I shouldn't complain too much because this game was free for Twitch users and I simply got it from piracy. While it might be unethical this is a process that I commonly use to try out games. If I enjoy a game, especially if it is from an Indie studio, I will later purchase the game anyway even though I already have the pirate version for free.
This game is exactly what I like in a gaming experience, but it is plagued with technical issues and a surprising massive drop in frame-rate despite the fact that I've seen better graphics on NES games.
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These sorts of pixel-art (if that is even what it is called) games really appeal to me because I am an old-school gamer that appreciates gameplay over graphics. I love it when games are released with "classic" graphics but updated tighter controls and awesome music. That is exactly what this platformer / metroid-vania game is and it simply doesn't make sense to me that it has the problems that it does.
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The graphics are certainly not something that anyone would consider demanding for a system and honestly, there is no good reason other than poor programming that any user should be experiencing the levels of extreme slowdown and frame-rate drops that I, and thousands of other people are experiencing while playing it.
The last "demanding" game I played on my rig was Resident Evil Biohazard and this truly tested the limits of my machine's capabilities. There were some issues during certain parts of that game but I'm running an I-7, 32GB or RAM, some level of Nvidia card that was top-of-the-line 4 years ago and also running the game off the SSD section of my internal drives. Yet in sections where there are just few enemies on the screen, my gameplay slows down to less than 10 FPS.
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According to the many many forums I have read, this problem is very widespread on PC but doesn't exist on consoles. Various people have presented certain workarounds including altering the actual game files manually and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do that just to play a game and I am certainly not going to pay for it if this is something I need to do to get what appears to be an 8-bit game to simply function.
When the slowdown first happened, I thought it might be some aspect of the game that I didn't understand, like having endurance that I was unaware was part of the game being a factor or something but no, it's just a "feature" of the PC version of the game that the devs never bothered to fix.
It's a real pity because this is exactly the kind of game that I really enjoy. It is a hack and slash with some strategy being necessary and you gain powerups along the way that make you capable of accessing other areas of the map that were previously inaccessible.
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there is zero reason for a game with graphics like this to experience a 90% drop in framerate... the devs simply don't care
I don't mind poor graphics because I am one of those gamers that would much rather have a game that looks like shit that is FUN rather than have hyper-realistic graphics and cutscenes that constantly interrupt gameplay.
If this game goes on special for PS4 I may pay a few dollars for it but as it is right now and it appears as though it is going to stay that way since this game has already been out a while and the devs are VERY AWARE of the issues, I don't think that this very huge problem is going to be corrected. Therefore, at least on PC, this game should be avoided unless you like throwing money away.