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Hi! I like all sorts of fangames, and my reviews are based on how much I liked them!
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PlutoTheThing
For: I wanna be the Destruction State
For: I wanna be the Destruction State
Very iconic and infamous avoidance, known for being an extremely hard barrage game and also being incredibly fast paced. In general the way the game feels is easily it's strongest aspect, it simply just feels cool to play especially when you get far, as everything goes by so quickly and so fluidly. The actual attacks I'm a bit mixed on, there's definitely some cool ones like the section where you fall down an arrangement of blocks, or the falling bursts, but then stuff like the shower at the end of the drop or nearly all of the ending section is both pretty unfair and also just annoying at times, especially since it sometimes feels as if the RNG is free or impossible, a nasty experience to have with any avoidance. With that being said there is a lot of skill-based stuff here, it's just at times the RNG is so fast and oppressive that it won't always feel that way. If you can look past these moments, the game can be really enjoyable, and I grew to like it a good bit, but if you find it too frustrating, annoying, or inconsistent, then it will be a miserable experience. Proceed with caution.
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Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 97 97
Aug 9, 2024
PlutoTheThing
For: Crimson Needle 2.5
For: Crimson Needle 2.5
This review is based on completing all of the content in the game that is currently known about. The difficulty rating for the third ending was 86/100.
Crimson Needle 2.5 is one of the most anticipated fangame releases of all time, it’s an entry in one of the most iconic fangame series of all time, years after its last installment. Even if it was marketed as “CN2 in studio” I think most people had a feeling the game was more than that, how much more was of course, entirely unclear. It’s really hard to break down everything about this game so I’ll split this review into 4 sections. There are massive spoilers throughout this entire review, I would highly recommend playing the game before looking at what I have to say about it.
Part 1: The 100 Floors
This is the most surface level section of the game, it’s the part that realistically was guaranteed to exist. Personally speaking I went into this game with absolutely no expectations so this was really the only thing I was anticipating. It shares a lot of CN2 DNA which is probably not a surprise, but I think it does show a lot about how much Kale has evolved as a maker. It’s no secret that games Kale made post-CN2 were pretty different as in general, gimmicks become a lot more integral to his style. In that regard you can definitely say CN2 is a relatively safe game and likewise this adaptation of it is somewhat reeled in compared to what you may expect if you viewed this game as a CN3 sequel going in. With that being said I think this section does a lot to use what it’s working with as a vessel to create something new, and in that regard it succeeds. A lot of parts, especially early on, are pretty similar to CN2 screens but the further you go I think the more flair is added and at times, some screens are entirely changed to be something far more interesting. One part that especially stood out for instance was 85-87, which is more focused on cycles and stuff and is completely unlike anything in the base game. It was really surprising but super fun. In general the quality of the needle feels much higher, the game just feels nicer to play because there’s many more distinct rooms, neutralizing the weakest point of CN2 for me, which is how much of it blends together. It may be less showy than other needle games or even other parts of this game but it does the job it’s trying to do incredibly well and is some really high quality platforming. I would be remiss to not mention floor 100, the spectacle of this floor is fantastic, the visuals of course are amazing, especially the background, and the needle itself is great. It’s a similar concept to CN3 floor 100 but a bit more explicit in taking from other parts of the game. It does a great job at being a conclusion to this part and the extra life mechanic is a really nice idea for a save this long to prevent it from being too much of a grind, something I think this game in particular benefits from. This section is great, super well put together, demonstrates how someone can evolve as a maker beautifully, and was also less than 8% of my playtime.
Part 2: The Guest Stages
The other three Crimson Needle games are as good as over once floor 100 is, at most there’s some minor bonus things you can do, but nothing significant compared to the scope of the main game. This game provides a first for basically any floor game, where the initial 100 floors are basically just the prologue. Throughout the game you can find some oddities, weird things that stand out, rooms that seem to allude to something, stuff like that. If you look deeper into these things you might eventually find where they lead and uncover a very shocking fact. While the main game is very much a complete game in its own right, in many ways it’s just the foundation for the most insane secret hunt I’ve ever seen in a fangame. The reasons for this are plentiful, one of the biggest being the sheer size of it. Every single stage, marked by the varying tilesets every 3 screens, is home to a secret somewhere, many of which also contain a hint for something, sometimes for an entire other stage. That’s 33 secrets, many of which you’d likely just glaze over on a first play because the way things are hidden is so clever. There’s such a nice variety of secrets, many of which require the player to do a challenge like go through a screen while constantly bonking on ceilings, or always turning around when touching a wall, stuff like this is especially impressive to me because of the way rooms can be designed to be completable with stipulations like this, but still feeling entirely natural to play normally. Some of the solutions are just so cool and clever, and just the process of entering stages feels great when combined with some of the phenomenal transitions between stage and secret, a minor element of the game which still feels like so much soul was put into it. The whole secret hunting part of this game is amazingly well thought out, the community experience of putting things together was something truly special to behold, and this is all just the set up for the meat of this section of the game.
Guest stages inherently are an inconsistent thing in fangames, it’s definitely cool to see a group of makers get together on a game, but often times a guest stage is not that maker’s best work, and I think the key reasoning behind this is the fact that a guest area is just that, an area, a stage. It’s hard for anyone to represent their full creative potential when limited to just a small section of a game, oftentimes entirely separated from the rest of the game. I think the beauty of CN2.5’s guest stages is that instead of fighting this, they embrace it. The guest stages sort of create their own ecosystem within them, where the makers make basically whatever they want, leading to an incredibly diverse array of stages in terms of style, size, and gameplay. A lot of these stages feel like their own games, notable instances of this are things like Chatran, Qwylwryght, Synthasmagoria and of course Cherry Treehouse. These stages contain their own stages within themselves, sometimes their own stories, and very distinct gameplay. It’s honestly amazing to witness, it truly feels as if within this 100 floor game is a bunch of sub-games hidden beneath the surface, leading to an incredibly varied and lengthy experience to play them all. I enjoyed almost all of these stages, but there are definitely ones that were particularly amazing.
Many guest areas are notable because of their extremely high quality platforming, stuff like Kale, TheNaderTwo, LemonGH, RandomErik, TheJPEGDemon, Verve, Zephyr, EchoMask, Chatran, among others contain really clever gimmicks, pathing, things that you’d probably expect from a high quality needle game, just executed to a very high standard. Some like LAWatson or Vormanax stand out because they contain some unique gameplay ideas like a minigame or an avoidance which slowly gets easier as you play. There’s a few guest areas that really resonated with me in particular, not all of them were my absolute favorites but I really respected what they were doing and thought they were extremely impressive. YaBoiMarcAntony and Egg are really awesome needle stages with some really amazing atmospheres. I really enjoy how the audio grows louder or silent throughout the first stage of Marc’s, and the lightning section at the end of Egg’s stage really stood out to me. PlasmaNapkin also has a really cool gimmicky stage based on momentum puzzle platforming, it doesn’t always feel the best to play for me but it has a lot of cool saves and I generally had a good time. Synthasmagoria’s stage is incredibly well put together, it’s one of the most unique things I’ve seen in a fangame and there’s so many incredible set pieces, a great sense of exploration permeates this area and it feels so unnerving and mysterious. Qwylwryght’s stage is truly a treat, unbelievably clever in some places with a great sense of humor while still having a lot of thought-provoking and intriguing moments. The tetris save was a highlight for the entire game for me. Last thing I want to mention is the Cherry Treehouse stage, and I think in many ways it speaks for itself. Out of this world visuals, great gameplay with a modified movement system allowing for some unique platforming and tons of variety with gimmicks, traps, cycles, anything you could ask for, and of course the bosses are awesome to see. I was especially happy to see the crimson bat demon here, but all the bosses were really fun and the final one is just so damn cool. It’s safe to say the guest stages are absolutely incredible, such a diverse maker list and it really feels like everyone brought their A-game to help make this something special.
