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Swilo posted:We did tell you to avoid solving the Tail puzzle... That is true, yes. But I've already input the DIS brand so v  vquote:If you are quick you can exit the game during the animation to cancel the effect. Oh gently caress yeah this is super helpful.
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May 7, 2024 01:28
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I haven't played this game in months but apparently there's a whole bunch of new content? Is it okay to jump right in or should I wrap up (super late-game) Lillie's DIS ending first? I've already done Gray's DIS ending so if there aren't any huge differences then I'd prefer to watch that on youtube.
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May 7, 2024 17:45
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Exodee posted:I haven't played this game in months but apparently there's a whole bunch of new content? Regarding the 2nd spoiler, I'm pretty sure the only real difference is some visual/story stuff, the gameplay is more or less identical?
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May 7, 2024 17:50
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Exodee posted:I haven't played this game in months but apparently there's a whole bunch of new content? Regarding the jumping in part, then yeah, going off by what you spoilered you should be fine to do so at any point you want now. Just note however, that (context "spoilers") it's not really feasible to get the brand to enter the new content alone, as it was intended as a community project, so you'll wanna look that up and start from there (I can't get a link due to work at the moment, else I'd pop it in here now, sorry!)
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May 7, 2024 17:55
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Einwand posted:Regarding the 2nd spoiler, I'm pretty sure the only real difference is some visual/story stuff, the gameplay is more or less identical? Arc Impulse posted:Regarding the jumping in part, then yeah, going off by what you spoilered you should be fine to do so at any point you want now. Just note however, that (context "spoilers") it's not really feasible to get the brand to enter the new content alone, as it was intended as a community project, so you'll wanna look that up and start from there (I can't get a link due to work at the moment, else I'd pop it in here now, sorry!)
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May 7, 2024 17:58
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New content discussion: Since EX mode is directly triggered via a special brand, you have to input it whenever you'd have that opportunity. It sounds like you might as well finish up what you were doing if nothing else as a warmup, assuming you'd already entered DIS. It's not tremendously different as Lillie from doing it as Gray but it's got a few nice touches.
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May 7, 2024 18:52
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Tortolia posted:New content discussion: Since EX mode is directly triggered via a special brand, you have to input it whenever you'd have that opportunity. It sounds like you might as well finish up what you were doing if nothing else as a warmup, assuming you'd already entered DIS. It's not tremendously different as Lillie from doing it as Gray but it's got a few nice touches. Though at the same time the new content is hard as nails drat. Doesn't help that I'm quite rusty I've already seen some stuff that seemed weird though, like one of those quest statues (forgot who it was associated to) blocking off the interface along with the number 41 hidden under a rock. I'm guessing there's a bunch of meta stuff going on like in the main game so this is quite exciting already.
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May 7, 2024 19:29
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New content spoilers but welp, E026 is some poo poo lmao. I gotta come back to this another day because my brain is fried. About the music on the jukebox, when does the last track before it loops play? I don't remember it but I guess it could be from the final DIS sequence? Or is it new?
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May 8, 2024 01:01
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Endgame(?) spoilers: Literally how. EDIT: Oh, that's how. Dear god I hope there's a brand for the cool stick. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 01:29 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 01:15
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Pollyanna posted:Dear god I hope there's a brand for the cool stick. No, but once you know how to manipulate the Void properly it only takes a few minutes to meet the appropriate criteria.
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May 8, 2024 04:26
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I have now seen Tortolia posted:No, but once you know how to manipulate the Void properly it only takes a few minutes to meet the appropriate criteria. A few minutes? I mean sure, Tail's on B030, but Gor's all the way down on B143. Is there a faster way to get there than the shortcuts...? Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 05:36 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 05:15
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Consider the unique properties of B053.
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May 8, 2024 05:52
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So I was messing around in the void after loving around with the UI and I found something. Big ol egg. Checking it doesn't do anything, hitting it doesn't do anything, turning sound to 0% volume doesn't do anything. Do I need to come back later?Tortolia posted:Consider the unique properties of B053. I...don't remember what I used B053 for. 
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May 8, 2024 06:01
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Pollyanna posted:So I was messing around in the void after loving around with the UI and I found something. Big ol egg. Checking it doesn't do anything, hitting it doesn't do anything, turning sound to 0% volume doesn't do anything. Do I need to come back later? Try pushing the egg. Take a look at B053 and my earlier tip about those rooms.
