I do wish Criterion Dungeons ended up like this in FFXIV. A mix of what they are currently with Deep Dungeon mechanics (in regard to pick-up loot). Hell, if they use PvP skills, they could easily scale it up for ability-changing loot like the opal/sapphire/emerald/ruby upgrades.
As an FFXIV raider, I already know that the mechanics and aesthetics were heavily inspired by the game. In fact a friend was trying to sell the game to me before it's full release by just describing it as "FFXIV, but 2d and roguelike" and honestly I was sold so fast.
one player is a hellish bullet hell, two/three/four players everyone must play perfect, but there is less spread patterns when you have only one buddy so its significantly easier to coordinate in very tight spaces, because arena is always the same size
@@AgentOracle That only depends on which "big" company. I mean, any company that makes enough money to be famous across a wide range of people can already be considered big. For example, you cannot really call Hoyoverse(the ones making Genshin Impact) a small studio in any capacity with how much money they're raking in selling Gacha mechanic while still getting a lot of people playing their games and popularity beyond them.
Love the video, banger as always. But uh, I noticed you missed something very important about the game; the soundtrack. It is CRIMINAL it wasn't at least mentioned. The whole game has a S tier track, especially Emerald Lakeside.
Maybe it's just me My voice, my face, my personality What would I have to be? If it's for you then I would change my every thing...! When I look into the jade lakeside My darkened silhouette is all that I can see But soon I'll shine, just as bright as you And then you'll see me NGL the lyrics go hard
Fun Fact: This game is a sequel to a game called "Maiden and Spell" which is essentially a non-roguelike, single player version of the game. Maiden and Spell is inspired directly by Touhou Project, which means that "Lunar" mode is a direct parallel to the "Lunatic" difficulty. Due to the notorious difficulty of the "Lunatic" difficulty and it's legacy on the Touhou community, there's a good chance that the "Lunar" mode was specifically designed to be almost impossible.
aaaaaaaa I'm so happy to see Skooch reviewing this game I've been anticipating it for so long now Additionally very important information: You can pet the shopkeeper :>
if i had a penny everytime an ultrahard game with bossfights built around bullet hell mechanics was themed around bunnygirls i would have 2 pennies, which isnt much but its weird that it happened twice. And both this and Rabi Ribi as super fun games to boot.
A glowing review and doesn't even mention the great soundtrack or the fact that it has local multiplayer and remote play enabled so that you can get your friends in on your runs without them owning the game. Also the character interactions are genuinely very funny (to me) AND YOU CAN PET THE SHOPKEEPER CAT! There's seriously not a bad part of this game.
Good god the moment you said Red Darkhouse, i felt that pain. My favorite area though has to be the Scholars Nest. The moment the boss time stops you and gives you her next three attacks that you have to then play out is a really cool feeling when everyone does it perfectly Though you had mentioned difficult coop games? Idk if youve heard of it, but there's a roguelite coop called Ravenswatch and that's pretty difficult with an interesting skill ceiling for each character.
6:42 I'mma be real, Skooch: I see you upload, I watch. It doesn't matter what new thing it is you're talking about, I just like hearing you talk about stuff. Keep up the great work.
been playing this game for the last week or so of release quite a bit, it's really flown under the radar, and nice to see someone get more than a few thousand views on their video about it. Hopefully it brings more in to play as it's really satisfying
Red Darkhouse is also a bit of a problem because of all the Stage colors in the game, Red on Black is ironically the least contrasting color on a black background (The others being Blue, Purple, Yellow, Green and White) while also being the most bullet hell stage.
There's actually an option to change the colors of the boss attacks, there's one for "Magenta Standard" for maximal contrast if boss attacks aren't visible enough for the player.
Gloomhaven is a Fun unique Co-Op game on steam based off a RL board game. I found it fairly challenging and it has aspects of rogue-like games i think you might enjoy.
Watching that red dark house part made my brain giggle. Let me explain... I have always enjoyed bullet hell games for reason, and have always been good at them. A friend brought over a game called Mushihimesama that he had been obsessed with for days. I watched him play once before he handed the controller to me, and I beat the high score that he had spent days setting. Then there was Ikaruga which I fell in love with to the point that I could eventually beat it in a total of 11 lives. Eventually I took a test. Not some online IQ test that takes 20 minuets and tells you that you are a genius, but a timed test with more questions than there are minutes to complete the test (I think it averaged 30 seconds per question) and it mainly focused on spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and logic. I wasn't taking this test for myself, but I was curious about my results and asked the person at the end what my score was. He said that he couldn't tell me my exact score or which answers were right or wrong, but he told me that I had the 2nd highest score he had ever seen, because one time somebody handed back both tests to him with 100% perfect scores. This game seems to be the same shape as my brain if that makes sense. Like if this game were a puzzle box with holes my brain would fit in the Rabbit and Steel shaped hole (and the square hole obviously, because everything fits in the square hole). I was watching red dark house and feeling that with enough practice I can do this. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to sell my friends on a game called Rabbit and Steel about cute anime bunny girls in a punishing rogue-lite co-op bullet hell.
The funny thing about the dragon boss, is that she doesn't bring any new mechanics to the table. Crow boss has timestop, mouse boss has you chasing around adds, but dragon boss? It's all the exact same stuff you just saw with the regular enemies in the zone. Just layered on top of eachother in the most obnoxious, sensory-overload ways possible
The bunny girls is why I'd believe someone telling me it would be one of the hardest games around. games with bunny girl protagonist are often the hardest. See: Bunny Must Die or Rabi-Ribi or some Touhou games.
yeah, I do agree about the visibility of mechs, I play FFXIV and cleared most savages and ultimates being the shotcaller, and some mechs should need different animations\colors to see it better, like when a Laser will rotate, it only shows arrows and the colors of it always the same as the AoEs\Boss colors, while in FFXIV when it's rotating clockwise the arrows has 1 color, if rotating counterclockwise has another color, so some QoLs would be pretty nice on this game. found this game just yesterday and I really did like it, I like both FFXIV and bullet hell games, this is just perfect, just need improvements of the mechs' visibility as said here. (and heck, I always seen FFXIV as a bullet hell game but it's disguised as a 3D game with mechs lol)
As an experienced raider myself i can see one big aspect of MMO raiding thats been vastly simplified. And thats the "trying out mechanics" part of the encounter. This game always has clear indicators of what one is supposed to do when, it even spells it out in big flashing colours what you must do exactly. Usually MMOs do not do this. Their mechanics are sometimes quite veiled, and it is up to your team to find out exactly what to do when, memorise it and then execute on it. Which is an interesting choice, but a welcome one. It should probably reduce the time to learn bosses from hours to days to...well, hours.
