hotl#NiQ The Firefly Diary

[Homura]

I have to admit. What attracted me to this game was its aesthetic. The juxtaposition of this game's dystopian environment contrasted by the fireflies in brightly coloured green and purple along with a super cute girl in Mion made it incredibly appealing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aTPsEVvUjc
You see that? That's like in-game graphics. The game really looks like what's in the official trailer. That is an incredible feat on any platform, especially on Vita.

Like the Order 1886, looking pretty isn't going to win you over just like that (you know, because the Order really is just another cover-based shooter #2314214). htol#niq has its own fair share of problems. If you look at its metacritic score, it scores an abyssmal 55/100, barely a passing grade. So what went wrong?

The gameplay consists of you leading the two fireflies around in the light and shadow world. The front touchscreen allows you to move the green firefly, which directs Mion's movement. The purple firefly is activated when you touch the rear touchpad of the system, which freezes time and lets you traverse the shadows to activate switches and interact with objects Mion otherwise cannot interact with. You can change the touchscreen controls to a more traditional method with the control stick.

In addition to guiding Mion to safety, you can also try to collect memory fragments (a little plant sapling) that lets the story unfold.

Mion herself moves very slowly. It makes sense, she's a little girl who barely woke up not that long ago. However, the impact of such a mechanic makes the rest of the game's level designs weird. The difficulty of this game is incredibly high, and the plentiful amounts of checkpoints is a nice addition, since you'll be going back to that checkpoint hundreds of times.

The problem, I think, is in level design. Many of the later areas have extremely difficult timings in order for you to traverse through correctly. Some of these stages legitimately look like stages from Super Meat Boy rather than from htol#niq, with hazards going from every which way to prevent Mion's escape from this dystopian world. The problem lies in this: Super Meat Boy has incredibly tight controls. Every twitch you make the meat boy will move. However, in htol#niq, every movement you make has a long delay on Mion's part, and often you have to intercept and make your decisions well ahead of time in order to clear an obstacle. You mistimed your change into the shadow world ever so slightly? There's a 1 second delay before you can go back into the shadow world, meaning you're dead.

At this moment, I've beaten 2 chapters, to which both of the bosses did some things unreasonable, making your deaths feel really cheap.

Spoiler:

The chapter 2 boss is straightforward, push a button on the left, and push the TNT to the boss, and have the boss eat the TNT. Do that three times. Here are the problems:
1. The TNT dropping kills you, so you have to make sure it lands before you move to it.
2. Mion can't let go of the TNT, so when you're pushing the TNT forward, you need to climb it, climb back down, and move away to leave the TNT.
3. The boss has 3 attacks: a roar that drops random items down, a flamethrower, and the eating attack.
4. The roar attack is telepgraphed with the roar, and items fall with rubble coming down to show you where things fall. If there is a cart, you can hide under it to avoid the debris, but it does not save you from either of the other two attacks.
5. If Mion is pushing the TNT, and the boss reaches the bomb with the eat attack, Mion is dead from the explosion. It telegraphs the eating attack.
6. If it flamethrowers the TNT and Mion is near it, or the cart you can hide under is near it, she's dead. The boss doesn't telegraph this attack long enough for it to matter.
7. If the TNT is near the cart, and the boss makes it explode, it destroys the cart. If Mion is hiding in there, she's dead.
8. So if you hit it 3 times, it shoots a missile. Carts fall down, so intuitively you'd think to just hide in the cart. And then you die. You're supposed to hide in the cart, and then go to the shadow world to destroy the missile while the boss still has it in its mouth.

Yup...bad design.

It's such a shame. the aesthetics, the lack of words used to convey a story, even the general control design...all shattered because of bad level design, and bad boss design.

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I think after finishing the game, the game is definitely worth the time I spent pulling my hair out in frustration. Much of the mid- to end-game all had little quirks and problems that deal mainly with the controls (and one boss where it's really unreasonable for my eyes). I got the regular and true endings, which were both interesting.

I even liked the downtime the game has in between puzzles.

It's a nice, self-contained game, with a good story, and great aesthetics that is marred by bad game design in not taking into consideration how the game handles itself. I like this game. I like it a lot despite its shortcomings.

[Sanctus]

Well written review. I would play it if I had a vita. There's lots of games on vita I'd like to play. :[

[Homura]

Thanks. Ya Vita does have a lot of quirky and niche games that I like.