Hi, I find minimum range dumb, too. That's right, the bow should have minimum range. But the meley weapons shouldn't. Because, if I would have stabbed a man in the head with a sword from very, very close range, he would have died. This is not like that in this game. You cannot hit people from very close distence, Please fix it, at least for the sword and knife.

Lucas, the knife indeed does not have a minimum range. If I miss with the knife, I usually find it is because the enemy is attacking me from my left and I am facing right. This is especially noticeable with the goblins who come at you from the right, but sometimes end up going to your other side to attack.
The behavior you described with the sword, damage dependent on distance, does actually happen with the bow, which I think makes more sense.
Lastly, you don't technically have to jump to hit the harpies, because they do often fly down to attack you.
whocrazy,
No progress yet on the XP issue. I'll release a new version as soon as the XP compatibility issue is resolved.
Jade,
You will never ever miss an enemy unless you are doing something wrong or trying to miss them for some other reason. The bats are simply harder to hit because they are in the air. There is no random miss factor.
You say in your list of reasons why you have issues with the Gray Lady the following:
The fact that while reloading, however quick it is, I get lagged a little, so
I can't runn and can't jump.
Umm? You can run and jump whilst reloading, actually.
Having the Grey Lady teleport to me with no warning while I was reloading and
while I was approximately in the center of the screen.
The tutorial does warn you about this.
The fact that you have to waste arrows and die repeatedly to determine range is...well,
frustrating, in a word.
I don't actually understand what you mean here, sorry. But it isn't something I think you need be doing.
keyIsFull
Well  often  if you have a few enemies in range, your weapons will not hit the closest
one to you, which I find kind of dumb. This is especially troublesome with the bow.
Think your a victem of minimum range here as well, because the closest enemy in range is always the first one hit. Take gray lady, for instance. When you are using your bow and you are trying to hit the much closer ghost but you instead hit the Gray Lady. This would be because the ghost is too close for you to shoot with your bow, so your arrow hits the Gray Lady instead. Another time would be in the areas where you have a large quantity of zombies chasing you.

So, I'll clarify some of what I meant, even though I thought I was pretty clear before.

1. If I try and reload on the ground, I find that the Lady moves, doesn't talk, and always, always kills me. No exceptions. The only way I beat her was by reloading in the air, jumping over her, jumping away, landing, turning, shooting twice, pausing a tick, jumping up and over her, away, land, turn, shoot, repeat. It works, but it's pinpoint accuracy. For the first boss. Thus, my issue previously mentioned is that if you reload on the ground you're a dead duck, as you don't seem to be able to start running after a reload. you get a little lag, and she moves too fast. So, okay, fine. Reload in the air. Lesson learned.
2. My gripe about range while fighting the Grey Lady. You've had to use the bow a little before this, it's true, but not a ton. Since the bow can't reach her when she's too far, and can't reach her when she's up close, you're going to waste shots. Take it from me, if you waste too many shots, you're dead, so this is pretty unforgiving.
3. The tutorial warns you about her teleports, yes, but half the screen doesn't strike me as being "too far away" as she's within bowshot range, though just barely, when I've seen her teleport. I was expecting she would only teleport when you were, I dunno, more than two-thirds across the screen.
4. Bats. Yes, I know you have to hit them in the air. I didn't when I first found them, but I figured that out in short order. I can leap up, strike at a bat and still miss in the tenth of a second after it bites me so...uh, they're not -that fast, and this is also true with the sword, so go figure.