Love this game :) also wanted to say that the actually first lunar clear with 4 players was done by cheesing the game and giving the entire team permanent invulnerability
One detail I love is that each area is set up to teach you the bosses mechanics before you fight the boss. For example, the crow boss (my personal favorite) has a teleport mechanic forcing you to position yourself somewhere that will be safe for where you teleport. But you know the boss will do this because an earlier enemy you fight in the same area uses this on you in an easy to dodge pattern. They do this for nearly every single mechanic in the game. Plus, a lot of these mechanics are special to their own area and won’t appear in other areas (with some exceptions)
As a FFXIV Raider this game was a must-buy and honestly it was exactly as messy and chaotic and fun as doing a new fight in XIV... definitely can recommand that game!
I love you skooch. You bring me such fantastic games for my brain. Roguelike doesnt scare me, it inspires me. The genre makes failure easier to take. Even though I fail more often. Genuinely you have a knack for these kinds of videos and keeping my attention. Super adhd and easily discouraged. Gonna give this a look! And they have a DEMO?!? games with demos are automatically given big points
A lot of roguelikes a big problem though: Making you start from scratch and go through stages that aren't challenging to you anymore. It makes them addicting when you just start them, because it's fun to make a build and stuff, but that mechanic can become a hassle once you have to go to the same tutorial stage for the 100th time without any challenge just to pick up your starting build.
Been grinding Lunar solo, gotten to the final boss of some of the zones a few times. If you don’t get a good item in the tutorial zone resetting is required as even with 100% uptime certain characters cannot meet the damage check.
Idk if skooch is gonna see this But if you want something similar to this *terraria* with mods can provide an experience that you may be craving Calamity infurnum + fargos souls mod is maybe something you would enjoy, based on what was in this video
Ok Skoo, i know you asked for hard co-op "games" but you just brought an idea to my head : -Bring at least 3 Elden Ring players out of your friend. -Make them install the "Seamless co-op" mod, the 1.5.1 version, not 2.0 Make them install the "Elden ring Reforged mod" -Start a game, do the prologue, go to a site of grace, change the difficulty to "Raid mode" You are now ready to suffer :) In all seriousness tho, ER is a big game, so if you're looking for a one and done experience, that's not gonna happen. But if you got a few pals with a decent pc, just give it a lil try. I know this wouldn't make great content due to the stability for Seamless coop mod, so it might not be worth your time, but still, it can be fun :)
Secrets of Grindea. I recommend Secrets of Grindea. It very good. Plays very well~ it's four player co-op and has both a story mode and roguelike mode that are BOTH co-op! I would recommend more people play this game. It's a lovely game that deserves to be seen. If you like Legend of Mana, Link to the Past, Hades..just..so many inspirations that come together to make a great game. I would love for Skooch to play this.
Personally I recommend you and your friends to play "full metal furies" (not furrys tho). It's a fantastic game with fun mechanics and also decently hard and a puzzle game. Loved it with my friends, hope you give it a try ^^
I never thought skooch would make a video about one of my favorite games that has come out of recent. Also hello from the 2.5% of players to clear hard.
For challenging co-op games i can recommend: Both Payday games, GTFO, Serious Sam (first and second encounter). And for 2-player co-op i can think of: N++, battleblock theater, super cyborg, and maybe synthetik: legion rising.
This gives me life considering the solo dev was highly inspired by FFXIV raiding, especially older content like the E8S or Edens 8 Savage fight with Shiva. I wouldnt be surprised if there's a light's rampant mechanic snuck in there somewhere 😂
If you want to see how insane Lunar gets one day because you're bored, if you join a Lunar mode run with 4 people already in it, you can just spectate their run. And uh. The ones I spectated went to the dragon place, which, I think, is the genuinely hardest area. And OHMYG-
You know Skooch, if you wanted you could always try final fantasy 14 for your co-op experience. Yes there is a jrpg's worth of content before the end game hard stuff, but it's a story worth enjoying, especially if you have folks to meme through it with. All of the raids are done in such a way that even the ten year old ones can still be done at roughly the difficulty they were run from, you can do 2/3rds of the game for free, including the first three raid series, and once you get to the end of that free trial, you'll have access to "ultimate" raids, what are generally considered some of the hardest, and best designed co-op experiences in gaming, with their "prog time" the amount of time spent practicing, measured in weeks and months. For what it's worth there's also no pay to win, gatcha or predatory monetization.
I'm just putting this out here right now for anyone that just heard of the game and wants to try it I've played the game non stop from its release and sometimes with some friends for fun and I am also very experienced in bullet hell games as I've played them for almost my entire life and it took me almost my entire 150 hour playtime to be able to beat lunar difficulty solo (the one after hard mode) but don't be discouraged the game is hard but fair the mechanics are easy to learn and with some dedication I'm sure anyone can beat lunar difficulty, just be warned enemy mechanics changes dramatically when playing with more players so gl to everyone and don't forget to enjoy the game and stay calm as in the end this isn't just a bullet hell game its a rouge lite :))
Thank for showing this gem to more gamers! This is awesome for Ppl who raided back in the day but dont have time to grind out an MMO and find 10+ ppl for Raiding every week.
If you want some recomendations on coop games i recomend "Lovers in a dangerous spacetime": despite the cute aesthetics the game's quite challenging especially on hard, requiring your team to coordinately and quickly move between the ship's control stations. Local coop only but remote play together might work for you.
Actrually, for the 'mmo raid like' there is this game called mini healer. It's... interesting, played it a bunch. In that game you play as the healer for a 4 person party and have to try to keep them alive. You can tell the party which enemy to target first, but otherwise it's mostly deciding the optimal healing, dealing with debuffs and interacting with boss mechanics by making sure to stand on the right spot. Game has hit a pause in development due to the dev having RL issues last year but seems that work is being done once again.
