Cuphead & The Difficulty Dilemma
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ต.ค. 2017
- Cuphead has had a bit of controversy in regards to its difficulty, but today I'm going to focus on how it stacks up to other challenging platformers that are held in high regard. Does Cuphead offer a good "rage game" experience? Let's find out!
Dark Souls footage by NickolaiBoulton: / @nickolaiboulton
Music used: "Soul Vibe" by Aso, "Autumn Leaves" by Axian X J'san, Cuphead OST
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Cuphead is the Dark Souls of Netflix exclusive animes.
DynamitePenguins Comment of the year award
this comment is the *dark souls* of indie news subscription services
The Saving Private Ryan of Soulsborne Metroidvania Roguelikes.
Netflix exclusive anime? My goodness I feel so dirty even saying it.
GET THIS CRAP OUT OF HERE NOW!
This is the best comment I've seen out there today.
Honestly, I get where you're coming from, but every time I've defeated a boss on Cuphead, I'm suddenly filled with pride and it makes me wanna go "YES!" _because_ of the surprise of winning. It's kind of more of a _"Crap, crap, I only have 1 HP, I'm not gonna survive, that projectile is coming right at me-- YES! KNOCKOUT! I DID IT!"_ for me. It'll be really frustrating when I keep losing, and suddenly, when I beat a boss, it gives me a mixed sense of relief, yes, but also gratification for defeating it after such a long while of feeling helpless. But maybe that's just me, idk.
I've been playing a bunch of so-called retro games lately and you're lucky if the game shows you the boss' life bar
@@alvareo92 worst case scenario your're playing megaman or castlevania which moves dont do consistent damage
I totally agree with you. Cuphead is actually the game I have gotten the greatest feeling of satisfaction from. I love the surprise knockout screen its so damn satisfying
@@IPODsify They are consistent in Mega Man. it's just contact and projectile damage taken differs.
Too repetitious and random for me to get satisfaction because it doesn't feel like my skills have improved, I have just memorized and prioritized better. Not to mention how bare it is and how the difficulty is a crux to extend it
It's weird. When I defeat a boss with no one around, it feels anticlimatic. But with friends, defeating a boss makes us cheer. I don't know why my reaction changes.
A shared experience like at the cinema perhaps
i guess it could be the fact that everyone saw you finally get through it
Playing cuphead with a friend is the best gaming experience
lol tru, for me i let out a victory cry regardless haha
"The game never gets easy. You just get better." - Monster Hunter
Wait! Dudn't you say.... wait no, ummmmmMMMMMMMM- ARGH I'M CONFUSED, RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Debatable.
Unless its Dark Souls or Nioh, in which case it just means it's hard.
true
Reese Bell sometimes games are hard but with practice, you get better, then dark souls says fuck y’all just for ragequits
Instead of saying "git gud", I'm gonna share some things I saw in your gameplay that would improve your experience.
1. In every battle on foot, I saw you using peashooter and the homing weapon. An NPC tells you that different bosses should be approached with different weapons. The peashooter is ok, but it's like going against all megaman bosses with the buster. The homing shooter is honestly a lazymans weapon. It allows you to ignore actually aiming at obstacles, but it's very very weak, and in later bosses it can even hinder you because you might hit random items and not the enemy. Charge shot is a godsend in almost every boss fight and should be your first purchase. Roundabout is incredible for damage and crowd control. Try it on the first phase of the phantom train for an example. Spread shot is also great for up close crowd control at awkward angles, and fast up close damage. The only weapon I didn't use is lobber. I promise if you master all weapons, you'll realize the bosses were balanced to be inherently weaker to different approaches.
2. Off my last point, the enemy health bar really isn't necessary. It would be nice to have, but once you understand how to approach a fight, you get a feel for where you are at in a phase. Almost every boss dies in around 2 to maybe 3 mins on the longer bosses. If you are using good strategy, the length of time left doesn't matter.
3. The robot...you take out the bottom panel first, then the top beam, then the middle. That alone will solve that fight for you lol.
4. The devil fight has a glitch. On the corner screen when the snake comes out, you will always take damage if you stay in the corner. There is no enemy. Once the snake turns toward the camera to leave, immediately jump back and dash. No damage taken.
5. The fights are less about just being completely random, and more that most bosses have 2 to 4 attacks that cycle, and the order in which those cycles overlap can be random. Certain attack cycles that overlap are very difficult to avoid. But that's part of the beauty of the game. If every cycle was fixed and preplanned, then you will have one optimal path to beat every single boss, resulting in a very robotic experience. Having rng within cycle overlap allows for non random attacks to still require you to adapt to a boss fight that has minor differences everytime, which results in a fresh experience. Although I'll say once you master all weapons, even this factor is much less than you think.
6. You mentioned the dash helping but then said "what if I want to use a different charm?" The answer is you can but the fight will be harder. The game was balanced around you having a invincible dash as an option, just like in some levels the dash is useless and coffee makes more sense, and in the train level the autoparry helped me the most. It's just like the weapons. You need to find the best charm to bring to battle.
If you have time, I hope you'll play some of the bosses again. That voltar viking game is wayyyyy harder than cuphead lol so I know you have the skill. I just think basing on these clips, you haven't truly experienced the full game from a mechanics perspective.
Sorry for such a long comment. I just wanted to offer a different perspective since I like your videos and I thought you missed out on some of the fun in cuphead.
very good explanation. similar to my comment, only better worded and formatted. i do hope he goes over the comments, he did ask for our opinion.
+misterkeebler
"Sorry for such a long comment." --> Don't be! There's a difference between
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And you did the latter.
Glad someone pointed out his use of homing/peashooter. I was about to make a comment saying roughly the same thing.
Pretty much my opinion as well, charge shot is OP on most bosses. And i don't think that a player of a hard game should think like "what if i didn't had that charm equipped" but rather "hey, on this boss this charm is obviously better so i should equip it" - create different builds for different situations and you would not find yourself in a bad situation. It's like saying "hey, i can't hit this boss with lobber, but what if i wanted to use it here??? Obviously bad design!"
The best description for this game that I've heard is that when you beat a boss, it often feels more like you survived than triumphed. I think Mark Brown said it in his Cuphead video, though I'm not sure if those were his exact words.
I agree with most of the stuff in this video. Sometimes the attacks were kinda cheap, and when I finally beat a boss, I was far more likely to sigh in relief than cheer. I wouldn't want a health bar, but some sort of visual indicator that the enemy was on its last legs would've been nice, like maybe if it started flashing red in its last sliver of health. That way, the "Knockout!" wouldn't feel like it came completely out of nowhere.
But I still think it's a fantastic game.
Kevin Stevens I feel because of the lack of visuals when it comes to the last legs of a fight. Those last stages feel like a slog to get through. Despite them being only 2-3 minutes long. Those last stages of a boss fight feel like 10. Which leads to me feeling exhausted after just 10 minutes.
Kevin Stevens Most bosses have 3 stages and some of them 4. You can tell that if the boss has transformed into something exaggerated, it's almost guaranteed his last phase. If you are in the third stage of a boss and they only had an attack or two per stage, it has a fourth one.
