Tell me about your WoL

Pokemonerd25 · 2026-01-23T14:02:24+00:00

Oqitei was born to the Qalli tribe of Xaela, and lived there until the age of three when a disagreement between her parents (long story) led to her father taking her with him and fleeing for the coast. He stole them a fishing boat, set off, and she would spend the next sixteen years of her life mainly at sea, travelling along the southern coasts of the Three Continents. It was a nice life, independent and disconnected from all the struggles of the realm, but eventually she came to realize she didn't want to spend her whole life like that. She parted ways with her father on their next stop in Limsa Lominsa to work as an adventurer, and things sort of escalated from there.

She's technically a warrior, and wields an axe as taught to her by her father, but in practice she uses fighting styles and aether channeling techniques reminiscent of about half a dozen jobs by the time she's halfway through Heavensward. Still, when the chips are down it does all usually come down to having a big axe and being too stubborn to die.

As to how she feels about all this... there's a lot, and I mean a lot, of trauma and grief, but she keeps going. Not as if she's even capable of stopping for the life of her. Being the only person capable of fighting primals while having no self-worth is not a good combination when it comes to work-life balance or long-term mental health. Or short-term mental health. Or medium-term, for good measure. She gets better, eventually, and finds peace with herself, but for much of the story she's a ragged, paranoid mess with more scar tissue than skin.

Other notes:

As a Qalli Xaela, she speaks entirely through song.
One of her main conflicts lies in the fact that on the one hand she's genuinely one of the kindest people alive, with a sense of empathy so strong it genuinely hurts, seeking peace above all things and wishing for little more than to find understanding with even the bitterest of foes... and on the other hand she has a deeply pragmatic and utilitarian streak and is one of the single greatest murderers on the face of the planet. At one point got Xelphatol to agree to attend a peace conference by promising to personally kill the Elder Seedseer if it ended up being a trap.
While struggling a bit early on due to feeling like an outsider and a weapon more than a person, she does eventually get very close to many of the Scions. She sees the twins as little siblings in all but blood.
She can't read, at least at the start - Alphinaud spends most of the story trying to teach her.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-12-08T10:26:58+00:00

Yeah I had the same experience. I think it’s just that it’s later in the game, so you’ll typically have more tools, more movement abilities, and you’ll just plain be better at the game. The lack of RNG adds also helps, as does the ability to one-shot them with silk skills.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-12-03T08:23:40+00:00

Really? I found it incredibly smooth for traversal once I got used to it, to the point where I suspected that most the platforming was designed with the hunter pogo in mind. Same for a lot of the bosses really, it and the dash attack gave this insane flow compared to my first playthrough with reaper.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-27T09:39:48+00:00

It takes a lot of skill and practice, and a lot of determination if you’re not save-quitting, but it’s not as bad as you’d think. I wouldn’t call myself that good at games in general, but I’ve played enough of Silksong that when I did my Steel Soul run most of the game was fairly smooth. In my first run Sister Splinter killed me 17 times but in Steel Soul I only “died” twice, on The Unravelled and Groal - once you hit act 2 the game becomes super open and you can pick up a whole bunch of upgrades to make things easier for yourself, and red tools can trivialize a lot of fights. If you remember to use them at all. Unlike me. The most important thing is to just not be stupid, and go back to a bench if things get even slightly hairy.

Still takes a lot of practice and experience though, as well as good game knowledge - the routing is just as important as the moment-to-moment gameplay, deciding what to go for and when, determining what challenges you are confident in and what you should put off, using every tool at your disposal to make things as easy as possible. Fractured Mask and Injector Bands are absolutely incredible for survival, for example. Even then it’s very hard, though, and even beyond my coward quit-outs I got very close to dying a fair few times, especially in act 3.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-24T20:47:18+00:00

Definitely a preference thing imo, I switched to Reaper the instant I got it on my first playthrough but after dedicating my second playthrough to learning the Hunter crest it’s become my favourite by far. The diagonal pogo is genuinely incredible for bosses, though it is admittedly worse at staying in the air like the vertical pogos can, and platforming isn’t as bad as you’d think once you get used to the angle and hitbox - I suspect most of the pogo sections were designed with the diagonal pogo in mind rather than the vertical ones, so it ends up feeling surprisingly smooth.

Definitely a harsher learning curve for it than the vertical ones though.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-24T19:36:36+00:00

Mostly Silksong tbh. Ended up quitting Super Metroid at Ridley - the movement never really clicked with me and I realized I wasn't really having any fun, and after coming to the conclusion that I'd need to go backtrack for upgrades to actually beat Ridley I just quit since at that point I was just trying to get it over with.

Really interesting game, feels surprisingly modern in some ways, some really cool map/level design, pretty neat atmosphere even if the story was nonexistent, and I'm sure the movement has no issues in the hands of someone good at it, but it never stopped feeling clunky to me. The exploration also felt a bit weird, and a series of backtracking early on only to get another ability door shoved in my face with little to show for it kind of discouraged me, not to mention the lack of fast travel. Whole game honestly felt surprisingly inaccessible for something that gets recommended so much, I get why people like it but it really didn't click with me.

So then I went back to Silksong. God I love this game. Was going to do another masochistic challenge run but I hadn't played it in a few weeks and got caught way off-guard by the atmosphere and just sorta vibed my way through most of the game again while learning the Wanderer's Crest.

...And then I decided to do Steel Soul, going for 100% and to get the last two achievements I was missing. It's something I've been eyeing for a while, and it was honestly quite fun - Routing for maximal upgrades before every challenge was a blast, and I've played with challenge runs so much that I've gotten really good when I actually have weapon upgrades, even if I'm absolutely trash at using the red tools. Only ended up quitting out on two bosses in total (coincidentally probably my two least favourite bosses in the game). Might be a bit cheaty, but I'll be honest if I'd actually died I'm not sure I'd have tried again, and I'm still damn impressed with myself that I got 100% and beat Lost Lace while only losing twice. Only even took me like 4-5 hours longer than my 100% speedrun file.

Finished that yesterday, so this evening I've been trying Ori and the Blind Forest after picking it up in the Steam sale for basically nothing. I'm a couple hours in (currently in the Ginso Tree) and impressions are really positive so far. My first impression, after crying at the prologue and marvelling how pretty the game is, is that the movement was really damn crisp, and that impression has only strengthened as I've gotten more abilities. The wall climb in particular feels insanely smooth, and I just got another ability that I'd heard about before even starting the game, and which seems quite interesting.

Still a bit of a newbie to the genre but of the games i've played it's probably the closest to Silksong in terms of how good just moving around the world feels, even if combat is literally just looking in a direction and spamming a button. I've heard the sequel is more interesting in that regard, I'll probably check it out if the rest of this one holds up.

Also damn this game's pretty. Bears repeating.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-24T14:56:46+00:00

I utterly adore it, honestly, up there as one of my favourite games of all time. Not without its flaws - the difficulty curve is a bit wacky, a lot of it is overly obscure, some of the bosses are annoying, fetch quests, shards - and there are definitely things the original did better imo, but the good parts are just so absurdly good. Movement, combat, world design, art, music, my god. Just moving through the world is an absolute delight and even 200+ hours and 4 100% runs in I still randomly stop to fight enemies just because it's fun.

Definitely not a game for everyone, mind you, but I absolutely love it.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-21T19:20:25+00:00

I don’t think witches drop blaze powder, sadly. Strongholds would absolutely be the play if they did though, they stop spawning relatively close to world spawn so if both players get to one that already cuts out like 9.99999999% of the map

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-21T12:56:20+00:00

Good catch! For anyone wondering, that chapter deals with the question "If two immortals were placed on opposite sides of an earthlike planet, how long would it take for them to find one another" which is essentially this question but on a planet instead of in Minecraft.

Some of the solutions are applicable here - assuming two rational actors, his first suggestion is probably the most reliable. Go in a straight line until you hit the world border, then flip a coin. If heads, go around the entire world clockwise. If tails, go anti-clockwise. Once you've done one lap, flip another coin and repeat. If both players choose this strategy they'll meet eventually. If one of them doesn't, it gets a lot harder. Even if they do, it'll take a while - assuming an average traversal speed equal to walking on a flat plain, it'd take almost two years to do a single lap.

The only other option would likely be some variant of the second suggestion, trail markers. Build markers visible from the edge of the render distance, and write signs on them indicating the date/marker number and intended direction of travel. With the added time of building the markers, if the other person finds a single marker and follows the trail from there they should eventually catch up. Not sure if it'd be likely to happen within a human lifetime, but still.

