Dewdrop Dynasty

Dewdrop Dynasty fundamentally misunderstands what makes a metroidvania (or any game) fun - it's not just running around a huge empty map. It's very linear, takes an eternity to traverse, and there are barely any secrets, most of which are just money you can farm from enemies anyway. Enemies and bosses are little more complex than "run at the player in a straight line" or "shoot a projectile every 3 seconds". The game's runtime is massively padded by everything you fight being a damage sponge. Even small critters can take a good minute of continuous shooting to kill, and bosses can be like 10 minutes of dodging the same five attacks. Some small details are good. Basic movement feels nice, animations are cute, cutscenes have tons of clever and fun effects. Unfortunately, these aren't enough to compensate for the major problems with enemy and level design.

Dewdrop Dynasty has the right amount of challenge and fun gameplay elements to where I think most people of all different skill levels can enjoy the game. The music and environments feel high quality and I enjoyed my time in the game's world. So happy to see the game finally released after many years! Congrats to Goodgis and the team!

Dewdrop Dynasty is a cutesy metroidvania game, however, it messes up in a lot of key ways. Let's go over the pros and cons. Pros: - Cute art style - Revolver jump mechanic is quite fun (but underutilized) - Fun dialogue However, there are many more cons to discuss. Cons: - Camera doesn't show below you enough so you end up running into plenty of enemies/spikes - Enemies sometimes have obnoxious amounts of health for no reason - Lack of secrets which makes it feel like you get punished for exploration - A good chunk of enemy attacks have no real indicators and are relatively hard to react to (in a way that is not fun) - The wall jump could use a coyote timer as it often feels clunky to use - The map isn't properly aligned with the character icon which makes navigating the world really difficult (but solely because the resources given to us are lying to us) - Having a dodge roll AND a dash that has invulnerability seems pointless in many ways - Pogo mechanic with the gun is used twice at the beginning of the game and after not so much - Some of the powerups/abilities suffer the fate of only being utilized in 2-3 instances and not much after - There are many parts of the map where you can travel to, just to be met with nothing - Veryyy short metroidvania, mainly feels like a demo of a metroidvania rather than a full on game I think this game has a lot of potential but the fact it is $20 and I am 70% done while it having this many issues makes me say it just isn't worth.

I'll be honest: I really enjoyed following this game's development through the devlogs, but the final product is just... mediocre. It's not terrible, but it doesn't really excel at anything. Everything feels extremely basic. The bosses are one of the worst parts of the game. Some of them have attack patterns that make them completely untouchable, so all you can do is stand there and wait until they're done. Even worse, they repeat these patterns over and over. Every boss fight also forces you to watch the same cutscene beforehand, and the final boss is especially painful because its cutscene lasts almost two minutes before every attempt. The world is huge, but it's mostly empty. The pixel art is ok, but visuals can't make up for a giant map with very little to discover. The collectible items are also disappointing. After nearly eight hours, I still have no idea what the fireflies are even for. The tickets are even worse. You solve puzzles on the opposite side of the map just to earn... money. That's it. The reward is so small that you could get the same amount by killing two enemies. It honestly feels insulting. The shops are another issue. Items are so expensive that I couldn't really buy anything until I was already about eight hours into the game. By then, returning to shops had become a chore because the map is so enormous. There is a fast travel system, but it's surprisingly inconvenient. Instead of teleporting directly between checkpoints like most Metroidvanias, you first have to travel to a central hub, then run across that hub to reach another teleport. What should take a second ends up taking a couple of minutes every single time. The story is also extremely basic, making it difficult to care about any of the characters. Considering the amount of content and its overall quality, I think the price is far too high. I bought the game because I follow the YouTuber behind it, but I can't honestly recommend it in its current state. I'm leaving this review because I genuinely believe most of these issues could be fixed. The game has potential, but right now it's very hard to recommend.

