Porgy

This is another big grower. In my mind, I compare this extremely heavily to Golfaria, as they’re both very similar. Both are metroidvania-esque games. Both involve exploring out, but with a limited resource for exploration so you have to go back to base a lot. And exploration is EXTREMELY unpelasant, until get a few powerups and have some leeway in case of mess ups.

In Porgy, you play as Rashmi, a marine biologist exploring the ocean in her submarine, the Porgy. The fish in the ocean have recently grown aggressive, and she wants to figure out why! This is a far more traditional metroidvania, or as I assume they call them in this universe, “porg-em-ups”, or “porglikes”. Your sub floats around, and can shoot torpedos to stun fish. You have fuel, which is also your health, and if it runs out, boom you splode. Your goal is to spread out, try and find fuel and weapon upgrades, and other power ups that can make your exploration easier. Like I said, exploration fucking sucks ass at the start, but it was immediately better than Golfaria, because while they both have that painful exploration is required bit, at least Porgy is a simple like, run and shoot kinda thing, and not a weird-ass golf game where you also need to learn new controls. Porgy is much easier to pick up and play.

Porgy

Once you get past that opening hump, Porgy is actually very pleasant and fun to explore. It’s quite large, took me five hours to 100%, and I resorted to a map for the last bit, and it STILL took me a while. It doesn’t help that you need to return to the surface every single time you get anything, which slows things down a lot. And combat really, really does suck at the start. Your weapons are weak and awful and awkward to use, and there’s no real need for it. So you have three things you can do. 1) Take a hit, which prolly means you’ll waste your time and fail this exploration dive. 2) Take a long time trying to avoid it, which wastes time, and you’ll prolly get hit anyway. 3) Kill it, which takes a long time for no reward, but at least it’s dead for the way back now. But after you refuel, everything respawns.

Porgy

This game is rather huge, and a lot of the stuff is extremely well hidden. It really was fun by the end, but I won’t deny when I first palyed it I legit kind of hated it. I got ANGRY. Especially since big bosses just roam each area, and if they appear in your path on your way back with that fuel you so desperately need, you’re pretty much fucked, do it again, slut.

The ending is also fucking confounding, in a way I really don’t want to spoil, but also what the actual fuck??

Also, there’s Tao Nemuru in the credits again! Huh, I wonder what that’s all about :) Also worth noting that this is the first game that has the UFO Soft name right there in the title. It’s official, no more LX Systems.

7.5/10