If you get through all 32 guest stages, you aren’t quite done with this section. There’s the final sequence, a final secret that leads to a mural which transitions to the final boss of the game. The fight is split into two phases, and it’s better than anything I could have ever imagined. The first phase is kind of like an evolution of the crimson style of boss, it’s got the general structure of something like the CN2 final boss, but it contains much more involved mechanics requiring you to develop an understanding of both what is going on and how to handle them. Developing a strategy for this fight was extremely satisfying and it’s got so many cool little things to keep you on your toes and make the fight as fun and interesting as possible. Phase 2 is more straight-forward but is such an amazing “finale.” A five part fight against each of the main crimson demons, ending with a tense face-off against the skull the green demon wears. The animations the demons have are fantastic and give them so much life, especially when combined with attacks that embody their origin. The whole concept of the fight is that as the demons die, they show up in future phases to interfere and support the current one you are fighting, and this is a great idea and leads to some creative moments, especially interactions with yellow’s thunder combined with blue’s water. This fight does an amazing job at concluding things, especially as afterwards you get a truly amazing credits sequence, complete with a great song and really nice art to represent each maker. I also adore the room after the credits, thematically it’s probably in the top 5 rooms in the game for me. I couldn’t really explain why I like it so much, the combination of songs, visuals, and context just create this special energy that I haven’t really seen elsewhere. I wouldn’t really have any other place to mention it so I feel I should here. If the game ended here, I don’t think anyone could possibly complain about that. The game would have already provided way more content than anyone could possibly imagine. The makers have already gone so far beyond what you would expect from a sequel to a series of 100 floor games. This makes the fact that the game is still far from over that much more shocking when you reach this point.
Part 3: Finding Closure
After the second sequence of credits, you get to play the guest stages freely, officially titled the Communion stages. If you enter the menu and look towards the end, there’s one stage you definitely didn’t wouldn’t expect, John 10:9. If you look this phrase up online, you’ll find a bible verse that begins by saying “I am the gate.” In a lot of ways, this chapter is where the game comes into its own gameplay wise. This is not to say the gameplay is bad before this, at this point the game was already amazing, however it feels like the game itself hasn’t gotten the chance to show what it can truly be, unbounded by restrictions of being built off cn2 or guest stage content which inherently is created outside the game. The final section is Crimson Needle 2.5 in its purest form. The stage starts with a reminder of how this journey began in the first place, the dog, Blue, which you’ve been searching for the whole time, and has clearly passed away. At this point the crimson demons are defeated, and as such this is kind of the one unresolved plot point in the game. The first thing I noticed gameplay wise is that this section immediately feels a lot more like Crimson Needle 3, some places very blatantly when you see the nerfed yet extended floor 100. The grand reveal comes a little bit in, when you reach a sanctuary which causes CN3 Floor 31 teleporters to spawn, along with the mind-breaking realization that even after this insane amount of content, there is still so much left to do and see.
The premise of this section is something that would make a fantastic needle game in its own right, being at the end of such a massive adventure is extremely absurd though. It’s similar to Floor 31, but with a greater emphasis on progression throughout, as you can do things that unlock more paths for you to go down. I absolutely love this, there’s very few things in gaming as satisfying as unlocking new areas to go in this labyrinth, a feeling only made more powerful by everything else about the section. For one the atmosphere here is unparalleled, in large part due to how it differs from what’s before it. Sections with more standard, familiar tilesets, guest stages which in some ways make the world feel populated by virtue of having multiple people making the content you play, along with many of them being pretty vibrant (although very far from all), it’s all so heavily contrasted with this section, you can’t go back to the rest of the game, in many senses you are trapped in this sprawling maze filled with so many paths, many of which take on far more atmospheric visuals and sounds than what you’d find in the 100 floor section. I found myself experiencing an unmistakable feeling of loneliness traversing through this part, and a lot of that time is spent alone with your own thoughts which is a really powerful experience a game can provide. There’s so much variety as well, largely because structurally this segment is quite different from something like Floor 31. It hops around tilesets a lot, each one having unique gameplay as well, there’s not a whole lot of things that feel like dedicated, proper stages, instead the area is mostly composed of smaller segments that string into each other. This leads to an incredible amount of variety, and it really goes to show just how much effort was put into this. Coming up with so many visuals, matching songs, and gimmicks to build platforming around is incredible and I can only imagine the kind of undertaking it was to fully realize this area in the way the creators imagined it.
I implied it at the end of the last paragraph but if it’s unclear, among all the visual and sonic variety in the section is so much unique gameplay. Some of the gimmicks here were amazing for one, the kid teleporting after a few seconds in water, shooting walls that allow you to walk horizontally or along a diagonal line, repurposing one of the restrictions needed to enter a secret for an entire stage, forced full jumps, there’s a big pool of them that get used and the ones I mentioned really don’t scratch the surface of what’s here. Even more impressive is how they get used. The gameplay implications of swapping between ideas so frequently is that you are basically provided something new on every screen. Nothing will ever overstay its welcome, you get something fresh constantly, something new to dig your teeth into, even saves within the same area are often wildly different. It makes for a really interesting gameplay experience, in some senses it feels like the halfway point structurally between Thank You Thenewgeezer and CN3, however the ideas are a lot more out there I think. In some ways, while the game is known for being somewhat gimmicky, I think CN3 is pretty restrained and most things feel like what your idea of “normal needle” would be. I think in this segment of CN2.5, the gimmicks really stick out more, and it leads to a lot more sections which feel like something completely brand new. This also leads to a very dense section gameplay wise, compared to the rest of the game, basically every save you’ll see here is significant in the sense that it has it’s own learning curve and you’ll probably need to get used to a lot of things within it in order to progress. It would be extremely hard to list all of the gameplay highlights in this part of the game, but it should be noted that this was my favorite part of the whole thing. The fact that it was after the praise I gave those other parts should say a lot in and of itself. If you showed me a screen from this area, chances are I can probably give you a list of things I loved about it. In isolation I think this very well could be the best platforming I’ve ever experienced in my life. It sounds exaggerated but to keep a player engaged like this for over 20 hours without ever missing the mark is a feat that I would be surprised if anything ever matches, at least for me personally.