I agree, in fact I love how the Devil in his very last phase is crying: it goes from being cocky to being miserable and when you land your final hit it's trully satisfying. Sadly, it's not always like this
I feels that way because most of the time "attack" means that you're just pressing "X" and the main issue is really avoiding the projects, but complaining about it is complaining about the game fundamentals, you just like the genre or not.
A fairly inaccurate dinosaur picture metal slug did it better
Just one more thing: can we stop pretending game journalism is attacking this game? Every single review from big gaming sites gave the game at least an 8/10
FireB4llz no one is arguing a game can not have artistic integrity. Some people are arguing that difficulty should be optional and there's arguments for and against that. Personally I'm a fan of when games a have a default difficulty like dark souls, binding of Isaac, mario and Zelda for that matter.
I think having a boss health indicator would do more harm than good. First because it would be a big piece of HUD for such a clean artstyle with minimal "game info", and second because the death card showing how close you were helps you getting a sense of the boss's health for next rounds, based on the damage you've dealt since the last phase, you rely on your own ability instead of having the game interfering to keep you informed.
Hrodgar Thorns at least for your character's case, they could offer visual cues that would tell you how much health you have left. Maybe have the cups begin to crack or make the facial expressions imply they're exhausted
It doesn't have to be big piece of HUD.
Also, you could turn whole screen in Cuphead black and show nothing except the sound all the time. Would that make it more difficult and make you rely on your abilities? Sure. Does that mean it's better? Depends. it just brings a new mechanic to the game, if it's done good then it's good, if it's done bad it's bad, if it's done just for a sake of cranking up the difficulty while not being integrated into rest of the system - it's lazy. And bad.
I got bored with the game mainly because of not knowing how much longer do I need to survive while the game knows it and hides if from me, felt like it's cheating me for difficulty sake, not an interesting challenge + lost my trust.
Making you unable to see the game and keeping away an information that isn't required to beat the boss is absolutely not the same thing. The game wants you to fail several times on its bosses in order to learn new info at each try and feel like you're always improving. If that's something that you find frustrating and that kills your will to play the game then fine, you don't like it, everyone hates things about otherwise popular games. I'm not part of that "more difficulty = better game" category, which I find stupid, it just makes sense for the game to let you try your best without telling you much, and then recap on your performance to see how you can do better next time.
Hrodgar Thorns The lack or reaction from the bosses runs deeper than being a minority opinion people have against it. For many people, a disconnect is felt when you shoot at something and it has zero reaction, almost as if you never hit it in the first place. What's worse is the lack of power in the shooting sound effect that makes hitting a boss with your bullets the least satisfying thing I've felt in a long time. This happens in many games, but in other games, the boss is too small to emote, wearing thick armor, or very stoic by nature. Cuphead's bosses are the opposite. It creates the drive to survive because it feels as if you are on the defensive which is really depowering. I don't want to feel like a weakling or a victim in a hard game: I want to feel like young David confidently rising to the challenge with my slingshot. Cuphead's boss fight, without it's visual style, would be so boring as to put people to sleep, because it's an empty chore, not a grandiose, dramatic experience.
I agree that the feedback is very minor, there's only this brief white blink when you land a hit. But in my opinion if there's something to fix it's that, making the shots more impactful, not making the boss's health visible so that you basically have a reminder of how many time you have left to deal damage until it's over, it would become about the bar and not about the character that you're facing.
I can totally see why people would be discouraged with the game as it is, I would be too, that's why I don't play it, but I still find that death card interesting for people who have the nerves and patience. If you take out the visual aesthetic then yeah I agree, the game is pretty bland, and people wouldn't praise it that much if it looked different, you just keep shooting until the boss is dead and avoid the things coming at you. The drive to play lies essentially in the expectation of the player to see the next creative animation, not in what interesting challenge they're going to be put against.
I think my main issue with Cuphead isn't the difficulty, but the fact some elements are too hard to read, with a large emphasis on form over function. For example, in the Dr. Kahl's Robot Boss fight, when the diamond projectiles are being shot out, their lack of an outline makes them a nightmare to read and dodge. Another example would be in the Skeleton Horse fight in King Dice's boss fight, where there's so many foreground elements passing by that it's difficult to keep track of projectiles and enemies.
Of course, I'm not saying Cuphead's a bad game, I'd probably rank it as among one of my favourite games of all time. I just find it strange how the game can have visually interesting, yet instantly readable fights like Grim Matchstick's Fiery Frolic, but completely ignore what made those fights fun and fair for seemingly no reason.
I do agree that Kahl's fight is a bit hectic and can be hard to read, but the Skeleton Horse is an overly simple fight because they put a lot in the foreground on purpose. Whether that's a fun system or not, that's another story.
The foreground elements felt like form over function to me too but it's probably a hard thing to get the balance right
I'd prefer an extra attack to dodge than those foreground elements getting in the way. The foreground bit makes it seem the game is stepping over the line of difficult but fair. Attacks should be numerous and overwhelming but be clear and telegraphed/predictable. It's a minor gripe though because the game nails this most of the time.
I have to disagree with that. I found Dr Kahl perfectly fair and manageable, and all of the projectiles are quite predictable. Their only problematic if the background gets in the way. Besides form and function always correlates. If a boss looks a certain way, you know what attack it's gonna do.
@@thesnatcher3616 the foreground does get in the way.. in dr kahl's there's like 3 foreground, the stick, bucket and another one..and oh boy, they cover quite the screen
and the background with red sky with red projectiles from the diamond.. and pink parryable with redsky background, in addition the 3 foreground(stick, bucket, and that thing)
i don't think it's quite fair.. just remove the foreground or make the projectiles Clearly different color..the aesthetic more less the same
I don't think health bars would've fit aesthetically with Cuphead, it's supposed to look like a cartoon not a video game
And yet it has the little HP thing at the bottom with the card counter.
nemirc And it fits the aesthetic of the game. And like you said, it's small.
Not knowing then bosses health might be a tad frustrating to some, but being unable to see your own is pretty dumb
i think making the cup of his head begin to crack would have looked nice
There are other ways you could show how much health you have
But it's a video game
I disagree on a few points in this video, but one of the main problems I'm seeing is you're going into each fight with the same tools. That's not going to work well. If you approach each obstacle with the same solution then you're in for a rough time. You need to use different weapons, charms, and supers for different bosses.
The clown, for example: For the weapons I chose the Roundabout and the Spread, my charm was Coffee, and the super art I chose was the invincibility. I found it quite efficient and I'm sure it was a different experience than what you went through on that boss.
The Roundabout I found was good for shooting him while not having to focus directly on him. I could dodge and jump around and my shots would often land because the "bullets" become larger on the return trip. It's good for most of the stages of the fight. I like using it on the first stage and the last stage, in particular.
The Spread does pretty good damage when you're up close to the boss. This weapon was most effective during the horse phase. I could stand under the boss and unload for maximum damage. If things get too hairy, and I'm unable to get out without a scratch, I had my super art to save me. It is also good during the last phase where you can stand right by his face and unload. If met with a hail of baseballs see super art.
