Moonscars Free Download

Moonscars Free Download Unfitgirl

Moonscars Free Download Unfitgirl What is one type of game that you think is very hard to get right? Platformers? Shooters? For me, it’s Souls-likes. Souls-likes require the right balance of grueling difficulty and fairness to get that feeling of conquering an insurmountable task just right. Moonscars, developed by Black Mermaid and published by Humble Games, got close but heavily misses the mark in its second half. Moonscars takes place in a decrepit kingdom, fallen into chaos. Humans have all but disappeared, and worthy warriors use clay bodies for combat. What they leave behind, though, become shells, possessed by those that have been lost and want to fight for their chance at life again. You play as one of these clay warriors—immune to the permanent clutches of death but cursed to fight forever. It is your mission to find out why your precious kingdom has sunk so low and put an end to this curse. When I started Moonscars, I thought this game was more approachable than most other Souls-likes. It had an interesting level system mixed with rogue-like progression and Metroidvania exploration. That’s one hell of a kitchen sink cookie to bite into. And for my first five to six hours, it tasted great! The fast and brutal combat was smooth, looking into every nook and cranny was fun, and the bosses felt tough but fair. Unfitgirl.COM SEXY GAMES

Then it all came crashing down at (figuratively) 6 hours, 0 minutes, and 1 second. Before I get into how it crashed, I want to rave about what worked up until that point. Moonscars uses several key features taken from rouge-likes and Metroidvanias. Specifically, as you work your way through the world, you gain temporary bonuses that boost your magic, healing, etc. You can also find permanent health and magic pick-ups hidden in crevices or hard-to-reach areas. The former gets lost on death and at save points.There are lots of risks and rewards to balance, and they all work! On top of all that, every save point you activate triggers a mini-boss fight against the you that survived up to that point. You need to literally overcome yourself to continue your journey and regain your special weapon. I love this melancholic storytelling that slowly adds to the overall narrative of “what exactly makes us human?” And I love how all the pieces of magic (called witchery), special attacks, mini levels, unlocking new abilities, trinkets, and so much more just all fit together. Plus, each fight and each boss forced me to change how I played. I could never get comfortable! I could never settle for how I was doing up to that point, which required me to keep growing and improving each skill set thrown at me to overcome the next challenge or find the right mix to push through.

I found the poetic gargoyles funny but you might not

Now we are one second past midnight, and that all came crashing down around me. Up to this point, I fought challenging bosses. But the boss I reached felt beyond inhuman because of its expectations. This particular boss requires the use of witchery to exploit its weakness and expose its weak point, which is fine. Like I’ve said before, each boss required me to fight in a way I wasn’t used to. But up till now, I rarely used witchery because I valued my magic just for healing. I mean, if I know I can deal more damage with melee more accurately, why waste the mana on witchery? For some context, healing requires using your witchery. But witchery is also required to cast spells. which becomes a problem if you’ve prioritized healing up to this point in the game. Additionally, melee weapons do absolutely nothing to everything except the boss’s weak point. The only way to expose its weak point and not take hours on this stressful fight is to use witchery. So, to use witchery, you need to basically not heal, especially if you have been upgrading your spells up to this point, which comes with an increased magic cost (and no, you can’t downgrade your spells after unlocking its upgrade and use a weaker/cheaper version). To make matters worse, there is an even more stressful second phase that I only saw once in my three to four hours of attempts. Catch and Release 

What made this fight unbelievably unfair was three equal parts: this boss hit like a freaking truck, there was very little room to regain magic, and the boss’s mechanics carried through its weakness being exposed. It wasn’t just a truck; it was a double-wide semi-truck carrying Acme anchors and safes on its way to Wily-E-Coyote’s next prank. Two hits and I was dead even with every health upgrade up to that point. Now I’ll be upfront—I am not that great at Souls-like games. But I push through, and they’re some of the most fun games I’ve played in my 25 years of gaming (man, I feel old just typing that out). I say this because I can tell if I can’t get through something just because I lack the skill. But this boss fight felt like something that required just pure dumb luck to make it through. I never got to experience the thrill of finally putting this boss in the grave, though, because of a much graver issue beyond severe balancing needs. While trying to grind out some temporary upgrades, I ran into a game-breaking bug. I jumped up an elevator and warped through a wall, unable to escape. With no reset or warp, my character’s stuck there forever. Even resetting the game didn’t pull my character out and put her at the closest save point. Moonscars is now unplayable for me, and I hope that changes soon after bug fixes and updates.

