💾 Archived View for appl.garden › play › necrodancer.gmi captured on 2024-05-26 at 14:39:54. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-07-22)
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Crypt of the NecroDancer is a hardcore roguelike rhythm game. Can you survive this deadly dungeon of dance, slay the NecroDancer, and recapture your still beating heart? Or will you be a slave to the rhythm for all eternity?
Originally released in 2014, I spent a lot of time playing this in high school, but at the time just could not complete the game (
cough* Aria *cough*). Recently decided to revisit the game, and check out the relatively recent DLC, *Crypt of the Necrodancer: Amplified*.
Yes, I still like this game just as much as I did before. It's been said before but the genre blend here is pretty unique: you start off thinking "well, everything in the game is tied to the beat, so it's a rhythm game", then "well, the timing of my beat is not being judged here, I just have to take steps regularly and somewhat consistently, other than that, it's a turn-based dungeon crawler", then "well, I am getting overwhelmed, so I must keep practicing boss and enemy patterns and actively learning as if it's a rhythm game".
I like trying out challenging rhythm games, but I do get the sense that I am wasting my time practicing the exact same song over and over without these skills necessarily transfering to another song. Crypt of the Necrodancer is just satisfying, but it teaches you patterns which apply to other levels.
As a roguelike, it's much simpler than something like Isaac, but I never got into BoI because I was too dumb for it. The set of items is limited here and some are clearly superior to others, so RNG does play a factor, but you will still die plenty of times playing as Aria even with the Heavy Glass Armor.
It goes without saying that the (multiple) soundtrack(s) are top-notch. Danny Baranowsky, FamilyJules, chipzel, what's not to love? Pixel art is nice and juicy during gameplay, though the larger-scale artwork like the main menus can look a tiny bit awkward. That's basically my one complaint. *9/10*
The DLC is good, but does have a deceptive difficulty curve. Zone 5 is very easy (especially with the powerful new character), but then the character's Zone 5 is by far the hardest boss in the entire game. A good 3 or so were spent practicing just that one boss, over the course of multiple days. I did beat her, but it was about as difficult as beating the regular game as Aria (which, for those who are unaware, is a character who dies in one hit, dies when you go off-rhythm, and cannot pick up any weapons; she is a story character and is required if you want to complete the game). The zone mechanics are pretty fun and I did feel satisfied after beating the boss, so overall I'd say i's worth playing, especially since both the main game and DLC are equally seriously cheap now. *9/10* for the DLC.
Earlier in my blog I documented an issue where GOG didn't package a certain software library, which used to be available in standard Linux repositories but is not offered anymore. Well, the exact same issue also applies to this game, apparently. Luckily, I didn't have to do anything special this time because the fix for the previous game also applies here.
Game finished 2023-06-25 - 20h
DLC finished 2023-07-02 - 7h 20m
gardenapple - 2023-07-12