The coffee I had selected so that my super would continuously build up, allowing me to use my super art more frequently, which brings in the most important tool for the fight:
Invincibility. Pop that bad boy when you're in a pinch and you're safe. Not only are you safe from in that instance, but you've got immunity to attack without any repercussions for a few moments. As mentioned above, at any point during the fight if you were in an impossible situation, you could use it to get you out (provided you had a full meter). The best time to use it, however, was during the fight is towards the end. When you're shooting at the clown and then the baseballs start getting thrown, activate your super art and keep unloading. It takes away the pressure of having to deal with those projectiles and you get to focus your attention and efforts on damaging the boss.
The great thing about this game is each boss is very unique, so figuring out the best strategies for dealing with each boss is quite enjoyable. The game gives you the tools to beat it efficiently. You just have to make proper use of them.
subseven He didn’t actually, there were several battles where he used the homing attack rather than the pea shooter. I agree with you that he didn’t switch it up enough, but your solution is like a bandaid over a series of gunshot wounds. You can switch around weapons all you like and strategize, and you may get lucky, but most of the major problems (getting caught by two conflicting attacks, for example) are still present.
Also, you must’ve missed the bit where he said, “Please don’t say Git Gud,” and I think “You just have to make proper use of them” is just ‘git gud’ in disguise. Learn to comprehend the whole video next time.
AJ The general issue with “git gud” is that it doesn’t actually provide any meaningful input. The video statement was made in regards to avoiding attacks in the heat of the actual battle, but comments like these emphasize that beating a boss starts at the menu screen more than anything. Being willing to experiment with your options and recognizing what works mitigates those problems. It isn’t just a band-aid or getting lucky, it’s half of the battle being won right at the outset, and I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the developers’ intentions in the first place.
You're absolutely right. These tactical options give players another meaningful decision to make and in my opinion, is a good game design. If we are to go with Snoman's logic, we should complain about how difficult Megaman is because we refuse to use anything but the default buster and armour.
ausreir Yes... don't most people strongly dislike Mega Man?
tru, i'll be honest, i didn't use invincibility the whole game eh hahaha, i only changed things up here n there, as i saw fit, but mainly just the weapons, i switched between 2 charms the whole game, didn't even buy the others lol, n weapons i pretty much only used peashooter, spread, and the auto aim one, except on king dice and the devil where i used the charger....i think for one or 2 other bosses i might've used lobber, but that's about it eh. same with specials, pretty much stayed with the first one the whole game, tried using the ghost one, but didn't really like it lol.
I feel like the bosses health being at the end is motivating. But that is just me
I liked the way they did boss health since it could taunt you with just how close or far you were from victory. It even shows you how many phases a boss has. Not knowing how much fight a boss has left in them maximizes the sense of relief when that "KNOCKOUT!" appears on the screen in addition to the gratification gained from surviving.
I'm not saying it's a better or worse system than visible health bars but unlike you I felt like it was a system that worked in Cuphead. Cuphead isn't Dark Souls, it's Contra and the old Contra games don't have health bars either (Gunstar Heroes did but I digress).
You got hit by the devil stretching his head out when he pulls his body back. Jump and dash to avoid it.
Bloodborne bosses have phases too and the health bar doesn't give away how many it has.
The point he makes about health bars is more than valid because it adds to the risk/reward mechanic, as well as strategy. No health bars means you just shoot until it happens to die.
nemirc Personally I always thought it was a nice touch because it comes as more of a surprise than anything, a sense of relief if you will.
I think that comes down to personal preference tho, but we really don't need another health bar on the screen I think
He didn't get hit by the devil stretching his head out because the edge of the screen is safe. It's a bug that everyone I know has experienced.
Corvus Veis When the devil pulls his head back it stretches and delays the hitbox. The game punishes you for choosing the wrong option there. You're supposed to duck under the snake while it's slithering forward. Then you don't get punished for running to an area you can't see.
pls no tanktops
*_P L S N O T A N K T O P S_*
I was thinking "please don't wear a tank top this video", then it fades into him wearing a tank top, saying "pls no tank tops". I got owned.
What did I say snowman
*ON A TANKTOP*
perfect example of ''do what i say, not what i do'' lol
have you gotten gud though?
i'm a dark souls series veteran
i think i can handle cuphead
i no hit O&S, and i am pretty good against midir
i like the 1t DS the most, but i played others
did you see his other videos?!?.... NO! he's not good, anything with challenge is "BAD GAME DESIGN" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Dani Andersen
have you even watched his videos?
he’s made “good game design” about really hard games (dark souls, shovel knight, volgarr the viking, undertale and super meatboi) and “bad game design” on really easy games (paper mario, clickers, mario party)
Razbuten Razbuten got 100k subs so fast he hasnt even gotten the check mark with hes name xD
@@daniandersen6013 do you hear yourself?
I liked the first couple hours I played in cuphead, then I got like 3/4 of the way through the second arena and all the enjoyment I had with it went away. Every boss just felt like I had to die at least 20 times just to learn what all it could do. One of my biggest complaints about cuphead that I don't see a lot of people saying is it can so damn hard to tell what can hurt you and what's just an aesthetic. Take the bee level for example. The honey on the bottom hurts you if you touch it, so for the longest time I thought the honey on the sides covering the platforms there also would hurt you. Seems logical, but it's just an aesthetic. I beat the game, but honestly it was just so I could have a leg to stand on when I talk shit on it. I really didn't enjoy it
That is definitely one complaint that I have made, You don't know what damages you and you have to find out the full nature of the bosses through multiple deaths. There were occasions where I didn't even know what I was meant to target and I was sometimes looking to guides to check whether I was progressing rather than for actual tips. I nonetheless enjoyed Cuphead and there is nothing wrong with the idea of survival and relief because it is a game that requires a lot of practice especially if it isn't content heavy to begin with. It is no doubt a modern classic that will be looked at fondly for ages to come.
great video. You addressed exactly one of the issues i had with this game, the randomness of attack patterns and stage hazards. I agree some level of randomness keeps repeated attempts refreshing. But when a good amount of a battle is heavily reliant on this, it adds more frustration directed at the game then yourself at a deserved death. It ends up not feeling fun and relieved that you beat the obstacle rather than gratified.
Great point about the health bars. I felt the same way, irritated to learn how close I came and sometimes surprised when I finished the boss. Some kind of status indication could have made it more satisfying
The Devil's imps have a telegraph and it isn't random. They always appear in a left-right-left-right pattern and they walk in from the foreground.
Something I noticed: a few "random" attacks were anything but. However, I can easily see a player missing the tells, since they were in the background. Bepi's train ALWAYS shows up on the roller coaster back there before entering the play area, and the demons run TO the direction in back that they'll run FROM in the foreground.
As for the "too much stuff" criticism, I noticed the background example was ALWAYS a plane level, and one where you didn't hang back (unlike the Bird boss)... with the Robot I can understand considering his arm attack, (though I'm pretty sure there's a tell for that too), but with Cala Maria? There's NEVER a reason to avoid that side of the screen.
