Part 5: Stage Thoughts CV1

Stage Thoughts
I accidentally erased these, so this is the redone version. Hope I don't miss any super cool observation I had the first time...

• Still a little confused about the birds. They really only hinder you when you're changing elevation, but they attack too slowly for that to be really relevant...
  
• It needs to be emphasized again how terrible the bats are. Their randomness combined with how slow the whipping still is does not make for a fun challenge at all. If you pair it with ropes, it's torture.
  
• This is how you should do the pencil stakes. I am super happy that they managed to carry over this semi-iconic level design element from the first game and make it really interesting to work with instead of a pain. Apart from looking far better, you now have ample warning, their speed is perfectly tailored to the reaction time you can expect an average player to have, and the side spikes don't instantly kill you anymore. A list of small changes, but they make a world of difference!
  
• The rope room again shows how you can update something that barely worked in the first game into a cool challenge in the second. I especially appreciate that it rewards hurrying up, though the one knight that's really in the way if you don't could stand to be less punishing.
  
• I'm still baffled by the rope that just takes you backwards in the level.
  
• The boss is the main feature, and it's pretty awesome as I say. The visual design is brilliant and I love it. HOWEVER...
  
• ...it is a little too punishing if you make a mistake. Often, you commit the grave sin of "not pressing on hard enough" and get punished for that like 10 seconds later with no way to save yourself, and that is a bit too long to really learn from your mistakes. It requires you to be very disciplined in your forward movement, which makes sense with the autoscroll of course, but it feels like the screen is just too small, so there is exactly one way to do it. The design suggests more flexibility than that, but you really have no choice; that is a bit of a failing on the designers' part.

Music

Castle #2 [Stage Map]

Original Sin [Dracula's Castle Part 1]

Pretty rocking. Really like what the composer did with the bass. The actual melody suffers a little because of the heavy focus on that, but it does have a lot of drive to it!