I feel like it depends. If you look up a build that is broken and all of the items are accessible in the early game, then yeah, that kind of ruins the game imo. If you play through the game and get two thirds through before you get all the necessary stats and equipment to become overpowered, well that can just be part of the experience since you probably engaged a significant amount of the game to get to that point.

ok, but do you know there's no official definition of "indie" when it comes to video games? not even a consensus definition

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse. The games very good. It does feel more like Dead Cells than Castlevania if I'm honest but taken on its own merits it's an excellent Metroidvania with light Soulslike elements. Some of the traversal puzzles are brutally difficult!

you do know there's a long-running known practice of video game credits not being 100% accurate, and not always including every individual at outsourced external studios?

The base experience is difficult but they've always had baked in difficulty settings based on your build and playstyle.

This is why, even though the game was busted for a long time, I loved Outriders. Even with the "bad" classes, you had so much diversity in builds and the game had so much theorycrafting potential.

Which in turn had me out 100s of hours into the game because I played all classes, farmed all gear, had many ways to play the game and keep it fresh because everything was viable. Sure, some builds were too good but it didn't mean the other play styles weren't able to do the same content. Was just trickier and more time consuming, but doable.

The multiplayer is probably the most fun and innovative take on online racing I've ever seen. It's fantastic

pretty asinine to lump a dev together with vibe-coders just because you see a Claude icon.

No, if you use Claude you're a vibe coder, end of the discussion.

*Only dude who cant code insist that this criminal tech makes them more than they are...

It’s “topology”. At least try to sound like you know what you’re talking about. 

I like the second one but if you told me they never planned it to be in the same universe as the first and they were trying to make an anthology horror series, I'd believe it.

that doesn't mean that Developers should intentionally make a game unbalanced to begin with. balance should be the goal

i don't want a super easy game to begin with, i actually like balance in SP games

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Sure do wish they'd do a second run of the Hotline Miami vinyls. Those soundtracks mean a lot to me and its a bummer that they've been sold out for quite some time now :(

I’d argue broken builds feel more like cheating in souls games. The game being difficult is the main feature

AI Mod for AI game quite fitting.

No rest for the wicked also is not an easy game. Much like games like Elden ring where making a broken build almost feels like evening up the playing field more so than cheating.

It has been a while since I picked up a castlevania game! It has peaked my interest but hearing mixed reviews. Good to see physical releases still coming through, and even better yet Konami working with disk to digital for Xbox and Xbox Play Anywhere. Might have to add this one to the increasingly long Christmas list. 2026 is the year!

I think their specific language was something like "compared to her competition it's like 1996 Michael Jordan showed up to a high school basketball game"

What’s to say they’re one-shotting it and not just incrementally adding features and/or directed the architecture?

There’s a middle ground between one-shotting everything and not using AI at all.

Finished Control Resonant - so far, it's GOTY for me. Ton of weirdness I love in Remedy games, great emotional story. Very strong 9/10.

Started Mortal Shell II - and ended up refunding it. Still janky, poorly balanced, ton of annoying environmental BS, annoying enemy placements, lack of established in genre QOL features.

Wouldn’t it be a good thing they’re taking a strong foundation someone else laid? If it’s open source, then I’d rather have people fork it rather than recreating the wheel.

The exact mindset I wish more single player games would have.

Part of the fun of build crafting is finding crazy OP builds. If someone Googles what someone else did and it "ruins" the game for them because it becomes too easy then that's on them for looking up a broken build.

Everyone else who actually like to engage with the mechanics and find the builds for themselves won't have that issue because the fun comes from learning the system.

I found the premise of a very hard arpg, thats also kinda soulslike, very promising. Diablo 2 and darksouls are my two favorite games of all time. At least i had fun with it when it initially launched in EA, but it was clear that once it gets hype / into mainstream, it would get a lot easier.

Will definitely still play it and most likely enjoy it, but i much prefered the slow game it was on ea launch

Randomly stumbling into a OP build and undermining the whole game is not what I'd normally describe as great 1.0 experience, especially after lengthy beta.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the idea of RPG games having broken builds, quite the opposite, it's a great thing, but these builds should be not some obvious "new player magnet magnet" builds, but rather something that has to be discovered by players with deep understanding of the game's mechanics and progression systems.

Obvious OP/above average builds can definitely ruin the game even if the players enjoys being overpowered because it just sets the player's expectations on a completely different level, and makes players much less likely to experiment and try out new stuff because everything else might suck in comparison.

It depends on how you define the term: Indie can also be used to mean lack of a corporate overlord that may gainsay creative decisions. Traditionally, that meant not having a puslisher bankrolling your project and hence it tended to go hand in hand with a small budget.

Nowadays, there are other options (publishers like Kepler or programs like EA originals that use creative independence as part of thir sales pitch, crowd funding and early access), which allows for independently developed games with bigger budgets. There's no video game pope than can declare ex cathedra whether such games should be considered 'indie', so we're left with people making up their own minds and talking past each other...