If you want a fun challenge for co-op play, then I can think of a couple (though idk if you’ve already covered them before or not): Risk of Rain Returns (Monsoon difficulty) Risk of Rain 2 (Eclipse mode) Deep Rock Galactic (Haz 5+, also this game has fantastic mod support) *insert Monster Hunter game of preference here* Overcooked 2 Doubtless there’s more, but these are the ones I’m mostly used to
I feel like saying it’s a touhou game sells it short… all of the different abilities and combos of loot you’re able to rack up make the game feel way different :P
I've legit been enjoying Rabbit and Steel recently! Favorite rabbit's for me would be Sniper rabbit (Go green hair for the full Bucky'O'Hare experience!) and Ancient rabbit, because her orange skin has a bird!
What a great morning, seeing a video about a game my friend recently recommended to me. About a recommendation of games with difficulty, I could hit you up with something called SYNTHETIK. It's a bit older top-down shooter but still has one of the most satisfying gun gameplay in Roguelikes. Add to that a good amount of weapons, similar to how Borderlands implemented it. It also has 2 player coop... with friendly fire. Did I mention you can accidently blow yourself up? My explanation won't do the game any justice so I hope you'll take a look yourself but I'll say atleast this: a ricocheting, penetrating sniper rifle where performing a 360 increases it's damage still is fun and all but still didn't allow me to beat the game... once... on default difficulty. And I regularly play Gunfire Reborn on R9, have finished everything in BlazBlue EE, find RoR2 Monsoon without artifacts boring and have a few other roguelikes under my belt.
Mate I am amazed you managed to sell me on a game that short circuited all motor skills just from watching clips of it, good video. from ur ask at the end, I've played a lot of Vagante with a friend. Definitely way slower of a roguelike than this and probably leans more to the frustrating part of difficult, but somethin keeps pulling me back into it. Also Duelists of Eden came out a couple months ago and the original game was always too fast for my brain but a deckbuilding mega man battle network type fighting game is sick as hell and closer to Rabbit & Steel's speed (also same composer as this game) o7
Vagante is great, but really need some checkpoint system. I think there might be one in the mods section but I haven't look into it. It actually made me stop playing it without mastering all the stages and bosses, just because it's so frustrating to go through the first 6 stages every single time just to get to the parts that are actually challenging. The game also incentivizes lots of scavenge hunting around every stage for loot and gear, which makes the lack of checkpoints even worse.
Difficult coop: Ravenswatch Synthetik GTFO Ready or Not Barotrauma Other coop: Monster Hunter (old & new) Deep Rock Galactic God Eater Exoprimal Rainbow Six (pre-siege) Divinity Baldur's Gate Wasteland The Ascent Castle Crashers
Operation tango is a fun coop game for 2 players. Highly reccomended. It relies on players only having half the info and needing to describe things to the other player.
a decently challenging co-op game is deep rock galactic (ROCK AND STONE!) there are four classes and tons of areas to explore, challenges to unlock and complete, its four player co-op where you fulfil what the company wants you to do and shoot bugs. incredibly fun
the game seems to have too much eye candy and visual pollution, makes it all confusing and challenging to see which attacks are from where and what they do
What I like about this game is that if you're doing the mechanics correctly, the big walls and circles of bullets just pass you by and you're fine. But even if you don't do them right, you can still be a bullet hell sicko (positive) and _just dodge them anyway._
20:56 Risk Of Rain 2 and Returns both work in comparison and challenge while being great Rougelikes. DeepRock Galatic's Dwarf lifestyle as a game. Gigantic, the Ramapage edition now adds unique enough Moba gameplay that it hopefully help cure you're trauma.
I'm sure you've heard about Helldivers 2, but I can't recommend it enough! It's a fantastic co-op game that is also very difficult, but not quite as cute as Rabbit & Steel. I guarantee that it will have you and your friends screaming in no time.
Challenging co-op game? *Dragon: Marked For Death* A 1-4 player, side scrolling, platformer, RPG made by Inti Creates that allows you to play from 6 different characters, 4 base game and 2 DLC. A large amount of quests to choose from with a few having side quests to complete. Difficult and hard hitting bosses, that may or may not anger some. I've only played this game solo with all characters, though I still a level grind to complete to fight the even tougher version of enemies and bosses. 😅 I personally like the game, but it can be a grind plus the contact damage will have some double take what just happened.
My vid reactions: 1. There's more in the Witch & Spell series?!? 2. Skooch's unintentional Touhou roast... 3. Skooch is still very entertaining to watch.
If you want a difficult Multiplayer experience try playing Deep Rock Galactic on Hazard 5+ with all modifiers maxed out. If that doesn’t challenge you enough add some mission hazards on top. If all that still doesn’t suffice mod the hell out of the game until the entire screen is filled with enemies that instantly kill you. Also the game is quite fun.
coop recommendations hrm Hammerwatch is a cooperative dungeon crawler. Crawl is a competitive dungeon crawler. Regular Human Basketball makes players work together to operate a basketball robot. Barotrauma makes players work together to operate a not-spaceship
Vermintide 1. Vt2 and darktide are both great games to play with friends too and have a lot of challenge, but the path to get to endgame is kinda grindy with how they made the gear and levelling work. VT1 doesnt have that. And VT1 has some ridiculous achievements to hunt for, complete the black powder mission on cataclysm without killing the rat ogre, complete the tower mission by killing all the supports within 5s (basically requires that you split up one to each corner). The completion rate for these achievements is less than 1% for a lot of them, and they are hella fun to try.
Yes I'm late... But at 15:48 if you didn't know you can change the attack color in the settings. It helped me a bunch to understand certain attack because I just couldn't see them.
Not sure if you played it but Pico Park is an 8 player co-op platformer on Steam. It can be a really fun challenge trying to get multiple people to cooperate on a level
I've done everything for achievements besides clearing lunar, 30 and 40 trickets, and master palettes. This game really hits everything for me since both FFXIV and rogue likes are some of my fav things. My only critique is I wish there was a training mode where you could bash your head into the same boss/mini boss over and over till you learn it instead of needing to do others before you get there again
Can you add some way to support the devs in the description their website or steam page etc the name isn't even in the title or description either. I know now its called rabbit and steel but I had to replay the video.
muck on gamer mode is an interesting experience. it looks, well bad. but it's like a runescape/minecraft survival game as a rougelike. but the longer you live the harder it is, monsters evolve into powered up versions, there are elite buffed versions that can knock you stuffing inside out for next winter and there are bosses that can just spawn in if you are unlucky enough. the objective is to repair the one ship in the world and kill bob. before you can fight bob you must find and eliminate 5 guardians that hold a different colored gem stone, (guardian in fact a boss that can spawn randomly). i love the game and there are some real nifty tricks to learn to make the game easier. I'll give you one that helps probably, don't spend your gold on chest the first 1 or 2 nights if you found a village and do NOT open the green pedestal chest, the villagers will hate you and try to kill you regardless if you helped them. also black chests are free. goodluck.