i really really wish i liked this game more since i followed the devlogs for so long, but i just have so many problems with it unfortunately. so many things are unintuitive and unfair. it feels like the entire map was made first and they just put bits in like furniture. lots of empty, useless rooms and not many secrets. backtracking and exploring altogether should be really fun but its just plain tedious. visually its hard to tell sometimes what item you use to break what; like with the rumbling floor blocks in Giant's Grotto- i tried my dynamite and my big shot ability and they didn't work. not a huge problem on its own but since this game is pretty buggy i cant tell if im doing it wrong or i just dont have the ability yet. (also the dynamite throw is so annoying). for reference im kinda trash at most games so take this with a grain of salt but the gun is really annoying because it just doesnt let me shoot where i want to shoot. based on the enemy movement patterns you'd expect to be able to shoot in all directions but the game only lets you shoot in 4, which means flying enemies are typically very hard to hit. also some enemies go through walls, and your bullets dont pierce walls so you're out of luck until they decide to pop out. theres a few bad platforming rooms which sucks for a while until you figure out how to avoid them. one series of rooms in particular has several of one enemy that goes through walls, flies, and have too much health. enemies reset when you leave a room, so honestly most of the time you'll find yourself just ignoring enemies with a lot of health cause they're just gonna be back the second you come back in anyways. i feel like i get killed cheaply pretty often, from reasons i mentioned before and that you have to drop down a lot, blindly, and often there's an enemy there that you either immediately hit or can't react to fast enough. also, you just lose so much on death... if i die 4 times in the span of 10 minutes just decrease how much im losing. my punishment is not only that im dying but when i find one of the arguably too rare shops, i have no bread to spend. another flaw in the currency system is that later in the game you'll realize some areas are OP and easy to grind. this means that when you're new and need help and upgrades you're broke, but when you've already powered through it, you can get rich quick in a cheese-y way. one problem i have with the keybinds which will probably be be fixed is the lack of being able to keybind to your mouse (for stuff like shooting) and seperately the lack of a mouse all together. the menus are visually stunning but such a headache when you cant use a mouse. additionally, the keybinds are baked into the menus despite rebinding those keys. i rebinded movement keys to WASD and space, and the map still uses arrow keys and the Z key to select stuff? it also shows the wrong key sometimes. this stuff shouldnt be that difficult to fix but it makes things miserable on my end cause theres no way i could play with those default keybinds. EDIT after beating most of the game: sometimes its very easy to miss key areas. i was about 80% through the game until i found out from somebody else that you find the crawl ability really early on in a side room. in addition to this, i feel like the sequence of you getting key items gets really messy and is too open ended. some bosses or rooms you will struggle with significantly because you don't have an item you don't know exists. i'm not an avid player of this genre so maybe this is a problem with me, but i feel like this game was made with an order of getting abilities in mind but that info is never given to the player. i really want to like this game more, i was just pretty disappointed it. ik the game just came out but it feels like it really wasnt ready. i will certainly change my review when things improve.

[h1]I'm going to refund this one. Here's why:[/h1] 1. The game length appears to be very short for the asking price. I'd price this at around $5 personally. 2. The wall jump is very poorly implemented. Basically if you try to jump off a wall, it won't work unless you are holding the directional button down against the wall you're on. This is totally unintuitive. If I'm on a wall and want to jump off of it to my right, I can't be holding down RIGHT, I have to be holding down LEFT. Admittedly this approach adds some challenge to the platforming, but when a games challenge stems from a backwards control scheme--I've lost interest. [h2]Issue 1 & 2 are by far my biggest gripes and the reason I am leaving a negative rec. The game is otherwise palatable. I'll list some more issues though:[/h2] 3. When you enter a room, the entire room is mapped like you've explored it (but does not mark collectables or anything). I HATE this, because when backtracking, you won't know where in a room you have or haven't been unless you mark it with question mark symbols everywhere using the ingame map markers. 4. Not sure why pressing DOWN enters doors & talks to people rather than pressing UP, but whatever. 5. It's a few extra button presses everytime you want to mark your map. You can press LB to view your map at any time which is nice, but to mark it you instead have to open your inventory, tab to the map, press to zoom in and then you can mark it. Doing this is easy and second nature after a while, but remains a small QoL issue. [h3]If issue 1 & 2 didn't exist (and maybe 3), I could see myself giving this game a pass as being a decent short metroidvania. As it is, I don't care for this one.[/h3]

The good: Movement is great. Gun jump is fun. Bosses have been solid. Environments and music are 10/10. Plenty of map markers. Engaging platforming sections. The bad: In a game with platforming you cant look up/down and you will constantly drop into enemies/hazards. The map reveals the whole room when you step into it so you cant keep track of what parts you actually explored or not. The wall jump just feels off. No controller rebinds yet. No cloud saves. All that being said the game does get way better as you go and ends up being super fun once you get a few abilities. It took about 5 hours to finish the game. I think its worth giving it a chance!

首先虽然标了是有简体中文，实际上只是菜单界面有中文，过场动画和人物对话均是英文，（这让我突然想到卡普空移植洛克人ZERO合集，以及老任移植马银1+2的操作了）你要说他们俩这操作，也无可厚非，毕竟人家游戏已经出了很多年了，只是移植，本身就是日文，没汉化也很正常。 你这是初次发售的游戏，还整个烂尾操作。 就这么端上来，纯纯诈骗。 虽说操作手感和动作方面很有潜力， 但这个定价，说实话一看就是个小品级游戏，卖30-40还差不多，而且首发还没打折，直接卖77未免吃相难看了些。 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ First off, even though the store page says it has Simplified Chinese support, that only applies to the menu interface—the cutscenes and character dialogue are all in English. This suddenly reminds me of Capcom’s Mega Man Zero Collection port and Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy 1+2 ports. But you could argue those were understandable, since those games had been out for years and were just straight ports—they were originally in Japanese, so a lack of full localization wasn’t a big deal. But this is a brand-new release, and they still half-assed it like this. Just serving it up in this state is pure false advertising. That said, the controls and combat do have some real potential in terms of feel and fluidity. But at this price point—honestly, this looks like a small-budget indie title that should be priced around $5–6. Selling it for $15 with no launch discount is just greedy and leaves a bad taste.