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?
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.