Enemy and world design is fantastic

For further information, I am waiting to hear back on whether this will be fixed, beyond the developers looking into it. Moonscars is a deep, dark tale about what makes us human in our darkest times and how we persevere. When it works, it really works and was some of the most fun I had playing 2-D souls-like in recent memory. But it is riddled with balancing issues and loses touch on what makes Souls-likes fun in the name of difficulty. To top it off, there are still game-breaking bugs in the game that can bring your progress to a screeching halt and require a hard reset of all your progress to keep playing. After some patches, I can see Moonscars being considered in the upper echelon on Souls-likes, but it is not there yet in its current state. In Moonscars, you play as Grey Irma, a “Clayborn” individual sculpted in the image of a great warrior. Cursed with a desperate need for ichor, life force absorbed from slain enemies, as well as the need to reunite with her creator, the enigmatic Sculptor, Grey Irma must cut a swathe through the formidable opponents and hulking bosses that stand in her way. If any game needed some kind of codex or glossary of key terms and characters, it would be Moonscars. Although clearly inspired by games like Dark Souls, Hollow Knight, and Blasphemous Catherine Classic 

All of which relied on minimalist environmental storytelling, I feel that Moonscars goes a little bit too far with that. The general stakes and protagonist’s goal feel murky. As the protagonist is an established character with a history and relationships (rather than the standard blank slate in most Soulslikes), the barrage of unexplained names, backstories, and terminologies are made even harder to follow than usual. The fact that much of the exposition is delivered by Etalag the cat (whose dialogue becomes less and less lucid as the game progresses) and the recurring gargoyles (who speak almost exclusively in riddles and taunts) only serves to make the plot and mythology harder to comprehend or become invested in. Compared to its impenetrable worldbuilding, Moonscars’ combat is elegant in its simplicity. Grey Irma has her signature sword, along with a handful of Witchery abilities and a special sub-weapon that can be swapped out at save points. There is a focus on environmental kills, which I found to be a nice touch, where enemies can be pushed into spiked walls or lured into traps for easy executions. The parry mechanic is also hugely important, with mastering its timing being a crucial tool in taking down some of the game’s tougher foes. Your Witchery powers and healing draw from the same ichor meter

Aesthetics for days

Which is restored upon dealing damage to enemies. It’s a nice system that rewards the player for keeping on the offensive. As long as you use your ichor wisely, you can always recover and stay in the fight. In keeping with the standard Soulslike formula, your dropped upgrade currency (called Bone Powder) is left at your grave, and you can recover it if you make it back there again without dying. Bone Powder can be invested in new Witchery powers or purchasing accessories which provide passive bonuses. Although the combat itself works well in that “easy to learn, hard to master” kind of way, Moonscars perhaps overcomplicates things with some of its supplementary mechanics. For instance, each time you reach a save point, you shed off your clay form for a new one (obtaining a new randomised sub-weapon along the way), however, you must then defeat your doppelganger who has now spawned and is out for your blood (or ichor in this case). Although these fights were rarely especially difficult, they disrupted the general requirement of a save point as a place of respite and sanctuary, and felt like something of an annoying and repetitive extra step to unlock progress. I’m also not a fan of the Moonhunger mechanic, where enemies become tougher if you fail to return to your grave without dying again. Catizens

Although this can be reversed with a somewhat-rare additional currency, it punishes the player for failure in a way that makes it more difficult for them to recover and try again, which doesn’t feel fun or fair.Moonscars’ most memorable feature is its gorgeous art style. The developers were inspired by the Dutch oil painting old masters, with its world portrayed in a vivid palette of greys, reds, and greens. Moonscars often feels like a painting come to life, which feels especially apt in its elaborate and nightmarish boss fights. Small features, from Grey Irma’s reflections on water to her weighty attack animations, make the game’s world a trip to dive into. The word of Moonscars steadily expands as you defeat bosses and obtain new abilities to access new areas, from opening new kinds of doors to super-dashing across chasms. Although a certain amount of backtracking and aimless exploration is perhaps par for the course in a Metroidvania such as this, the oblique storytelling and map design can make it somewhat unclear where the player is supposed to go next at points. Moonscars may have benefitted from taking a leaf out of the books of recent Metroidvanias, such as Guacamelee! 2 and Metroid Dread.

These games find a middle ground of providing a general idea on their maps of where the player needs to go and ensuring the player doesn’t get completely lost, while still leaving the general path vague enough for the player to put in work of their own. Unfortunately, my playthrough experienced an odd game-breaking bug some way in where, upon dying at the same time that I landed the finishing blow on a boss, I didn’t obtain the required ability to progress to the next area that is supposed to be provided upon victory. It’s a pretty unusual situation that most players likely won’t experience, and will hopefully be patched before long, but is something to be mindful of. Moonscars has the fundamentals of combat absolutely nailed to the wall in a way that many other genre contenders struggle to achieve. The game just feels right, combining a swiftness of movement with immediately satisfying hit impact for a core experience that stands shoulder to shoulder with the best. When we talk about the how and why of FromSoftware’s best achievements we often reference the almost elusive impact moment of the parry, the ‘ka-chunk’ hit that you feel in your bones when you pull one off. Moonscars manages to emulate that visceral satisfaction in every standard blow.

Add-ons (DLC):Moonscars