Easy mode is more like normal/hard mode would be in other games. There is a bit of room for error in the first level except for pits (which are fine, I have never ever had trouble with pits), and the second level is harder but not much harder. Grey Lady is much, much, much harder by comparison. Look at all the people who've struggled with her. That's called player feedback. If two people in ten tell you something's too hard, it's a wash. If eight tell you it's too hard, it's probably time to take them seriously.
The next level after this isn't too bad really.
The Gremlin boss isn't telegraphed in any fashion. I just thought I was in the next level fighting a regular gremlin, because I didn't get a cutscene. That guy is infuriating, but he's doable. Wish his melee attacks would do less damage on easy mode (they take about a quarter or so of my health, and that seems a bit much). this is particularly true since the level before is notoriously arrow-draining if you're not careful, and though you can fight the gremlin without arrows, you're going to trade hits and die pretty fast.
And then you have the next level. Giving zombies a chance to plague you before you get the miracle cure is borderline mean all by itself. Rocks are okay, though I have the same problem with this as I had with Paladin of the Sky's stupid planks that somehow kick you around corners back to the stairs in Tower of Judgment. Sometimes you can be hit when the sound isn't centered, when it's a little to your left or right. It's a minute detail, but I haven't ever had this problem with Super Liamm, so I dunno what to tell ya. Then there's bombers. Fine on their own. Peskky, but I can live with them. And then, spiders. Oh, spiders. I hate these enemies. The ability to potentially gang up on you and freeze you while other creatures melee you to death in under four seconds? Not nice. It's almost a pity there weren't more levels with a little less in them, at least at the start.
Again, folks. This is not what most people consider "easy mode". The fact that some people -have done it is not the point.

And, as far as the half-smug comments about learning attack strategies, let's see:
Gremlins like to approach, hit you, run away, then come back. They're mysteriously immune to damage while retreating even though an arrow in the back ought to be fatal.
Statues appear to regenerate health, or they start being -given more health in the level with the spiders. Five shots kills one in level 2, but it takes more than ten in later levels.
Spiders can appear almost out of nowhere from either side. It's kind of difficult to avoid them, even while jumping madly around, when you're between two. And especially hard if a ghost or a zombie or both pop up on one side or the other.
Ghosts, on their own, are fine. They can pop up right behind you. Okay, spin and hit, they die. But I've had this happen while trying to escape from said spiders. Instant death. There is nothing to be learned from this. It's called randomization, and it's not a skill you can account for.
Rats and bats never seem to be where you want them. A rat or a bat can bite you, and whether you're on the ground (for a rat) or in the air (for a bat) it's possible to swipe multiple times with a knife and miss.
The sword is useless against almost everything, because the sheer slowness of it means you get chewed to hell while you wait to swing again.
Since enemies don't appear in the same place from the same direction at the same time, there is only so much you can do as far as planning. Random spawns means you can get caught between enemies you'd just as soon flee from.
So please, please, please, don't talk to me about advanced audio gamers not getting the concept. It's a poor deflection from the points being raised, most notably about the Grey Lady here. This game is fast, and random, and wild, and not precise. And that's fine, but don't claim it's precise when it's not. Only very specific enemies (like said Grey Lady) are in any way precise.

I figure the simplest things to make easy mode easier are:
1. Make ghosts, including Grey Lady, only take 20% health when they touch you.
2. Make arrow pouches hold 20 arrows, and maybe (but only maybe) increase the bow's capacity for holding arrows up to 10.
3. Maybe, but only maybe, start the player off with more lives. Easy mode is not game default. Easy is easy. You don't get anything for beating it, so short of making all enemies wander aimlessly and just feeding it to the player (which would be bad), I think an effort should be made to try and make the game easier than its default. Give players something to mess around with, to decide whether they want to bother amping up the difficulty later. You still have four other difficulties for players to challenge themselves. Because my thought right now is, "If easy mode is this hard, then nightmare is simply not worth playing". I'm not a masochist. Sorry.

Hi!
I know this is probably not a mainstream opinion but I find this game nicely deterministic. It stopped being frustrating for me when I realized that losing a few lives along the way is not a sign of me making stupid mistakes but just part of the process, sometimes even part of tactics. I find myself using lives as just one more resource, sometimes deliberately sacrificing one to separate some enemies if I get overwhelmed.
Also I see some levels as puzzles to solve, so I often deliberately reload to go back and find a better jumping sequence to change the distribution of enemies around me in my favor.
I guess I'm just a geek.
From what I can tell, almost nothing in this game is random. It's just lots and lots of interwoven patterns. There's even some humor in them, such as the distance between two mushrooms set up so as to create a particular wave timing effect which is particularly challenging to jump over. So what seems random is actually the predetermined result of careful design. The effect is a bit like someone watching.
Kind regards,
E G

The only real difference between difficulties is that the enemies have more hp and might move faster and hit harder. That's just sort of a lazy way to manufacture difficulty. Now if you made the enemies do other interesting stuff on the harder levels, that is real difficulty. Like having gremlins use daggers on easy and normal, a bow on hard and very hard, and maybe a sword on nightmare. Some enemies like rats and bats are ok if you make their difficulty by changing their vitals (heath and speed and damage), but doing that for all the enemies is just uncreative.

I can agree with a lot of what Jade said here, even despite thoroughly enjoying the game. I can definitely agree with the idea of either being able to purchase arrows or arrow pouches being able to hold more arrows apiece. I also agree that Easy difficulty souldn't mean micromaaing lives and arrows within the first three levels or so. I can also agree with the comment about peraps toning down the Gosts' strength at least on Easy. When you've got a ghost to either side of you it's not always easy to kill one, then get away from the other one long enough to be able to turn around and hit it before it can touch you. I can also see the merits in his comments about the spiders since I had many a cheap death thanks to the little twerps. As it stands I myself am currentl on the last stage but I have few lives or arrow pouches to my name simply because some enemies just can't be taken out by other means before they reach you. Then of course if an enemy moves fast enough they're well past the minimum range and so your arrow just flies past them while they score a hit on you. And of course the sword, while powerful, is so slow that you wouldn't dare use it on most bosses, even though it would probably cut down on fight time given its power. I also agree that the rocks do seem to be a bit off since as Jade said you can still get hit even when it sounds like the rock is a little off to your left or right depending which way the level is going. So you could be at a point where you would think you'd be out of the way and yet you'd still say goodbye to a good sixty percent of your health. I'm pretty sure that even the lasers in Super Liam, which made me swear more often than just about anything else in my life at tat time, weren't so brutal. Of course they also didn't take off the vast majority of your health from a single hit and neither would they it you if the sound wasn't exactly centered the way the rocks seem to be able to do here. Then of course there are those parts where rocks just seen to pop up out of nowhere.

Hi guys! I have created a playthrough of the gate on normal. It's all here, from the beginning to hades, minus the cutscenes. The ending scene is in there, just because I think it's hilarious. I also have turned on my own music over the game's rather unremarkable music because it seems to fit better with the beat-em-up nature of the game. Let me know what you think!
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/825 … normal.ogg 163mb

Yeah, I actually was a little less careful than I could have been in that playthrough. The zombies move pretty fast and usually I still have about a dozen miracle cures by the time I reach Hades. I just wanted to get it done by that time, I think. 2 hours 47 minutes is actually pretty fast for beating the game start to finish though.

As for the vocoder zombies they're referred to as Apocalyptic Zombies. The backwards talking critters are Satan's Devils. As for that gauntlet you mentioned that's where I'm currently stuck. I've had to take a break from the game for a while though since it makes me swear a lot.

ammericandad2005,
Yes, it was.
Jade,
keep in mind Key was playing on normal mode, too.
Also, of course there is randomness to it. But you don't randomly miss an enemy just because I say so in the game, you miss because the enemy moved too close, too far away, or you are on the ground and they are in the air.
That was all I was saying.
And also, in theory, you don't actually have to trade melay blows. As with any game, audio or video, you will end up doing that. But theoretically you can significantly lower how much damage you take through skill.
Also, the game keeps introducing the new enemies as you saw, so it actually doesn't end up quite as repetetive as you seem to suspect, certainly a lot less repetetive than a lot of games.
Sure, you mostly slice jump back slice jump back slice to kill enemies, but not all enemies.
You often have to manufacture your strategies for individual enemies or even when they appear in clusters.
Regards,
Aaron

I just now came to Hades boss on easy difficulty. But I'm too tired right now after playing the entire game, so I'll try to win this battle tomorrow. And, I've noticed that Carmilla seams to be totally resistant to the lightning rod . Yep, this vampire appears twice in the game, which is interesting.

I agree with you Jade, especially on those random faling rocks that just appear out of nowhere right above you. It can be hard enough sometimes just avoiding the ones you hear from a distance, partly because of te soundissue that's been mentioned, where it sounds like it's either still a bit ahead of you or even behind you and yet it still sometimes counts as being close enough to hit you.