ShadwSonic I definitely saw the coaster and demons coming it just didn't matter when they showed up on screen, nothing I could do with the timing
@@snomangaming just wait till they are coming out of the background, in that moment jump and dash while still keeping yourself in the corner. After a few tries, just jumping is enough to avoid them. You don't need to kill them, but if you equip the short distance shot, you cam kill them before they appear on screen
Love the video, but my ONE issue is describing the genre as Rage game, it just implies the joy or point is the anger when that is almost never the case, the anger is a requirement for for the payoff (which you explain is underplayed because of the HP bars which is fair). The term I hear more often is hardcore which emphasizes its distance from casual better imo. Just my opinion tho
7:19 You can see the train coming in the background.
You can also see the purple devils coming from the back
A lot of game reviewers can't see the attack indicator for the boss then they blame it on rng
"Health Bars" wouldn't really work well with the aesthetic of Cuphead, however, you can still show damage without having a health bar and I think that's something Cuphead should have implemented. Having the boss show wear and tear or having there movements be more panicked, frantic, and/or stammering about. The comment made about having too many projectiles on screen is kind of a misunderstanding of what this game is. Cuphead has a lot of inspiration from bullet hells (along with boss rushing, platformers, and rage games) thus the amount of threats on the screen at a time.
3:52 "Each individual match" earned the video it's thumbs up for how perfectly the words matched the image.
The only time when the 'randomness' gets painful is when aiming for s rank as sometimes some bosses won't generate enough parries on some runs to get the S. Also the retry button being a favorite of many is very true as the game gives you no reason to go into later stages with less health. Other than that everything is honestly manageable, even on expert, even with the array of patterns which just serve to help keep the match fresh.
Another time that randomness is painful is when you fight Quick Man. Wait...Your profile pic...
Yup once i get hit i just restart
yer i agree on certain bosses, if i got hit stupidly early, i'd restart, i didn't hav a problem with it, some other bosses, the later stages were easier than the beginning, so i wasn't as bothered.
My biggest gripe with Cuphead is how it overshadowed "A Hat in Time".
well maybe because cuphead was pushed on the front scene by microsoft... which make me worried even more about the signification nowaday of "indie games"
a hat in time is pretty much just as popular
I've seen decent buzz about both from my friends, but Cuphead has sold over 1 million copies, but Hat in Time only 50k :( I wish it had more exposure
i think cuphead earned it a little more due to how much hard work they did on the animation, but it's a shame that a hat in time didn't do better
honestly, i really want a hat in time. Looks like a super great game, and would love to support the devs.
You are by far one of the best on youtube. Love your content. Please keep it up.
Maybe if the bosses had like a visual queue of how hurt they are so you could gauge how much health they have.
8:30 That was a glitch in the game (which I believe is patched out) which I think is the attack hitbox from the devil's attack appearing on the other side. I think it's the same reason you can hit a Koopa in Super Mario Bros. at the top of the screen when the Koopa is at the bottom.
I haven't played cuphead, but I picked up Darkest Dungeon recently and everything you said here is 100% applicable to that game. You can have a full team of fully optimised fully equipped and trained level 6 adventurers in a level 5 dungeon, but oh no, your party was surprised going into this fight, because of a die roll you can neither see nor influence, which means your party order is now reversed, with your melee tanks at the back and ranged healers at the front, and too bad now they're all perma-dead. Or a boss randomly decides to attack your healer and crits, knocking them to death's door, and applying bleed, and your healer goes next and dies of the bleed before you can do anything.
I can understand randomness as a balancing factor in multiplayer games, but in single player games literally *who* enjoys the feeling of going into a situation 100% prepared and failing utterly regardless, through no fault of your own. It's not fun. That's why I love dark souls so much, I can beat it without dying in a single (long) sitting by now. You can literally never say that about games like darkest dungeon, because oh no, the game rolled a crit, you lose, sorry, please spend 4 more hours grinding to rebuild your level 6 team. Even classic roguelikes don't punish a failed run with hours of grinding, it's just bam, back into the action. Instead of winning being fun, losing is just painful.
Awesome video with great points as usual Snoman!
Love the video. Lots of good points. One thing I would like to point out is the Bepi the clown fight. You point out how the horse and roller coaster could trap you, which I agree. Happened to me lots, but there is a telegraph. The cart appears in the background. It can trap you, but it can be avoided.
Thank god im not the only one complaining about the foreground. If it really frustrates you, wait till you try expert. They have more projectiles on screen, and many behind foregrounds.
I agree 100% with everything in your vid. I loved the game but there are tons of moments, that the randomness gives you absolutely no chance and it feels unfair and not hard. Almost all these moments are in the bosses last or before last phases. Another example is the final phase of the pirate, where I was cornered by the beam and the crate fell on me and I could not do anything to avoid that, like triggering it to fall earlier or something. Then I saw in a video, that the bubbles the ship throws at you, can be avoided if you duck on the far left corner... I beat him on my next try with the roundabout gun in like 7 seconds, it seemed like a joke. Bu HOW the hell I suppose to know that he can't hit you in a specific corner? Was it a flaw or it was intentional to have that spot there? Another one is at the third phase of Djimmy the Great, the one with the sarcophagus. If you equip the bomb and stay at the up and right part of the screen, he can't do anything to you. Maybe you have to move a bit back to avoid the sig-zag planets projectible, but even with that it makes the whole phase like it doesn't exists. I discovered that accidentally and made feel that it was something the designers missed, not something I was supposed to discover.
Overall, they could make the final phases of some bosses more fair (especially that damn dragon) but it's like a taboo in the gaming community... If you claim that the game is too difficult or unfair at a point, you are automatically labeled. Proof are some of the comments here...
You can actually dodge the falling barrel while ducking under the laser just by dashing, though it’s not immediately obvious
with the example he showed with the rollercoaster you can see in the background when it's about to come so you can be prepared and not let yourself get trapped the way he did.
Really enjoyed the video, thanks for making it
Thanks for pointing out the health bars! I gave it a thinkthrough and I think one of the reason I like the lack of them so much is because it reminds me of EarthBound, a childhood favouite
Just picked it up on switch. Absolutely love it but I completely agree with the random nature of some of the boss stages. You also made a really good point about the health bar.. Never really thought about it but it would change the way you play.
With difficult games it always feels as if you haven't accomplished anything, you've just somehow managed to beat it.
Hard difficulty is great sometimes but in a game like Dark Souls or Nioh you basically just get thrown into this hellish nightmare from the beginning.
Some say that it's the feeling of accomplishment they get via beating the hard part but for me all I feel is my sore wrists and my throbbing headache after trying to beat it.
You mention that there are moments that seem completely random, where in my experience, these seemingly random moments tend to have some telegraph hidden somewhere in the animation. Which is actually one of my favorite things about this game, using its handdrawn animation to its advantage with its ability to hide telegraphs. Usually difficult bosses boil down to remembering patterns or trying to find what random weapon its weak against, which is usually a lot of trial and error. But trying to find out what a boss's hidden tell is was very enjoyable to me. Pretty soon, any time a new boss hit me with a seemingly unavoidable blast, I start to wonder "alright, what's the trick?" and I start paying attention to its movements for clues. It almost felt like boxing, and looking for an opponents weak points.
I still had moments in the game where deaths felt random or unavoidable, but I felt they happened a lot less often, and I'm willing to chalk them up to tricks/telegraphs that I wasn't able to pick up on. Its after all, really hard to pay attention to it all when you're trying to dodge up to 3 or 4 different attacks.
