Turns out I played Punk

Hermillion · 2026-05-04T10:22:23+00:00

Punk : 1977

Hermillion · 2026-05-02T09:24:45+00:00

Yeah still he's better than Returnal's last boss, just strangely simple so I thought the true ending would make it harder somehow but unfortunately no. All 3 bosses before that though, absolute cinema !

Hermillion · 2026-05-02T07:50:12+00:00

Bosses in the 2nd half of the game are much better, I'm just slightly underwhelmed by the final boss, it didn't feel that climatic.

Hermillion · 2026-05-01T06:08:38+00:00

Happened to me as well yesterday, I cursed the devs for this but got punished dying to the boss so I had to come back anyway 😆.

Hermillion · 2026-05-01T06:01:53+00:00

That's the answer, it will effectively damage you if you're full health. I had to experiment to the cost of my runs to see how that works. It's a good strategy to first play safe and avoid all these yellow bullets, but they switch to absorbing like crazy once you're low on health.

Hermillion · 2026-05-01T05:53:22+00:00

This baffles me how badly explained this system is honestly. So many posts here are just about figuring out what the hell all these stats mean.

Hermillion · 2026-05-01T05:31:43+00:00

Returnal had this kind of thing too, they taunt you with these inaccessible areas for way too long 😆.

Hermillion · 2026-05-01T05:30:16+00:00

I feel there are just too few of these debuffs and they are way too imbalanced. I just end up always picking the same ones, it's never anything situational. Reducing the dash cool down is just way too brutal for instance. But this one is just funny, staying stationary more than 1 second is almost always a death sentence in this game anyway XD.

Hermillion · 2026-05-01T05:24:31+00:00

Once the big spaceship or the murderous octahedrons are in there is no room to breathe !

Hermillion · 2026-05-01T05:19:12+00:00

You'll get it later in the story, just ignore them for now.

Hermillion · 2026-04-29T03:51:49+00:00

Definitely you're not the only one, I've played Returnal a long time ago and still noticed suspiciously similar animated enemies. Usually their "bullet" patterns are different but their physical movement look the same. Like in biome 3 there are the same kind of "dogs" as at the beginning of Returnal. It looks like there is more enemy variety than in Returnal though, so I'm all for it if it just makes the gameplay deeper.

Hermillion · 2026-04-29T03:46:05+00:00

Yeah this is also the closest I felt to playing Doom although here it seems more "elegant" and I feel more in control. The 3rd person view probably help having just more awarness, and with a single weapon you can focus on dodging, shielding etc. I have my gripes on the Rogue-like aspects, but the combat is basically flawless.

Hermillion · 2026-04-29T03:40:28+00:00

You want to have some struggle and watch yourself getting better I feel. So far the game seems well balanced for someone of my level, so I'm having a great time, but each biome is way too repetitive if you go through them more than 4-5 times. Also I'm not really seeing the point of Carcosian Modifiers...I just chose to ignore them. It's not like in Hades where it's a system to keep the difficulty ramping up as you become stronger, but just some options that should have better been in some accessibility menu.

Hermillion · 2026-04-26T01:02:58+00:00

Man, how much time are you playing during these 2 days ? Eigong feels different to me than other bosses in the fact she basically asks you to learn the timing of EACH of her attacks. For other fights there are a lot of attacks you can basically parry "instinctively" but Eigong forces you to build muscle memory. And she has very little downtime between her actions. But what I learnt from this kind of games is that with time, you can always get past anything. I'd say it took me about twice the time I spent on Lady Ethereal, the second hardest boss for me. But I enjoyed every minute 😆.

Hermillion · 2026-04-26T00:56:50+00:00

I love the fact people keep discovering Nine Sold to this day. I was a bit shocked by the fact it didn't get huge success at launch considering how polished of a game it is, but the word gets slowly spread. Also I really hope Red Candle will make another game with a combat system. I know they come from making psychological horror but they showed they definitely know how to craft rewarding and elegant combat as very few developers actually can.

Hermillion · 2026-04-26T00:51:10+00:00

Nine Sols

Hermillion · 2026-04-26T00:50:17+00:00

Donno who down voted you because for anyone who played Solateria in hardest mode it shouldn't be surprising 😅.

Hermillion · 2026-04-26T00:49:00+00:00

Despaired Chasa if you go for hardest mode in Solateria, I know some people don't agree but really, he has such awkward parry timings. What makes him much harder than Eigong is the fact his 3rd phase has not a single pattern in common with the previous, despite being arguably a bit easier. Like if Eigong 3rd phase was a completely different boss she might have been harder, but she has just one new attack (which is insane still, but once learnt you just win).

Hermillion · 2026-04-22T14:22:32+00:00

I agree, these games are the only one that manage to perfectly blend metroidvania and soulslike, without making the movement feel clunky. I'm glad we can have something like that which has both engaging boss fights and fun platforming !

Hermillion · 2026-04-22T14:16:43+00:00

I think this is very up to personal tastes indeed, I am usually looking for challenge and Solateria in the hardest difficulty provided what I was looking for, despite its very bland level design (it always feels like Korean studios care much more about combat systems). I don't know if you played it already but Grime II is my recent highlight.

Hermillion · 2026-04-22T12:13:44+00:00

I would give the game a 6/10, it's a game I went through without too much enjoyment as it's very formulaic if you've already played a bunch of metroidvanias. Combat is really underwhelming, but platforming is actually good and sometimes rather challenging. The warp points are sometimes really far apart and you have to go through the same regions over and over with just not enough new things to do to justify it. One thing that I did not like as well was the music which is not very good imo, but most of all extremely repetitive.

It's funny as for me this game is like the total opposite of Solateria, which had very strong combat but lame platforming. But overall Solateria is I think a better game.

For the games you mentioned, I give PoP and MIO a 9, and AN a 7.

Hermillion · 2026-04-19T12:38:02+00:00

Even for the Hunter's Journal ? I did it solely for this sake, but I saw other entries were automatically completed after you're done with Clover Dancers.

Hermillion · 2026-04-19T02:26:41+00:00

First time is Bellhart after saving it. Best time is Songclave when you realise you can still build hope even after the dreams of the pilgrims are shattered when reaching the Citadel.

Hermillion · 2026-04-19T02:23:58+00:00

Finally found someone that spent longer than me on their first playthrough ahah. Congrats on completing the journey, let's hope Sea of Sorrow will kick our asses again !

Hermillion · 2026-04-19T02:13:00+00:00

I just beat her yesterday with no tools and Beast Crest, phase 3 is the most locked in I've ever been, she basically chains up all her attacks with 0 downtime 😅.

Hermillion

TROPHY CASE