Ahh yes, the survivors genre. "Ohhhh boy yet another vampire surivors clone." you may say, roling your eyes. And you would be incredibly wrong to judge this gem of a game based on that alone. This game is AMAZING and you should get it. In what other game can you play as a samurai frog on a samurai gundam and use your special mecha-katana to cut a golden minigun in half twice so there are four golden miniguns? Which you pick up all at once to turbocharge your own minigun into quadruple overdrive?? Oh and your minigun uses ammo that hunts down the boss like a smart gun out of cp2077??? Boss eviscerated. On Vampire Survivors Lets first talk about the elephant in the room, the king, the original, the one and only Vampire Surivors. Yes VS is great, I love it, I have hundreds of hours in it. Ive played multiplayer quite a bit as well. Not going to glaze it so much as actually point out flaws that lead me to seek other survivors games, looking for rehashes and improvements to the formula: 1) Lack of interactivity Boiling down VS to its bare essentials you really only do 2 things: move a character around and make educated choices. After a while, you do want more things to do than walk and press A sometimes. 2) Sameyness of characters Sure you can sit here and tell me "B-but each character has different stats and sometimes a special passive that can radically change the gamep-" Yes yes yes but these are just meta choices to change your Educated Choices this run. Some chars are great no doubt, but they dont affect you walking around and pressing A. 3) Multiplayer is a DRAG I love VS. I want to play VS with friends. But VS with friends can be grueling. Between limited item slots and alternating levels, it becomes more of a chore levelling up every 30 seconds but 2/3 times you twiddle your thumbs. And you pick your choice instantly while your friends go "Yeah can I get an uhhh". And then one friend INSISTS on picking each limit break instead of random always. Playing VS in multiplayer is like being constantly awoken when you're just on the verge of falling asleep. And this next one is technically not a VS flaw but one of the genre 4) All of the VS clones try to copy VS weapons Like another steam reviewer here said, many survivors games try to copy things like the little birdies that have a circle that orbits you, or clockwork somethings, or self-centered aoe damage zones (ok that ones the free space on a bingo card). But generally you can see some sort of lazy VS-like weapon. Why Entropy Survivors is Great First it fixes a few of the qualms I have with VS. Which isn't entirely original to VS clones, many do. Fixing interactivity: Ok so the main point of when you play this, you still get your weapons like a VS clone, but you also have a lot more to do each game. First theres dashes (which you can get multiple charges). Theres also an active melee weapon and active gun you fire, as if you were playing a twin-stick shooter game. Also, each class comes with a special class ability such as leaving a trail of thorns, turning into a speeding jet, etc. It adds quite a lot to the game. There are auto-aim and auto-fire settings that let you turn it to be a lot less button mashey if you prefer the old VS feel. Fixing Samey-ness: In Entropy Survivors, you pick a loadout before you play! There are 8 classes each of which affect your base stats like in VS, but each also has its own active ability. Then you can also pick one of 6 melee weaps and one of 6 guns, each with different quirks to them. All of these you need to unlock of course giving game progression. However also each one of these things has both passive upgrades that are general power boosts, but also special perks that radically affect the gameplay. For instance, the spear has a perk that when you attack with it, it parts the sea of enemies. You can also equip a spear perk that lets you plant it in the ground like a banner when you shoot your gun to give a damage boost in an aoe. Each class and weapon has these kinds of perks, so you could be playing with a friend using the same class, melee, and gun, but different perks that alter your gameplay quite a lot. Fixing Multiplayer: Most VS Clones fix this I think. The grueling experience that is alternating level-ups. In this game as many others you all level up together. And game is designed with multiplayer in mind, such as the spear-banner perk, which also buffs allies. You can also make your flamethrower coat allies weapons with fire. There are also several class abilities that heal allies. Its great! One of my favorite things was me playing as a paladin with healing perks to let my gf and I bunker down, while she played as the jet class with perk that doubles xp gained when she picks up xp orbs while jet-dashing. So her whole goal was to bunker with me until she could jet dash to rush and pick up xp for us.\ Powerup Uniqueness: Man, some of the powers here are really really original. I wont go out and say each one is goated or even useful, some I am still scratching my head at a little. Sure you have your generic self-centered damage aoe, in this case its spinning blades, and arguably orbiting mines. And a few other standard armaments like grenades or missiles. But I mean, theres one where you randomly summon bulldozers off the screen that rush towards you like a meteor, only to fizzle out just before touching you. Yes, that was a JoJo reference. Anyway the bulldozers push/hurt enemies and also push exp/money pickups towards you. Theres a also a power that god-space-hands clap in front of you and bring all enemies in the arc together. Space flare pillars. Electrical outlet tethers. A fleet of garbage trucks (you heard that correctly). TLDR its great! Some extra awesome on top Metacurrencies and upgrades: There are 5 maps each with 5 tweaks to difficulty and each drops a different combination of meta-currency. You have money for passive overall upgrades. Then class/melee/gun/ability currencies to buy each class/melee/gun/ability's specific 6 passive powerups (things like +10% damage, -10% cooldown). Then when you complete challenges (ex kill 1000 enemies with a spear) you get geodes to buy those special perks so your spear can helicopter or shish-kabob enemies. Educated Choices - regarding Probabilities: Instead of doing a reroll/skip/banish system, each ability can have its chances to appear modified. So if you really hate/love the bulldozer power, you can make it never appear or give it 2x chances to appear, or somewhere in between. I put most of my meh powers on 0.5x and most of my yes pls powers on 1.5x, it feels nice. When you level up, you are given a choice of 3 options (with a timer) As far as skipping powers, it seems like if you dont pick a choice on is picked for you (which is a bit of a disappointment but oh well). Educated Choices - The choices change! But also also one thing thats SUPER COOL about this game is that sometimes your option for an ability isnt the same boring progression, its a rarer, stronger upgrade. So like, lets say normally upgrading <ability> from lvl2 to lvl3 gives +5% damage, but you could get lucky and get the rare upgrade version which gives +8% damage but also -1s cooldown. So now you have to decide if you pick the new ability you have been looking for, or the super powerful upgrade of the ability you already have that you werent going to pick. To translate this to Vampire Survivors speak, lets say you've been looking for Garlic (self-centered damage aoe) the whole game but your Peachone (bird with orbiting circle attacky thing) has the option to upgrade with also 2 limit breaks on top? HMMMMM. Character and charm The graphics are pretty great, and you are a FROG WITH A GUN ON TOP OF A MECHA ROBOT like what more could you ask for??? Idk man just buy the game its $10 and so worth it.
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