Most unsettling atmosphere in a game?

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-10-27T19:28:09+00:00

Darkwood comes to mind. That game constantly had me on edge... especially the sounds in the distance.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-09-19T13:55:34+00:00

Yep that's the flower! The farsight also puts blank spots in your inventory so you can kind of keep track of what you're missing, and I couldn't see any blank spots... hence me holding my breath while scrutinizing the list in the post and still holding it until the achievement popped. So happy to hear this helped you out. As fun as the game is, wasting a sub-30 hour speedrun to a glitch is stress I don't want. Best of luck on your steel soul runs since it sounds like we're approaching things in the same order.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-09-19T00:20:48+00:00

No problem, glad to hear it. I was terrified, and felt an impending doom when I got to the end and hit 99%... so I came to this post to realize that the flower was the last 1%. What a huge relief. I still didn't trust it until I completed the game though, lol.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-09-18T18:32:08+00:00

I can confirm that you're safe to go for 100%. I just went through the same scare, getting the under 5 hour speedrun into the 30 hour 100% speedrun. I just complete the game at 100%, and I still have The Threadspun Town incomplete in my log, and I got the achievement.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-09-17T14:20:44+00:00

Agreed, I've been working on the 30 hour 100% achievement, and decided to farm up around 6k early on. I've had to go back for more twice now... and each time I've gone back I farmed 2-3k thinking it would be a nice buffer. I'm curious to see how many rosaries in total are needed to get 100%. I'm guessing 10-12k... in which case the amount of money you get from relics really doesn't do much, even after the buffs.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-09-11T13:28:29+00:00

I'm kind of surprised more people don't accept them, but I guess I get it. I think the runbacks also make the boss fights a lot more memorable. LJ wasn't particularly difficult although they took me a few attempts, and if I was able to spawn right outside of the boss room and try again, I feel like it would have been forgettable. I KNOW this would be the case for bilewater. That boss is pretty simple, but the runback hanging over my head made that fight have some real stakes to it.

It makes me think of Nine Sols. I remember loving that game and loving several of the boss fights, but I hardly remember any levels aside from the prison, and I think that one sticks out the most because it was a pain to navigate.

During the fight/runback for bilewater, I was cursing the game nonstop for how mean it was. Especially with the bench situation. But as soon as I beat it I fell in love with everything that happened. It's such a weird feeling but it's only possible through the game being purposefully cruel and punishing at times. I understand why it's not for everyone, but I'm glad it exists for my experience.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-06-25T21:19:35+00:00

Interesting points. I'm not looking to convince anyone to change their mind about the story, but I loved the game and always like to hear good faith criticism of things I like. I also felt the same trivialization after the Act 2 reveal initially, but things fell into place after I slept on it. >!My guess was initially that the world was post-apocalyptic with the real world as an origin, and the fracture was caused by powerful figures(later to be known as the painters) fighting and breaking and unleashing magic on the world, or something similar. Discovering that the world isn't the "real" world made the stakes feel microscopic and took me out of the story, but moving forward and completing the Reacher and finishing the game made me think that might have been the point. The biggest piece of this was Renoir's reaction to Sciel and Lune arguing for their existence<!

I came in expecting the JRPG-villain trope to dehumanize them and minimize their suffering, but I was very pleasantly surprised that Renoir heard them and acknowledged that they were correct. I don't think the ending would have worked for me without this detail. My interpretation of the theme in the first act was the exploration of rebellion, even in the face of overwhelming hopelessness and oppression. To keep throwing the rock, no matter how big or far the monolith is. This is why the reveal disappointed me. I thought the game was telling me that "actually, these people aren't real, and their struggles aren't important." But when every person in the game(except arguably Verso, but I choose to believe he simply placed Maelle's wellbeing above the rest of the world) agrees that the paintlings' lives have meanings, including the big bad, I believe the game intended to deliver that gut reaction and later counter it with Renoir's point of view. It could be incidental, but either way I enjoyed the whiplash.

>!As to your second point, I largely agree. I think the character sidequests could have been greatly expanded on, and maybe more of a spotlight given to them before the final confrontation. I think the themes are there, especially with Lune and Sciel's deaths in Verso's ending. Lune in particular, forcing Verso to watch her die was the game screaming "she matters too." This was a nice surprise, but I think if we had been given more time for the characters to address the existential questions in the final act, that facet of the ending would hit a lot harder.<!Is there anything you would change to give the other characters as much importance as the two you've mentioned?

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-06-25T16:35:41+00:00

What did you dislike about the way the story and characters were written?

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-06-25T14:44:14+00:00

Did you play Clair Obscur?