If you do manage to get to the end of this journey, you’ll find yourself with a shiny Halo at the front of a church atop a mountain. Going inside is essentially the start of the true end-game. The initial tower is fantastic, it’s another very lengthy save which allows you to die once past the halfway point, and it feels great. I’m pretty sure it’s partially based on floor 93 in CN3, much like a few other screens earlier based on CN3 screens. It’s a long gauntlet with a lot of different sections and I love it, I have a soft spot for long saves and this one feels amazing to play. If it truly is based on Floor 93 then I think this is quite an improvement. After this you get a brief intermission which is very mysterious but I really like it, segments like this stick out in your head long after a clear for me and give a game so much staying power. The final save that ensues is a masterpiece, 10 screens utilizing various gimmicks throughout the third chapter of the game, in a mostly random order. Like everything else, it has a heavy learning curve, but figuring out how to manage everything is super satisfying. The screen is filled with more static as you progress, the dark clouds throughout, details like this really make it feel like a climactic ending and such a great encapsulation of what this section was about from a gameplay perspective.
If you get past the final save, what comes next is of course, the ending of the game. Even if it feels eternal, at some point, the grand adventure must close its curtains. But doing so for a game like this seems impossible, how can you just end such a journey? The answer the game provides is in the form of an artistic, avant-garde cutscene, one that I’m personally extremely far from fully grasping. I have no doubts that there’s a lot to it though, at the bare minimum I can appreciate just how beautiful it is, there was a point towards the end where I got a bit emotional, I didn’t tear up or anything but I definitely felt a very powerful emotion inside myself I don’t quite have a grasp on. It’s a beautiful ending, punctuated by how definitive it is. There is nothing to do after it. There is no kid to move around, no feathers to use to experience previous things, nothing. It’s over. After a long journey with so much to it, there is nothing left to do, at least in some senses. There is other stuff that exists to do, but you won’t be doing it on this save file. The main journey is over, and what a journey it was. In spite of how much I’ve said about the game already, I think some things get lost if you examine the sections of the game in isolation, so the end of this review will be dedicated to analyzing the game as a whole, and appreciating things I glossed over initially.
Part 4: Crimson Needle 2.5
The presentation of all of the things provided in this game is out of this world, there is a lot of care put into so many small details throughout the game. An easy example of this is the skins, which can be collected throughout the game. The fact they are unlockable for one is really nice, it encouraged me to want to use more than just my favorites since I grew to appreciate the ones I had earned. Being able to set hotkeys for skins is also great and it’s just one of those things that shows how much care was put into the whole experience of CN2.5. It’s very clear that the development time was spent well, and used to craft a generational experience. In general that experience of just progressing through the game is unlike anything I have ever seen before, especially with how much of it was shrouded in mystery. As the game grows in scope you might begin thinking it would eventually stop surprising you, but every time something new came, it was always a massive surprise that felt like it revolutionized the whole game, and made you see it in an entirely new light. That experience is a large part in what makes CN2.5 such a special game, I’ve never truly seen a game capable of flooring its audience in such a way. It also makes you grow to appreciate the fact that the game is even that big, the amount of content provided here is unlike anything I’ve seen in a fangame before, and it’s all done out of pure passion, it’s not like there’s a monetary incentive. I think in that sense CN2.5 is very much a celebration of what fangames are about, that artistic expression, creating an experience unlike anything you can get elsewhere, reflecting yourself in your own work to making something personal to you, and doing all of this in the shell of a precision platformer. It’s just beautiful to me, the fact it can exist is beautiful, the fact we all get to experience it is something that makes me happy beyond what words can express.
Even after that, the game technically isn’t over. It contains a New Game+ which includes deathless challenges for the main stages and special challenges for guest stages, which is SO cool! These are far from thrown-together additions by the way, they come with things like additional stats and info that show that even a post-game bonus is something that was given serious thought and attention just like the rest. There’s also special secrets in chapter 3 which are currently unsolved, and potentially lead to something. If I complete either of these things I may add an addendum to the review, but they are worth mentioning since it’s more content on top of an already monstrous game.
I don’t think I’ll ever say everything I have to say about Crimson Needle 2.5. This lengthy review only scratches the surface, I hardly went into detail about anything because if I did, I’d probably never finish. When I completed the 100 floor section, I thought the game was amazing. When I completed the guest stages, I thought the game was something truly special. Now, I sit here with the game completed, and I’ve realized what I have played is the kind of masterpiece that only comes around once a decade. You will only ever get to experience something like this a handful of times in your life, at least in a video game. The fact I got to once is something I will forever cherish and appreciate, I would encourage everyone to experience this game. If you can’t play it because of your skill, then work your way up so you can. If you don’t want to do that, then watch the game, either through VODs or an edited video whenever that exists. If you do none of these, you are missing out on something special, and I truly mean that. Everyone involved in this game should feel incredibly proud of themselves, and I thank them all for making this. Thank you for creating something this monumental, and giving the community the privilege of being able to play through it, talk about it, and appreciate it. Crimson Needle 2.5 is a shining beacon of how far the community has come in so many ways, and I adore everything about it. That’s really all there is to say.
The following part of the review was added on September 10th, 2024, when I had completed more of the game. I have completed all the content known to exist in the game, but there may be more. If more content exists, I will do it and if it’s significant, it will be added to the review when it is found and completed.
Part 5: Beyond The Egg
Outside of the main clear there’s two major parts of the game that exist, the first of which is New Game+ which I briefly mentioned, although I hadn’t played it. The more simple part of it is the Golden Cherries, where you go through a full tileset of 3 floors without dying a single time. This segment is not super in-depth, but it’s still neat that it exists. You’d honestly be quite surprised at how well this game works with this concept, since a lot of the silly precision stuff from the original CN2 was either removed or made optional, every golden is reasonable, albeit some are quite challenging. I found that most things in the game got really consistent with time, and each one is kind of its own challenge, with different tilesets having very different difficult balance. It’s definitely time consuming and maybe a little exhausting, but it’s a lot of fun. The rewards for this are pretty minor, making some saves golden and the entirety of floor 0 turning golden if you do them all, but it’s the kind of challenge you do more because you really want to do it, rather than expecting a grand reward. For what the golden cherries are, I think it’s a really fun bonus, although it’s not really the star of the show here.
