Continuing on from: https://hexbear.net/post/6064592
I have been neglecting my work and playing anyway. Probably 10 or so hours in at the moment.
I'm curious how your impressions are changing as you play? I've unlocked a new moveset that seems to knock enemies back more with wider sweeps which has gelled with me better, and I'm struggling in combat less.
Overall I would still say I'm really mixed. The game seems to get easier the more I play which is a curious decision, the music is still very much taking a back seat which seems tragic to me given how strongly the HK music shaped my impression of zones. I have discovered a handful of tools but would say that experimenting with them seems actively discouraged, I'm always out of shards and a combination of the enemy types and level design mean I'm just not getting many anymore.
Emptying my set in a boss fight is about 80 shards, which to stock up for would be ~20 minutes of traversal and farming. Consequently I'm mostly just sticking with the "safe" set I'm used to. Bummer.
The world is beautiful, maybe a bit spread out. Hornet is more expressive than the Knight, something which shone in a particular involuntary sequence (if you know you know). Still very minimalist though.
Boss difficulty seems to swing wildly around, my experience is that the final phase often comes down to a DPS race and luck, particularly when ads are a feature. There's just so much on screen and enemies move in more complex patterns, I get mind-flooded something I rarely felt in HK where almost every boss fight felt like a careful dance.
How are you finding it?
If you’re having shard problems try saving tools for phase two on bosses. That way you get the easy phase mastered without spending resources and when the boss enters phase two, you can pretend that you did too. There’s some that absolutely trivialize certain bosses.
I think I’m nearing the end now. Incredibly good game so far. Ran into some few genuinely frustrating parts that got better when I looked up some spoilers online. There’s an area in this game that makes blighttown look pleasant, and given what they named it I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what they were going for.
Obviously you can not use tools or grind for bundles, it's just a bummer. They're really fun, I'd like to feel like I wasn't penalised for playing with them or using them during exploration.
The current pattern I'm on is never use them, then in phase 2 of a boss race with spike trap and ant boomerang. That is... not fun it's the sort of "optimising the fun away" type strategy that is the result of feeling like a game doesn't reward approaching it playfully. The point of a game isn't to beat it, it's to play with it.