19:43 visual clarity, is a thing that fundementally cannot be treated as a skill issue, as it's like a superficial form of difficulty, it isn't testing you on the mechanics you've learned it merely ruins them and makes them annoying to achieve. Zesty Jesus makes an amazing video on the well crafted design of TF2 being gutted:th-cam.com/video/8RAF-55O2-k/w-d-xo.htmlsi=iYRHyf8g3qzQriTl But basically it's important for your players to get what they're working with and forcing them struggle through bad design doesn't actually test anything it just blinds their eyes so they can't interact, in that video the visual design of Team reconigition got so gutted that a Pyro skin makes it basically impossible to tell who team it's on, resulting in a class not balanced around stealh to be stealthy. Which isn't a test of the players because nothing in game really used or tested you on that, that is a bad design dicesion making the game uncecarrly annoying to play instead of a insterting way to interact compared to like Spy who actually works around it and balances himself around it. Basically the game needs to change it up it's visiual design, I would also say their character design aswell, it isn't intersting playing the same generically looking bunny girl over and over because the creator didn't think about character sillouates, having it's characters lose alot of their pointential by limiting them all to gacha designs, AKA oversaturation AKA every terrible gacha game(though I would say all of them are due to fundemetnally being Badly designed but these are worse). TbSkyen's video on soulfoul design: th-cam.com/users/shortsKzS_7THp14c?feature=share
There is a boardgame called Hellapagos which I highly recommend. It's only about 20$, and it's a co-op game until the food runs out and you have to decide with player to kill
Late to the party but on your request for difficult co-op games: Nuclear Throne does have a mod called Nuclear Throne Together, should be what you are looking for And i already told my friends about Rabbit and Steel, hyped to dive into it together
Gigantic rampage on Steam Not only is it the closest game I’ve ever played to being a perfect co-op moba But it has its own unique moba objective Characters that can be upgraded to change to evolve through the flow of the game but it’s also so goddamn cool to look at it feels awesome to play I highly encourage you playing it please !!!!!! Especially because it was originally released eight years ago but got shut down after one year because everyone kept passing it off as an overwatch or paladins clone when it 117,000,000% just isn’t
I just want to note that Heavy Blade should focus on CD on Special. Ever wanted to be a beyblade? Here's 3 charges at a CD of 0 with 2 items... Out of the several you get every run. :) Spend all 3 charges every GCD and be invuln during it.
this game feels like the dev did a few savage raids and was like "but what if it was the entire game?"
im pretty sure the dev is a high end raider on ff14, so, yes that is exactly what happened
I do wish Criterion Dungeons ended up like this in FFXIV. A mix of what they are currently with Deep Dungeon mechanics (in regard to pick-up loot). Hell, if they use PvP skills, they could easily scale it up for ability-changing loot like the opal/sapphire/emerald/ruby upgrades.
@@FlickTakFlakAttack yea thats how I wanted the new deep dungeon to go, more roguelike, more ambitious, and less .... potd with a new skin
Bro 4 of us ultimate raiders had trouble with hard mode 😂
@@deatsu But I like the pain of solo running a new PotD. Guess you could always intentionally skip loot. That would be a fun run.
The fact that a game so deep and cool and expansive and fun and cute was made by a SOLO DEV is so inspiring ngl.
We're in the era of solo devs right now. Lethal Company and Crab Champions are two really great games both made by a singular human.
Wait a second,a hard game,made by a solo dev,with cute girls?guys, i think we found the next touhou
@@Zel-Veraan Did you mean crab game?
@@erkot000 nope. Crab Champions is a roguelike third person shooter developed by Noisestorm, the artist who made Crab Rave.
@@Zel-Veraan IIRC both Fear and Hunger games were also made by a singular dev!
As an FFXIV raider, I already know that the mechanics and aesthetics were heavily inspired by the game. In fact a friend was trying to sell the game to me before it's full release by just describing it as "FFXIV, but 2d and roguelike" and honestly I was sold so fast.
There are lines on the floor
@@ThatVia _sometimes the lines are circles_
As a WHM, I can only recommend this Disposable Pointy Stick "don't stand in the fire, idiot" training aid highly.
this is just vierra savage raid simulator
It's just ff14 with an all viera party
So a normal WR prog?
just daily roulettes in a nutshell
The dev themself(?) admitted to have inspirations from XIV
"two players is probably the game at its simplest-" [shows what seems to be an elaborate alchemy diagram / cat's cradle made of lasers]
one player is a hellish bullet hell, two/three/four players everyone must play perfect, but there is less spread patterns when you have only one buddy so its significantly easier to coordinate in very tight spaces, because arena is always the same size
Somehow, I feel like if this game was made by a big company, all of the bun girls would be a lot more anime
Considering this game was heavily inspired by Final Fantasy XIV (the dev admits they played a ton of it over the years), you are not far off the mark.
If this game was made by a "big" company, all the bun girls would be less attractive.
@@AgentOracle?
@@AgentOracle That only depends on which "big" company.
I mean, any company that makes enough money to be famous across a wide range of people can already be considered big.
For example, you cannot really call Hoyoverse(the ones making Genshin Impact) a small studio in any capacity with how much money they're raking in selling Gacha mechanic while still getting a lot of people playing their games and popularity beyond them.
@@RyudanX I never said they would be attractive
Love the video, banger as always.
But uh, I noticed you missed something very important about the game; the soundtrack.
It is CRIMINAL it wasn't at least mentioned. The whole game has a S tier track, especially Emerald Lakeside.
I recommend the One Step from Eden soundtrack as well, same composer (Steel Plus).
You’re completely right abt the emerald lakeside tracks! The action vocals are so good, def one of my favs
"...it feels like a choreographed dance routine while having a cannon pointed at your face..."
Ah, so you liked the Avy fight too.
