I've been pushing off with feedback until I was sure that my impressions weren't just knee-jerk reactions. Here's a few things:
Pros:
- New towns, huts, artwork, and underground caverns are all awesome!
- Finding the spring pad challenges out in the wild gave me the encouragement to give them a try. Especially finding them in Region 1. I felt that I hadn't invested too much in the run to give something so high risk a shot. The fact that it was still really freaking difficult still balanced it out. I've tried several times, but only completed once. I don't know what the reward was like in previous versions (I avoided it), but now that I know what the reward is, I can do that cost-benefit-analysis.
- Rebalancing the economy seems like a smart move. Collecting crystals was kind of a casual part of the Alpha, but seems way more important now. It kind of bums me out that the Crystal Seed only gives 2, but I can understand why.
- Trading in seeds in town is a very welcome addition, although accidentally losing your Waypoint Seed because you lingered on the pad a little too long was really really frustrating.
- Giving a limited number of uses on Squash was a good move. That was turning into a crutch, for me. Still very useful, but the reward of money-money-money is a little more balanced with the risk of getting clobbered.
Cons:
- The difficulty is crazy. I just completed my first run where I got to Region 4 since the update. I used to get there pretty reliably, since I continued playing TS right up till the update. I've been playing almost every day since the 0.6 and I just NOW got there, and I have no idea when that will happen again. I used to get all the way to region 4 pretty reliably, but now almost all of my runs end in Region 1 or 2. I'll go into more detail below.
- Region 1: The density of enemies and holes SEEMS a little higher. Maybe nothing has changed. It's hard to tell. But one thing that definitely changed is the economy, and playing as agressive as you can has become almost manditory. This new change in how I have to play just to get 20+ crystals in R1 leads me to get into a lot of situations that I used to be able to avoid. Things like taking down spiders. I never used to take those things on with just thorns, but now I kind of have to, making a lot of my runs end pretty quickly. If there was a little more room to move around, the high density of enemies might not be quite as bad. I'm actually really concerned for new players if Region1 stays like this. My wife wanted to try this out, she's only played a little bit of TS, and she bounced off of this build pretty hard.
- Region 2: Oh my. The denisty of holes in this region has sky-rocketed. Maybe something else effected the math, but the hole-density now resembles the desert, a region where I used to think that the shit just got real. This in turn makes all other challenges really really difficult. The majority of my runs end here, and the majority of those are before I reach the crystal room. I was starting to think I was getting a pretty good handle on the movement mechanics and I even beat 0.5 several times, but Region 2 is my doom in 0.6. If you ask me, the hole density needs to loosen up.
- Region 3 and 4: I don't have much feedback about these since I've only gotten to 3 about 3 or 4 times, and Region 4 once. The new towns are amazing, though. :)
- Region 2 vegetation: I'm a supporter of the new clutter art for Region 2, but there is one problem I'm having. I can't distinguish between plants that are solid and which ones I can pass through, very well. Even when I identify which ones will fuck up my roll or push me into a hole (that's happened a couple times), when they are all bunched up together, it's hard to see them as individuals. I really like the idea of those clusters of plants, though. When there is a seeking enemy after me, it's nice to have a place to go and screw with their pathfinding.
Bugs:
- One time a grub had a "hole-maker-worm" smash up from underneath it. The grub was now in a hole, and it got stuck.
- I placed a purple spider right next to a node so I could finish it off with one last thorn I needed to plant there. The spider was positioned to the node's 12 o'clock so that as soon as the thorn was planted, I could stab him from a safe distance. For some reason I took damage when the seed was planted, and no thorn appeared (probably because I took damage). The spider didn't take any damage, so the thorn didn't spawn on it. Then, out of curiosity, I was descending from my damage-jump and landed on the node that I had supposedly planted the seed (of which existed a spent thorn plant) and immediatly took damage again, ending my run. Somehow a collider got stuck there that was dealing me damage......or something.....
- I'm still falling into holes that are spawning behind towering sprites, making them invisible. Now that there are so many more things that stand tall enough to obscure holes, this seems like a bigger issue.
I'm still enjoying the game quite a bit, but with Region 2 being as it is, this build has gotten pretty frustrating.