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« on: September 16, 2020, 03:58:11 PM »
Children of Morta - A very fun rogue-lite dungeon crawler game. Kinda diablo-ish gameplay, I guess? The storytelling is all done by a narrator, but all the characters have a lot of personality anyway. I'm at the...has to be endgame rn, if there's something behind the boss I'm at I'll be shocked.
The seven characters you can play as are all fairly different and it's hard to call any of them actually worse than the others(except Mark) since there's been bosses and floors that even the ones I would normally consider the "best" deal worse with than...honestly even Mark. He just has a larger amount of situations he's not great in, really.
To break things down a bit, my character ratings(and please keep in mind the gap between 1st and 6th is very small)
1st - Lucy. Lucy is one of the two characters with long range damage and hers becomes much stronger than Linda's as you let it build up. The thing is, Lucy can't move while attacking! This is in fact a downside and the reason Lucy has some bosses she's just the wrooooong pick for. But the speed of her fireballs increases the longer you fire, and she starts spraying off more and more "sidewinders" which are little mini-fireballs that vaguely go where you're shooting and do less damage. They still inflict tiny amounts of hit stun though. And at the speed she fires...well. Lucy's two special attacks are her Tornado(which sucks in enemies and pins them down for a bit) and her Doppleganger(which is a decoy that enemies will attack instead of her). Both very strong! But the thing that puts her at the clear #1 spot is her passive which gives her little shields which null attacks. When capped out, that skill gives her 3 tiny shields which will nullify attacks that hit her, and if she hasn't been hit for 8 seconds she will regen 1 shield(up to 3, ofc).
Lucy's Rage mode does allow her to move while shooting for a bit...as her shots turn into a giant fuck off laser. It's not as damaging as you might think, but it is great for letting her escape.
2nd - Linda. The other ranged damage character, an archer to her little sister's mage. Act shocked, the ability to hit shit from across the screen is Good Actually. Linda can fire while moving, but it drains from her stamina bar(which will build back up as she either doesn't shoot or doesn't move for a bit). Her damage at base is better than Lucy's and she also gains more damage as she stands still and fires from a passive skill, but Lucy's will build up to higher levels as the speed goes. Linda's two skills are the Explosive Crescendo, an arrow that homes in on where some enemies are and creates an explosion, and Harmonic Slam, which stuns the enemies immediately around her for a second. Crescendo is very very good, since it can hit enemies you can't normally hit(hard corners, etc) and some area boom is great for thinning things out. Harmonic Slam...I dunno. When surrounded with Linda I typically hit the dodge button to create distance before I remember to welcome my enemies to the Jam.
Linda's Rage mode gives her infinite stamina for a short period and MASSIVELY increases her rate of fire. This is one of the strongest rage modes for sheer "Get. Out." factor. It's not as good as some others in hallways, but she'll make a boss ablate a third of their HP bar in record time with it.
3rd - John. So John is the patriarch of the Bergson family, and is the classic sword & board hero. He's slow, the only character who has only a single dodge bar, and his damage is on the low side. So why is he in at #3? Two reasons. First, that fucking shield. He can just raise the shield to block and it will stop most projectiles cold, and enemies that hit his shield in melee will take damage from the impact! He can still be hit by some attacks, and using the shield does drain his stamina(and you have to have your facing right! You block from the FRONT only.) but it's a strong mechanic. I was bad at it for awhile but once I put in the effort to get gud, John became a slowly advancing wall that would just smoosh enemies into the dirt. Second is his skill Heaven's Strike. This is the best button in the game, full stop. Hits multiple enemies, homes in on ones close to you, each sword has a bit of explosion damage around it, it's just the best crowd clearer in the game. Also can fire around hard corners because fuck you that's why. His other button is the Shield Slam(which replaces Heaven's Strike while you have the shield up!), which is basically just a better version of Linda's Harmonic Slam.
John's Rage mode doesn't really do much. Just makes him immune all damage for a few seconds and deal retaliation damage to any enemy that hits him while he's using it. Wait did I say not much I meant it's also the best Rage mode in the game.
4th - Kevin. Kevin is weird in that when he's the best option he is THE BEST OPTION and when he's not...well, he's squishy and also a melee character who uses knives so has a very short attack range. He's Linda's younger brother(and thus Lucy's older), and the little story arc he gets before you gain him as a playable character is great imo. So Kevin's whole deal is that instead of a stamina bar like Linda/Jon/Joey or a mana bar like Lucy/Apan, he has a momentum bar. As he attacks, his attacks get faster, and you can level up a passive skill to let him keep this going longer. He also has the highest crit rate and I believe bonus crit damage? Basically once he gets going he becomes a blender and the dungeon is now a juice bar. Buuuuut he's still short range and has no hard defenses like John or Lucy. He is the only character with three dodge bars, and that's good! But he still has to get back in there to do the killing. His buttons are Fan of Knives(whips throwing knives in every direction. Pretty okay) and Cloak of Shadows(enemies can't target him for a bit!). While in Cloak, he also learns two other skills: Execute(huge damage single swing with ID chance) and Shadow Dance(hits a bunch of enemies? I dunno it's not good).
Kevin's Rage mode sends his attack speed even higher and it seeeems like it also increases his crit rate further? The game just says "Sends Kevin into the Ultimate Frenzy!" which thanks real helpful game. Basically it makes Kevin even more Kevin-y.
