MindSeize

Ignored the bad review comments to give this game a shot, and wholly regretted it. Everything about this game is full of jank. The movement is clunky, and while functional at the start of the game, become a battle to fight against once the enemies and bosses start opening up new angles of attack. It honestly feels like you're piloting Robocop against Armored Core bosses, and you will die a lot without learning anything new about their attack patterns, just the bitter growing dissatisfaction in your choice of game. The thing is, boss battles look like they could have been fun to fight, which is a pity because half the time you'll be trying to even get within range of the boss to deal damage. Switch to a ranged weapon? The thing feels like a BB gun shooting a string of pathetic 1 point hits. And the diagonal aim requires pressing 2 different buttons (not even counting the normal movement buttons mind you), which is frankly absurd. In the world 1 monkey end boss fight, just getting into position to shoot it diagonally is a chore, and it's probably gone by the time you get there. This could have been mitigated by a halfway decent healing system, but healing takes too long to apply and too long to regenerate over time for it to be viable in a boss fight. The game kinda *works*, but with the proliferation of excellent metroidvanias at good prices, simply *working* just doesn't cut it anymore. There are far better games to spend your time and money on.

Mindseize es un metroidvania que sigue la logica de los viejos metroid de SNES pero con un poco de interfaz y otros detalles mas modernizados. La historia es sencilla somos una persona la cual los Ascendidos se robaron la mente de nuestra hija y buscamos los medios como unirse a una nave y su crew para poder lograr recuperar la mente de nuestra hija y devolverla a su cuerpo, y para esto deberemos buscar a Shiva, la jefa de los Ascendidos que fue quien robo esto. Los diferentes mundos que vamos explorando en nuestra aventura para derrotar a los Ascendidos, son bastante diferentes, cada uno con su propia ambientación y enemigos. A su vez el sistema de progreso de ir obteniendo habilidades los cuales nos permiten explorar zonas que antes no podiamos, me parece bastante bien realizado. El mundo que mas me gusto fue Takomo 7, se siente realmente abandonado.. Tambien el juego copia lo del Metroid que muchas veces para progresar, deberemos nosotros mismos explorar el mundo y encontrar donde debemos ir, esto es un punto positivo y negativo, positivo ya que nos da la curiosidad de que podemos explorar del mundo cada vez que conseguimos nuevas habilidades y negativo porque a veces uno puede llegar a confundirse por donde debe progresar o que necesita para avanzar. Fuera de ello, los enemigos cumplen en general, y van escalando adecuadamente a medida que progresamos, donde al final ya tenemos enemigos mas rapidos y con algunos patrones de ataque diferentes. Los jefes, algunos me parecieron dificiles, otros no tanto, cada uno tiene su propia personalidad y estilo de pelea. Lo unico que no me gustaron fueron los ultimos como el Monstruo Abisal donde pasaban tantas cosas en poco espacio que habia muy poco margen para salir vivo, y la pelea final senti que le falto un poco mas de dedicacion ya que muchas peleas anteriores parecian sentirse mas complicadas y intensas especialmente la de Valkyrie y la del Ascendido que nos da la espada Thyr. Lo malo del juego puede ser a veces los controles, como son bien estilo Metroid, presentan los mismos problemas que uno cuando dispara tiene esos microsegundos donde uno no puede moverse o reaccionar y eso muchas veces nos cuesta caro en las diferentes peleas o en algunas zonas de exploracion. Encontre algunos bugs como cuando saltas y te quedas trabado o si chocas contra una esquina no diagonal que te empuja violentamente hacia otra zona pero bueno no terminan generando bugs graves de juego y generalmente se arreglan a los segundos, los cuales no me parecieron tan graves. En resumen recomiendo este juego para los que les gusten los metroidvania, facil tendran entre 8 a 10hs de juego jugandolo y espero que lo disfruten si lo juegan!