Needless to say, I had a blast. I actually like how there's no health meter; one less thing to clutter up the screen, and I feel like health bars give the player an unfair "omnicient" advantage against the opponent. So long as the game makes it clear when I'm damaging the boss and when I'm not, I'm happy.
There were maybe, at most, 2 bosses that I genuinely sighed with relief after beating, hoping not to face them again. The giant robot was definitely one.
Am I the only one who ever realised that you probably could avoid Cala Maria's scream attack in the tunnel by shrinking yourself?
I really like it but I agree about the foreground objects. It’s very frustrating to not be able to see the edge of the screen because of some object, and I feel all of the things they put in the foreground could just have easily gone in the background. Yes some of the bosses are random but i feel with the foreground being removed or having a setting to move it back and possibly a boss health bar (though I’m still thinking about that one because of the stages) the game could be improved. I still really enjoyed the game but I agree there are some fights I’m just like “oh. Yay. I won” still love the animation and game though. Maybe just settings to modify these things would be nice ?
My only problem in the game are the deaths that seem cheap, like being on one side of the map and an enemy comes out right where you are without any previous warning
The lack of a health bar was never an issue for me. Not only do I like the resulting minimal HUD, but also I had a feeling for the boss's health the entire time. This made the final stage of a boss in the last moments so packed with suspense that was released all at once in a storm of satisfaction when the "Knockout!" screen appeared.
7:05 The roller coaster is telegraphed in the background.
When i beat a boss in cuphead i feel satisfaction for about 10 seconds then im right back to being pissed i wish the creators would have added a easy medium hard mode because the high difficulty is kind of a turn off and why most people don’t get to the end if cuphead i got the game today and im already considering a refund but i cant because i have more then 2 hours played on cuphead so i guess i just have to finish the game but no im not gonna fight king dice or the devil im just gonna select the “bad ending” and never touch this game again
imoff thatmilk
Thinking of playing that game again now?
Huh. Maybe you shouldn't have gotten this game in the first place if your not gonna finish it. Might as well then leave a bad review after.
imoff thatmilk
Or you could just not suck? Cuphead wasn’t made for players like you. Head on back to CoD.
@@chrism1518 Sad but true.
@@chrism1518 If he has beaten multiple bosses in two hours, I think he's a very okay player.
Hard games are good. Easy games are good. Insisting that one style of game be turned into another style of game is not good.
And how is this relevant?
Because of whiny journalists that think hard games are sinful.
Dannish I LOVE hard games. I even loved most of Cuphead, just pointing out a few things that kept it from feeling perfect to me:/ but it's still probably an 8/10
I wasn't referring to you specifically. Though I do think a few of your complaints were nitpicks.
It's game design analysis - it's going to be nitpicky. Doesn't mean that any single thing means the game is terrible, but just things he noticed while playing that he thought could be improved upon based on his experience.
I have usually avoided uber-challenging rage games but I felt like there was a certain lack of challenge in a lot of the games I’ve played in recent years. Cuphead was the first “rage game” I’ve played in a long time, and I found it so rewarding and so enthralling. Everything that made me yell “c’mon!” I ended up conquering by the time I finished the level. The game made me appreciate learning it. I couldn’t just cheese my way through it if I thought it was hard, I really had to push myself to overcome. So for me, a majority of the annoyances you described played into what I ended up loving the game for.
7:20 ...But you can see Beppi's roller coaster in the background. It clues you in on when it's going to come charging by.
I didn't play it, but just by watching this video about it, I can definitelly point out something that was not mentioned: cuphead is not only a run and gun game, but it has elements of the bullet hell style, especially on the airplane maps. And it makes much more sense if you think like that about why it doesn't show health bars, or why you die everytime.
Some bullet hell games doesn't show a boss health, but gives you some pointers of how much do you still need to go (the most common in old platforms was a boss getting red and more red as you hit them). Although the bosses transform and change attack patterns, it's not really a good indicator of how close you're to beat it.
Also, bullet hell is really chaotic and it's supposed to have certain elements of randomness in the attacks that you just can't predict. But, many of them has a continue option, or certain lifes you can get until you get an game over (obviously this was applied in arcade-oriented games like Metal Slug and Sonic Wings for example, but it would be really efficient if they thought more about that). Even if you could heal yourself would make the experience more enjoyable and pleasant (Please, ignore this last statement, idk if the game actually has this feature or not, but it doesn't seem like it)
But as you said, the animation is just gorgeous. I would tackle all this challenges with pleasure just for the sake of it.
I personally think that DKCR and DKCTF have some of the best bosses because when you beat them, you get that moment of satisfaction with the cutscene, then you get to shake the controller/spam buttons to beat up the boss. While i've never played cuphead, the screen just randomly saying knockout after grinding to beat that boss doesn't seem as good as the way bosses end in the donkey kong games.
since you've never played this game you'd best just go away you can't discuss your opinions on a game you've never even played
@@jessicapinkman-xm2eg my brother in christ this comment is three years old
This is an interesting video for me because I absolutely loved Cuphead, and because of that I decided to S rank every boss in the game on expert, and the fact that every boss is possible to S rank (you can't take any hits, need 3 parrys, and you have to use 6 ex cards, while also beating the boss in a certain amount of time) I think shows that while some scenarios may seem random at some points, there are always ways to predict or manipulate these moments so you don't get hit. So while in casual play some moments may seem random, there are definitely ways to get past all of these moments with the right timing, and you don't need smoke bomb to get out of them. When it comes to other design factors that you mention, such as the bosses not having health bars, I think that is just preference, because I don't really care whether the boss health is there or not. I personally like the feeling of "ALMOST THERE!!!" and then bing "A KNOCKOUT!!!" and then you pop off, so not having a health bar seems to make encounters more suspenseful. The only thing in Cuphead that I think is a design flaw is the parry system because it ends up being pretty gimmicky, and while it is a satisfying mechanic to use, it doesn't get to be used enough, and that kind of disappointed me, but not enough to dampen the entire experience. Also on S rank, pure RNG can cause not enough or no parries at all to appear on some bosses i.e. Grim Matchstick and Cala Maria. I really liked the video, because I have heard some people make similar arguments about the game, but I feel you presented them way better, so I can understand your viewpoint fully. If you took the time to read this block of words, thanks.
Hey thanks for having a really insightful comment hehe :) Yeah, like a lot of it will definitely come down to preference and you're totally right, like if I had spent enough time mastering everything, I'm sure I wouldn't have a lot of the same arguments, but I had no desire to come back and beat them again, it was too annoying the first time lol, but hey good job!
The whole point of only showing the healthbars after you die is to tell you how close you were and to motivate that you can push through the entire way on your next attempt
You're not supposed to be in the corner for that devil attack. You're supposed to be under him.
Doesn't matter. It looks like you can be in the corner, so you should be able to be in the corner. The little devils were a bad design choice all around anyway, and the bug where you get hit by nothing (which everyone I know has experienced) makes it even worse.
Corvus Veis surely the train of thought should then be "huh, I can dodge the devil by hiding in the corner but then the demons get me. Maybe there's a different way to dodge this attack then?"
