admittedly, what caught my interest was when a tetris friend of mine posted a huge item dependency flowchart from the remake (googling 'la mulana trigger map' pulls up the one), along with various small mentions and complaints about the game from him. Seeing a couple screenshots on google convinced me to give it a go, and hot damn was i in love with the art and music, and overall design in general. This sort of *faithful* retro-style is so rare, i am more than willing to give it my full appreciation. Very very well done.
the gameplay design on the other hand.... well, the premise is really good. the text-based riddles and intuition traps and longform puzzles & mysteries are for the most part well executed, but i don't know if it was due to the fan translation differing at points, or if it was intentional design trying to evoke old garbage game tropes, or if i was just missing tablets like a dummy but there were a handful of puzzles that just... can't be worked out with the given hints, and must be brute-forced (like the six dias puzzle in gate of illusion, or the medicine puzzle), or rely on noticing a change when backtracking through other rooms, or even backtracking to a previously-dead-end... don't get me wrong, most of the game has a really nice flow, and if i ever got stuck in one area i could always check over my notes and try a lap around a different area, and that usually led to more progression. when both me and the game are firing on all cylinders, it feels really great. as i said to my housemate a few times, "I really really enjoy it until i really don't."
I only did one playthrough of original La Mulana. Got all the item slots filled, and most but not all of the roms. Didn't know hell temple was a thing. That was in march, and i waited a few months to start playing the steam release of the remake (I specify because apparently things are still getting tweaked with each new release)
right off the bat, while i much prefer the original's art and music, i think they did a good job building the game up around wiiware limitations - the sequenced music still slaps, the art takes on a much more Saturn style (though i think the backgrounds wind up pretty cluttered at points), and they fit all the core game in! And higher resolution means more movement fidelity, good stuff (though jumping feels less weighty. hard to pin feelings on it). But again, once i start digging into the gameplay...
it's like, they did a good job identifying things that could be improved (no doubt aided by them listening to player comments on their website), but a lot of their fixes either fall short or get muddled up by other tweaks. the EXP bar sharing max length with max health? good decision. EXP is now a random+timed drop? bad decision. then they try to make it work with a healing hot spring, so you aren't required to grind a random drop to get your health back up. the gate of illusion puzzle i mentioned? instead of adding another hint or tweaking one to reduce possible configurations, they just.... removed the puzzle entirely, replaced it with a simple speed test. the game revolves around longform puzzles and remembering things for later, so they added a (very limited) text memory function, but so many of the puzzles and things you need to remember aren't just text, requiring you to still take notes. so they added not one, but two more hint systems (emails and mulbruk)! and why oh why is the angel shield now a required item when the silver shield still makes sense for its puzzle??? but again, i don't think it's all bad. i think the feather mechanic change is good, adding another hint for the medicines is good, adding more puzzles to third act areas like the dimensional corridor and chamber of birth is good, stuff like that. the interface changes are good, too. way more accessible game, especially early on (holy moly i forgot how expensive the scanner and translator were in original).
another change they seem to have made with the exp bar change in mind is to make enemies far more lethal - or at least they seem to be? and again, because exp is random drop now this effectively makes combat death far more common if you're playing at the same level. something i talked about with my housemate early on is that, in the original game, it felt like deaths came mostly from the exploration phase - new unfamiliar area, falling for traps, learning how enemies behave, adapting to the bosses - and death didn't carry too much a penalty as i was still gaining knowledge that would make further exploration easier. if i ever absolutely wanted to keep some progress i could warp out to gate of guidance and grind on some ant-lions for the levelup. whereas in the remake, it almost seems like, excepting the traps (which i mostly remembered from classic anyway), subsequent area runthroughs were almost as dangerous as the first, a bigger focus on the action gaming aspect. Though this entire paragraph might be a consequence of not having played the remake first? making the whole new exploration aspect mostly missing. hmm. i wish i coulda somehow played both versions 100% blind to give this a fairer comparison.
working my way through the last of the steam achievements gave me a thought - if, with some software perhaps, all of your conversations with xelpud and mulbruk, all the scanned tablets, and all the extra info scans (Archaeology Dictionary and all the other scans needed for the scanning achievement) that you had encountered so far were saved for later reference (like a big glossary with categorical separation or something, the YS 1 and 2 remakes come to mind as a possible example), maybe that'd be enough to shift the game away from needing to take supplementary notes? was that something they were even trying to do? and again, i haven't played EX or Hidden Treasures versions, i don't know what further tweaks were made to the game later, just lamenting the state of the PC release.
I did three playthroughs of the remake. One to get familiar with it and to actually try out Hell Temple, one to get the All Characters Alt Costume endings (using a premade route for reference), and one to get all the conversations and scans. Lemme tell you, the steam achievements not always updating after each one got me pretty stressed at times!
I'm not sure which one I personally prefer. Original's presentation style hits a huge soft spot for me, but all the interface and control refinements the remake does are really good. And like i said, the gameplay tweaks themselves are a big mixed bag for me. I'd definitely recommend the remake to most people though, unless i know they'd be able to appreciate the original (which makes me feel kinda pretentious saying, but you know what i mean). The game's definitely not for everyone, either.
I'm really hoping for the sequel to further refine the game's approach to things, instead of being more of the same. Especially since it's not really shackled to being a copy of the original, or necessarily being designed around MSX or wiiware limitations. I have no worry that they can ante up on the puzzle and plot aspects, i guess it'll all be in the execution. Probably going to start playing it later today.
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