The goldens alone are pretty cool as a New Game+ addition, but on top of that, each of the 32 guest stages contain a special challenge, and there’s so much variety in these. There’s challenges that are simple, stuff like beat the stage in a low death count, or within a time limit, but others are low save challenges, original saves based on stuff in the stage, buffed versions of boss fights, and more. So many of these have such a unique concept behind them that you are always excited to see what’s coming up. I really want to give them a lot of love because I had so much fun going through them and I believe, at least at this current moment, they’ve gone very underappreciated since a lot of people haven’t even attempted them (albeit not many have reached them yet.) Immediately some of the simple ones stood out because the way they change how you engage with the stage. Plasma’s stage for instance starts as a lengthy gauntlet of a stage, but with time you see how consistent it is and how smoothly you can go through the stage after that initial playthrough. The speedrun challenge is really nothing like the casual playthrough which is kinda a rarity in fangames. Some of the stage buffs are really cool, like Wonderful and LemonGH both have challenges that make significant changes to their stages, like adding gimmicks or cycles, that basically felt like a brand new stage with how different they were, not to mention Lss which has so many changes that fundamentally change how the whole thing plays out. Cherry Treehouse has a buffed version of the first phase of the final boss, it’s so hectic and fast paced that I can’t help but adore it, there’s so many crazy attack combos that exist that force you to get good with the ninja kid mechanics, it’s just awesome. There’s also Lone’s challenge which is a big routing puzzle, trying to figure out how exactly to navigate the area to get all the collectibles, on top of pretty tricky execution to actually clear, I mostly appreciate this challenge for making me really like this stage, when on a first playthrough I didn’t really enjoy it. All the challenges that feature just one save that’s a harder and wackier version of an existing save were amazing, stuff like Anuj, Dress, Qwylwryght, Artimax, etc, I love them all and some might even be some of my favorite saves in the entire game. There’s more challenges that I love but eventually I’d just be listing off every single one in the game, I didn’t even mention Synthasmagoria’s second challenge or Chatran’s, both of which were really cool, the Synthas one especially seeing as it really goes all in on the exploration aspect of the stage. This idea and the way it was executed is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a fangame, so much effort must have been put into this and it definitely paid off.
If you enter the chapel at some point during New Game+, there’s going to be a warp which leads to a special challenge that opens a door to a room that shows off your collection of medallions that you earn from completing the guest stage challenges. If you have collected all of them, you unlock something that’s been called Floor 100+, but whatever you call it, it’s a buffed version of Floor 100. It’s more akin to a haystack type buff, with almost every section having not just harder jumps, but also increased complexity. It’s really different from the rest of the game, not just in terms of design but difficulty, it definitely fulfills the role of being an “ultimate challenge” type thing. I really love this save, it was a long process to learn and beat but I spent almost all of that time consistently engaged and enjoying myself, there was never really a dull moment because of how interesting the jumps are. It really surprised me how even some of the most simplistic sections often got buffs you wouldn’t expect that radically changed how they played. It’s an amazing save, the best that I’ve played in this difficulty range personally. It also just feels great to clear, everything is so satisfying, super impressive stuff especially when you consider that Kale hasn’t really made anything like it before.
Outside of New Game+ there’s also the secrets in chapter 3 that I mentioned, and these have now been solved by the community. The secrets here are quite a bit more obscure, and definitely harder to solve. Like the first set of secrets, I didn’t solve many myself as it’s not really my thing, but I still have a ton of respect for this element of the game. I think a lot of the puzzle solutions are very clever and I love seeing how everything comes together. The whole section is structured as a journey to get this big machine running that has a bunch of parts, with each puzzle you solve contributing to making a different piece run properly. It’s really neat and it ties together a lot of this third segment, sort of giving justification to some of the weirder things you’d see, not that they needed a reason to exist, but the fact that there is one hidden in plain sight for things like the kid face that turns you into BlockKid is really neat. One of the secrets even leads you to another Crimson fight, one that is really unique. It has some really cool attacks and mechanics that make it play unlike any other crimson really, it feels like it’s own thing in some regards while still having that crimson-shaped base. The ending of the boss is also pretty neat, a tense memory game after the main boss is done. It's a small thing that’s not too hard but it’s still really intense and makes the clear feel like more of a relief when it’s done, it’s just a really cool idea. If you solve all the puzzles and get the machine working, you can get an altered ending when the Kid hops into the egg at the end of the final cutscene, one that leads to a grave for the dog Blue, it’s a beautiful sight to see. This whole sequence is great and I’ve really never seen anything like it before, which honestly can be said for so many things about the game, but the more insane things you see as you play, the more mind-blowing it gets and the more you just have to respect the fact it all exists in the first place.
The final thing I really have to talk about is the replayability of this game. One aspect of doing all the stuff I mentioned is that you’ll inevitably have to replay stuff in the game, it’s part of New Game+ inherently and also the two endings in chapter 3, stuff like this encourages and occasionally requires going through this whole game again, and honestly that’s another aspect of the game that I’ve grown to appreciate. This game has a lot more replayability than you might expect given its length. For one, NG+ lets you skip 7 of the guest stages and still reach the final boss, which is pretty cool, as it means you can either reach chapter 3 a lot sooner if you want to just go through the game quickly, or opt to do all the guest stages again if you don’t really want to skip any. That choice is really nice and on top of that, the platforming is just really fun. Beyond all the spectacle and the crazy unique ideas and the sense of mystery and wonder, Crimson Needle 2.5 is just genuinely an incredibly fun game to play. Even if this is the end of the journey and there’s truly no more content, I’m not done playing the game. I will want to keep coming back for more, the game is just that enjoyable. It’s been fully cemented in my mind that this game is a true masterpiece, one that will have people playing and talking about it for a very long time, and I think that’s incredible.
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Crimson Needle 2.5 is one of the most anticipated fangame releases of all time, it’s an entry in one of the most iconic fangame series of all time, years after its last installment. Even if it was marketed as “CN2 in studio” I think most people had a feeling the game was more than that, how much more was of course, entirely unclear. It’s really hard to break down everything about this game so I’ll split this review into 4 sections. There are massive spoilers throughout this entire review, I would highly recommend playing the game before looking at what I have to say about it.
Part 1: The 100 Floors
This is the most surface level section of the game, it’s the part that realistically was guaranteed to exist. Personally speaking I went into this game with absolutely no expectations so this was really the only thing I was anticipating. It shares a lot of CN2 DNA which is probably not a surprise, but I think it does show a lot about how much Kale has evolved as a maker. It’s no secret that games Kale made post-CN2 were pretty different as in general, gimmicks become a lot more integral to his style. In that regard you can definitely say CN2 is a relatively safe game and likewise this adaptation of it is somewhat reeled in compared to what you may expect if you viewed this game as a CN3 sequel going in. With that being said I think this section does a lot to use what it’s working with as a vessel to create something new, and in that regard it succeeds. A lot of parts, especially early on, are pretty similar to CN2 screens but the further you go I think the more flair is added and at times, some screens are entirely changed to be something far more interesting. One part that especially stood out for instance was 85-87, which is more focused on cycles and stuff and is completely unlike anything in the base game. It was really surprising but super fun. In general the quality of the needle feels much higher, the game just feels nicer to play because there’s many more distinct rooms, neutralizing the weakest point of CN2 for me, which is how much of it blends together. It may be less showy than other needle games or even other parts of this game but it does the job it’s trying to do incredibly well and is some really high quality platforming. I would be remiss to not mention floor 100, the spectacle of this floor is fantastic, the visuals of course are amazing, especially the background, and the needle itself is great. It’s a similar concept to CN3 floor 100 but a bit more explicit in taking from other parts of the game. It does a great job at being a conclusion to this part and the extra life mechanic is a really nice idea for a save this long to prevent it from being too much of a grind, something I think this game in particular benefits from. This section is great, super well put together, demonstrates how someone can evolve as a maker beautifully, and was also less than 8% of my playtime.