[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote] I have said this before and I think I need to say it again: Someone once told me that the impression given by a game in its first two hours is very important, as if the player does not get hooked by something or does not find something that interests them, they are very likely to drop that game and never return to it. And I see myself agreeing with that statement. As time goes on, we find less and less time for our entertainment. Our free time, which seemed to be endless as a kid, slowly becomes a luxury as we tackle much more important tasks and take on more important roles. And all of this is without mentioning the refund systems that allow people to return a game shortly after purchase, if some rules are not broken, should they not want to keep onto it anymore. Therefore, the first two hours of a game are very important. So, if I play a game and find nothing that interests me about it, I'm not going to continue playing it for a very slight chance of suddenly falling in love with it. I'm not going to dedicate my very limited free time to playing something that I do not seem to like. Hence why I dropped this game after spending nearly an hour and a half in it. The very first thing that put me off about this game, was the story presentation. The first cutscene of the game seems to be in a rush and just throws you inside its world without any proper story development. You won't have any idea about what's happening in the game's world, you won't know what's the deal with the main character and his enemies, and the NPCs who work with the main character are not properly introduced. The cherry on top of everything is probably the main character's name though, as he is literally called "M.C.". If you don't know, that is also the abbreviation of "Main Character", which I personally found to be very jarring. And this is not the end of story problems. Do you know why the game starts like this? Because some of the story context is on the store page. No, I'm not kidding. Just go and see for yourself. A whole bunch of the information that is written there is not relayed to the player in the game. Why? I have no idea. If I had a nickel for every time I saw a game putting its story details on the store page and not inside itself, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. It's such a shame that even the gameplay failed to get me hooked. Now, the game did feel interesting at first. A metroidvania with a main character that uses the same combat methods as in Mega Man Zero? I'm totally down for something like that! But then... I don't know why, but the level design did not feel okay to me. Navigating the environment and going through the platforming challenges did not feel fun or rewarding at all, and the fact that the game does not tell you what you have to do just made things worse. It gives you no indication or even a hint on where you have to go in order to progress further, so you just keep moving around just to suddenly trigger a cutscene or find an ability that you need to get through specific places. And these are without mentioning the occasional bugs and glitches that can happen while doing simple platforming, or the fact the main character will instantly drop down like a bag full of stones if their head or body hits a diagonal part of the terrain. About those abilities. I did not like the fact that the collectable abilities you can find for the main character's mechanical suit are just spread around in the wilderness with no reason behind them. Why is a module that helps us slide under narrow corridors hidden inside an underground cave? Why is a module that lets us cancel a dash stuck inside a tree? Now, this is not a game-breaking fault, but I expect to have a reason on why this is a thing in order for the world to feel logical and believeable. I mean, Samus got her abilities from Chozo Statues, or Alucard got them after defeating Dracula's strongest allies and underlings. They just didn't find something that was absolutely necessary for progression in a random ditch or something. And you know what's worse when it comes to collecting abilities that are spread around? The game ignores all advancements in the genre since Symphony of the Night, and does not let you put a marker on the map to identify locations of interest. Now, I would have just dealt with this and accepted it, if I was actually enjoying the experience. At many points in the beginning areas, I just thought some of the enemies were purposely put there so there's a higher chance for the player to take damage or get juggled between them. Some of the enemies can even attack through walls, which is very unfair. And if you get hit, you will lose a substantial amount of health. The game lets you recover HP with repurchaseable health packs, but even that is not very well implemented. Simply put, the amount of health you recover with these packs are very low. You just need to take one or two hits from the enemies or the bosses to lose all of what you had regained. It also doesn't help that trying to recover health while in a combat situation is usually a death sentence as not only there's a wind-up animation prior to using a health pack, but your health regenerates gradually instead of instantaneously. So, if the enemy or boss you are facing against is pretty aggressive, using a health pack means you are basically committing seppuku. I was already having a very bad time with the game, and then came the final straw to break the camel's back. You know how stubborn we can be, right? Even if the characters in a game tell us that something is very hard or impossible to do at that point in time, nothing stops us from trying anyway. And if we find out that yes, there is indeed a way to claim victory, we just keep trying over and over again to win. So imagine how infuriated I was to see the game constantly replaying a conversation after dying to the second major boss, telling me that maybe I have to come back later. This conversation just kept coming up after each of my even numbered deaths, and made me angrier bit by bit. "Does the game think I am an idiot?" is what was circulating in my head at that point. I understand that some players might legitimately be too braindead to realize maybe they don't have what it takes to tackle a boss, but to just repeat what you have already told them over and over again? That's just overkill. I eventually understood the boss' behaviors and attack patterns and defeated him, just to get a new firearm and find out I still need to explore the environment to find out where to go. At that point, I started to think: If I did not enjoy my time with the game so far, it is definitely not going to get better. So, I decided that enough is enough, and quit. This could have been good; But the flawed storytelling, the unenjoyable exploration, the questionably-designed gameplay mechanics and all the bugs & glitches sadly make up for a game I can never recommend.