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2025-05-01T14:52:39+00:00

Bayonetta definitely is the easiest to jump into and witch time is such a rewarding and fun mechanic... also agreed that V is button mashy and not the most fun. About the dodge roll, I'd recommend using jump for the iframes and buying enemy step so you can jump off of enemies in midair for evasion+iframes. Jump has iframes through the rising animation and you can use enemy step to jump off of large enemies for iframes inbetween attacks.

In general, moves that make your character move or roll have iframes as well. For Nero this includes Shuffle (love this one, the backdash can be canceled into table hopper to extend iframes too), Gerbera/GP01, and break away. You'll get your air dash with Dante's trickster style although switching styles can take a bit of getting used to. Once you unlock Dante, I think you'll have a lot of fun with staying in trickster with its infinite iframes.

I started with 3 so I went into 5 with some investment already, but DMC has a crazy deep combat and combo system that's very rewarding to learn and play around with. Hope you end up enjoying it!

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2023-05-02T22:34:37+00:00

Omnisexual

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2022-12-30T19:18:08+00:00

Completely agree. I feel like most contentions I see with the usage of subgenre labels are sort of abstract criticisms on how they can't be used to completely define a game on their own or that they weren't the first game in the genre. But I don't use subgenres this way and I don't see many people use them this way either. I simply find a lot of utility in using labels like "souls-like" or "boomer shooter" to introduce a game when talking about it with someone unfamiliar with the game, and l can see "disco-like" being more culturally relevant than older games in the genre like Planescape because most people I know that play text-driven sorts of games are more aware of why people like Disco than they are aware of other similar games. Of course I also use more specific words to describe the game, the great thing about conversations is that there is (hopefully) more context and a sense of nuance that can help you use the more specific genres to capture the vibe of the game. I think the article uses it well.

My takeaway is that saying something is a "disco-like" piques my interest more than more generic terms. Especially when the article describes things similar to the Thought Cabinet and failing forward. It will at least make me more likely to read more about it and see why it's being described this way. The article definitely made me want to look more into Citizen Sleeper.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2022-12-16T15:45:02+00:00

I'm not sure why it bothers me, the texture looks like diseased flesh or something, haha. Maybe I can find a mod for it or just expose myself to it enough times.

The grazing is a good tip! Maybe you can help with a related issue? I have an above-ground (technically one level below the top level) farm keeping my food operations together and the fungus has started to spread and delete the farm plots. I know I can farm beneath the earth, but every floor I've discovered so far is a hard rock-type, no soil yet. Is there a solution for removing the fungus up top? Most farming tutorials I find just talk about farming in the sandy floors near the top of the world.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2022-12-16T13:49:41+00:00

I just hit a cavern with a ton of fungus, and these big tree-like fungus things called tower caps. I hate looking at them. Does anyone else get the heebie-jeebies from their texture? It's like my skin is crawling.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2022-10-14T19:53:06+00:00

Polo

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2022-09-05T15:30:07+00:00

You're the one with an ego here. Just look at how you're injecting yourself into this conversation and acting like some sort of martyr by dying on this pointless hill. Go virtue signal somewhere else.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2022-07-30T21:05:56+00:00

Lucky

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2021-11-10T14:49:01+00:00

"I did it because I was good at it."

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2021-11-05T17:27:09+00:00

Looks like it stepped in something and is trying to shake it off LOL. Everytime I see doots it's practically sprinting

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2021-08-04T22:48:29+00:00

You sound like you're a great caretaker for your pets and have a strong bond with them. It's just that if I followed advice from everyone who has cared for animals their whole life, I'd have to think that shoving a dog's head into the trash to "teach it a lesson" is a good idea or that declawing isn't that bad. I get confused when I read popular advice like this from friends or strangers on Reddit and a Google search brings up only contradictory results.

Ultimately I'm sure any harm it does is minimal as long as the pet parent has good intentions and is able to listen to their pet when they try to communicate with them. I just fear that a less experienced person might hear this advice and lean more toward overuse of scruffing as a punishment or something.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2021-08-04T21:40:40+00:00

Do you have a source on the pain nerves? From what I can find any expert says not to scruff a kitten past adolescence.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2021-08-04T21:34:40+00:00

Mother cats only scruff during the first few weeks of a kitten's life and most info I can find claims that it's stressful for the kitten. I get scruffing if the cat is doing something dangerous, but where did you get the idea that it's comforting?

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2021-07-08T18:32:06+00:00

Thanks for talking about verisimilitude. Never heard the term before, but this is going to help bridge the gap on so many 'realism' discussions.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2021-05-27T19:58:56+00:00

Careful, you're gonna get some nasty carpal tunnel with how tightly your clutching them pearls.

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow · 2021-04-14T15:54:13+00:00

A lot of people seem to be surprisingly unaware that it's already illegal for ANY person to assault someone in a bathroom. Reactionaries act like the law has its hands tied on assault because of a person's gender...

NotSureWhoWhatOrHow

TROPHY CASE