I don't find the game very manoeuverable right now, take for instance when you jump and then umbrella-jump and touch a block on your right.. no matter how higher the umbrella-jump goes, you can't anymore lean right.. your flight is gonna be vertical. That's the sort of stuff I'm talking about.
By hitting the attack key just after umbrella-jumping, you can use the momentum of the jump without hanging onto the DHU, meaning that you won't rebound from walls in the same way. There's also a trait called
Hang Glider which allows you to steer the DHU in the air.
The game is a little bit too hard at the moment.. unless it's your intention to keep it Nintendo-hard.
I wouldn't take "Nintendo-hard" as an undesired criticism.
It is very much designed to be a game that gets easier with experience though, and there are different ways to approach it strategically: for example whether you aim to reap every item from a level, or rely on speed-running for a good time bonus; or whether you try to fight as many enemies as possible to collect treasure and mana, or whether you avoid combat and play stealthily, or even as a pacifist, in order to avoid angering the hellion factions.
There are also quite a few unlockable advantages which you'll encounter as you achieve more within the game.
Traits cost too much.. every baloon only gives 1 star, I never managed to collect 100 of them in order to get a trait.
Collecting balloons will gradually gain you mana, but an even quicker way is to kill enemies using the DHU, especially using combo attacks. I usually aim to have one or two traits by the end of Act IV - and depending on the traits you choose, you can accrue mana even more quickly from then (
Balloon Animal, for instance, increases the amount of mana available from balloons).
And fixing/replacing the balloon is very expensive.. can't think that everytime I get hit I have to pay 200 coins to repair it. And no balloon pretty much means game over.
I actually know players who intentionally don't use the balloon for much of the game, relying almost entirely on exploring on foot, and there are items which can effectively replace it for situations in which it might be necessary. Then again, there are players who explore and fight almost entirely in the balloon, and use their money to upgrade it heavily for that purpose. In any case, the more carefully you play, the less likely you are to need to spend your money on repairing and replacing the balloon, so it's often a good idea to think carefully about when to park it somewhere safe while you explore.
Ryan