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May 8, 2024 06:04
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Swilo posted:Try pushing the egg. That's what I meant by hitting it. Did I gently caress it up? quote:Take a look at B053 and my earlier tip about those rooms. I should be able to inscribe a brand there, yeah...so one of them should dump me close to 143, right? I don't remember which one, I'll doublecheck.
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May 8, 2024 06:06
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Pollyanna posted:That's what I meant by hitting it. Did I gently caress it up? What did it do? Did that remind of you anything else?
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May 8, 2024 06:14
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Swilo posted:What did it do? Did that remind of you anything else? It's the punch-6-times-wait-6-seconds sound, but I had to reload and find it again for that to work. A bug, maybe? I'll say yes and see what happens. edit: 
Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 06:36 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 06:31
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Pollyanna posted:edit: Outside of being a bit of a lore type Easter egg, it happens to be a brand-level reset ending you can trigger whenever you can access the status bar.
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May 8, 2024 13:14
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Convenient! I haven't forgotten about my lore/story/ending thoughts post, that'll take a while longer. I want to finish hard mode first. Charting out a course for quick-super-rod (what the gently caress is it actually called).
Also, there's a mimic on B025 that wasn't there before. I'll mess with it later. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 15:34 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 15:17
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Wait, you haven't completed the Lillie run yet? That's, uh, quite the sequence break.
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May 8, 2024 15:54
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Tortolia posted:Wait, you haven't completed the Lillie run yet? That's, uh, quite the sequence break. It’s supposed to be Lillie then DIS?
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May 8, 2024 15:57
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Tortolia posted:Wait, you haven't completed the Lillie run yet? That's, uh, quite the sequence break. If they didn't want me to break a sequence, they should have made it a sequence  Especially not in this day and age where everyone communicates what they find with each other. Games should be designed with that in mind. Currently running into a problem! It's a loooong way from B143 to any black statues. This wouldn't be an issue except that this is a Lillie run. 
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May 8, 2024 15:59
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I mean yeah. The game basically goes "OK, you saw an obvious bad end, do it right this time" in your almost probable first run then when you do that immediately launches you into a new cycle that very much upfronts some new story beats and increases the puzzle difficulty accordingly. That's pretty much as close to a directed flow as VS gets. I don't think it's weird to think that hopping off that train and going to exhaustively pull on every loose thread from the Gray run is at least partially sequence breaking.
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May 8, 2024 16:03
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Also consider (mechanic spoilers obviously): this is a game with several intentional methods of circumventing itself that are intended to be discovered over time during your runs as Gray and Lillie and not from someone going "oh yeah you can pull the numbers put of the UI and warp". Even though you can stumble into the UI in both of Gray's endings, connecting that to doing brane warping is not exactly instant.
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May 8, 2024 16:09
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I hope I'm not coming across as critical, BTW, I had always wondered if it actually was possible to do Go Gray -> DIS without actually doing a full Lillie run and just hadn't tested on a completely fresh save. I didn't see anything that would pose a blocker, but wasn't sure if there'd be a curveball thrown in there or not. I think it's that several of us were nudging you towards the Lillie run both in terms of general story progression as well as a smoother difficulty curve in terms of puzzles; obviously Lillie is a big step up from Gray's run, but DIS is an even bigger leap and relies on a lot of tricks and concepts that are more broadly tutoralized and integrated as you go through as Lillie. It's not like there's a fourth burden in the Lillie run that transforms DIS, it's just all about that continual upward climb as the game continues to force you to learn what it wants you to learn.
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May 8, 2024 16:22
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Tortolia posted:I mean yeah. The game basically goes "OK, you saw an obvious bad end, do it right this time" in your almost probable first run then when you do that immediately launches you into a new cycle that very much upfronts some new story beats and increases the puzzle difficulty accordingly. That's pretty much as close to a directed flow as VS gets. I don't think it's weird to think that hopping off that train and going to exhaustively pull on every loose thread from the Gray run is at least partially sequence breaking. No Wave fucked around with this message at 16:26 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 16:23
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It’s been a minute so I may be mistaken, but for what its worth I believe my route was: * Gray Voided ending * Gray un-Voided ending * Start Lillie, get to the mural room on B023 and go to the Void Memory room * but the chest is empty * Trip the trap stairs on I think B026 * ”gently caress this”. Back to Gray to tidy up loose ends * Find the hidden room and the lead-in for the super rod * Progress glacially slowly through DIS trying to avoid getting Voided. * Catch a post somewhere that suggests being Voided doesn’t matter in the DIS area, thereby rendering my attempts at caution pointless * todo
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May 8, 2024 16:37
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I think people are over blowing what a big deal it is to pursue an alternate progression route. I’m sure the game is still narratively satisfying.
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May 8, 2024 16:39
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Some Strange Flea posted:It’s been a minute so I may be mistaken, but for what its worth I believe my route was: this was basically my progress as well, including the part where i gave up on caution to bang my head against cif for 30 minutes. i still haven't completed a lillie run and i'm happy with it overall. maybe someday i'll return to this game to do that and EX(?) mode, but probably not 
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May 8, 2024 17:45
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Tortolia posted:I mean yeah. The game basically goes "OK, you saw an obvious bad end, do it right this time" in your almost probable first run then when you do that immediately launches you into a new cycle that very much upfronts some new story beats and increases the puzzle difficulty accordingly. That's pretty much as close to a directed flow as VS gets. I don't think it's weird to think that hopping off that train and going to exhaustively pull on every loose thread from the Gray run is at least partially sequence breaking. Zodack posted:Also consider (mechanic spoilers obviously): this is a game with several intentional methods of circumventing itself that are intended to be discovered over time during your runs as Gray and Lillie and not from someone going "oh yeah you can pull the numbers put of the UI and warp". Even though you can stumble into the UI in both of Gray's endings, connecting that to doing brane warping is not exactly instant. Tortolia posted:I hope I'm not coming across as critical, BTW, I had always wondered if it actually was possible to do Go Gray -> DIS without actually doing a full Lillie run and just hadn't tested on a completely fresh save. I didn't see anything that would pose a blocker, but wasn't sure if there'd be a curveball thrown in there or not. No Wave posted:Thing is Lillie run is insanely hard without burdens. If you get frustrated and go online and find out about burdens its very possible to then go hard on discovery in Gray mode cause if you missed burdens what else are you missing. I totally get how it could happen, and I'm kind of surprised it doesnt hapoen more tbh. Imo the biggest failure point in terms of intended (?) progression is just missing out on burdens because then what do you even do besides sweat through Lillie mode for an eternity. Some Strange Flea posted:It’s been a minute so I may be mistaken, but for what its worth I believe my route was: nrook posted:I think people are over blowing what a big deal it is to pursue an alternate progression route. I’m sure the game is still narratively satisfying. After having seen Lilith's ending, I don't think the routes are explicitly ordered. They all work well enough on their own, none of them even give us or assume we see the whole picture (so far), and with games and stories like these you really only get the proper perspective on the narrative once all the pieces are placed and you can take a step back or two. I expect that to happen with this game. My route was: - Gray Void - Find a couple brands and Void Memory - Gray Normal, noticing that there's an empty mural at the end - Dip into Lillie - This is a pain and I don't feel done exploring - Back to Gray because there's things and brand inputs I want to try - With some prodding, find all the brands, shortcuts, and burdens - Holy poo poo these upgrades are sick, let's try Lillie again - Get to like B160-ish on Lillie using shortcuts/brands/burdens along the way - Get sick of puzzles, start wondering what's up with the remaining mysteries in Gray - Back to Gray to clean things up - Ask for hint on the last brand that I never found in game, realize it's more floor warp bullshit, get Cif's brand - Ask for hints off-thread on Tail bullshit because I wanted to wrap that up and CBA to do it properly cause I've spent like 25 hours on the game by this point - Kill Gor and Tail, get Super Rod - Realize I never figured out B227, notice that it's 6x6 - Input the empty brand and go through DIS - Find DIS to be tough but roughly equivalent to Lillie's route, decide to just push through and use a spoiler-free DIS guide to hint at what I need to accomplish for each puzzle because I'm getting puzzle fatigue - The uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh rest of the game happens - Gray DIS - Dev room and dev room ending - Remember the null-floor void zone, find egg, kramer into thread asking what I did wrong - This page happens - Lilith - Still a shitload of mysteries and questions left to answer
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May 8, 2024 17:50
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Zodack posted:Also consider (mechanic spoilers obviously): this is a game with several intentional methods of circumventing itself that are intended to be discovered over time during your runs as Gray and Lillie and not from someone going "oh yeah you can pull the numbers put of the UI and warp". Even though you can stumble into the UI in both of Gray's endings, connecting that to doing brane warping is not exactly instant. I figured out brane warping on my very first Gray run because I got stuck on one of the puzzles in the 200s and couldn't think of any other way to do it. At the time I figured that was intended, and I've talked to at least a couple other people who had the same experience. I also don't remember if there's really anything in the Lillie route that specifically gates the DIS prerequisites. I assume the major reason for the "normal" order is that the tail puzzle is approximately the last thing an unassisted player will be able to figure out on their own.
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May 8, 2024 17:54
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I'M STILL NOT loving DONE???????????????????????????
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May 8, 2024 17:57
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lol
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May 8, 2024 17:58
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Void Stranger:Pollyanna posted:I'M STILL NOT loving DONE???????????????????????????
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May 8, 2024 18:03
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EDIT: Done! That was pretty cool, actually. Previous to-do list with possible MASSIVE endgame spoilers!: New to-do list with possible MASSIVE endgame spoilers!: Figure out what the 0stranger brand is for, cause I have no idea what it does. Find the missing 8th brand, cause I only have 7 and it seems like one's missing. Investigate the mimic on B025. Investigate voidstranger_data.csv cuz that ain't like no CSV I've ever seen. Figure out who the hosed-up Drakengard reset lady at the very bottom is. Still don't know what those binary letter codes in the empty domain are for. Write post-ending(s) post. Try and understand what the gently caress is going on. Figure out what else I need to investigate. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 22:34 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 18:54
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Any intended order so much as it may exist is much more about the puzzle difficulty and player ability/engagement than any narrative threads. edit: in the interests of saving you some time feel free to hover over these, or don't I'm not your boss Pollyanna posted:
quote:Figure out what the 0stranger brand is for, cause I have no idea what it does. quote:
quote:Investigate the mimic on B025. quote:Figure out who the hosed-up Drakengard reset lady at the very bottom is. 
Swilo fucked around with this message at 22:53 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 22:38
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Thoom posted:I figured out brane warping on my very first Gray run because I got stuck on one of the puzzles in the 200s and couldn't think of any other way to do it. At the time I figured that was intended, and I've talked to at least a couple other people who had the same experience. Yeah it's generally the Tail puzzle or the Cif brand. Not for any difficulty reason, because once you get it you GET it, but travelling to it over runs takes time. For me it was simpler to clear Lillie since I was already down in the 200s than go back to Gray and go to the 200s and did not serendipitiously figure it out while I was in the area. My previous reply was more in response to the idea that VS should be a certain way or sequence a certain way as a jab when breaking the "sequence" is usually a consequence of getting a bit too much well-intentioned help that cracks into the more obscure game mechanics. Zodack fucked around with this message at 21:07 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 23:20
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Hades 2 has been distracting me lately but I've finally reached the new content's sword section and the music getting more layers as you go deeper is a nice touch  Was not expecting there to be so many floors either, if the other unlocks are just as long.
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May 9, 2024 21:01
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I have absolutely no idea if I’m done with this game or not! So whatever, non(-ish)-spoiler Void Stranger thoughts: —- tl;dr: Very strange, very clever, very unapologetic hidden gem with a couple flaws. Relatively confident recommendation for hardcore puzzle and mystery enthusiasts, maaaybe watch a blind LP instead if you’re not hot on hours and hours of tile puzzles. Things that were great: Music, art, aesthetics, mysteries and obscurities. The game is certainly cool and the what-the-gently caress factor ramps up and stays high throughout. Which is not easy to accomplish! It surprises and reorients the player without relying on shocking swerves or cheap moves (for the most part). I had quite a few  moments which I haven’t really experienced since Irisu Syndrome of all things, and boy do I wish more games pulled that off. We’re in dire need of weird poo poo.Puzzles. There’s too many of them, yeah, but individually you have to admit they’re all pretty good. Though man some of them are absolute bastards. Inventiveness. Certainly does a lot of things I didn’t necessarily not expect, but were pretty consistently pulled off well. Kudos to the dev(s) for making an entire game of this size out of tile puzzles, that’s an accomplishment. Things I’m mixed on: Plot, story, and lore. Not because it’s bad, but because I still don’t feel satisfied??? Even like 50+ hours in and what I think is a solid 90-95% of this game’s mysteries and unlockables resolved, I’m still in the dark on a whole bunch of poo poo and answers just raise more questions. There’s either a lot of things that never get followed up on, or you never really feel like you figured things out. Character-specific stories at least seem mostly wrapped up, so there’s that. Iunno, I guess I just don’t feel like I actually completed this game. Oh also, I have to admit I saw a lot of the plot twists coming. So I wasn’t as blindsided as most people here. Sorry!  I consume too much anime ‘n video games, I think.Things it can improve on: Efficiency. There is no reason for this game to be 40-50 hours long, like goddamn. IMO one single run through of all the floors is enough for any player; you get really fuckin’ sick of doing them over and over and over when you’re secret-hunting and note-taking. That makes exploration tedious and exhausting, which is bad for a game that leans on solving mysteries and digging deep, and *really* bad for an RPG-length Zelda dungeon. As-is, the awesome-per-second - and there’s a lot of awesome in this game! - is tanked by time spent doing poo poo I’ve already done. I think this is its biggest weakness. That’s not to say that the first run is solid gold, either - there’s like three Laytons worth of tile puzzles in a single run. Five or six if you count hard mode. Too much for me. Discoverability. There’s a lot of really weird and obscure poo poo in this game, but you still end up learning about a large chunk of the mysteries and surprises from thread discussions and accidental hints and spoilers from inevitably consulting puzzle guides when you get stuck on or sick of something. That doesn’t feel very good - I want to discover this stuff myself, not get prodded by someone to look for it! Especially when you think you’ve combed as hard as you can and oops it turns out you moused over a spoiler about a rare missable event where Darth Vader turns out to be Luke’s dad, guess that surprise is hosed. But then, you wouldn’t even know that was a thing without getting spoiled on it, so welp. The game itself should enable all this poo poo for me as smoothly as possible, and to an extent it does. But IME it’s still too easy to vineBlind hints and breadcrumbs. Maybe this is a Fromsoft Age YouTube video essay thing, I dunno. Relatedly, there’s also the spoilers part of all that. Because I got stuck on so many puzzles and mysteries, I ended up giving up and looking for help. So I got spoiled on a number of things that would have been cooler to find out on my own. The alternative would have been to put the game down for large amounts of time, and I really wanted to just get the thing over with by like hour 25. And, because there’s so much poo poo in this game, I had no idea if the spoiler talk in this thread was going to be about something I already saw or if I was going to get spoiled on something cool and .Things that just straight up suck: Please don’t make me go through 200+ floors of increasingly difficult tile puzzles I already finished at least once before just to take notes and screenshots of minutiae I didn’t know I needed to look out for the first time around jesus loving christ. Backtracking in this game sucks horsecock. I’ve lost count of all the times I thought of something I wanted to try or investigate, and groaned loudly when I realized how long it would be and how many floors I’d have to go through to get my questions answered - assuming I didn’t have to outright reset my run!  Most of this game’s playtime is backtracking, and I’m confident in saying I wouldn’t replay it for that reason alone.(There is a shortcut system, but it’s piecemeal, far too limited to be all that effective, and requires you to do said backtracking to unlock anyway. So that kinda sucks.) —- Overall good game, but if I didn’t cheat on puzzles and/or ask for help, I would have gotten frustrated/bored and quit before reaching the good stuff. Doing so involves making a tradeoff in what you’ll be surprised by, which is the main draw of this game, soooo yeah. If this game respected the player’s time more, it’d be an easy recommendation. And I’ll talk about spoiler stuff after I do another once-over (apparently that mimic points to something I missed…). Also this game has a fascination with tits that rears its head at some absolutely bizarre and hilarious times. Word of warning of there, I guess.
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May 9, 2024 21:51
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I'm conflicted about the efficiency point. On one hand, I agree that the level of backtracking resulted in quite a slog through the mid-game. They probably should have explicitly tutorialized the fact that brand rooms react to any brand, not just the one for that zone, during the Lillie or Cif runs, by trapping you in a 6x6 room that's a few tiles removed from B023 or something. There's probably a few other things they could do for QOL without compromising anything important, like adding a brand for the upgraded rod, and letting you click a brand to auto-input it at the start after you've activated it once. On the other hand, this is fundamentally a game about noticing secrets, and that kind of game requires a big haystack for the needles to be hidden in to avoid making it too obvious. I also have a strong respect for games like this and Outer Wilds that commit hard to their model of the world and require you to do some things via in-game means that would just be menu options (like resetting a run, or traveling to a distant location) in less opinionated games.
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May 9, 2024 22:11
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