Clockwork Ambrosia

非常棒的一部類銀河戰士惡魔城類型的GAME，原本以為只是一部小品量的作品，沒想到遊戲玩起來內容異常豐富，有非常多的東西可以收集，如果你愛這類遊戲，這片滿值得一試

A great addition to the MV genre, and Id even go so far as to say its just under SoTN and SM as one of the best. It does alot really well, and a few things not so well, but what it does well it does so good that the flaws are easily over looked. Note that this is a pretty open ended MV, and there is NO guidance or direction for where to go, so if you get frusterated getting lost and exploringm this may set you off. This is so much better then those overrated bug games. Guys give it a try, make it popular so the MV genre isnt just riddled with diehard bug fanboys that will lash at anyone who doesnt like the things they do!

I've sorely missed these kind of games, it's one of the best Metroidvanias I've played in YEARS. Perfectly captures that feeling SotN gave of starting with nothing and feeling invincible by the end. Full video review: https://youtu.be/NS-QOZZ0SrM

Last boss is incredibly annoying. Other than that, it's decent.

I'm around the Mt. Yore area after six hours, but I think at this point I'm going to check out. The game has visual polish but its map design and navigation in general are incredibly bland with no real hazards or platforming to speak of. Movement upgrades don't flow into each other at all, making gameplay feel disjointed when you need to come to a full stop for a high jump and so on. In spite of the work that must have been put into the system, the weapon mod mechanic feels trivial, and what's worse, those mods are going to be found at a lot of dead ends which will reduce your motivation to explore. Most equipment also feels pointless, like those magnet mitts. The range to attract drops is very small and enemies violently scatter all drops on death, anyway. The map is open ended, but not really because you'll find out too deep into an area you were supposed to get a movement upgrade or a key item somewhere else. The mods don't add any depth or strategy besides adjustments to damage or shot angle, and I don't blame the developers for being hard pressed to make every one of those mods feel viable. It's way, way too many variables to keep track of. The game brings up mending but I don't think I ever learned how to do that. Gathering materials for crafting from enemy drops is never, ever, EVER a good idea. Ever. You get so much scrap (money) in this game that you figure that's how you would buy anything, but crafting never works as a in-depth gameplay mechanic because all it amounts to is juggling several dozen virtual currencies. Not to mention this game has no bestiary so I hope you remember what enemy drops what. This game seems to want to suggest it has "puzzles", but all these amount to are moving things or doing things in a certain order or switching to a certain weapon. Which, by the way, isn't set to buttons, but instead something you have to do in the menu. You can swap between two, but not between the four you're going to end up with. Is it really a puzzle if you already know what to do? It's just tedium at that point. Even worse, there's some items for navigation that are completely useless to the player and only operate as glorified key cards, like these items that allow you to remove fungus barriers and stand on mushrooms. You seriously have to go through an area to get those and then backtrack and go back to what you should have been able to stand on in the first place, it's unbelievable. Same with swimming, which would not have broken the game at all if you could have done it from the start because there's barriers in the underwater area you can only unlock with another key item, anyway. Sending those mixed messages about whether the game is "open" or "linear" will end up exhausting the player. If I could leave any notes for what I think would be better in a future game, I'm begging the developer to understand this - finding > grinding. Always. It's more intuitive and accessible and the game just flows better. Also, just let the map be open. It doesn't mean the game has to have a flat difficulty, some areas can be way harder than others. If the player gets clobbered, they'll still have peace of mind knowing they can check out any of the other areas first and come back when they feel ready. I know that this "metroidvania" subgenre is known for RPG-lite mechanics, but genres can evolve over time, it doesn't have to be that way. This subgenre was birthed from the platformer genre, so it should feel like a platformer first. Platformers are called easy by most players, but you can still only take a few hits at most and there's death pits and environmental hazards and so on. A "metroidvania" should be more difficult, but ironically is EASIER than most platformers because the player can take more hits, heal, has more movement options, and doesn't have to worry about death pits in most cases. This, to me, is why RPG-lite mechanics are mucking up the genre. Grinding, crafting, skill trees, leveling, upgrades necessary for exploration, all that stuff. I don't mean to come down so hard on this game, I wrote all this because I care. The faults I've listed aren't exclusive to it. I write this as a plea because I feel like the "metroidvania" subgenre is dangerously close to a saturation point where players are just going to start turning away from them, the genre feels "stuck". Not recommended.