@Corvus Veis no. it matters a lot. if you run to the side, thats your problem for limiting your vision and reaction time. it makes more sense to duck under, which gives you plenty of time to kill imps too. without the imps, the fight would be even easier than it already is... also, bugs are bugs, dont include them as part of your reasoning.
But if you're under it, you ain't getting over him
CCSir What does getting over him have to do with anything?
The lack of any sort of feedback on hit besides small light flickering and the lack of health bars to show your progress on the boss are actually the most mentioned problems of Cuphead. That's the reason I've decided to pass on that.
Most of the bosses were fair, but there are some areas of the game you can't avoid no matter what you do.
For example: Captain Brineybeard.
When the ship is firing a laser at you and the barrel is raining down on you at the same time, there's nowhere to go.
You bring up a good point about the health bar and how the game would be so much more satisfying if we could actually see how much farther we have to go. Though as the game went on I eventually developed a 6th sense as to how much health was left based on how long I've been bullet sponging, so there was that.
I'd say the best part is the art style. Now adays so many games are "pixel art for nostalgia" and they barely utilize the power of modern computing power (or at least that's the impression they give off). Cuphead in my opinion is how most modern indie games should look; maybe not THIS detailed, but at least doing things that weren't possible 20 years ago (but instead we get games that want to emulate the look of games from 25-30 years ago).
For me what would have made cuphead better is more platforming levels. The boss battles are alright, but I love platformers, and those levels are my favorite.
simply making the boss appear redder as the fight went on to signify health would be great
Or even giving them unique visual tells, like having the clown start sweating towards the end
I think this was a fair assessment. I loved the game, but it isn't without its flaws. No game is. I think the random elements were there to add a sense of dynamic play to each attempt so no attempt feels exactly the same, but maybe they could have looked into some of these phases more in-depth to make sure that no combination of these attacks were absolutely impossible to dodge. Being predictable is not a bad thing and certainly does not take away from the difficulty of these kinds of games. Having certain phases where it is impossible to avoid damage all for the sake of dynamic play hurts the experience somewhat, and I do agree that this should be at least looked at in any future games the developers may attempt. Very good video, sir!
Dr. Khals robot on expert mode is true pain, when I actually beat I didn't feel accomplished I felt relived that it was over
Nice to see some critique! I've been hearing nothing but good stuff about Cuphead.
Cuphead was my first “hard” game. My family owned all the souls games and bloodborne, but just didn’t ever feel the need to play them. Cuphead sparked my love for rougelikes and bossrushes/twitch playforming. I would later play all the souls games and I’m now doing Sekiro and I love it all
my problem with this game is it almost seemed to turn much more gimmicky after the first island. during the first island, it was in my top three favourite games ever, but then i moved onto to island 2, played the first three and it instantly jumped into the teens. the game is great, and could even be as great as odyssey, but it just got worse as it went on
7:12 this kind of reminds me of the last 2 bossfights in the specter knight campaign of shovel knight, some of the attack AI can trap you into taking damage, which when in NG+ can be a death sentence
I love these analytical videos but i have to admit I like it better when the first 2 thirds of the video is all screen capture with only the last third showing snowman. Great videos, just my input
Thank you for putting that into words. I have the game and watched my brother play it some but it seemed lacking in fun somehow so I haven't played it. Your video explains what I was feeling intuitively.
I usually like your stuff but this seemed like you looking at the game through a lens of something it isn't. It isn't meant to be a rage game really, it's just hard. Same way I don't think dark souls is a rage game. Rage games tend to rely on reflexes where something like Cuphead does use reflexes, but it uses strategy and learning more.
Gersonzero yeah, he actively said that he didn't use the smoke bomb and then complained about difficulty. If you aren't using the tools the game provides you, then you don't have a right to complain
Moist Splash when he says rage game he's referring to this and stuff like dark souls, not what you are referring to
Moist Splash i agree i feel that calling a game a rage game is subjective and it depends on the players skill
Marcar9 Marcar9 But dark souls isn't a rage game. Dark souls is hard, but it's fair. If you put in the time and planning, it doesn't have to be hard. Same thing here
Then what is a rage game?
I'm currently on my first playthrough. Defeated 6 bosses so far.
Though I did die quite a bit against some of them I can't really say I have felt frustrated against any of the bosses yet. Just need to memorize the visual cues of what attacks they'll use next.
I don't mind that the bosses have no health bars. When 'Knock out' appears on the screen, it fills me with a sense of satisfaction for overcoming a difficult battle.
It's not so much the bosses that I have found difficult. The Run and Gun stages are possibly more frustrating as there are no checkpoints.
4:37 that exact aspect reinforced the game for me and gave me confidence, I wasn't mad I was just there, it made me determined to finish the fight, as I knew I was right there and I knew I was able to make it.
Him: If you're stuck in the corner because of the dragon attack
Me: D U C K
Your note on the health bars is very grounded in logic and I love what you had to say on it. I can definitely agree that non-bosses don't need health bars, but a boss always needs a visual representation of progression to satisfy the player's accomplishments
and their feels of such. I think a well-animated game like Cuphead would have benefited greatly if they put the extra time into giving at least one extra "passive-animation-state" when the boss reaches a critically low health value like 15%~ or so. Obviously multiple states would be better, maybe one for 50%, another for 20% and another for 5%~. But, a pure health-percentage bar would do wonders.
I adore Cuphead's style, and I also really appreciate youtubers like you and Mark Brown who dissect the game and look at it from a deeper design perspective. I don't think I will appreciate playing this game as much as I do just looking at it, as the randomness you described feels overwhelming just to watch for me. Thanks for talking about this though!
This is why Nightmare King Grimm's battle from Hollow Knight is such a good example of a boss. Your first encounter with him will be a short one from how quickly he'll whoop your ass, but as the attempts progress the boss seems to slow down as you start to learn the visual queues to dodge his attacks. The winning attempt truly does feel like a dance. And his Pufferfish attack happens whenever he's at 25 percent HP, 50 percent HP and 75 percent HP, showing how far you are into the fight.
This is also applicable to Troupe Master Grimm regarding the pufferfish, which was very helpful to know what stage I was on (75% health remaining, 50% health remaining etc). It was such a unique mechanic: if more bosses used something like this then you wouldn't need boss health bars.
Health bars on bosses in games like this are a necessity, in my mind, and you hit the nail on the head in explaining why. Great video!
I love Cuphead's music and animation! But yeah I still think it is a Metal Slug game painted with 30s cartoon aesthetics.
P.S.
Have you played or at least known Doki Doki Literature Club? If yes then what do you think about shock value or interface breaking in games?
P.P.S.
I want your tank top.
I agree with parts of what you said, like with things impeding your view or too much going on with the robot, not to mention the medusa stone vision. however there are a few that I disagree with.
One being the lack of a health bar having the boss's health on screen while nice could potentially be distracting, and with so many attacks needing full focus it could cause loss of focus, and for me at least dying and seeing how close I was to finishing was less of a angry damn, and more of a damn I was so close now I know for sure I can get them next time.
The exception to that however was the robot boss where the meter does not move at all until you completely destroy the body which felt more discouraging the the other bosses.
I also liked felt that some of the bosses were more suitable for different shot types, for example I found that using the lobber against matchstick made the fight more manageable I was able to stay high and rarely had any issues with the clouds(could be wrong but they seem to be somewhat generated based on your position), or with beppi where using the scatter shot could quickly pop the balloon dogs, and fights like that encouraged me to try different tactics and charms. like how smoke bomb can't be used in flight levels I would use the coffee or if I was struggling the extra heart.
Another thing I noticed was that some of attacks had calls, such as beppe's train which you can see in the background before it enters the stage.
Something that I do think it somewhat messed up at was in some bosses it was not clear that you could duck under attacks like at 3:10 with the slimes punch, or the devil's foot clap
The only boss that really irritated me to the point of real rage was the honeycomb tower bee boss, only being able to parry at the top of the orbs, plus always having to jump vertically platform to platform was a pain, that was one of the few where the rng was a major issue for me
I totally agree with about the Devil, the Robot and the Honey Bee boss fights, but the rest of tought it was pretty fair, and especially that frozen attack from the Mermaid/Medusa, if you mash fast enough you will break free pretty much intantily, but overall I really, really like this game, definitely one of the best games I play this year
I feel like if the whole news journalist controversy hadn't happened, Cuphead would not have been nearly as successful. Instead you get all these people playing just to prove "Hey guys I'm better than game journalists lol" when in reality it was probably too hard for them to handle.
Then again I didn't play Cuphead and I'm also a little salty it overshadowed A Hat in Time.
OnlyFriendlyGuy you're very honest. I appreciate that.
Just beat this game 30 min after this video came out so good timing! I highly agree with a lot of what you said. Hotline Miami and Super Meat Boy are 2 of my favorite games, and I bought Cuphead because I thought it would be the perfect game for me. And I loved the game! However I do think the RNG components went too far on some of the bosses. The honey bee boss battle was my least favorite because of how random and unfair the platform positioning could feel. It took me almost an hour and I didn't even feel that satisfied like you said these kind of games should make you feel. My favorite boss was the Rat in the can because I thought it was well balanced, satisfying, and It made me feel like I was in a Tom and Jerry show!
For some reason I beat the honey bee boss so easily. I just jumped in the invisible platforms and waited the missiles. But Dr. Khal's Robot HOLY SHIT I STILL DIDN'T BEAT THAT CRAP
João Pedro I've heard a lot about the robot boss being really difficult for many, but it felt like just a normal one for me! Only took me 20 min to learn and beat.
Zanee It's always interesting to see how different people find different bosses. I'd have to agree on the Bee one. Too many times I found myself with nothing to jump on.
Zanee every boss took me 1hour to 2hours+ and im on world 2 expert and i love it
On the dragon attack in the devil fight at 8:30 I think the fact that demons can come from the sides of the screen should signify to you that maybe you shouldn't just blindly walk to the edge of the screen to dodge it, but rather, get below him at the right spot, then you barely have to move.
A lot of patterns in games like this (e.g. Wings of Vi) are like this. Where your first instinct is to create the most distance between you and an attack, but that's not the right course of action.
you brought up some pretty good points, I felt the same way about some of the complaints in the video, for example cala maria's freezing attack felt pretty unfair at times, it would have been better if you could at least dodge it. allot of the complaints I had weren't too detrimental to the gameplay though, at least in my opinion, the rouge misplaced clouds did make the grim matchstick fight annoying at times, but it only happened every once in a while so it wasn't too bad
7:06 But the roller coaster is telegraphed in the background so you can easily play around it
Still almost impossible to avoid getting cornered like at 7:17. Not a fun element.
The reason you get hit anyways in the left corner is that the devil has a hitbox there
it's a glitch
About the Devil's snake-head attack, you can hide under the gaps he leaves while moving and duck to avoid him when he retracts. Don't worry about the mini-demons during this either, you can turn while ducking to shoot them.
Oh, and the "nothing on the left side of the screen" thing is a bug.
The health bar thing is a neat point, especially because you can test it out in a decent number of games. Like, give Ice Titan or Sephiroth a try in the Olympus Coliseum in KH1 without Scan. You can just turn it off if you want.
In fact Ice Titan seems like a really neat test case, because you can't change much in your behavior based on the health of your enemy in that fight. You're still just trying to catch damage opportunities where you can and there's little to no sense of "powering through."
Ice Titan is also an interesting counterpoint to the "madness on screen late in the fight" argument. If Cuphead's levels are actually flawed due to this, it's probably this PLUS another factor. To me what makes it less of an issue with KH is that there's a recovery system. You're not on a flat 3 hits to death. This allows some breathing room so that even if a hit occurs that is literally Just Not Fair, that's recoverable. In fact if you've got MP Rage you can take INFINITY hits as long as you can also find time to use Cure. But then, this kind of damage forgiveness is what makes KH decidedly NOT a Rage Game, even if its optional bosses start to dip their toes in those waters.
I just wanted a game to rekindle my passion for cutthroat arcade gitgudness
THE TANK TOP YES
For real though. Way to give a polite middle finger to the haters. It's more class than they showed you.
TheKiss LOL that's a great way to describe it
This video really showed me how different of an experience I had playing cuphead with a friend through the entire game. Almost everything this video talks about, unfair hits, too much on the screen, not knowing how close you were, kind of just wasn't part of my experience at all, and that's because I played it in co-op mode. With that, all the nonsense and unfairness kind of felt more fair, because your buddy was always right there to zip around and revive you as fast as possible. And when you lost for the 1400th time, you had your friend their with you to share the pain. So I guess I never saw the game in this light, and really just felt that it was another part of the madness, and made it even more fun for me and my friend. Co-op just felt like the right way to play, with cuphead and mugman working together to get their souls back from the devil, and when we finally beat it I couldn't believe how good it felt, because we had done it together. Anyway, that's just my 2 cents. I bet all this stuff is completely valid and much more in your face when it's in single player mode. I still haven't had the heart to go back and try it for myself.
I’m honestly really surprised by your experience and a lot of the points you made. For me, defeating a Cuphead boss ALWAYS filled me with a sense of triumph, I’d get up and cheer and jump and scream “YES!” and then I’d take a celebratory break before coming back to face the next challenge. On my first playthrough, when I had to struggle in each fight since I wasn’t at my current skill level yet, every single boss defeat felt like this empowering victory. Some bosses I was stuck on for multiple hours, and when I finally got that knockout, it made me feel like I was on top of the world.
Also, I didn’t experience any of the “unfair randomness” you describe. Sure, there’s randomness to nearly each boss fight, but the only one I found that didn’t seem to be a learnable pattern or something you could easily anticipate were the platforms in Rumor Honeybottoms’ fight. It was kinda always a gamble whether you’d have a platform to land on or not. In every other fight however, the randomness still felt learnable and easy to predict once you’ve gotten skilled enough and become familiar with the attack patterns. In my opinion and my experience, this game is incredibly difficult and challenging, but is still very *fair.* I never felt like I wasn’t in control, or like I was being cheated by the game. It always felt like the mistakes were on my part, they were my fault, and I had to learn how to avoid making the same mistake again.