Part 2: The Guest Stages
The other three Crimson Needle games are as good as over once floor 100 is, at most there’s some minor bonus things you can do, but nothing significant compared to the scope of the main game. This game provides a first for basically any floor game, where the initial 100 floors are basically just the prologue. Throughout the game you can find some oddities, weird things that stand out, rooms that seem to allude to something, stuff like that. If you look deeper into these things you might eventually find where they lead and uncover a very shocking fact. While the main game is very much a complete game in its own right, in many ways it’s just the foundation for the most insane secret hunt I’ve ever seen in a fangame. The reasons for this are plentiful, one of the biggest being the sheer size of it. Every single stage, marked by the varying tilesets every 3 screens, is home to a secret somewhere, many of which also contain a hint for something, sometimes for an entire other stage. That’s 33 secrets, many of which you’d likely just glaze over on a first play because the way things are hidden is so clever. There’s such a nice variety of secrets, many of which require the player to do a challenge like go through a screen while constantly bonking on ceilings, or always turning around when touching a wall, stuff like this is especially impressive to me because of the way rooms can be designed to be completable with stipulations like this, but still feeling entirely natural to play normally. Some of the solutions are just so cool and clever, and just the process of entering stages feels great when combined with some of the phenomenal transitions between stage and secret, a minor element of the game which still feels like so much soul was put into it. The whole secret hunting part of this game is amazingly well thought out, the community experience of putting things together was something truly special to behold, and this is all just the set up for the meat of this section of the game.
Guest stages inherently are an inconsistent thing in fangames, it’s definitely cool to see a group of makers get together on a game, but often times a guest stage is not that maker’s best work, and I think the key reasoning behind this is the fact that a guest area is just that, an area, a stage. It’s hard for anyone to represent their full creative potential when limited to just a small section of a game, oftentimes entirely separated from the rest of the game. I think the beauty of CN2.5’s guest stages is that instead of fighting this, they embrace it. The guest stages sort of create their own ecosystem within them, where the makers make basically whatever they want, leading to an incredibly diverse array of stages in terms of style, size, and gameplay. A lot of these stages feel like their own games, notable instances of this are things like Chatran, Qwylwryght, Synthasmagoria and of course Cherry Treehouse. These stages contain their own stages within themselves, sometimes their own stories, and very distinct gameplay. It’s honestly amazing to witness, it truly feels as if within this 100 floor game is a bunch of sub-games hidden beneath the surface, leading to an incredibly varied and lengthy experience to play them all. I enjoyed almost all of these stages, but there are definitely ones that were particularly amazing.
Many guest areas are notable because of their extremely high quality platforming, stuff like Kale, TheNaderTwo, LemonGH, RandomErik, TheJPEGDemon, Verve, Zephyr, EchoMask, Chatran, among others contain really clever gimmicks, pathing, things that you’d probably expect from a high quality needle game, just executed to a very high standard. Some like LAWatson or Vormanax stand out because they contain some unique gameplay ideas like a minigame or an avoidance which slowly gets easier as you play. There’s a few guest areas that really resonated with me in particular, not all of them were my absolute favorites but I really respected what they were doing and thought they were extremely impressive. YaBoiMarcAntony and Egg are really awesome needle stages with some really amazing atmospheres. I really enjoy how the audio grows louder or silent throughout the first stage of Marc’s, and the lightning section at the end of Egg’s stage really stood out to me. PlasmaNapkin also has a really cool gimmicky stage based on momentum puzzle platforming, it doesn’t always feel the best to play for me but it has a lot of cool saves and I generally had a good time. Synthasmagoria’s stage is incredibly well put together, it’s one of the most unique things I’ve seen in a fangame and there’s so many incredible set pieces, a great sense of exploration permeates this area and it feels so unnerving and mysterious. Qwylwryght’s stage is truly a treat, unbelievably clever in some places with a great sense of humor while still having a lot of thought-provoking and intriguing moments. The tetris save was a highlight for the entire game for me. Last thing I want to mention is the Cherry Treehouse stage, and I think in many ways it speaks for itself. Out of this world visuals, great gameplay with a modified movement system allowing for some unique platforming and tons of variety with gimmicks, traps, cycles, anything you could ask for, and of course the bosses are awesome to see. I was especially happy to see the crimson bat demon here, but all the bosses were really fun and the final one is just so damn cool. It’s safe to say the guest stages are absolutely incredible, such a diverse maker list and it really feels like everyone brought their A-game to help make this something special.
If you get through all 32 guest stages, you aren’t quite done with this section. There’s the final sequence, a final secret that leads to a mural which transitions to the final boss of the game. The fight is split into two phases, and it’s better than anything I could have ever imagined. The first phase is kind of like an evolution of the crimson style of boss, it’s got the general structure of something like the CN2 final boss, but it contains much more involved mechanics requiring you to develop an understanding of both what is going on and how to handle them. Developing a strategy for this fight was extremely satisfying and it’s got so many cool little things to keep you on your toes and make the fight as fun and interesting as possible. Phase 2 is more straight-forward but is such an amazing “finale.” A five part fight against each of the main crimson demons, ending with a tense face-off against the skull the green demon wears. The animations the demons have are fantastic and give them so much life, especially when combined with attacks that embody their origin. The whole concept of the fight is that as the demons die, they show up in future phases to interfere and support the current one you are fighting, and this is a great idea and leads to some creative moments, especially interactions with yellow’s thunder combined with blue’s water. This fight does an amazing job at concluding things, especially as afterwards you get a truly amazing credits sequence, complete with a great song and really nice art to represent each maker. I also adore the room after the credits, thematically it’s probably in the top 5 rooms in the game for me. I couldn’t really explain why I like it so much, the combination of songs, visuals, and context just create this special energy that I haven’t really seen elsewhere. I wouldn’t really have any other place to mention it so I feel I should here. If the game ended here, I don’t think anyone could possibly complain about that. The game would have already provided way more content than anyone could possibly imagine. The makers have already gone so far beyond what you would expect from a sequel to a series of 100 floor games. This makes the fact that the game is still far from over that much more shocking when you reach this point.
Part 3: Finding Closure
After the second sequence of credits, you get to play the guest stages freely, officially titled the Communion stages. If you enter the menu and look towards the end, there’s one stage you definitely didn’t wouldn’t expect, John 10:9. If you look this phrase up online, you’ll find a bible verse that begins by saying “I am the gate.” In a lot of ways, this chapter is where the game comes into its own gameplay wise. This is not to say the gameplay is bad before this, at this point the game was already amazing, however it feels like the game itself hasn’t gotten the chance to show what it can truly be, unbounded by restrictions of being built off cn2 or guest stage content which inherently is created outside the game. The final section is Crimson Needle 2.5 in its purest form. The stage starts with a reminder of how this journey began in the first place, the dog, Blue, which you’ve been searching for the whole time, and has clearly passed away. At this point the crimson demons are defeated, and as such this is kind of the one unresolved plot point in the game. The first thing I noticed gameplay wise is that this section immediately feels a lot more like Crimson Needle 3, some places very blatantly when you see the nerfed yet extended floor 100. The grand reveal comes a little bit in, when you reach a sanctuary which causes CN3 Floor 31 teleporters to spawn, along with the mind-breaking realization that even after this insane amount of content, there is still so much left to do and see.