Maybe it's just me
My voice, my face, my personality
What would I have to be?
If it's for you then I would change my every thing...!
When I look into the jade lakeside
My darkened silhouette is all that I can see
But soon I'll shine, just as bright as you
And then you'll see me
NGL the lyrics go hard
Fun Fact: This game is a sequel to a game called "Maiden and Spell" which is essentially a non-roguelike, single player version of the game.
Maiden and Spell is inspired directly by Touhou Project, which means that "Lunar" mode is a direct parallel to the "Lunatic" difficulty. Due to the notorious difficulty of the "Lunatic" difficulty and it's legacy on the Touhou community, there's a good chance that the "Lunar" mode was specifically designed to be almost impossible.
But the lunatic difficulty is designed to be beatable by ZUN himself though, except Touhou 8 which has reduced difficulty for his wife
I KNEW I recognise this art style! Maiden and Spell is a masters, can't recommend it enough.
aaaaaaaa I'm so happy to see Skooch reviewing this game I've been anticipating it for so long now
Additionally very important information: You can pet the shopkeeper :>
"Now I'm going to say my most hated and most beloved zones,"
Me, instinctively: Yeah Dragons and Frogs.
Frog is also suffering, but to good music
if i had a penny everytime an ultrahard game with bossfights built around bullet hell mechanics was themed around bunnygirls i would have 2 pennies, which isnt much but its weird that it happened twice. And both this and Rabi Ribi as super fun games to boot.
Tevi exists too, made by the same guys who made rabi ribi.
I think legacy of lunatic kingdom deserves a honorable mention!
I havent played it so I am not sure how well it fits this, but maybe Rabbit Hole counts.
A glowing review and doesn't even mention the great soundtrack or the fact that it has local multiplayer and remote play enabled so that you can get your friends in on your runs without them owning the game. Also the character interactions are genuinely very funny (to me) AND YOU CAN PET THE SHOPKEEPER CAT! There's seriously not a bad part of this game.
ah, multiplayer touhou
you're so wrong for that
Th3, 9, 19
I forgor if it was 3
@@unrealredist4124 to be fair Phantasms(and Fightings) are 1v1
multiplayer touhou is previous game from this game's developer - Maiden & Spell
Good god the moment you said Red Darkhouse, i felt that pain. My favorite area though has to be the Scholars Nest. The moment the boss time stops you and gives you her next three attacks that you have to then play out is a really cool feeling when everyone does it perfectly
Though you had mentioned difficult coop games? Idk if youve heard of it, but there's a roguelite coop called Ravenswatch and that's pretty difficult with an interesting skill ceiling for each character.
Edit (because I’m on mobile): I see you already talked about Ravens Watch in another video lol
6:42 I'mma be real, Skooch: I see you upload, I watch. It doesn't matter what new thing it is you're talking about, I just like hearing you talk about stuff. Keep up the great work.
Also, this game looks like TouHou had a child with Undertale.
I'm buying it.
@@Zel-Veraan How much money does it cost?, seems pretty cool
@@zariosmation3462 $15 on Steam.
been playing this game for the last week or so of release quite a bit, it's really flown under the radar, and nice to see someone get more than a few thousand views on their video about it. Hopefully it brings more in to play as it's really satisfying
Red Darkhouse is also a bit of a problem because of all the Stage colors in the game, Red on Black is ironically the least contrasting color on a black background (The others being Blue, Purple, Yellow, Green and White) while also being the most bullet hell stage.
There's actually an option to change the colors of the boss attacks, there's one for "Magenta Standard" for maximal contrast if boss attacks aren't visible enough for the player.
@@teereee_official Whaaat, I need to try that. Thanks for informing people
Gloomhaven is a Fun unique Co-Op game on steam based off a RL board game. I found it fairly challenging and it has aspects of rogue-like games i think you might enjoy.
Watching that red dark house part made my brain giggle. Let me explain...
I have always enjoyed bullet hell games for reason, and have always been good at them. A friend brought over a game called Mushihimesama that he had been obsessed with for days. I watched him play once before he handed the controller to me, and I beat the high score that he had spent days setting. Then there was Ikaruga which I fell in love with to the point that I could eventually beat it in a total of 11 lives.
Eventually I took a test. Not some online IQ test that takes 20 minuets and tells you that you are a genius, but a timed test with more questions than there are minutes to complete the test (I think it averaged 30 seconds per question) and it mainly focused on spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and logic. I wasn't taking this test for myself, but I was curious about my results and asked the person at the end what my score was. He said that he couldn't tell me my exact score or which answers were right or wrong, but he told me that I had the 2nd highest score he had ever seen, because one time somebody handed back both tests to him with 100% perfect scores.
This game seems to be the same shape as my brain if that makes sense. Like if this game were a puzzle box with holes my brain would fit in the Rabbit and Steel shaped hole (and the square hole obviously, because everything fits in the square hole). I was watching red dark house and feeling that with enough practice I can do this.
Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to sell my friends on a game called Rabbit and Steel about cute anime bunny girls in a punishing rogue-lite co-op bullet hell.
The funny thing about the dragon boss, is that she doesn't bring any new mechanics to the table. Crow boss has timestop, mouse boss has you chasing around adds, but dragon boss? It's all the exact same stuff you just saw with the regular enemies in the zone. Just layered on top of eachother in the most obnoxious, sensory-overload ways possible
LET'S GO RABBIT AND STEEL
These fucking Rabbits got Hands bro
The bunny girls is why I'd believe someone telling me it would be one of the hardest games around. games with bunny girl protagonist are often the hardest. See: Bunny Must Die or Rabi-Ribi or some Touhou games.
Everyone knows there's only one raid mechanic: Don't stand in fire.
Bad Rogue: It's so warm here in the fire!
Just a heads up, in the options you can change the colors of all the attacks in various sets! Be sure to look at that. Also, this game is 10/10
The game is great, the only bad thing is that it needs a proper training level. Tons of fun and hard as nails
yeah, I do agree about the visibility of mechs, I play FFXIV and cleared most savages and ultimates being the shotcaller, and some mechs should need different animations\colors to see it better, like when a Laser will rotate, it only shows arrows and the colors of it always the same as the AoEs\Boss colors, while in FFXIV when it's rotating clockwise the arrows has 1 color, if rotating counterclockwise has another color, so some QoLs would be pretty nice on this game.
found this game just yesterday and I really did like it, I like both FFXIV and bullet hell games, this is just perfect, just need improvements of the mechs' visibility as said here.
(and heck, I always seen FFXIV as a bullet hell game but it's disguised as a 3D game with mechs lol)
Very few games i look at the screenand have absolutely no idea what is going on, im goin to have to check this one out.
As an experienced raider myself i can see one big aspect of MMO raiding thats been vastly simplified. And thats the "trying out mechanics" part of the encounter.
This game always has clear indicators of what one is supposed to do when, it even spells it out in big flashing colours what you must do exactly.
Usually MMOs do not do this. Their mechanics are sometimes quite veiled, and it is up to your team to find out exactly what to do when, memorise it and then execute on it.
Which is an interesting choice, but a welcome one. It should probably reduce the time to learn bosses from hours to days to...well, hours.
Love this game :)
also wanted to say that the actually first lunar clear with 4 players was done by cheesing the game and giving the entire team permanent invulnerability
One detail I love is that each area is set up to teach you the bosses mechanics before you fight the boss. For example, the crow boss (my personal favorite) has a teleport mechanic forcing you to position yourself somewhere that will be safe for where you teleport. But you know the boss will do this because an earlier enemy you fight in the same area uses this on you in an easy to dodge pattern. They do this for nearly every single mechanic in the game. Plus, a lot of these mechanics are special to their own area and won’t appear in other areas (with some exceptions)
I am fine with everything but that *"Haha changed your location!" ALWAYS* THROWS ME OFF FROM MY TRACKS 😭😭😭
As a FFXIV Raider this game was a must-buy and honestly it was exactly as messy and chaotic and fun as doing a new fight in XIV... definitely can recommand that game!
With shorter prog session lol
Fun fact, you can pet the merchant cat.
I think someone needs to introduce him to Final Fantasy 14 if he wants to experience more of this game.
Funny thing is that the dev does play FF14 and was inspired by savage raids and ultimates
Ff14 raids are a fucking joke with massive wind ups and telegraphed hit boxes and there is no heat progression
@@venumus1what is heat progression?
@@sonawhite8813 gear auto correct is stupid
@@venumus1Someone hasn't seen the absolute joke that is Mythic raids
I love you skooch. You bring me such fantastic games for my brain. Roguelike doesnt scare me, it inspires me. The genre makes failure easier to take. Even though I fail more often. Genuinely you have a knack for these kinds of videos and keeping my attention. Super adhd and easily discouraged. Gonna give this a look! And they have a DEMO?!? games with demos are automatically given big points
A lot of roguelikes a big problem though: Making you start from scratch and go through stages that aren't challenging to you anymore. It makes them addicting when you just start them, because it's fun to make a build and stuff, but that mechanic can become a hassle once you have to go to the same tutorial stage for the 100th time without any challenge just to pick up your starting build.
Been grinding Lunar solo, gotten to the final boss of some of the zones a few times. If you don’t get a good item in the tutorial zone resetting is required as even with 100% uptime certain characters cannot meet the damage check.
Idk if skooch is gonna see this
But if you want something similar to this *terraria* with mods can provide an experience that you may be craving
Calamity infurnum + fargos souls mod is maybe something you would enjoy, based on what was in this video
Ok Skoo, i know you asked for hard co-op "games" but you just brought an idea to my head :
-Bring at least 3 Elden Ring players out of your friend.
-Make them install the "Seamless co-op" mod, the 1.5.1 version, not 2.0
Make them install the "Elden ring Reforged mod"
-Start a game, do the prologue, go to a site of grace, change the difficulty to "Raid mode"
You are now ready to suffer :)
In all seriousness tho, ER is a big game, so if you're looking for a one and done experience, that's not gonna happen. But if you got a few pals with a decent pc, just give it a lil try.
I know this wouldn't make great content due to the stability for Seamless coop mod, so it might not be worth your time, but still, it can be fun :)
Secrets of Grindea.
I recommend Secrets of Grindea.
It very good. Plays very well~ it's four player co-op and has both a story mode and roguelike mode that are BOTH co-op!
I would recommend more people play this game. It's a lovely game that deserves to be seen.
If you like Legend of Mana, Link to the Past, Hades..just..so many inspirations that come together to make a great game.
I would love for Skooch to play this.
Personally I recommend you and your friends to play "full metal furies" (not furrys tho). It's a fantastic game with fun mechanics and also decently hard and a puzzle game. Loved it with my friends, hope you give it a try ^^
I never thought skooch would make a video about one of my favorite games that has come out of recent. Also hello from the 2.5% of players to clear hard.
For challenging co-op games i can recommend: Both Payday games, GTFO, Serious Sam (first and second encounter). And for 2-player co-op i can think of: N++, battleblock theater, super cyborg, and maybe synthetik: legion rising.
This gives me life considering the solo dev was highly inspired by FFXIV raiding, especially older content like the E8S or Edens 8 Savage fight with Shiva. I wouldnt be surprised if there's a light's rampant mechanic snuck in there somewhere 😂
I'm told there's a Pantokrator somewhere, of all things. 😂
If you want to see how insane Lunar gets one day because you're bored, if you join a Lunar mode run with 4 people already in it, you can just spectate their run. And uh. The ones I spectated went to the dragon place, which, I think, is the genuinely hardest area. And OHMYG-
You know Skooch, if you wanted you could always try final fantasy 14 for your co-op experience. Yes there is a jrpg's worth of content before the end game hard stuff, but it's a story worth enjoying, especially if you have folks to meme through it with. All of the raids are done in such a way that even the ten year old ones can still be done at roughly the difficulty they were run from, you can do 2/3rds of the game for free, including the first three raid series, and once you get to the end of that free trial, you'll have access to "ultimate" raids, what are generally considered some of the hardest, and best designed co-op experiences in gaming, with their "prog time" the amount of time spent practicing, measured in weeks and months. For what it's worth there's also no pay to win, gatcha or predatory monetization.
5:29
They really got that toad scream after that interaction.
