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Sayonara Wildhearts (PS4)

Status: Finished playing
I started playing this game on Sunday 5 July, 2020  //  I stopped playing this game on: Thursday 9 July, 2020
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.

July 9, 2020 07:13:51 PM
Played a few songs again the other day, but now specifically to unlock achievements. For one of them I learned something I had not noticed at all when I was playing regularly! There's a song where you can "teleport" from the left of the screen to the right and vice versa! Huh! I wonder if there are other songs where this exists and I'm guessing it's the key to get gold scores on those levels?

The achievement system is interesting - there's a special UI that lists them all, but they're in the form of cryptic clues/riddles you need to solve in order to know what to do. They're all tied to signs of the zodiac (2 per sign, there's a b-side with the other half) all on a wheel you can rotate. Once you've unlocked the trophy, a crown appears above the respective zodiac sign. I read a few, but wasn't motivated enough to try to figure them out and then do them. So, I looked online. I think it was a good call because otherwise I would have spent a long time between experimenting with answers and being able to pull them off. I think if they were all clues to something that wasn't hard to do, it would have worked better for me. In my mind having a double challenge - figure out the thing and then pull it off is too much (especially when you need to pull it off to verify your solution).


July 6, 2020 05:37:29 PM
Wow, this game is FAST! It's also nice and short - I finished it yesterday afternoon in 2 hrs? (maybe less?)

I really enjoyed it even though the music wasn't particularly to my liking. There are definitely some cool levels I want to play again, but the score chasing (I only got gold on one level, silver on a bunch and bronze on everything else) isn't really my cup of tea. Especially since it seems that the score chasing here will be really memory-dependent. In other words, you need to memorize what's coming next, where/when to turn and that sort of thing.

I did enjoy the fact that the game has a "is this too hard?" option that lets you skip past an area you've been failing at too often. I never used it (though it definitely came up more than a few times). Hmmm..

For such a short game I also really enjoyed how much variation there is between levels in terms of the art as well as the gameplay. At first I thought it was simply a "dodge" stuff, but then there were some timed button presses (hit button when circle gets small enough), then there was some moving around in 2D (initially it's 1D), then 2D movement but from a different perspective, then there are fast button presses and, perhaps my favorite of all, a shooting section (a few actually) that MUST be a homage to Rez. I'm sure... The first level of Rez specifically, I'm sure there's even a camera angle change that happens at the same time as Rez.

Actually, for me that was the coolest moment - the Rez moment - I literally when "Whoah! It's REZ" and, perhaps unsurprisingly this was the only level I was able to get Gold on. I wonder if it was some Rez muscle memory that kicked in? Like, I just knew what to do?

For now I'll continue playing, but mostly for Trophy hunting. The trophies are really just the excuse...


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria