Elipsis 最近的评测

I'll be speedrunning this game for SGDQ 2022, and after over 120 hours with it I feel like it deserves a thumbs up. But with a little asterisk.*

* is because the criticisms that I'm reading in the negative reviews are largely valid. For a precision platformer, this game has made some odd choices. In particular players will likely find frustration in the lovingly handcrafted, artisanal hitboxes. What does that mean in practical terms? It means that the cool organic-looking wall that has a 92 degree incline probably has a matching 92 degree hitbox. It means that the little divot in the ledge that makes it look worn and natural is also a spot where Glimmer will slide off that ledge and die in a pit of spikes. It has the same energy of the old 2D Worms games where a bunch of explosions generates bizarre terrain, and you have to deal with there being 3 pixels that you just can't stand on but they are nonetheless still there interacting with the physics engine. See that tiny gap between hand-drawn spikes? Yep you can probably stand there.

On your first playthrough this property of the game won't be anywhere near as big of a deal as the *intentional* difficulty that the game has, particularly in the later chapters.

On subsequent playthroughs, chasing after speedrun achievements and whatnot, you might get agitated as you realize that sometimes you just slide off walls and die in a way that seems completely random and inconsistent. A lot of people rightly call this out as a crappy or unfair feeling experience.

But way beyond that, with even more experience and replay, this game really starts to shine again. You start understanding what specific sets of pixels should be avoided, you get enough mastery over Glimmer to make extremely precise movements, and you really unlock potential for some high-skill-ceiling gameplay. This game is chocked full of tricks that are only achievable through extremely precise movement and attention to detail. A lot of the rooms seem like they have been designed to have incredibly fluid routes through them, but only if you can execute near-perfectly. I can't say if this level of depth is intentional or not, but I can say for certain that it is there, and incredibly rewarding to discover.

There are also plenty of things about this game that nearly everyone praises. The art and music really are beautifully done. But don't let the Ori aesthetic fool you, this game plays a lot more like (and intentionally borrows heavily from) Celeste. Many sections of this game are probably harder than the C-sides, so don't pick this title up expecting to breeze through it.

I am certainly not saying that you have to push the game to world record tier competitiveness to get enjoyment out of it, but I do want to put it out there that *if* you choose to do so, you'll find that the depth and challenge only increase as the frustration and sense of unfairness decrease.