A good example I’ve got is the King Dice fight. King Dice felt impossible on my first go around, I just could not figure out how to parry the cards, and it felt unfair in that moment. But I later discovered that I just wasn’t doing it right. I was frantic, so I was spamming the button multiple times thinking that would help me get quick parries. On the contrary, you need to time your button press properly to when you’re about to land on a pink card, and in doing so you will successfully parry. I had to learn and get used to what parrying felt like. And unfortunately for me, I had not learned how to do so before the King Dice fight because once I got the P Sugar charm, I used that for many of my fights and unintentionally put myself at a disadvantage, because I didn’t allow myself to learn how parrying worked beforehand. The King Dice fight forces the player to parry the way you have to under normal circumstances, without the help of P Sugar. And in my opinion, I think that’s a good thing. Parrying is a pretty important function of Cuphead, and I think it would suck if P Sugar always allowed you to skip out on actually learning how to do it and becoming skilled at it.
Long comment and I know this video is old but I wanted to share my experience anyways. It’s fascinating how players have such different experiences with this game, in all its aspects.
Also I personally enjoy the boss health bar gimmick in this game. I found it much more exciting to be unsure how close I am or not, so I become hyper focused on performing my best and trying to hold out for as long as needed, and when I saw and heard the knockout screen, it was an exhilarating surprise!
I really liked cuphead but I think you brought up some really good points!
My favorite part is when the decoration in the foreground occludes part of the scene in the middle of an aerial bullet hell battle.
I am not mad at all.
you are not alone in the devil dragon thing every time I am force to go in the left side I always jump to avoid being hit by nothing
Zen Advent Just duck under him so you don't get hit instead of moving into a corner
yeah but the risk of being hit is there since the body is moving in a wavy pattern
I personally like the fact that you need to focus on a lot of things, it keeps you focused on the screen and awake. And that's the thing that keeps you focused on the screen, some games makes health bars to the bosses but eventually I will know where I usually die and I wont look at the screen until I get really far away now once in a while this IS a case in cuphead for me but only in very challenging bosses where I can try something easier. Other than that the music is actually my health bar at cuphead. try focusing on the music next time you play, usually each boss switches phase at a specific part of the music if you hold the shoot button what most people do through the entire button. for example: in sugarland shimmy the final phase comes somewhere around the change of the song to the part where the melody is only played by one instrument, the music changes tone and there is another instrument that plays but isnt minor. ok, better example: in beppi's fight the melody starts at the transition to the second phase. if you dont find it a good healthbar it's your opinion and I respect it, I personally like the game that way.
by the way I feel more acomplishement when it takes me by surprise but its just me
My annoyance with cuphead is 3 things
1. Lack of feedback- I feel like I'm shooting a potato gun at a brick wall the whole fight, the game feeds off it's visual flare, use small cartoon effects when we hit with a hard attack like the charge or ex attacks not just white outline. Also a bit of an indication, small hint like physical damage on the boss would let you feel more hype and determined when the boss seems to be getting weaker.
2. Lack of balancing on the items- I managed to beat the game with smoothness with 3 purchases, the round about, the charge shot, and the smoke bomb. I got through 85% of the bosses with this set up. Smoke bomb is almost universally the best charm in the game, no draw backs and invincibility frames on dashes, why take an extra hit point and lose damage, when you can easily avoid most attacks and still keep your damage. The charge shot steam rolls bosses when you land at least 2/3rd of your shots.
3. Lack of " Yes!" moments- 30% of the time when I beat the boss, I either when " Finally can I stop now?" Or " Well that wasn't fun, thank god it's over." Either the bosses are just bullet sponges or they other 70% where the climb to finally mechanically fucking them was kinda fun, and when I heard " Knockout!" I would go.... oh so I did kill him, well shoot didn't see that coming. Or worst, last hit I'm like " Be nice if there was a hint to know that, wouldn't have spent all my time dodging the 20 projectiles on screen and just shot the fucker."
Fine game just too annoying to play longer then an hour at a time.
For me with the no health bars my heart races hoping he is close to dead. I enjoy it more because it makes me focus the entire match
I'll admit I feel very conflicted about Cuphead. When I started it, I loved it but recently I completely dropped it and wasn't playing at all. I just feel tired. When I was playing, often it seemed like the win or loss was more depended on luck than on skill.
I had the same issue in the devil fight and only on the left side of the screen. I think it's just a glitch. I learned that if you jump at just at the right time you can dodge the hit consistently, including the running devils.
So in your example about beppi, where getting cornered leads to unfair damage, if you dash before reaching maximum jump height you can get between the gap of the horseshoes and not collide with the rollercoaster. In short, it isn't unfair, simply demanding. Dashing in the air cuts vertical momentum. Though it feels like bad luck to you, ultimately you are responsible. You also control when and where the phase shifts.
Regarding cala maria, that is an understandable frustration and one that used to bother me as well, but after enough practice and observation of the video, the real issue is your mash time. You should be preemptively moving so that you have enough time to mash out. Mashing out of petrification should take less than half a second. You are taking a full second and a half. That is why it feels unfair. You can also mitigate bumping into the spiked obstacles from that paralysis, by simply playing further back on the screen. You dont want to eat petrification half way up the screen. Again, not unfair, simply poor decision making.
If the demon enters from the same side of the screen the snake head pushes you towards on the devil fight, just jump and dash against the screen edge and he will pass under you harmlessly. Its very far from near impossible to dodge, and actually quite simplistic once you get it. The lingering hitbox the snake leaves is poorly represented, I agree with that, but this too is circumvented entirely by just jumping and dashing back to center as the snake retreats.
Ultimately I understand your discussion is one of "FEELING" and you aren't saying these things are literally impossible. But the reality is that feeling is mislead by assumption. You create an interesting video and present a fascinating point but at the end of the day I disagree. Your "feelings" of unfairness come from a lack of understanding of the nuances of the mechanics presented to you. That is not the games fault. I actually argue that this game is so fair, that it can be beaten front to back without taking a single hit. I've done it twice and even uploaded it on my channel so I'm not just talking out of my ass on that. Its very doable, but frustration comes in lack of knowledge.
Ultimately, regardless of your feelings, none of this game is out of your control. That is something a lot of people have trouble accepting, and that's okay, but I'm living proof. We're allowed to differ in opinion and I still appreciate the thought and work you put into the video even if I disagree with it. I Wish you the best. Good luck!
First of all, I saw your hitless runs a while ago and you're amazing. Second of all, while I agree most of the game is fair, there are certain unfair parts. Rumor Honeybottom's platforms can just not spawn at times, which ruins multiple otherwise S-Rank attempts, and Cala Maria's paralysis can screw you up no matter how well you plan it out. The game is *near* perfect, but some attacks are unavoidable when RNGesus does not shine down on you.
Cuphead is one of my favorite games of all time. Despite that, I agree with pretty much every point you made. The only one i truly disagree with is the one about how the Boss getting knocked out Caught you by surprise and therefore felt less rewarding. Personally, every time that knockout screen came up I felt amazing. Great vid Though!
same
There's this neat feature that people always seem to overlook called settings maybe you should try it
when i think back to my experience with this game my initial thought is the frustration i felt, but the more i think about it the more i realize how much fun i actually had