I'm just putting this out here right now for anyone that just heard of the game and wants to try it I've played the game non stop from its release and sometimes with some friends for fun and I am also very experienced in bullet hell games as I've played them for almost my entire life and it took me almost my entire 150 hour playtime to be able to beat lunar difficulty solo (the one after hard mode) but don't be discouraged the game is hard but fair the mechanics are easy to learn and with some dedication I'm sure anyone can beat lunar difficulty, just be warned enemy mechanics changes dramatically when playing with more players so gl to everyone and don't forget to enjoy the game and stay calm as in the end this isn't just a bullet hell game its a rouge lite :))
Thank for showing this gem to more gamers! This is awesome for Ppl who raided back in the day but dont have time to grind out an MMO and find 10+ ppl for Raiding every week.
If you want some recomendations on coop games i recomend "Lovers in a dangerous spacetime": despite the cute aesthetics the game's quite challenging especially on hard, requiring your team to coordinately and quickly move between the ship's control stations. Local coop only but remote play together might work for you.
Actrually, for the 'mmo raid like' there is this game called mini healer. It's... interesting, played it a bunch. In that game you play as the healer for a 4 person party and have to try to keep them alive. You can tell the party which enemy to target first, but otherwise it's mostly deciding the optimal healing, dealing with debuffs and interacting with boss mechanics by making sure to stand on the right spot. Game has hit a pause in development due to the dev having RL issues last year but seems that work is being done once again.
If you want a fun challenge for co-op play, then I can think of a couple (though idk if you’ve already covered them before or not):
Risk of Rain Returns (Monsoon difficulty)
Risk of Rain 2 (Eclipse mode)
Deep Rock Galactic (Haz 5+, also this game has fantastic mod support)
*insert Monster Hunter game of preference here*
Overcooked 2
Doubtless there’s more, but these are the ones I’m mostly used to
I think " *RED DARK* house" is meant to be dark, and red
Oh so its a touhou game!
No, it's a touhou game but the bosses figured out bullets are no longer enough
@@AdamDj-ic3kr Oh so it's a Touhou game!
@@antoineguerrier2965 .....yes
That would suit its predecessor more I guess
I feel like saying it’s a touhou game sells it short… all of the different abilities and combos of loot you’re able to rack up make the game feel way different :P
I've legit been enjoying Rabbit and Steel recently! Favorite rabbit's for me would be Sniper rabbit (Go green hair for the full Bucky'O'Hare experience!) and Ancient rabbit, because her orange skin has a bird!
Rabbit and Steel needs MORE COVERAGE! It's such a fun game with friends!!
What a great morning, seeing a video about a game my friend recently recommended to me.
About a recommendation of games with difficulty, I could hit you up with something called SYNTHETIK. It's a bit older top-down shooter but still has one of the most satisfying gun gameplay in Roguelikes. Add to that a good amount of weapons, similar to how Borderlands implemented it. It also has 2 player coop... with friendly fire. Did I mention you can accidently blow yourself up? My explanation won't do the game any justice so I hope you'll take a look yourself but I'll say atleast this: a ricocheting, penetrating sniper rifle where performing a 360 increases it's damage still is fun and all but still didn't allow me to beat the game... once... on default difficulty. And I regularly play Gunfire Reborn on R9, have finished everything in BlazBlue EE, find RoR2 Monsoon without artifacts boring and have a few other roguelikes under my belt.
Mate I am amazed you managed to sell me on a game that short circuited all motor skills just from watching clips of it, good video.
from ur ask at the end, I've played a lot of Vagante with a friend. Definitely way slower of a roguelike than this and probably leans more to the frustrating part of difficult, but somethin keeps pulling me back into it.
Also Duelists of Eden came out a couple months ago and the original game was always too fast for my brain but a deckbuilding mega man battle network type fighting game is sick as hell and closer to Rabbit & Steel's speed (also same composer as this game) o7
Vagante is great, but really need some checkpoint system. I think there might be one in the mods section but I haven't look into it. It actually made me stop playing it without mastering all the stages and bosses, just because it's so frustrating to go through the first 6 stages every single time just to get to the parts that are actually challenging. The game also incentivizes lots of scavenge hunting around every stage for loot and gear, which makes the lack of checkpoints even worse.
Difficult coop:
Ravenswatch
Synthetik
GTFO
Ready or Not
Barotrauma
Other coop:
Monster Hunter (old & new)
Deep Rock Galactic
God Eater
Exoprimal
Rainbow Six (pre-siege)
Divinity
Baldur's Gate
Wasteland
The Ascent
Castle Crashers
"Enrage" is a word that I was not expecting to hear outside of Final Fantasy XIV
if you've played FFXIV, this is basically a 2D roguelike version, very fun!
Operation tango is a fun coop game for 2 players. Highly reccomended.
It relies on players only having half the info and needing to describe things to the other player.
a decently challenging co-op game is deep rock galactic (ROCK AND STONE!) there are four classes and tons of areas to explore, challenges to unlock and complete, its four player co-op where you fulfil what the company wants you to do and shoot bugs. incredibly fun
the game seems to have too much eye candy and visual pollution, makes it all confusing and challenging to see which attacks are from where and what they do
This game is 2D Final Fantasy 14 raiding, and I love it
What I like about this game is that if you're doing the mechanics correctly, the big walls and circles of bullets just pass you by and you're fine.
But even if you don't do them right, you can still be a bullet hell sicko (positive) and _just dodge them anyway._
20:56
Risk Of Rain 2 and Returns both work in comparison and challenge while being great Rougelikes.
DeepRock Galatic's Dwarf lifestyle as a game.
Gigantic, the Ramapage edition now adds unique enough Moba gameplay that it hopefully help cure you're trauma.
I'm sure you've heard about Helldivers 2, but I can't recommend it enough! It's a fantastic co-op game that is also very difficult, but not quite as cute as Rabbit & Steel. I guarantee that it will have you and your friends screaming in no time.
If you havent already, GTFO is an amazing 4 player multiplayer co-op game about stealthing, shooting, and dying so very many times.
This game is absolutely amazing! Great video, by the way! Only thing you missed was talking about the top tier OST this game has.
I had a whole bit that I cut out but Emerald Lakeside ost is top 5 songs ever made in history
Challenging co-op game? *Dragon: Marked For Death* A 1-4 player, side scrolling, platformer, RPG made by Inti Creates that allows you to play from 6 different characters, 4 base game and 2 DLC. A large amount of quests to choose from with a few having side quests to complete. Difficult and hard hitting bosses, that may or may not anger some. I've only played this game solo with all characters, though I still a level grind to complete to fight the even tougher version of enemies and bosses. 😅 I personally like the game, but it can be a grind plus the contact damage will have some double take what just happened.
