Post by purplecolorbomb on Sept 7, 2017 23:47:24 GMT
This is a part of A Week of Sparkle.
Sparkle Unleashed: When Sparkle stopped being Zuma and started being Luxor. Then went back to Zuma. It's pretty difficult, and even the dev team thinks so as well. Difficulty has never been a bad thing, but maybe the way they did it was... annoying. I will bring up 3 points.
1. Chain. Chain. Chain. Chain. Oh a stone orb. Chain.
The game loves its Chains. Literally just made for wasting time. I'm pretty sure Chains appear in more levels than Stone Orbs. AND STONE ORBS CAME FIRST. Stone Orbs don't even appear on the last few days. Stone Orbs are arguably worse, because if a Chain Stone Orb (Day 80+ only on Normal - probably different everywhere else) gets matched, and there isn't any more orbs on the chain, you gotta fire 3 more. However, this isn't as unfair as The Ultimate Challenge (I keep hyping that up. Hype will be dispersed tomorrow.), but manages to be a major annoyance.
2. So much for 110 days...
I forget how much they marketed the days, well, how many there were. Wasn't there 106? 110? Either way, the number of unique levels is not that high. Surprise survival was cool, but I can count the number of maps in the game on two pairs of hands. Twenty unique maps. One of them is not even seen until the last day. This means some maps will have to be played SIX TIMES!!! It might be even more than that, but FOUR WAS ENOUGH. Playing a map at least 6 times - spread across another 19 levels, will become... grating. People already complain a bit about repetitiveness, but when you have the least amount of levels of most marble poppers (20) (For reference, Zuma has 23. Most Luxor games have 25. Sparkle 2 has 37.), you've done it wrong. And no, that unused 3-path level would not have made it any better.
3. It's Just Not... Sparkle
I will deal with the orb launcher. I will deal with the map designs, but what will I do without some of my favorite things from the 1st two Sparkles? I'll give you some time, but you've probably read it anyways. It's SECRETS. Tap the Tree of Life's fruit! Tap the pond! Tap that pond as well! Herd some butterflies! It felt like effort was put into the menus. There were lots of secrets (18, and 2 secret trophies) but this game strangely has none. There really wasn't a surprise final level either. The monument was always there. Not like the stone statue was meant to be a Disc 1 Final Dungeon, and then out pops the monument. It's probably just me really liking secrets, and then becoming slightly angry when there isn't any secret in this game.
This probably just brought up some flaws, it's still good - but not good.
Well, tomorrow is The Ultimate Challenge. It's even harder than Nightmare Mode.
Sparkle Unleashed: When Sparkle stopped being Zuma and started being Luxor. Then went back to Zuma. It's pretty difficult, and even the dev team thinks so as well. Difficulty has never been a bad thing, but maybe the way they did it was... annoying. I will bring up 3 points.
1. Chain. Chain. Chain. Chain. Oh a stone orb. Chain.
The game loves its Chains. Literally just made for wasting time. I'm pretty sure Chains appear in more levels than Stone Orbs. AND STONE ORBS CAME FIRST. Stone Orbs don't even appear on the last few days. Stone Orbs are arguably worse, because if a Chain Stone Orb (Day 80+ only on Normal - probably different everywhere else) gets matched, and there isn't any more orbs on the chain, you gotta fire 3 more. However, this isn't as unfair as The Ultimate Challenge (I keep hyping that up. Hype will be dispersed tomorrow.), but manages to be a major annoyance.
2. So much for 110 days...
I forget how much they marketed the days, well, how many there were. Wasn't there 106? 110? Either way, the number of unique levels is not that high. Surprise survival was cool, but I can count the number of maps in the game on two pairs of hands. Twenty unique maps. One of them is not even seen until the last day. This means some maps will have to be played SIX TIMES!!! It might be even more than that, but FOUR WAS ENOUGH. Playing a map at least 6 times - spread across another 19 levels, will become... grating. People already complain a bit about repetitiveness, but when you have the least amount of levels of most marble poppers (20) (For reference, Zuma has 23. Most Luxor games have 25. Sparkle 2 has 37.), you've done it wrong. And no, that unused 3-path level would not have made it any better.
3. It's Just Not... Sparkle
I will deal with the orb launcher. I will deal with the map designs, but what will I do without some of my favorite things from the 1st two Sparkles? I'll give you some time, but you've probably read it anyways. It's SECRETS. Tap the Tree of Life's fruit! Tap the pond! Tap that pond as well! Herd some butterflies! It felt like effort was put into the menus. There were lots of secrets (18, and 2 secret trophies) but this game strangely has none. There really wasn't a surprise final level either. The monument was always there. Not like the stone statue was meant to be a Disc 1 Final Dungeon, and then out pops the monument. It's probably just me really liking secrets, and then becoming slightly angry when there isn't any secret in this game.
This probably just brought up some flaws, it's still good - but not good.
Well, tomorrow is The Ultimate Challenge. It's even harder than Nightmare Mode.