The Last Medic

어려운데 재밌어 재밌는데 어려워 근데 또 어려운데 재밌어 근데 또 재밌는데 어려워

edited review after nearly 80 hours of gameplay (and more hours to come until i 100%), i am changing from a positive review to negative. while initially incredibly impressed by the game, i've come to resent it. no, this isn't a skill issue - playing this game has been a slog in the late game TLDR: Game too long, feels like digital chores, defeats any sense of accomplishment. If i don't get a sense of accomplishment, why bother playing a game in this genre? there are several reasons for this change of mind. - the game is too long and as a result, the "late game" feels like a chore. for a cheap indie game, there is a tonne of value in the fact i get so many levels. the issue with this is that the game displays a "% complete" counter on your save file every time you boot it up. psychologically im now conditioned to want the 100%, upon "completing" the game (not to 100%, just the "Story") you dont feel a sense of accomplishment because the counter doesn't register 100% even though at that point if you're like me, you got all the secret extras. what happens isyou unlock extra worlds, and completing those worlds unlocks extra worlds. your reward for completing what was already close to somethinglike 100 levels for the pre-extra worlds game, is another ~30+ levels. what an absolute punish. just give me an achievement already. - building on this, you beat the game, you get an achievement, but there are 4 hidden achievements for game endings. i didnt unlock any of them, so hang on, what gives? see above - beating the game isnt beating the game, hence that whole psychological conditioning i've been subjected to with that 100% counter and getting all those extras - it does nothing for my achievements and actually making me feel like ive beaten a hard game - the game is not balanced. a lot of the levels are a fair platforming challenge with good sprite, music, and level design. bravo. some are so easy that it feels like they were honestly left over remnants from the game development process when the dev was experimenting with new sprites. and some are just so obscenely hard that it honestly feels like you need to be playing with a frame perfect input tool to complete things. in these ridiculously unfair levels, you spend so much time dying and RNG takes over at some points so you just have to die until you get lucky. a LOT of the late game im in is like this. the hardest levels in the game are the ones that you unlock after beating the main levels, but still my 100% counter sits unfilled. it feels like the 80/20 rule will take over here and ive gotten to 80% of the game for 20% of the effort. Now to get the last 20% of the game complete, my hours will need to exponentially increase. great... - some spawnpoints are WAY too far apart leading you to have to re-do so much of the level when you make the tiniest mistake. the punishment does not fit the crime. with some of these levels with the spawnpoints are spaced out too far, you often have to do many different styles of platforming to get back to your initial death point, so it just detracts from the level's overall cohesiveness the changes i would recommend: - ditch the 4 endings thing. im not even up to that yet, but it sounds like a laborious chore just to go through that. you're a platformer for gods sake, and your character is a mute. why do you even have 4 endings when all i do is press right dpad and jump.... - ditch the 4 extra worlds you unlock for collecting all the easter eggs. replace them with an achievement OR just give me one world to unlock when i collect ALL the collectables, not 2 worlds for the 2 sets of collectables, then having those 2 worlds spawn off more worlds. - give players the option to have one "medic tent" per level. players can drop the tent only ONCE any level, but if they want to re-use the tent, they need to relenquish any level progress including checkpoints gained, and start again. the tent acts as your own moveable checkpoint. this would help the insanely boring and tedious slog of some of the really difficult levels and give some accessibility to the players in the group discussion who would like a feature like this. Because so many spawnpoints are so far from each other, a tactical medic tent drop would save games some much needed sanity Overall, it is a very good platformer and do recommend fans of the genre play this as it is a quality addition to the genre. I'm aware im now being quite harsh on a solo dev who has done some exceptional work, but, ive poured a long time into this game and i feel cheated out of a completion and sense of satisfaction. ill get my 100%, but i dont enjoy how ive been forced to get it