This game is pretty incomprehensible if you haven't played Necrodancer

Hey gang,

So, like many of you, I heard this weeks bombcast, and sounded CAPTIVATED by this game. The only real rhythm games I've played are Elite Beat Agents and Gitaroo Man, but the guys made this sound really appealing. I love Zelda games, and the fact that it looked like the Super Nintendo one was very cool.

I played for about 30 minutes today, and boy was I getting my butthole torn in two. The game gives you a 30 second "Try to keep the beat I guess?" tutorial, then hurls you into the world. I never played COTND, and it really shows. I'm struggling with the most basic enemies, and I've only got this far cause I have the cleave sword.

Any ideas friends? I don't wanna "go off it", but it's hard to like when you've no idea what you're doing

I had exactly the same experience, but I stuck at it. The difficulty curve is really awful: it's frustratingly hard at first, and then way too easy by the end. Part of that is the same problem a lot of Zeldas have with difficulty: as you get more hearts, you can just absorb so much damage that you don't need to really pay too much attention to enemy attacks. If you haven't got the heart containers from the diamond death shop yet: focus on that first.

But also I think it takes a while to get used to the way combat works and the way your action happens before enemies. It ends up being all about the space between you and them: if you're next to someone and move into them, you'll attack before them and all's good. If there's a single empty tile between you and them, you'll move first and then they'll move into you and hit you. If there's two or more tiles, it depends on which beats they move on but you have some leeway to back out if you're about to be hit.

Working all of that out, on the fly, while still trying to keep up with the music just takes some time to learn. You can always switch to fixed-beat mode to get a hang of the spacing if it's too tough. But I would reccommend going back to playing with the music if you can: the tempo pushing you to make split-second decisions when you've got enemies on all sides is some really compelling gameplay.

EDIT - I should also point out a lot of the smart spacing stuff goes out of the window once you get a weapon that can hit two spaces away, which is kind of a shame actually.

When you just start out, don’t be a hero. The basic 1-range sword is a very difficult way to play the game. The dungeon bosses are especially difficult if you just have the basic 1-range sword. You have to be quite good at pattern recognition and managing your own movement to attack enemies without taking damage from other enemies.

On a new file, if you’re really struggling, just wander around the overworld. If a screen has enemies you know you struggle with, just hold down the shield button and try to get out of that screen. Don’t feel obligated to clear it. Just wander the overworld looking for chests and heart pieces you think you can safely get. Granted, the penalty for dying is extremely light, and if you’ve been activating Sheikah stones you can get back to where you were pretty quickly. Also, when you die and respawn, never buy the basic shovel or torch from the respawn person. If you enter into the world with no torch/shovel, A) the Link’s house screen has a guaranteed pickup for both, and B) even if you skip that it seems that enemies are guaranteed to drop a basic torch/shovel if you don’t have one.

The game is quite tough with only 3 hearts and a 1-range sword. Just farm chests off the overworld until you have a spear or broadsword, and maybe like 5 or 6 hearts, and the game becomes a lot more manageable. As long as you don’t outright die on 1 screen, you can usually farm a ton of hearts from bushes and pots and so on.

In Crypt of the Necrodancer, taking ANY damage was a huge screwup because healing items were hard to come by, but as long as you don’t drop from full health to zero in Cadence of Hyrule, you can usually heal back up pretty easily. Having slightly higher max HP is actually a huge buff since it’s so easy to restore health.

? I disagree as someone who never played Crypt and played this.

Only issue I had was...somehow i managed to not see the sword when I started and wandered around the map wondering how the hell to fight enemies. Aside from that, it's pretty straightforward.

I ended up buying Crypt of the Necromancer after and don't like it as much simply because everything is way smaller on the screen. Playing on the Switch, it's harder to see things.

Necrodancer doesn't really give any more direction starting out, so I don't think playing that first is really a prerequisite or expectation. You just have to keep trying and experimenting to figure out the mechanics. I hear CoH is much less punishing than Necrodancer, so you room for error.

I don't know if this is the same for everyone, but in my game I could buy a spear for like 6 diamonds or something. If you buy that spear, the game gets significantly easier. Save up your diamonds for that.

Yeah Necrodancer doesn't really go through any sort of deep tutorial or have a particularly well laid out plan to introduce mechanics. You're learning most of it on the go and that's part of the challenge to it.

Never Played Necrodancer, only part that gave me some real challenge was the end game stuff right before the last bossfight, otherwise I was surprise at how easy I got adjusted to the game, but that last specific partgave me a little bit of challenge.