I never checked out Guacamelee, but I always heard really really good things about it and by extension the studio. Out of nowhere a few weeks ago I saw that they had a new game coming out, and it’s an ARPG, and it’s Game Pass Day 1, and there’s nothing else going on! Time to slam through this!

I gleefully sunk 16 hours into a near-complete first playthrough, then went on to put a couple more hours into NewGame+. I’m well on my way to getting the last two achievements (Beat NG+, S-Rank all forms), but keep getting hung up by doing too much crap on mobs and crashing the game.

Storywise, there’s not much going on here. It reminded me a lot of Deathspank, where it’s goofy and lightly gross-out humor, but not like overboard or anything. Stylistically it reminds me of one webcomic artist the name of whom I can’t remember, and also a lot of Newgrounds.

Mechanically the game is DENSE. The game progresses you through a tree of 15 wildly different classes, with a mix of fantasy generics (sword guy, ranger, necromancer, monk), random animals (rat, turtle, slug, egg), monsters (dragon, zombie, mermaid) and . . other stuff (robot, strongman, magician). Each of these classes is individually really well designed, with four unique active abilities and a passive. You can use a quick-swap wheel to swap through any of these classes instantly with no penalties. Each class has its own pros and cons, its own unique playstyle, unique art, unique everything. They have their own inherent combos, status effects, etc. And they work great with the pretty simplistic enemy shield system, where enemies can have one of four shield types, and player damage can be imbued with one of four damage types.

So that’s all great and if they had stopped there the game would have been fine, but they didn’t, they made the everything except the ‘a’ attack and passive mix-n-match. After the first major dungeon the game completely opens up by giving you the ability to equip anything anywhere from any class on any class. Slug that can gallop, Zombie with holy attacks, Fire breathing robots. Egg.

And they also could have just left it there, and left it up to the player to find what “works”, but the use their core progression system of micro-quests both progression and tutorial. Each class has its own set of quests that walk you through how to use it, how all its various skills work, how the passive works, and then it starts moving into some recommended combos. Ok you’ve got a primarily melee class, how about you figure out how to pepper in some range? You’ve got a magic class, how about you try some melee attacks? What about status effects? Status combos? Pets? By the time you hit b-rank you’ve got a good idea of what it offers and can add that knowledge to your repertoire for when you then head over to another class. Realize this one class has a ridiculous passive? Cool, bring it as part of another class’s build. Like their primary ability? Add it when you need that kind of damage.

Then they give you a big world to screw around in with tons of enemy diversity and a couple distinct biomes. The overworld is pretty straightforward, somewhat linear, lots of roadblocks, but once you get water mobility you can get pretty much anywhere. Difficulty scaling keeps enemies right around what level you are, with some slightly harder some slightly easier. Dungeons are more mechanics-puzzles, especially later ones, where you’re given multiple shield types to mitigate, plus multiple negative modifiers like increased enemy damage, no health drops, regenerating shields, etc. On top of that, there are big-boy dungeons where your quest progress is stopped and you have to make due with what unlocks you have.

I enjoyed the game thoroughly, and I’m slowly chipping away at NewGame+. As I stated, the only thing holding me back is that NG+ keeps crashing because I do too much. 20 enemies charge at you with 2 debuffs each, then you add 3 debuffs to them, spawn 10 pets, and then dash into a wall? Whoops, game tried to do too much and dies. At the moment I’ve S-ranked about half the classes, and I’m barely through the NG+ dungeons. Once I’m done maxing all the classes and I’m just going for optimal builds not Garbage For Quests, I expect it’ll be smooth sailing. There’s no level differential in NG+, mobs are just always at-level, so it’s purely about overcoming the mechanical challenges, not powerleveling or whatever.

I’ll probably wrap it up over the next couple weeks, then be done with it altogether.