Vivid/Stasis (Dropped)
I didn't drop it because it didn't qualify the thread, it completely did, I just was having no fun with it.
Vivid/Stasis is a 4k rhythm game / visual novel with ARG style puzzles. Every element on itself seems to work, but in conjunction is just a total mess. The rhythm game segment were pretty solid, the engine was good tho I had a frame drop once, but it may have been my pc, the songs are cool tho not peak, and the charting was ok. They introduce a new mechanic called bumpers that works as a note that can be hit by pressing any key on the corresponding hand, imagine sound voltex that has those big orange notes but they're pressed by pressing either one of the two left or two right ones.
I don't think they really utilize bumpers that well from what i've played. They mainly work as a reading challenge but I think they don't pull it off in a way that feels satisfactory, from what i've played in rhythm games, there is a certain beauty to a good reading challenge, it's very satisfactory, but with vivid stasis all the charts feels very messy, sometimes you missread but you're able to singletap fast enough to where it doens't actually punish you but totally messed with the flow and feel of the play.
I will applaud that the default keybinds where pretty good, they clearly played etterna/osu, this may seem like a weird thing to point out but god so many games have included 4k segments that are controlled by arrow keys and they're just the worst to play, this actually has sdjk keybinds. The only other narrative game i've seen have good keybinds is "until then"
Now, the rhythm game elements are story elements are quite separate, you play songs to get points to unlock visual novel segments, I don't like this system. The harder the song is the more points you get, this sounds logical in paper, but I think it's a bad call. I have some experience in 4k games, i'm not exactly competitive at them, but i'm for sure better than someone who is new at it, so when I opened the game and saw I had to unlock the story, I played a "course", which is basically a dan course, I think it was level 11 or 12 and I got two S ranks and two AA, that gave me enough points to clear the ENTIRE story for that chapter.
This is a system that benefits players who are already familiar with the genre and punishes one that doesn't, which is the problem, because people who are not rhythm game fans are probably playin because of the story, while the ones that are good for the rhythm game segment, so why are you gifting the rhythm game players the story and making the story players beg for it?
Worst part was when I finished reading up to the end of the chapter, that had a ARG puzzle, I will talk a bit more about it later, but the point is, it asked me to get 500+ combo on 5 songs of the difficulty I was aiming at to unlock it, OR I could solve the puzzle already, but I would be playing the boss song at the lowest difficulty, making it less hype.
So, after I binge read the story, at the very climax of it, you say "go grind 5 random songs, whichever you want, then come back here"!, what a way to kill the momentum jesus chirst
the actual 500+ combo requirement was also pretty insane, again, I was playing on "finale" difficulty that were songs between 10 and 13 of difficulty, getting S and AA and I was not getting 500 combo, I had to play on a lower difficulty and that just made it a whole less exciting
the actual story felt very gimmicky, you are directly thrown into a mistery surrounding one character, but we've really hadn't have much character developement, so it felt hard to care, instead, the story was aiming for this ARG type mistery stuff?, like the characters find a creepy arg-ish video and they go exploring but bad things happens and etc
I've only played up to partway through chapter 2, but the actual story didn't seem to be trying to say much, it was entirerily based on the mistery, so it's not like omori that it goes "find mari!" but then the story just really develops and it's in the search that the true message of the game is found, it's nothing like that.
The actual puzzle you solve and the ones that the characters solve in the story are also separate, so it's not like you're recieving the satisfaction of solving the mistery yourself. There is nothing wrong with this approach, watching people solve a mistery is satisfying, but for the love of god, if you're going to include puzzle on the game, why not make it them the actual puzzles the characters are facing, it jus seems like such a waste.
the whole game in a way feels meaningless, it tries to do so much but nothing really combines well, the story is this ARG type stuff surrounding characters you don't care about, the rhythm game is good but why would you play this over osu or etterna.
Now, the actual ARG puzzles, they're bad. They feel like they're there just because the dev thinks ARGs are cool, but it's just, it being a ARG doesn't contribute anything to the game. When games implement ARG stuff, think of off or inscription, they do it for ambience, it's a way of breaking the 4th wall, in off it works to make the game feel even more bizarre and in inscryption to make it feel creepy, but in here, I don't know what they were trying to accomplish, felt they watched video youtube essays and said "let's copy that!"
they didn't feel super amazing to solve either, the problem with ARG is that by breaking any boundaries it opens up the fan of possibilities A LOT. Let's put a famous game, portal 2, you got the chamber and the portal gun, you know exactly what are the tools you've got to work with and where to look, with games like off and inscryption, these ARG puzzles are never very complex and have very clear directions to where to look. It's less a difficult challenge and more poking at you and breaking the 4th wall
but here, you're just opening a website for the user and expecting them to solve it, bitch it could be ANYTHING, you no longer have a portal gun and a chamber, you have your entire computer to work with. Maybe it's the html code?, maybe it does something at a certain hour of the day?, maybe it's the url itself?, just play around until you find a solution that works!
thankfully the first episode chapter that was the one that I found wasn't very difficult, but yeah I can imagine it being a problem in the future as I think the philosophy is quite bad.
Also, pet peeve of mine, the vn segments show the actual hour ingame, but that clock doesn't move. I read half a chapter once and it apparently all took place inside a single minute which must be a oversight by the dev.
Also, the text position seemed bugged, a lot of the time it felt way too close at the bottom of the screen and some text overlapped with each other
So yeah, it just feels pointless, D rank, queue empty.