Necrodancer, Cadence of Hyrule

[Prime 2.0]

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It's out.

I've been seeing a bunch of people on my switch friends list popping this game open; personally, I got it yesterday and just kept going until I had finished it at 2:30 in the morning. Now that that's done and I'm dipping my toe into permadeath mode, I find myself more interested in what other people think.

As for me, I had been dimly aware of the original Crypt of The Necrodancer's existence before the first trailer for Cadence dropped, but the announcement is what finally got me to try it out and I absolutely loved it, from the adorable touches like how all the enemies dance to the music in their idle animations to the stunningly well interlocked mechanics of the enemies and random items that you can find, to getting Disco Descent stuck in my head for over a week.

By the time I had to put it down to focus on university, I had honestly become more excited for the fact that it was a new Necrodancer game than for how it was a new Zelda game.

I've since had a blast with Cadence; the expanded scope and new mechanics like altitude are neat, though I find it to be a bit less tightly designed. In particular, inventory management is a pace breaker, and the existence of "hold" actions that take place off-beat dilutes the core of the game in my opinion. Additionally, the lack of any way to rapidly play dungeons one after the other, in the vein of zones from the original Necrodancer is a bit of a disappointment, as while the overworld is fun, the dungeons are the exact sort of GO GO GO rush that made the first Necrodancer such a joy to pick up for short, intense sessions. Hopefully something like that gets added in a DLC.

So what about the rest of you?

 

[JEV3]

I am terrible at rhythm games but I loved this game. I plan to come back to it at some point (still have a lot of Fire Emblem left to play).

I really enjoyed the music, particularly Gerudo desert. I finished my first playthrough pretty fast, but I did not spend much time learning the different types of items and imagine that mastering them will feel pretty good. I might try fixed beat mode some time, just to try it, but if even I can handle the game when my sense of rhythm is so bad, I've got no excuse not to play it the way it was meant to be played.

I just saw there's a demo out too, which is great for people that were iffy about it. This satisfied my Zelda itch for a while, since I'm gonna hold off on Link's Awakening (since I literally just played the original on DS last fall).