5th - Joey. So to preface this, Joey is honestly better in most hallways than Kevin is. He has a hammer and everything looks like a nail, he has huge reach on his melee swings and is a giant sack of HP. That is basically the long and short of it. Most of his power comes from a couple passives he has. One gives him a damage boost on his next attack whenever he takes a hit. One increases his damage and move speed when low on hp. One increases his damage based on how many enemies are hit by his attack. You get the picture. His other big claim to fame is that his dodge deals damage to enemies and kinda pushes them. Joey is a big boy and he can move anything smaller than him whether it wants to move or not. Most things are smaller than him. Hit buttons are Smite(a hammer attack on the ground that damages enemies in front) and Whirlwind(spin2win except not much winning tbh it's pretty weak). Smite gets an upgrade to Divine Smite which when you hold the button before releasing it will send out a GIANT ENERGY WAVE on impact which is the second best button in the game after Heaven's Strike.
Joey's rage mode continues the Big Boy tactics and he now does contact damage to the enemies instead of the other way around. Another move that's good at clearing hallways.
???th - Apan. So I have no idea where she fits, to be quite frank. Apan has a staff that she swings and hits with this super weak fan of energy from...but it has some pushback which is nice, and covers the most area by far of any normal attack. Her Thunderclap button damages and slows enemies in a cone in front of her and she has a passive that gives her bonus damage to slowed enemies! But even with that her damage is the worst in the game by miles. But she can fight from a reasonably safe range, and her dodge also slows enemies near her when she does it, so she has good escapes. The biggest issue is that her second button, Magic Glyph, is...bad. She makes a big field on the ground that hits all enemies around her a bunch and she can't move while using it! And the damage is...much lower per hit than even her(already worst in the game, remember) basic physical. And it drains her mana super fast! I just don't know what to make of her. Playing Apan feels like an exercise in "Okay everything is under contr...NOTHING IS UNDER CONTROL!" until you somehow extricate yourself from whatever the fuck just happened and now you have everything under control again.
Apan's Rage mode gives her a big shield bar which takes hits instead of her HP for awhile. Which would be amazing if it didn't disappear fairly quickly even if it hasn't taken that many hits and if John's "literally invulnerable also I hurt YOU when you hit me instead" wasn't right there.
7th - Mark. Ooookay. So I love Mark, let's get that out of the way right here. He's a cool dude and deserves better than he got. He's the punch-dude, and he has some awesome passives so lets talk about what he has going for him first. His main deal is his Atman Barrier, a bar(what he has instead of Stamina/Mana) that fills up as he punches things and that gives him Armor. His armor gained from the barrier reduces damage he takes, based on the strength of the barrier(it is a skill to put levels in, etc) and taking hits will deplete the bar. You can keep it going fairly well by punching more often than you get punched. Also he gets another passive that increases his damage as his Atman Barrier gauge fills as well, which...until you get this going he's just god awful, I'm not gonna lie. He has 2 dodge bars like most characters, but gets a skill that lets him spend the second one while in the middle of the first to cancel his dodge into an area attack around him. Very strong move!
Okay, so all that said...why does he suck? Well, apparently punching dudes is very hard and not accurate at all. See, Mark has the worst attack reach(fair, he's punching) and makes up for it with the ability to dash in to hit enemies when he's close enough! But...you don't control the dashing. He'll target an enemy, which you can see as a red circle around the enemy he's currently homed in on, and when you attack he'll dash in and hit that enemy! And...how the game decides who is targeted is pure magic. And if your facing has gotten a bit weird, like say in the middle of a giant clusterfuck, Mark likes to not actually home in on any of the enemies that are slightly off to the sides and currently stabbing him but instead punch thin air. Every other character you can just hold down the attack button to go ham with and adjust your facing as needed. Even with Lucy you can change your angle of shots without stopping the barrage! But with Mark you have to let go of attack and reorient yourself. In the middle of melee. With the shortest reach character. He suffers from extreme jank, I'm sad to say.
Also his two buttons are...okay at best. Scourging Whip does negligible damage but pulls all enemies hit in and gathers them up in one spot, stunned, for a moment for Mark to wail on. Solid! But still janky since which enemies get caught in it is a frikkin' mystery sometimes. Also ones that just decide to immune stun for some reason, well they're now right in front of you and it may or may not have interrupted any attack animation they were in the middle of. Swirling Staff is the exact opposite. Instead of pulling enemies in, it knocks them away. Well, not the EXACT opposite, it still does negligible damage. Can't have the dude with 0 attack reach or range on his normal attacks having any reliable way to damage multiple enemies at once.
Mark's Rage mode...is my least favorite in the game. It turns his basic physical into the Punch of Concentration, which is a cone shaped area in front of him that is roughly the size of Apan's physical but much higher damage. Sounds good, yeah? Except that it's slower than his normal swings, he no longer moves at all or has the targeting circle, and being a cone it doesn't hit enemies that are approaching you from a slight angle well. And being Mark, he's gonna be in the middle of everything most of the time. It's...the opposite of Kevin. Kevin's Rage makes him More Kevin. Mark's makes him a different character for a bit.
Anyway, this has been my breakdown of the characters. I love the game and enjoy playing as all the characters(even Apan and Mark) and think the story is very well presented. Play it!
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