The premise of this section is something that would make a fantastic needle game in its own right, being at the end of such a massive adventure is extremely absurd though. It’s similar to Floor 31, but with a greater emphasis on progression throughout, as you can do things that unlock more paths for you to go down. I absolutely love this, there’s very few things in gaming as satisfying as unlocking new areas to go in this labyrinth, a feeling only made more powerful by everything else about the section. For one the atmosphere here is unparalleled, in large part due to how it differs from what’s before it. Sections with more standard, familiar tilesets, guest stages which in some ways make the world feel populated by virtue of having multiple people making the content you play, along with many of them being pretty vibrant (although very far from all), it’s all so heavily contrasted with this section, you can’t go back to the rest of the game, in many senses you are trapped in this sprawling maze filled with so many paths, many of which take on far more atmospheric visuals and sounds than what you’d find in the 100 floor section. I found myself experiencing an unmistakable feeling of loneliness traversing through this part, and a lot of that time is spent alone with your own thoughts which is a really powerful experience a game can provide. There’s so much variety as well, largely because structurally this segment is quite different from something like Floor 31. It hops around tilesets a lot, each one having unique gameplay as well, there’s not a whole lot of things that feel like dedicated, proper stages, instead the area is mostly composed of smaller segments that string into each other. This leads to an incredible amount of variety, and it really goes to show just how much effort was put into this. Coming up with so many visuals, matching songs, and gimmicks to build platforming around is incredible and I can only imagine the kind of undertaking it was to fully realize this area in the way the creators imagined it.
I implied it at the end of the last paragraph but if it’s unclear, among all the visual and sonic variety in the section is so much unique gameplay. Some of the gimmicks here were amazing for one, the kid teleporting after a few seconds in water, shooting walls that allow you to walk horizontally or along a diagonal line, repurposing one of the restrictions needed to enter a secret for an entire stage, forced full jumps, there’s a big pool of them that get used and the ones I mentioned really don’t scratch the surface of what’s here. Even more impressive is how they get used. The gameplay implications of swapping between ideas so frequently is that you are basically provided something new on every screen. Nothing will ever overstay its welcome, you get something fresh constantly, something new to dig your teeth into, even saves within the same area are often wildly different. It makes for a really interesting gameplay experience, in some senses it feels like the halfway point structurally between Thank You Thenewgeezer and CN3, however the ideas are a lot more out there I think. In some ways, while the game is known for being somewhat gimmicky, I think CN3 is pretty restrained and most things feel like what your idea of “normal needle” would be. I think in this segment of CN2.5, the gimmicks really stick out more, and it leads to a lot more sections which feel like something completely brand new. This also leads to a very dense section gameplay wise, compared to the rest of the game, basically every save you’ll see here is significant in the sense that it has it’s own learning curve and you’ll probably need to get used to a lot of things within it in order to progress. It would be extremely hard to list all of the gameplay highlights in this part of the game, but it should be noted that this was my favorite part of the whole thing. The fact that it was after the praise I gave those other parts should say a lot in and of itself. If you showed me a screen from this area, chances are I can probably give you a list of things I loved about it. In isolation I think this very well could be the best platforming I’ve ever experienced in my life. It sounds exaggerated but to keep a player engaged like this for over 20 hours without ever missing the mark is a feat that I would be surprised if anything ever matches, at least for me personally.
If you do manage to get to the end of this journey, you’ll find yourself with a shiny Halo at the front of a church atop a mountain. Going inside is essentially the start of the true end-game. The initial tower is fantastic, it’s another very lengthy save which allows you to die once past the halfway point, and it feels great. I’m pretty sure it’s partially based on floor 93 in CN3, much like a few other screens earlier based on CN3 screens. It’s a long gauntlet with a lot of different sections and I love it, I have a soft spot for long saves and this one feels amazing to play. If it truly is based on Floor 93 then I think this is quite an improvement. After this you get a brief intermission which is very mysterious but I really like it, segments like this stick out in your head long after a clear for me and give a game so much staying power. The final save that ensues is a masterpiece, 10 screens utilizing various gimmicks throughout the third chapter of the game, in a mostly random order. Like everything else, it has a heavy learning curve, but figuring out how to manage everything is super satisfying. The screen is filled with more static as you progress, the dark clouds throughout, details like this really make it feel like a climactic ending and such a great encapsulation of what this section was about from a gameplay perspective.
If you get past the final save, what comes next is of course, the ending of the game. Even if it feels eternal, at some point, the grand adventure must close its curtains. But doing so for a game like this seems impossible, how can you just end such a journey? The answer the game provides is in the form of an artistic, avant-garde cutscene, one that I’m personally extremely far from fully grasping. I have no doubts that there’s a lot to it though, at the bare minimum I can appreciate just how beautiful it is, there was a point towards the end where I got a bit emotional, I didn’t tear up or anything but I definitely felt a very powerful emotion inside myself I don’t quite have a grasp on. It’s a beautiful ending, punctuated by how definitive it is. There is nothing to do after it. There is no kid to move around, no feathers to use to experience previous things, nothing. It’s over. After a long journey with so much to it, there is nothing left to do, at least in some senses. There is other stuff that exists to do, but you won’t be doing it on this save file. The main journey is over, and what a journey it was. In spite of how much I’ve said about the game already, I think some things get lost if you examine the sections of the game in isolation, so the end of this review will be dedicated to analyzing the game as a whole, and appreciating things I glossed over initially.
Part 4: Crimson Needle 2.5
The presentation of all of the things provided in this game is out of this world, there is a lot of care put into so many small details throughout the game. An easy example of this is the skins, which can be collected throughout the game. The fact they are unlockable for one is really nice, it encouraged me to want to use more than just my favorites since I grew to appreciate the ones I had earned. Being able to set hotkeys for skins is also great and it’s just one of those things that shows how much care was put into the whole experience of CN2.5. It’s very clear that the development time was spent well, and used to craft a generational experience. In general that experience of just progressing through the game is unlike anything I have ever seen before, especially with how much of it was shrouded in mystery. As the game grows in scope you might begin thinking it would eventually stop surprising you, but every time something new came, it was always a massive surprise that felt like it revolutionized the whole game, and made you see it in an entirely new light. That experience is a large part in what makes CN2.5 such a special game, I’ve never truly seen a game capable of flooring its audience in such a way. It also makes you grow to appreciate the fact that the game is even that big, the amount of content provided here is unlike anything I’ve seen in a fangame before, and it’s all done out of pure passion, it’s not like there’s a monetary incentive. I think in that sense CN2.5 is very much a celebration of what fangames are about, that artistic expression, creating an experience unlike anything you can get elsewhere, reflecting yourself in your own work to making something personal to you, and doing all of this in the shell of a precision platformer. It’s just beautiful to me, the fact it can exist is beautiful, the fact we all get to experience it is something that makes me happy beyond what words can express.
