Solateria

Solateria is an incredible letdown. I tried the game on two separate occasions, hoping I could find some enjoyment by approaching it with a different mindset, but the way the game is structured consistently undermines its better ideas. I was initially attracted to the deflection focused combat. If you press guard at the right time, you parry an enemy attack. Miss the timing and you still guard the attack. Perform enough successful parries and you can unleash a critical attack. On paper, that's a really cool combat loop. Unfortunately, the execution makes it incredibly difficult to enjoy. The biggest offender is the parry timing. The minimum window is apparently only 8 frames, or roughly 133 milliseconds at 60 FPS. Sekiro, a game widely regarded as having difficult but satisfying deflection combat, starts at a much more generous 15 frames before tightening the window through repeated use. Solateria's timing is so strict that combat stops feeling intuitive and instead becomes a test of memorization. That would be difficult enough on its own, but enemy attacks have very little rhythm or telegraphing. You're often expected to memorize extremely fast flashes of animation and react within that tiny window. There isn't enough information being communicated through the enemy's attacks for me to feel like I'm learning a pattern. I'm just trying to remember which animation means I need to press the button immediately. Bosses make this even worse because they have enormous health pools. Fights can take several minutes, which becomes exhausting when you're repeatedly attempting the same encounter. I rarely find a game too difficult because I'll generally rise to whatever challenge is put in front of me, but Solateria doesn't give me the tools to make that challenge satisfying. You either pass the memory test or get killed quickly while trying to learn it. Neither experience is particularly enjoyable. The directional parrying also creates problems because enemies don't have collision with the player. I actually like the lack of contact damage in concept, but enemies can move through you and end up on the opposite side of your character. Since many attacks also move the enemy forward, it's easy to become turned around with very little counterplay if an enemy continues attacking. Guarding isn't a particularly effective fallback either. It initially only absorbs 50% of incoming damage, with a few ways to improve that later. The result is a combat system that feels relentlessly punishing. And this applies to practically every encounter. Even regular enemies take long enough to kill that the combat's weaknesses become impossible to ignore. Exploration Exploration doesn't fare much better. There are long stretches of hallways containing essentially nothing, making the world feel barren and padded. It's also strangely linear. You can occasionally access multiple areas, but there is very clearly a correct path based on the rewards available and the expected difficulty of the next boss. Enemy encounters aren't particularly interesting either. Each biome has, at most, around three enemy types, and they repeat very quickly. When enemy variety is already limited, uninspired placement becomes an even bigger problem. The game also has a strong focus on its story, which simply wasn't something I was interested in. That would be fine if I could move through it quickly, but there are unskippable scenes and dialogue that force me to wait. Even when fighting a boss, you have to manually hold the skip button every single attempt to get through its introduction. I don't understand why games continue to do this. Nobody wants to watch the same boss introduction repeatedly. The Potential Is There What makes this particularly frustrating is that I can see the intent behind Solateria. The deflection system has the foundation of something interesting. The game clearly wants players to learn enemy behavior, master parries, and eventually dismantle encounters through skill. But the numbers and presentation work against that idea. Give the player more frames to react. Give enemies clearer animations and more readable attack patterns. Reduce the health pools so successful play actually feels rewarding rather than simply making fights shorter. Let the player intuitively learn an encounter instead of requiring them to memorize tiny flashes of animation. Even after doing that, however, the exploration would still need significant work. The world is simply too barren and the enemy variety too limited to carry the experience. I'm honestly somewhat resentful that I put as much time into Solateria as I did trying to find the fun in it. I rarely spend this much time with a game and come away with nothing but annoyance. That's ultimately on me, but I can't recommend a game simply because I appreciate what the developers were trying to accomplish. Solateria has good intentions, and it has clearly received patches since release, but the fundamental problems that made the game unenjoyable for me either haven't been addressed or can't be addressed without substantially changing the experience. Maybe the game works better on an easier difficulty, or perhaps players who are more invested in the story and art style will find more to appreciate here. For me, though, the combat never became satisfying and the exploration never gave me enough reason to push through it. I wanted to like Solateria. I really did. Unfortunately, I just don't think it's fun.

Soletaria is a beautiful game from start to finish, beautiful visuals, beautiful combat, beautiful music, and a beautiful story. It has combat similar to Nine Sols but different enough to be unique. The world's characters were very charming and compelling. The game's story takes the part of an infection, but the characters interact with that plotline in very different ways. My one complaint is the typos, however this is slightly excusable since it is a small team based in Korea, so getting an English translation was probably difficult enough for them as is. There is a total of 14 major bosses in this game, which is a bit low compared to say Hollow Knight or Dark Souls, but each one was well designed and featured a fair bit of complexity. The game is also incredibly open, leading to a midgame full of getting lost and finding new things, which is one of my favorite parts of playing a metroidvania for the first time. I'm gonna wrap it up here though, I picked this game up on sale expecting a short, fun adventure and instead received on of my favorite games of all time. I was not very far in when I decided to 100% this game and it was well worth it. Beyond worth $20. An incredible experience.