My vid reactions:
1. There's more in the Witch & Spell series?!?
2. Skooch's unintentional Touhou roast...
3. Skooch is still very entertaining to watch.
If you want a difficult Multiplayer experience try playing Deep Rock Galactic on Hazard 5+ with all modifiers maxed out.
If that doesn’t challenge you enough add some mission hazards on top.
If all that still doesn’t suffice mod the hell out of the game until the entire screen is filled with enemies that instantly kill you.
Also the game is quite fun.
You say that Roguelike is a scary word but seeing this clusterfuck, I'm reminded of an even scarier word ; Touhou.
I would love to see you and your friends play Overcooked 2! It's silly fun and gets fairly complex the later you get
The best part about all this is Renalie is somehow also cute, as a dragon, that kills you harder than any other boss.
coop recommendations hrm
Hammerwatch is a cooperative dungeon crawler. Crawl is a competitive dungeon crawler. Regular Human Basketball makes players work together to operate a basketball robot. Barotrauma makes players work together to operate a not-spaceship
Vermintide 1.
Vt2 and darktide are both great games to play with friends too and have a lot of challenge, but the path to get to endgame is kinda grindy with how they made the gear and levelling work. VT1 doesnt have that.
And VT1 has some ridiculous achievements to hunt for, complete the black powder mission on cataclysm without killing the rat ogre, complete the tower mission by killing all the supports within 5s (basically requires that you split up one to each corner).
The completion rate for these achievements is less than 1% for a lot of them, and they are hella fun to try.
Sounds like something the hardcore 2hu crowd would enjoy. The Reisen enjoyers in particular.
Still havent gotten around to playing this. Loved Maiden and Spell.
I would probably say Mini Healer is the first "MMO Raid-like", but this one certainly tops it.
Can confirm that the entire dragon zone is harder than the actual final boss of the game
im SO happy to see more coverage of this game
Yes I'm late... But at 15:48 if you didn't know you can change the attack color in the settings. It helped me a bunch to understand certain attack because I just couldn't see them.
Not sure if you played it but Pico Park is an 8 player co-op platformer on Steam. It can be a really fun challenge trying to get multiple people to cooperate on a level
Dude, games that force me to trust random strangers with my life are just asking for a quick fall off
I've done everything for achievements besides clearing lunar, 30 and 40 trickets, and master palettes. This game really hits everything for me since both FFXIV and rogue likes are some of my fav things. My only critique is I wish there was a training mode where you could bash your head into the same boss/mini boss over and over till you learn it instead of needing to do others before you get there again
1:34 you forgot that while doing that you also have to maintain your dps rotation because if you dont kill the boss in time on hard it's game over.
How did youtube not recomend me this video when I'm literally playing this game and I normally watch all of your videos
RABBIT AND STEEL MENTIONED
Can you add some way to support the devs in the description their website or steam page etc the name isn't even in the title or description either. I know now its called rabbit and steel but I had to replay the video.
muck on gamer mode is an interesting experience. it looks, well bad. but it's like a runescape/minecraft survival game as a rougelike. but the longer you live the harder it is, monsters evolve into powered up versions, there are elite buffed versions that can knock you stuffing inside out for next winter and there are bosses that can just spawn in if you are unlucky enough. the objective is to repair the one ship in the world and kill bob. before you can fight bob you must find and eliminate 5 guardians that hold a different colored gem stone, (guardian in fact a boss that can spawn randomly). i love the game and there are some real nifty tricks to learn to make the game easier.
I'll give you one that helps probably, don't spend your gold on chest the first 1 or 2 nights if you found a village and do NOT open the green pedestal chest, the villagers will hate you and try to kill you regardless if you helped them. also black chests are free. goodluck.
19:43 visual clarity, is a thing that fundementally cannot be treated as a skill issue, as it's like a superficial form of difficulty, it isn't testing you on the mechanics you've learned it merely ruins them and makes them annoying to achieve.
Zesty Jesus makes an amazing video on the well crafted design of TF2 being gutted:th-cam.com/video/8RAF-55O2-k/w-d-xo.htmlsi=iYRHyf8g3qzQriTl
But basically it's important for your players to get what they're working with and forcing them struggle through bad design doesn't actually test anything it just blinds their eyes so they can't interact, in that video the visual design of Team reconigition got so gutted that a Pyro skin makes it basically impossible to tell who team it's on, resulting in a class not balanced around stealh to be stealthy.
Which isn't a test of the players because nothing in game really used or tested you on that, that is a bad design dicesion making the game uncecarrly annoying to play instead of a insterting way to interact compared to like Spy who actually works around it and balances himself around it.
Basically the game needs to change it up it's visiual design, I would also say their character design aswell, it isn't intersting playing the same generically looking bunny girl over and over because the creator didn't think about character sillouates, having it's characters lose alot of their pointential by limiting them all to gacha designs, AKA oversaturation AKA every terrible gacha game(though I would say all of them are due to fundemetnally being Badly designed but these are worse).
TbSkyen's video on soulfoul design: th-cam.com/users/shortsKzS_7THp14c?feature=share
There is a boardgame called Hellapagos which I highly recommend. It's only about 20$, and it's a co-op game until the food runs out and you have to decide with player to kill
Someone had a bit of inspiration from Tohou
Late to the party but on your request for difficult co-op games: Nuclear Throne does have a mod called Nuclear Throne Together, should be what you are looking for
And i already told my friends about Rabbit and Steel, hyped to dive into it together
Gigantic rampage on Steam
Not only is it the closest game I’ve ever played to being a perfect co-op moba
But it has its own unique moba objective
Characters that can be upgraded to change to evolve through the flow of the game
but it’s also so goddamn cool to look at it feels awesome to play
I highly encourage you playing it please !!!!!!
Especially because it was originally released eight years ago but got shut down after one year because everyone kept passing it off as an overwatch or paladins clone when it 117,000,000% just isn’t
Endless dungeon on the hardest difficulties with a coktail is an interesting experience
I just want to note that Heavy Blade should focus on CD on Special. Ever wanted to be a beyblade? Here's 3 charges at a CD of 0 with 2 items... Out of the several you get every run. :) Spend all 3 charges every GCD and be invuln during it.