Even after that, the game technically isn’t over. It contains a New Game+ which includes deathless challenges for the main stages and special challenges for guest stages, which is SO cool! These are far from thrown-together additions by the way, they come with things like additional stats and info that show that even a post-game bonus is something that was given serious thought and attention just like the rest. There’s also special secrets in chapter 3 which are currently unsolved, and potentially lead to something. If I complete either of these things I may add an addendum to the review, but they are worth mentioning since it’s more content on top of an already monstrous game.
I don’t think I’ll ever say everything I have to say about Crimson Needle 2.5. This lengthy review only scratches the surface, I hardly went into detail about anything because if I did, I’d probably never finish. When I completed the 100 floor section, I thought the game was amazing. When I completed the guest stages, I thought the game was something truly special. Now, I sit here with the game completed, and I’ve realized what I have played is the kind of masterpiece that only comes around once a decade. You will only ever get to experience something like this a handful of times in your life, at least in a video game. The fact I got to once is something I will forever cherish and appreciate, I would encourage everyone to experience this game. If you can’t play it because of your skill, then work your way up so you can. If you don’t want to do that, then watch the game, either through VODs or an edited video whenever that exists. If you do none of these, you are missing out on something special, and I truly mean that. Everyone involved in this game should feel incredibly proud of themselves, and I thank them all for making this. Thank you for creating something this monumental, and giving the community the privilege of being able to play through it, talk about it, and appreciate it. Crimson Needle 2.5 is a shining beacon of how far the community has come in so many ways, and I adore everything about it. That’s really all there is to say.
The following part of the review was added on September 10th, 2024, when I had completed more of the game. I have completed all the content known to exist in the game, but there may be more. If more content exists, I will do it and if it’s significant, it will be added to the review when it is found and completed.
Part 5: Beyond The Egg
Outside of the main clear there’s two major parts of the game that exist, the first of which is New Game+ which I briefly mentioned, although I hadn’t played it. The more simple part of it is the Golden Cherries, where you go through a full tileset of 3 floors without dying a single time. This segment is not super in-depth, but it’s still neat that it exists. You’d honestly be quite surprised at how well this game works with this concept, since a lot of the silly precision stuff from the original CN2 was either removed or made optional, every golden is reasonable, albeit some are quite challenging. I found that most things in the game got really consistent with time, and each one is kind of its own challenge, with different tilesets having very different difficult balance. It’s definitely time consuming and maybe a little exhausting, but it’s a lot of fun. The rewards for this are pretty minor, making some saves golden and the entirety of floor 0 turning golden if you do them all, but it’s the kind of challenge you do more because you really want to do it, rather than expecting a grand reward. For what the golden cherries are, I think it’s a really fun bonus, although it’s not really the star of the show here.
The goldens alone are pretty cool as a New Game+ addition, but on top of that, each of the 32 guest stages contain a special challenge, and there’s so much variety in these. There’s challenges that are simple, stuff like beat the stage in a low death count, or within a time limit, but others are low save challenges, original saves based on stuff in the stage, buffed versions of boss fights, and more. So many of these have such a unique concept behind them that you are always excited to see what’s coming up. I really want to give them a lot of love because I had so much fun going through them and I believe, at least at this current moment, they’ve gone very underappreciated since a lot of people haven’t even attempted them (albeit not many have reached them yet.) Immediately some of the simple ones stood out because the way they change how you engage with the stage. Plasma’s stage for instance starts as a lengthy gauntlet of a stage, but with time you see how consistent it is and how smoothly you can go through the stage after that initial playthrough. The speedrun challenge is really nothing like the casual playthrough which is kinda a rarity in fangames. Some of the stage buffs are really cool, like Wonderful and LemonGH both have challenges that make significant changes to their stages, like adding gimmicks or cycles, that basically felt like a brand new stage with how different they were, not to mention Lss which has so many changes that fundamentally change how the whole thing plays out. Cherry Treehouse has a buffed version of the first phase of the final boss, it’s so hectic and fast paced that I can’t help but adore it, there’s so many crazy attack combos that exist that force you to get good with the ninja kid mechanics, it’s just awesome. There’s also Lone’s challenge which is a big routing puzzle, trying to figure out how exactly to navigate the area to get all the collectibles, on top of pretty tricky execution to actually clear, I mostly appreciate this challenge for making me really like this stage, when on a first playthrough I didn’t really enjoy it. All the challenges that feature just one save that’s a harder and wackier version of an existing save were amazing, stuff like Anuj, Dress, Qwylwryght, Artimax, etc, I love them all and some might even be some of my favorite saves in the entire game. There’s more challenges that I love but eventually I’d just be listing off every single one in the game, I didn’t even mention Synthasmagoria’s second challenge or Chatran’s, both of which were really cool, the Synthas one especially seeing as it really goes all in on the exploration aspect of the stage. This idea and the way it was executed is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a fangame, so much effort must have been put into this and it definitely paid off.
If you enter the chapel at some point during New Game+, there’s going to be a warp which leads to a special challenge that opens a door to a room that shows off your collection of medallions that you earn from completing the guest stage challenges. If you have collected all of them, you unlock something that’s been called Floor 100+, but whatever you call it, it’s a buffed version of Floor 100. It’s more akin to a haystack type buff, with almost every section having not just harder jumps, but also increased complexity. It’s really different from the rest of the game, not just in terms of design but difficulty, it definitely fulfills the role of being an “ultimate challenge” type thing. I really love this save, it was a long process to learn and beat but I spent almost all of that time consistently engaged and enjoying myself, there was never really a dull moment because of how interesting the jumps are. It really surprised me how even some of the most simplistic sections often got buffs you wouldn’t expect that radically changed how they played. It’s an amazing save, the best that I’ve played in this difficulty range personally. It also just feels great to clear, everything is so satisfying, super impressive stuff especially when you consider that Kale hasn’t really made anything like it before.
Outside of New Game+ there’s also the secrets in chapter 3 that I mentioned, and these have now been solved by the community. The secrets here are quite a bit more obscure, and definitely harder to solve. Like the first set of secrets, I didn’t solve many myself as it’s not really my thing, but I still have a ton of respect for this element of the game. I think a lot of the puzzle solutions are very clever and I love seeing how everything comes together. The whole section is structured as a journey to get this big machine running that has a bunch of parts, with each puzzle you solve contributing to making a different piece run properly. It’s really neat and it ties together a lot of this third segment, sort of giving justification to some of the weirder things you’d see, not that they needed a reason to exist, but the fact that there is one hidden in plain sight for things like the kid face that turns you into BlockKid is really neat. One of the secrets even leads you to another Crimson fight, one that is really unique. It has some really cool attacks and mechanics that make it play unlike any other crimson really, it feels like it’s own thing in some regards while still having that crimson-shaped base. The ending of the boss is also pretty neat, a tense memory game after the main boss is done. It's a small thing that’s not too hard but it’s still really intense and makes the clear feel like more of a relief when it’s done, it’s just a really cool idea. If you solve all the puzzles and get the machine working, you can get an altered ending when the Kid hops into the egg at the end of the final cutscene, one that leads to a grave for the dog Blue, it’s a beautiful sight to see. This whole sequence is great and I’ve really never seen anything like it before, which honestly can be said for so many things about the game, but the more insane things you see as you play, the more mind-blowing it gets and the more you just have to respect the fact it all exists in the first place.