地圖做很大但什麼都沒有 那你做那麼大是在做辛酸的喔 只會用跑圖浪費我們的時間時間

We have Nine Sols at home. It does feel like Solateria tries to be great at times but has too many issues holding it back from reaching the same level as Nine Sols and HK. It's a pretty solid game but it is painfully average in certain aspects as well as has a bunch of needless frustration built in. - Exploration is completely mediocre. Areas aren't interesting and there's a lot of just walking around without anything noteworthy happening. There's the usual charms of coming back and picking up collectibles you couldn't access before but it's blurred by how dull the areas and enemies in them are - The enemies. A lot of the cannon fodder mobs polluting the areas are extremely basic. Some of them legit have one attack they spam over and over. Some have two, some have three. They are completely forgettable and uninteresting - The bosses are decent but there's a huge issue with the design. They simply move a lot and there's nothing stopping them from going to your other side. This doesn't sound like a problem but parrying is directional so a lot of the time, during their chain of attack, they will phase through you and start whacking you while you parry the wrong direction. This feels utterly awful. Salt and Sanctuary had this already figured out years ago (you couldn't walk through enemies unless you were rolling, bosses got stuck on you as well) and yet here we are. This is the most frustrating issue I have with the game - Last three bosses... aren't great. They're hard in the insanely annoying way - Also some boss attacks feel completely undodgeable (especially if cast at the corner of the arena). Final boss's grab, Baran's AOE whirlwind to mention a few. Not a fan - Story is surprisingly good

体験版が面白くて10時間位遊んで期待してたけど製品版はあんまり刺さらなかった人のクリアレビュー。 一番言いたいのは、このゲームのパリィがあまり楽しく無かった、と言うこと。 私が好きなSEKIROやナインソールのパリィが面白いのは、それが難しいからじゃ無くて｢敵の攻撃を完全に理解して対処出来てる感｣が感じられるから。 けれど本作の、特に終盤のボスは、 ・どんな攻撃をしてるのか分かりにくい。 ・ディレイが長すぎてタイミング掴めない。 ・攻撃モーション見てから反応不可な速度なのに予備動作が静止画なせいでやってる事がほぼ目伏せてストップウォッチを指定時間で止めるアレ。 ・ボスのモーションと一切関係ない所から攻撃飛んでくるのは何…？ と言う状態。有志の検証によると最高難易度で9フレーム(SEKIRO:12フレーム)らしい。やってられるか！！！ まぁフレームに関してはしっかりタイミング取れてれば気にならないけど、タイミングを取って気持ちよくなるのがパリィゲーなのにタイミング取りにくい仕組みなのが気に入らなかった。 体験版時から気になっていたので開発に質問してみた所、 ｢ “拍子”を覚えるタイプのソウルライクに近い。 長いディレイのある攻撃が直前に明確な予兆を出すわけでは無いが複数のクリーチャーが共通の拍子を使っているため、ゲーム全体のリズムを覚えてパリィすることを意図している。 不親切に感じられる事は強く共感しているが、ゲームの核となる設計思想が異なるため、改善は難しい。 ｣ と返信を頂いた。 ……難しいよ(泣き)。取り敢えず私には普通にプレイしただけでは開発の言うゲーム全体での拍は覚えられませでした。SEKIRO ナインソールとは全く別系統のゲームと考えた方がいい。 パリィ以外の所については、まあまあ、と言った所。 ステージやアスレチックはホロウナイトよりエンダーリリィズ系。ジャンプの高さと空中移動距離を伸ばす為だけの能力達があまり好きじゃ無いので残念。もっとボス戦でも飛び回りたいよ… ステータスの割り振りは始めは結構好きだったけど、割と直ぐ能力値限界が来て活かしきれて無いと感じた。 料理は作って直ぐ食べるのじゃだめなの？なぜ1回インベントリ経由させる？ マップに収集物 発見済みNPC 等々が映るのはgood ストーリー。それ自体は良いけど流石に安直過ぎない？隠された重大な真実、物語開始の時点で察してたんですが…

Its fun but I think it needs more telegraphed attacks and better audio design, the difficulty is handled a bit poorly.

Overall had a wonderful time playing Solateria. Played about 95% of my playthrough on the hardest difficulty, legendary flame, and found it to be a very challenging experience, especially as someone who is not very good with rhythm. However, it was still (mostly) fair, and that was what's important. I found one late game boss to be extremely frustrating, such that I waited until after defeating the final boss to go back and beat him on a lower difficulty, due to the requirement for parries being directional, and all of the teleporting made it feel unfair to stay properly oriented. Besides that, the combat was extremely satisfying. Replaying the final boss after that aforementioned late game boss, but this time on Warriors path difficulty made me realize that the game is mostly very well balanced against that difficulty, and as such if you don't want 100% achievements, or extremely difficult and precise parry combat (for me bosses were harder than nine sols, sekiro, grime 1/2) I'd highly recommend that standard difficulty option, as it is fair but still very challenging. Platforming was okay, not necessarily a strong point, as some items on the map required extremely precise usage of all the games traversal abilities, and it didn't feel consistent to perform. However, the art and world overall were beautiful, and I really enjoyed the exploration of the world, exploration felt both rewarding and interesting, and I enjoyed meandering around the environment. Lastly, enjoyed the music, but not too many standouts (might have been too focused on the boss to hear the OST), and with that said I do still wish the OST was on spotify so I could relisten to find the best boss themes and add them to my playlist for workouts. All in all, I would say Solateria is a game that is worth your time, attention, and pain. 8.5/10