Symphonia

The concept is cool, some levels are fascinating, but for the main part of the game -- The platforming does not flow smoohtly at all

Symphonia is a 2d precision platformer where you fling about as a songbird trying to get the show together. Beat it, got all gems and notes, and got all letters (but not all achievements) in 10.5 hours using a game controller. Difficulty is hard. When I first picked up this game, I remember playing through part of the beginning then putting it down. When I picked it back up, I had no idea what controls did what and the violinist was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I kept dying, repeatedly, trying to sort out the controls without any semblance of success. In the end I had to restart, then stick with it until beating the beginning area. That said, that controls are ambiguous, backwards, and really hard to get use to. More than once I had a hard time grabbing the grab-point, and swinging out the string on later challenge areas only half the time did it in the direction I wanted because the game wants you to stand a certain way and that's bloody hard to do mid-precision. Outside of the controls, the characters are memorable, the music is good (but can lull me to sleep off-game), the levels are all different, and it was fun finding the collectables. The story was too vague to fully enjoy, even after getting all the bonus parts. Once I Got Gud, going back and doing the various challenge areas drove me freaking crazy. However, I got way too much satisfaction when I succeeded. The worst part of the game was the ending sequence. I could not for the life of me use the controls and dodge at the same time. Thankfully, over the game you get abilities to change up gameplay, such as slowing the game down a little. And that's how I got through it. My enjoyment of Symphonia went as far as the collectables. After that I felt worn out. Way too worn out to try to speedrun everything. Maybe in the future. Either way, I still greatly enjoyed the game despite its misgivings with the controls. Left a good impression. If you like classical music, get the ost.

great overall, which makes its few glaring flaws stick out very hard default controls are completely insane and basically everything in the gameplay settings has to be set to the opposite value there's a significant hidden cooldown between using your abilities and you have to get used to it the hook has a variable length depending on how long you're holding its button, even though there's no situation in which it would be relevant, which makes the player die constantly by holding it one millisecond too short accessibility options and cheats are unlocked by... completing challenge levels the chase level at the end of the game requires you to repeatedly die by jumping into the unknown (or be clairvoyant) to know what you're even supposed to do at any given point the chasing shadow in the additional game mode is pitch black, which makes it invisible in darker areas

The art direction and soundtrack in this game are fantastic. The world is stunning and sounds beautiful. Most of the platforming challenges are pretty fun! Unfortunately, I have a few gripes that make me not want to recommend this game. For a $30 game, the gameplay is ridiculously unpolished, and the level design does leave something to be desired. The control scheme is pretty unintuitive and takes a while to get used to. There are also loads of little things that make the movement feel very clunky and unresponsive. For example, just jumping back to back can randomly kill all of your speed. The wall jump is a set distance every time and is almost impossible to recover from if done by accident; the crouch is ridiculously slow, etc. On top of the clunky movement, mechanics in this game outright broke and stopped working as intended for me on multiple occasions. The grappling hook is by far the biggest offender (it literally just stopped grappling me). I also managed to soft-lock the game (clipping out of the map, textboxes stuck on screens, etc.) on 7 separate occasions (by accident) in the final section of the game, and the only way to fix it was to quit out of the game and relaunch it. The reason why similar titles like Celeste feel so good to play is that when you make a mistake, it FEELS like your fault. This is not the case with this game. The platforming isn't that challenging, and MOST times when I died, it felt like it was out of my control, and it was just the game screwing me over. The level design is also quite flawed. There are a lot of auto-scrolling sections, and there are numerous sections that feel like they weren't play-tested (the platforming feels awkward and not fun). You can pretty much only beat platforming challenges one way. Overall the game punishes you a lot for trying to go faster than intended (there isn't much room for skill expression like in titles such as Celeste). Completionists will also have a bad time with this game. The aura shards are absolutely terrible to collect. There is almost no way to distinguish them between foreground and background elements. I had to rely on a guide. TLDR: If this game is on sale, it's worth a shot, but I would absolutely NOT buy the game at full price. It's short and it's a buggy mess. While a good chunk of the platforming is fun, there is also a lot that can be improved.

Definitely worth playing if you're a fan of Silksong and Celeste. Beautiful visuals as well :D

O jogo é bastante bonito, principalmente os cenários (que de fato fazem uma boa mistura entre instrumentos de música clássica e máquinas). Mas na prática é só isso, um jogo de plataforma (estilo Celeste/Super Meat Boy) mas em que os cenários e personagens são baseados em instrumento musicais. Fiquei decepcionado com a falta de mecânicas musicais no jogo. Symphonia não tem quase nenhuma mecânica musical: você tem um botão dedicado que serve para tocar o violino, mas ele serve apenas para interagir com objetos que atuam como alavancas que abrem portas. Fiquei até surpreso quando, lá no meio do jogo, encontrei o primeiro elemento mais musical que foi um piano tocável. Ele era apenas um puzzle simples de memorizar símbolos e colocá-los na ordem, mas deveriam ter mais coisas assim durante a jogatina principal. Não sei dizer se esse tipo de interação ocorre mais quando você busca desbloquear achievements, mas eu passei o jogo inteiro pela trilha principal e não teve nada além disso. Mas assim, resumindo, é um jogo de plataforma okay com visuais interessantes mas fases repetitivas. É uma pena, quando vi o jogo achei que tinha muito mais potencial. Observe como Symphonia não está nem categorizado como Música ou Ritmo, ao contrário de jogos como Guitar Hero, Trombone Champ ou Crypt of the NecroDancer, o que me entristece e evidencia como o jogo não é sobre música, apesar de a história ser escrita para um jogo de música. No mínimo, uma batalha musical para convencer os outros músicos a participarem da orquestra deveria ter...

The ending is really bad. I beat three of the chasing levels. In the fourth I just went out of patience. It has however very beautiful graphics.

A very good precision platformer, with amazing sound design and music (as expected from a music-based game). Some mechanics can be clunky (most notably grapple...yeah, not a fan of that one), but for the most part, it is a really well-done platformer, with pretty art, nice story, and amazing music. Definitely can recommend.