The final thing I really have to talk about is the replayability of this game. One aspect of doing all the stuff I mentioned is that you’ll inevitably have to replay stuff in the game, it’s part of New Game+ inherently and also the two endings in chapter 3, stuff like this encourages and occasionally requires going through this whole game again, and honestly that’s another aspect of the game that I’ve grown to appreciate. This game has a lot more replayability than you might expect given its length. For one, NG+ lets you skip 7 of the guest stages and still reach the final boss, which is pretty cool, as it means you can either reach chapter 3 a lot sooner if you want to just go through the game quickly, or opt to do all the guest stages again if you don’t really want to skip any. That choice is really nice and on top of that, the platforming is just really fun. Beyond all the spectacle and the crazy unique ideas and the sense of mystery and wonder, Crimson Needle 2.5 is just genuinely an incredibly fun game to play. Even if this is the end of the journey and there’s truly no more content, I’m not done playing the game. I will want to keep coming back for more, the game is just that enjoyable. It’s been fully cemented in my mind that this game is a true masterpiece, one that will have people playing and talking about it for a very long time, and I think that’s incredible.
Rating: 10.0 100
Difficulty: 94 94
Aug 3, 2024
PlutoTheThing
For: I wanna snow
For: I wanna snow
This game has a lot of kinda weird stuff, some strange and at times very inconsistent jumps and nonexistent balance, but I think it's pretty fun. There's a lot of fun stuff here, in particular the second half of the game was more enjoyable for me as I felt it had more creative stuff that was really satisfying to pull off at times. The first half is still good but I think saves 1 feels a bit too inconsistent for my tastes at the end, just doesn't feel that great to pull off, and save 4 was mildly annoying, I didn't dislike it, it was just my personal least favorite, partially influenced by getting destroyed by it for no good reason. If you can look past a few questionable moments I think this game is worth a playthrough for sure.
[1] Like
Rating: 7.7 77
Difficulty: 89 89
Jul 24, 2024
PlutoTheThing
For: Prismatic Needle
For: Prismatic Needle
Trigger needle game which has some really creative stuff, some of the movements here are awesome, there's a pretty steep learning curve which is inherent to this kind of design, but I like that kind of thing and it made progressing through the game feel really nice. There's a few moments throughout the game I thought didn't feel amazing, or maybe even not as in-depth as some other stuff, but for the most part it's really good. The final screen is also a great way to sum up the whole game. If you like trigger needle then you should play this, it's rad.
[1] Like
Rating: 8.5 85
Difficulty: 63 63
Jul 21, 2024
PlutoTheThing
For: Selected Needle Works 21-23
For: Selected Needle Works 21-23
This game is really interesting and very clearly a deeply personal game, as such I think almost anybody will play this will find at least something they don't resonate with, especially with how unfiltered the platforming is at times. My taste in needle is usually more-so based on interesting ideas, doesn't have to be gimmicks really, just having something cool going on can make me enjoy something a lot more than if it feels standard. In that regard this game is doing excellently, it's very unique and I can safely say I haven't quite played anything like it.
Each stage has it's own thing going on, wildly different visuals and usually a very different needle style. The game sticks to standard needle although there's some trigger screens that go quite heavy in the triggers. The more abrasive parts in the game usually come from the visuals or lack of saves. The long saves are, for the most part, pretty fun, I really enjoyed most of them, in particular the last save was something I enjoyed quite a bit. The visuals are a clear breaking point for some people and the reason why is obvious. There are multiple stages with visuals that actively obstruct the players view, but honestly, I like these a lot. Even the final stage which looks insane was still completely manageable for me, once I knew the jumps the visuals didn't really get in my way and I could just appreciate them for what they were.
The needle style itself is mostly really cool, there's a lot of variety like I said before, stuff like the Tree of Life stage almost entirely based on jump refreshers and vines was great, and the trigger stages are really fun. The 2nd to last stage was probably my favorite one in the game, it ends with a really crazy trigger-based screen which felt great to learn and play. The bulk of the gameplay was super fun and interesting for me, but there is one big exception. There's a stage with black plants and a dark building I couldn't get into, the first save was mildly annoying but alright, but the second save was a major low point for me and I didn't enjoy it at all sadly. I think others will find this save fine but for me, I just didn't like the jumps and got really frustrated. It's not a big deal, it was a sizeable portion of playtime but not nearly enough to be "game-ruining", but is worth noting as my one real complaint with the game. I at least love the visuals of the stage and think it has cool stuff even if it wasn't for me.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend playing this game from start to finish, it's the definition of "not for everyone." But I do think it's worth your time, at least to see just how creative the game is. If it ends being your thing, it's an awesome one of a kind experience.
[1] Like
Each stage has it's own thing going on, wildly different visuals and usually a very different needle style. The game sticks to standard needle although there's some trigger screens that go quite heavy in the triggers. The more abrasive parts in the game usually come from the visuals or lack of saves. The long saves are, for the most part, pretty fun, I really enjoyed most of them, in particular the last save was something I enjoyed quite a bit. The visuals are a clear breaking point for some people and the reason why is obvious. There are multiple stages with visuals that actively obstruct the players view, but honestly, I like these a lot. Even the final stage which looks insane was still completely manageable for me, once I knew the jumps the visuals didn't really get in my way and I could just appreciate them for what they were.
The needle style itself is mostly really cool, there's a lot of variety like I said before, stuff like the Tree of Life stage almost entirely based on jump refreshers and vines was great, and the trigger stages are really fun. The 2nd to last stage was probably my favorite one in the game, it ends with a really crazy trigger-based screen which felt great to learn and play. The bulk of the gameplay was super fun and interesting for me, but there is one big exception. There's a stage with black plants and a dark building I couldn't get into, the first save was mildly annoying but alright, but the second save was a major low point for me and I didn't enjoy it at all sadly. I think others will find this save fine but for me, I just didn't like the jumps and got really frustrated. It's not a big deal, it was a sizeable portion of playtime but not nearly enough to be "game-ruining", but is worth noting as my one real complaint with the game. I at least love the visuals of the stage and think it has cool stuff even if it wasn't for me.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend playing this game from start to finish, it's the definition of "not for everyone." But I do think it's worth your time, at least to see just how creative the game is. If it ends being your thing, it's an awesome one of a kind experience.
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 77 77
Jul 21, 2024
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