13 replies to this topic

[Ether]

Umbral Cloud by Evan20000

 

   

 
 

A metroidvania with an .ogg soundtrack that features heavy emphasis on exploration, sidequests and boss fights.

A quest made to practice boss scripting, Umbral Cloud is a solid metroidvania and a really cool boss showcase. Also has difficulty selection!

[Ether]

I remember playing this. It has. A lot of bosses. Not so big on the dungeons, just lots and lots of bosses.

 

One thing that always stuck out to me are the healing points. Not the in-engine ones that force you to hold still, those are annoying, these you can walk off of at any time. Other games scatter pots throughout dungeons and sometimes have more of them in front of a boss or whatever. I always thought this game was really elegant for just letting you heal after a hard room without making you grind hearts for it, and I wish more games did that.

 

A long time ago, before I even joined ZC, I sort of wanted to run a forum adventure (think Homestuck except actually interactive) that was a spinoff of Umbral Cloud's story. A setting where a miasma has taken over most of the world, and the last free people live either in mountains (the miasma is heavier than air) or in deserts (where the sun goddess is at the height of her power). That never went anywhere and it would have crashed and burned if I'd tried, but it was fun to think about at least!

[SofaKing]

This has been in my "this looks interesting, I should think about trying it" category for a long time.  Now I finally will!

 

I am on Level 8 in LQFTH.  It's something.  

[Aevin]

This one's a favorite of mine. Generally well put together, with creative environments and enemies, and some potentially extremely challenging bosses, but multiple difficulty settings. If anyone's on the fence, I'd encourage you to participate with this one.

[Moosh]

Finished my first playthrough, planning on doing a second to get the bad ending which I haven't done since the quest first came out. On replaying it I am certain that despite its age this is the best quest ever made, possibly that ever will be made. I just don't see anything else topping the experience here for me. Umbral Cloud is simply that good.

[Moosh]

Spoiler

Bad ending path playthrough went too quickly, so I went back for a third, this time going for minimal health and magic on Stronger difficulty. I was rather surprised by how little the reduced stamina mattered. Most bosses have regular pity stamina drops which keep you filled up on your bottom two containers. And nothing costs more than those two containers to use, so the main difference is not being able to nuke later bosses with powerful attacks at the start of the fight. A couple bosses felt very different though. Gaius and Synapse took longer per attempt than usual because they don't give pity stamina and like to keep you away from them. I suspect Pyron nvm he's easy and Tartaros would be similarly difficult, but I can't get them on a true minimal stamina run because they're gated behind one stamina container. So I'll be going for that next.

[Russ]

I finally got my one rupee on Swindling. That was fun.

 

I think Umbral Cloud is a really cool quest overall. It's ambitious, but not so big as to feel overwhelming. The scope of the bosses is wonderful, and they've all aged really well for the most part. The SFX can occasionally be a little jarring (namely the bomb blast), but far less so than in IoR. Few places feel overtuned for difficulty, even on the hardest difficulty, and the world comes together in a really great way. The story works for the most part (even if there's one or two moments where the writing feels slightly oddly explained for the audience's sake), and it comes together as a cohesive whole overall. I've really only got a few criticisms from playing.

 

- Frozen as a status effect is a bit annoying. It takes all agency from the player. I spoke with Evan about this one already, but I feel like being able to mash out of the ice to thaw faster would go a long way towards making it more fun.

- The lack of a comprehensive map is a little annoying. There's spacebar maps restricted to each area, but a lot of the navigation comes from figuring out how the world (one above ground map an one cave/dungeon map) connects, which isn't always obvious when you can't see the big picture.

- F6ing not refilling HP is a minor annoyance.

- There's one or two times where there's a little too much going back and forth across the map.

- Some bosses have way too many enemies between them and the nearest continue point, making the trek back after death, even if it's only two screens, very annoying.

- The ice bombs are just generally unpleasant, and one screen in particular feels like there's no recourse for dealing with them.

 

Mostly minor nitpicks. It's a fantastic quest on the whole. A really different take on the Metroidvania genre that feels really well-planned and cohesive. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't played it to give it a go.

[Evan20000]

The fact this quest is already nearly 8 years old bothers me irrationally.

[Moosh]

Spoiler

So yeah, Tartaros proved a wee bit harder than Horizon to low%. Feel like despite how long it took, there were some attacks like the sparks in phase 1 or the rocks in phase 2 that I just did not understand. Still the winning run felt pretty clean and I don't think was just good RNG.

[Haylee]

Got all the way to the main boss of the Fire Area before stopping my play session for tonight. I kind of wish I gave this a fair shake earlier, because I'm definitely gonna be binging the hell out of the rest of this quest. I have a lot of issues crawling out of my comfort zone when it comes to a particular style of gameplay, and the moment I started fighting the first main boss, things started to click massively.

 

In particular, I appreciate quite a bit how consistent secret activation has been so far. I feel actively rewarded for paying attention, and that's quite a nice feeling to have. I look forward to playing more of this one.

[Haylee]

 

Finished it. Having never played it back in the past, I kind of regret not giving it a shot when I definitely should have. I played on normal, and all in all, it had my type of difficulty. I got pretty much everything aside from beating the superboss, and did both the B and C endings. The bosses were quite fun to figure out, and I definitely feel like I became a much better player by the end of it. Combat challenges are completely up my alley, and this quest is pretty much entirely that. It's very good.

[Ether]

Okay so I finally dragged myself away from Dreams Realm long enough to start replaying this. (Currently getting close to unlocking the second guardian, I think.)

 

I remember last time I played this I went, "Oh, not so much in the way of dungeons, huh." This time the sense I get is more like the distinction between indoor/cave areas and outdoor areas was always completely arbitrary and I shouldn't have been thinking in terms of dungeons at all. Zones are zones. It's really cool how interconnected everything is.

 

I always admired how even most of the normal enemies in this game are scripted and nonstandard. With that said, a lot of them are very rude.

[Evan20000]

With that said, a lot of them are very rude.

Fire Keeper did nothing wrong.

[Deedee]

So I beat the game 3 times yesterday; the first one I was halfway through from the day before, the second one I 100% in about 6 hours on the hardest difficulty (ignore the hour I spent trying to kill a boss early), and the third was me using sequence breaks to beat the game sub-hour really sub-optimally. Game's fun! The exploration is pretty good, the bosses are varied and unique with some breaking the standards of what you'd expect out of a ZC boss, the puzzles add novelty without being tedious or stale, and the story is good (though the gameplay is definitely the main focus). The 4 difficulty modes that you can change at almost any time mean that the quest is accessible to anyone. My only real gripe (beyond the story not fully accounting for sequence breaks (EDIT: and one of the tablets arbitrarily being locked until post 3rd-guardian and not getting a chance to shine)) is that there's one really rude enemy in the snow area that makes backtracking through it a bit annoying.

When this quest first came out, I was disappointed that it wasn't the next Isle of Rebirth and the instrumentality tileset wasn't the most appealing tileset, so I didn't really like it that much; I regret feeling that way after replaying this. Game was so fun I replayed it twice in the same day.

Also, there is an optional superboss in the quest; while normally I'd advise people who aren't into that sort of content to steer clear, this is IMO Evan's most reasonable superboss to the point I don't think it's that much harder than the true final boss. If you enjoy the boss fights in this quest, you should give the superboss a shot.
 

Fire Keeper did nothing wrong.

Ice bomb has a lot to answer for.