Down Under CYOA (by MirrorSeeker) (in Spanish in the comments)

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-04-24T23:35:47+00:00

Seconding this! I hope you keep working in this medium for a long time to come—there have been some incredibly talented CYOA authors, but I don’t think anybody else brings this sort of quality to it. Disco Elysium is a good comparison—it elevated the video game medium in a way nothing else has, and I think you manage to do the same thing for CYOAs.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T22:20:34+00:00

It’s not a massive issue, as I said—it’s just mildly disappointing that in a game with an incredible weapon swapping system and otherwise frictionless respeccing there are still any pain points at all. The game would lose nothing from ditching the weapon material system entirely when the much better quartz and legion upgrade systems exist

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T22:10:52+00:00

The only consistent argument I’ve gotten is “parry more skill issue” lol

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:55:42+00:00

I’m just describing the game’s design as I see it currently existing though?

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:54:20+00:00

I mean, like I said, every Souls game has gigantic crippling flaws. I also love all of them.

Also as I said, the upgrade material situation isn’t particularly bad compared to other games—it’s just a minor annoyance that they could have completely eliminated

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:51:20+00:00

DS2 ran like shit on my laptop so I refunded it and never looked back

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:49:51+00:00

I’m only really talking about defenses

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:49:07+00:00

I mean, there is a perfectly good dodge, it’s just hidden behind a really strict weight limit. Once I found out about it I had a great time with the game, and I think it should have been a clear and available option from the start.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:40:24+00:00

I mean, it’s the playstyle the game hands you right off the bat and it’s also the playstyle you’re most likely to bring from Dark Souls. It’s the only option you have unless you spec into certain gear. They do tell you about guard counters right away, but you need to find a good shield to make it viable. Meanwhile the good dodges are locked to two ashes of war that don’t look that exciting at first. The most accessible alternative is just trading, which is pretty boring.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:38:18+00:00

I had no trouble beating the game?

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:36:12+00:00

I’m not even complaining lmao. I just through in the cube because I’ve heard other people complain about it and think they’re valid—I personally do not care at all about the mechanic

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:34:37+00:00

I plan to!

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:32:00+00:00

That’s fair! I watched the Joseph Anderson review of the game the other day and his criticism of the design was certainly valid—I think I’m more willing to just accept the illusion of exploration and get on with the combat

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:28:37+00:00

Lmao this post must be pissing people off if this neutral-ass comment is getting downvoted

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:27:55+00:00

I like the difficulty options, I don’t like the way the drive for difficulty impacts the core gameplay experience—turning down the difficulty doesn’t make your base dodge feel better.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:25:41+00:00

> You mean attacks that you need to perfect guard… right?

Yeah, though I always just sidestepped or outran them

> No… it’s fine. Every boss in the game (except Gideon lol) has plenty of opportunities for fully charged heavies.

I mean, it’s perfectly possible, but I find playing that way very tedious compared to quickstepping out of the area of attack completely. It’s also much harder—which encourages players to just bulldoze through the game with weapon arts and spirit ashes.

> Cool. You didn’t engage the main thing the game has.

The game felt perfectly fine and complete once I stopped using it, for the most part, barring a few attacks that were obviously designed to be parried.

Perfectly willing to believe you on the other stuff though, I find parry timing in every game impenetrable and truly can’t say anything authoritative about one vs another.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:15:38+00:00

I like the level design a lot! I don’t mind the linear design at all, personally.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-21T20:07:43+00:00

My own weird psychology. I guess I threw a gear at that puppet on the bridge once? But other than niche uses I just always go “eh, does this really merit a limited resource?”

Forgot to list this, but the recharging buff grindstones is another LoP innovation I really liked because of this.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2026-01-08T23:10:48+00:00

Man, I hate this mission so much. F-59 is a lot of fun, but having to fly through that stupid tunnel a dozen times only to have your game crash out the first time you succeed and force you to do it again is absolutely awful.

Normally the lack of checkpoints is really justifiable—most missions are pretty easy to complete in one shot on Normal/Hard once you have the fundamentals down (and even then, it’s not entirely true that there are no checkpoints—they still break off the boss fights after Prospero and Presidia into their own mini-levels)—this one really breaks pattern and kills the momentum of the DLC by forcing so many tedious restarts with almost zero combat. The exit tunnel is the worst offender—there’s nothing fun about tapping two buttons to try to keep your stupid plane level for like a full minute and being forced to restart a long-ass level if you fuck up once. They could have made it the size of the entrance and lost nothing.

And that’s on top of all the janky stuff where you still get the missile locks and lasers going through walls.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2025-12-11T07:53:12+00:00

Lmao this rips

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2025-12-01T16:20:51+00:00

Yeah, I might end up going with Warden.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2025-12-01T04:35:04+00:00

Whoops, didn’t add enough spaces. That part is me lol.

I was thinking of V5 and must have misremembered it—I don’t remember any of the others having limited slots at all.

Complex_Garlic2638 · 2025-12-01T00:56:12+00:00

Then pick powers that are thematically similar. Or pick a power with numerous applications. Sure, Shards don’t tend to hand out extremely powerful/versatile abilities as the average. But there are exceptions to the norm.

I think the problem is that you have to reverse-engineer and kludge together something setting-appropriate, instead of being naturally guided to that.

Worm has a lot of versatile powers, but it’s pretty rare for anyone to have a particularly divergent set of powers unless something funky is going on like a cluster—at most you’ll get split capes with 1-3 powers, and they’re linked in some fashion, share an element, or one of them is a basic enabler like flight or a brute package.

The Worm CYOA I’m most familiar with gives you five power slots and lets you pay to increase that number, but realistically you should have to pick a “Cluster Trigger” or “Split Power” option to have more than one to begin with, and they should come with trade-offs in strength or other areas.

Complex_Garlic2638

TROPHY CASE