The Dark Queen of Mortholme

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Enjoyed it.

The concept is what drew me to the game. But after a certain point it just became rage bait. Storywise, the character arcs happen quite fast, and the Queen starts being emphatic and sad seemingly unprovoked. Maybe this is the power of yuri. The game is very short, but it's very repetative as well. The rage bait comes from the heroine at one point growing in strenght beyond any equal measure. Whilst this is the point of the game "good vs evil", it feels so damn frustrating and not fun at all. The mace attack lands directly on her head, but she takes no damage half of the time. She reads into all your attacks, and since you are so slow and all your abilities have a cool down you just become a punching bag with no way to fight back. I got the dialogue "have I even improved?" three times in a row, without the heroine getting me below half HP yet in the next loop she was completely impervious to all my damage. The hero's growth is annoyingly overpowered. Again, the point of the game is that you as the Dark Queen get defeated, but in the little time the gameplay happens it's just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ frustrating. It's inevitable the hero becomes overpowered, yet you aren't allowed to grow. I see what they were going for, but the execution is just not ideal. It's a fun game for the first run I suppose, but again I was angry more than I enjoyed it. Bad power scaling.

Spoilers ahead! This is a weird one. How do you rate a game this short? It's very poignant in what it wants to do and it works really well in recreating the feeling of learning a boss fight. Getting to the second stage of a boss only to have to learn new ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moves to dodge. I love how the hero mimics a reaction I would have in such a boss fight. The way the hero learns moves. But also is apprehensive at first when the boss is not attacking anymore and then just gets annoyed, goes out and in the end is like, yeah let's get this over with... I feel very seen! I also, in a weird way, loved the 'harder' achievement of trying to make the hero leave. Having resorted to the tried and true tactic of spamming 3/B and then 1/X. I felt like I just became the one annoying boss everybody hates for their stupid one attack. And having won the fight in the end only by getting good rng. Don't think I would have quit as fast as the hero, but if there is a boss that's just 'abusing' a stupid combo, I might actually not do it (or resort to using cheep combos back). I also love how gamers usually give bosses these intentions, just as I have done in the previous sentence. And finally we get to live them out. So yeah, having written that, I think this game manages to pull of exactly what it was going for, maybe even more having thought and written about that. Still I don't think I can give it a 10 or even 9 out of 10. It's not bad, but these ratings I think are reserved for truly truly masterful games that blow my mind. I had a really good time with this one. So it deserves a 8/10

Пиксель арт крутой, но сама игра очень короткая и скучная. Концовка с победой получается не каким-то оригинальным использованием абилок, а тупо монотонными действиями у трона. Диалоги и впринципе отношения героев друг к другу чувствуются натянутыми, это буквально +- 16 попыток, пол часа времени, а они каким-то образом уже сдруживаются, тогда Папич и Радан вообще должны были бы поженится. Вообщем идея хорошая, а реализация подкачала

Un minuscule jeu axé sur le concept d'incarner un boss final dans un jeu vidéo de dark fantasy face à un joueur revenant sans cesse plus fort jusqu'à notre inévitable défaite. Ponctués de dialogues un chouïa philosophiques autour des buts qu'on se donne et des défis qu'on traverse, The Dark Queen of Mortholme joue une perspective originale qui fait aussi réfléchir sur le jeu vidéo. Une expérience qui intéressera les joueurs et joueuses de Souls à qui le jeu fait clairement référence.

Эта игра заставила получить одновременно абсолютную власть и тоску. Ты буквально финальный босс герою остаётся последний шаг к завершению данной истории... И вот перед ним Тёмная Королева Мортхольма, бескорыстна и безжалостна она правит этим миром и мы любой ценой, должны победить героя или нас самих. Игра меня удивила эмоции и контраст просто зашкаливают динамика бомба, а атмосфера ещё лучше. Даже если игра была, так скажем отталкивалась от героя тоже интересно было про неё узнать, иногда даже короткие игры имеют столь отличное повествование, как и полная игра с большим сюжетом. Мне понравилось