Good game. Has a few bugs. I could never get loadouts to work or for keyword definitions to show.

Clockwork Ambrosia is absolutely something special. A friend of mine is one of the developers, but I would thought the same even if I hadn't known that! My experience with "metroidvanias" is a bit limited, which may have held me back a bit at first; but Mega Man X? Now that's a series i have played and enjoyed a lot of over the years, and this game gave me the same sort of fun times I remember back on the ol' SNES! Now, this is definitely the sort of game that doesn't hold your hand or plaster tutorials all over your screen, for better and for worse (mostly better). The world is a large one to explore, and it is laid out in a way that makes it most satisfying to poke around. Your map is your best friend in this regard - if you happen to see an area that isn't completely filled in, that means there's more to explore! (And if you find you can't continue down that pathway, make a note of it and come back later. Super jumps and ceiling-climbing will solve most of your traversal concerns!) There were times when I wish I had a little more direction on where to go next, or what I was supposed to do, but I generally managed to muddle forward, sometimes with a hint from a helpful NPC. One of the most noteworthy features is the ability to heavily customize your weapons with mods. These can do anything from shooting an extra projectile, to ricocheting said projectile around the screen wildly, or having your grenades leave behind icy clouds of damaging gas, to name a few. There are no "plus 1 to damage" upgrades here - the amount of adjustments you can make are almost dizzying to consider, and it's quite satisfying to see your damage go up as you find equipment and mods scattered across the world! As for the story, it is a tale as old as time; humanity, as it is wont to do, dug too greedily and too deep, with far-reaching consequences for the island in which the game is set. All of this comes as quite an unwelcome surprise for our protagonist Iris, who was planning on a nice vacation here and instead gets her airship shot down by a most unreasonable mecha-dragon. If she wants to get home, it seems she'll have to get to the bottom of the mysteries of this place! Clockwork Ambrosia is a wonderfully fun experience, and is clearly a labor of love from a small team. I know something of the struggles they went through to get this game made, and I'm very glad that they persevered in the end. Onward, Iris! Where will her adventures take her next? Back home? Into the skies? [b]Davenport[/b]? Wa ha ha ha!

I enjoyed the concept of building your own weapon, although some of the modifications can really break the game. By the end, I was literally shredding through everything with zero problems. The map can be annoying to navigate since there aren't names of the areas, and also the amount of grinding needed to upgrade everything is a lot, but other than that, it was a really good game!

There is a lot to like here. But after losing an entire hour of progress due to being glitched into a wall thanks to a current and a bunch of fish, I'm done. The combat is fun. Boss fights can be intense. Lots of enemy variety to deal with, and it even looks good. The game's world looks cool, even if the story seems to be a sidenote more than anything. But navigating this large world falls a bit on the tedious side of things. I unlocked some fast travel via the mushroom folk, but that's mostly useless as that doesn't really take me anywhere I need to be anymore. The amount of dead ends you run into that just have a weapon mod that you might not even use is astronomical. I know the weapon mods can be useful. It makes sense to have them. They make combat have some pretty cool variety. But you don't need to use the full assortment of weapons most of the time. So the mods don't always make that exploration worth it. Especially considering you'll need to backtrack through so much to get back to where you're going. I liked that you unlock equipment that opens up more exploration options. It's just so tiresome to constantly run through the same areas all the time. Being able to fast travel to previous save locations would have been amazing. Great pixel art and music. But maaaan. I just don't have it in me to slog my way through the tunnels to get back to where I was. I suppose navigating through the map has been slowly eating away at me the entire time.. But losing progress knowing I've got a long trek to get back to where I was... And knowing that might just be leading me into a dead end.. Yeah, I just don't have that kind of patience.

Absolutely loved this game. It's like a mix of Megaman and Metroidvania. Really hoping for a sequel.