This game is a... standard Metroidvania experience. If you're looking for one and stumbled across this, you may as well go for it! It was a passable experience all around! No major flaws, though a glaring (minor) oversight was quite annoying. It has enough polish for fans of the genre. Getting 100% of the items wound up being a 10-hour experience, and only one of the bosses felt a bit unfair to me. (My reaction speed was not fast enough to adapt to his otherwise simple pattern, but he shows up in two spots, and they are next to save points.) Considering I beat the final boss in my first attempt, (maxed healing upgrades is sure handy,) it sure made that particularly tough boss stand out as an outlier. So long as you try and keep collecting the various upgrades, you'll do fine throughout the adventure... with some pattern learning. The melee weapons seam all fairly well balanced, so you're not forced into using one you don't like. The guns, however, aren't quite as polished. Though you could still ignore a gun if you don't mesh with it well... assuming it isn't gun 4. That one is just better. (But not by numbers, just effect.) The largest glaring oversight was the controller cannot dismiss the 'obtained upgrade' menu at all. CANNOT. AT. ALL. Randomly halts things until I get over to my keyboard and press spacebar every time I collect an upgrade. The controller's menu button (or activate, or any other button really,) dismissing this menu would be an easy workaround. You are invincible during it, (along with any other situation that locks out your controls,) so I can't get randomly murdered from it. My only complaints after that are little things: Not able to complete the map, map itself makes sizing a room hard as the black line defining the end of a room is a bit too thin, (missed a gun until after I reached the final area due to that,) no ability to fire down-diagonally forward, forward momentum in air is reduced at a certain distance that feels really random... small things. Wall-jump inputs feel strange initially, but still easier to get down then Super Metroid's wall jumps. All in all a very small list.

Mindseize, a game I didn't think would have been great at first, seeing the complete map small, but with every metroidvania I get I give them a try anyway. And I'm glad I did. A great combat system, with different weapons to choose from, malee and projectile weapons, special abilities, power ups to your arsenal, granades, little objectives to complete for achievements, lore elements, an interesting story and a nice enemy variety, with only few reskins (the "mages" but they had each different weapon attacks). Highly recommend it. Completed it 103%. Thank you for producing it!

map is crap

its sux 4/10

I played about four hours of MindSeize, and I don’t think it’s a terrible game, but I ultimately understand why people complain about the map and progression. Honestly, I don’t even think the map itself is that bad. The bigger issue is that the game doesn’t do enough to point you in the right direction, and the moment-to-moment combat isn’t strong enough to make wandering around feel rewarding. The combat and boss fights are good enough to carry things for a while, but once progression stalls because it’s not obvious where to go next, the game starts to feel like a chore. If the combat were a little sharper, or if the game gave you firmer nudges toward the next objective, I probably would have stuck with it and felt better about the overall experience. As it is, I ended up walking away. Not awful, but not one I’d recommend unless you’re especially hungry for another metroidvania.

Fantastic Metroidvania. Art, music and action are all on point. A bit on the hard side but there's an Easy Mode setting to help if you need it. There are tons of power ups and a collectable finder near endgame to help you get them. Look around if you feel stuck. The dev included multiple paths and breakable passages so you're never truly trapped.

un muy buen juego retador pero entretenido, algunos bug pero nada que arruine la experiencia se ve largo como me gustan los metroidvania,8.5