that how it was made harder, enemies so fast they practically teleport.

-I recall reading this in the leaked manual but unlike the typical sor grab mechanic of sliding into an enemy to grab them I believe this game has a dedicated grab button! Thats a huge shakeup from SOR because previously grabs were more about positioning or being comboed into and was very much a part of the flow of the game and the way to maximize your damage. In the footage we see the player presses grab and an enemy behind tug warps and into his hands! That's whacky af. Also, the manual suggest that grabbing opponents protects you from your front completely. Well just have to wait and see how broken grabs are.

-The 'oh no!' clips that keep repeating is because the guy is out of blu but keeps pressing the button for it, relieved to know it's not like that!

Overall the gameplay does look a little rigid. Everything is moving faster and jerkier than sor2 and it makes the enemy patterns seem less readable. Because he's playing on very hard it's too early to tell how representative that is of typical enemies. The person playing is clearly mashing buttons so it's also hard to tell what a typical combo look like for tug and how well their moves flow. But hey, this is what Fonzie wanted after all! Can't complain about the game being presented in a bad light when you refused to hit the switch for 8 years.