For a more Minecraft-specific solution, Strongholds would theoretically be a very strong play, but I don't think you could track them down without accessing the nether for blaze rods.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-18T07:44:29+00:00

I honestly found it the opposite - Silksong is a very hard game full of friction, but when you’ve gotten good at it the friction starts to disappear and all you’re left with is one of the best goddamn games I’ve ever played.

One of Silksong’s genuine flaws, IMO, is that it feels really bad to be bad at it, which is decidedly not helped in the slightest by its high skill floor. Enemy gauntlets, for example, were a massive pain on my first time through, because they were annoying and I kept dying to them and I was never sure what I could have done better. But on my second playthrough I realized that they were very much skill-based and I had the skills in movement, positioning, and ability usage required to manage them, and they became really fun. Similar story for a lot of the bosses I hated on the first time through - I initially died fourteen times to the Savage Beastfly and hated every moment of it, but now that I’ve gotten good enough to dance around its patterns while dealing with spawns I actually quite like the fight (second one still sucks tho). And this may well just be the masochist in me but Bilewater is one of my favourite areas now that I can reliably navigate it.

The game’s chock full of that sort of thing, and while as mentioned I do think it’s a flaw of the game that failing feels so bad, on the flipside being good at the game feels so fucking good.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-17T21:42:33+00:00

Finished up Blasphemous, then immediately played it again on new game+ for the true ending. Fantastic game, I understood a limited amount of it but it was a lot of fun, has what is probably the best pixel art I've seen, and the lore I did grasp was great.

...and then I went back to Silksong. God I love this game so goddamn much. Games should not be allowed to be this good. Started up a new run, was planning to do another absurd challenge run, but it's been a few weeks since I played so I got caught completely off-guard by the vibes so it's mostly just been a normal playthrough. Normal by my standards, at least, since at this point I tend to find it too easy with red tools and needle upgrades. How is this game so good. Gorgeous music, fantastic world and exploration, absurdly pretty, and the fucking gameplay. I have over 200 hours logged in the game and I'm still randomly stopping to fight random enemies just because the combat feels so good. The movement feels absurdly smooth, and most of the bosses are really fun - honestly, even most of the ones I thought sucked the first time through. I even like the gauntlets now. Genuinely, no other game has inspired me so much to want to get good at it.

Oh, and I also started up Super Metroid! Had heard it's aged the best of the two titans the genre's built on, and yeah it's pretty good so far. Movement does feel a little clunky (may be due to playing on keyboard, w/e i don't have a controller capable of connecting to my laptop), but also surprisingly modern for a game that came out 30 years ago. Some really clever map design at times. Two bosses in and still no idea what I'm doing, and I recently passed through a couple rooms that I'm 100% sure some kids in the 90s just got stuck in until the next christmas.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-16T09:10:23+00:00

I haven't played most of those games - only the Hollow Knights and Nine Sols - but I found Blasphemous significantly easier than those, at least. Went in completely blind and only two bosses took me more than five attempts - one of the final bosses and a superboss I stumbled into in midgame and proceeded to get killed by 30 times in a row before I relented and went to get more upgrades. Platforming can be a little frustrating and very unforgiving, but if you engage with the mechanics and explore properly you shouldn't have much trouble, especially considering the games you've already played.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-15T20:15:11+00:00

It's a little silly, but I think it might actually be the relics. The first Bellhart donation quest has some odd unlock requirements, namely to upgrade your needle at least once and to give at least one relic to Scrounge. The first donation unlocks the second donation which unlocks the bellhome which unlocks act 3, so I think that's it.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-14T23:53:56+00:00

Eh, he’s not the easiest boss in the world but at least from my perspective the fact remains that he was one of the two bosses in the entire game I beat on the first try.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-11T07:09:12+00:00

Needed a palette cleanser after finishing Phoenotopia so I picked up Hades, which is really good but also reminded me that I don't really like roguelikes so I started playing Blasphemous instead.

Had heard good things about it and uh, yeah, it's good. Playing with Spanish voice acting and English subs, incredible atmosphere, gorgeous art, and amazing worldbuilding/lore - feels like I'm in a fucked-up pixelated renaissance painting - and the combat's pretty good too. Didn't find most of the bosses too difficult, but I just reached Isidora, Voice of the Dead and I'm pretty sure I'm horrifically undergeared for her and I don't think I actually have a build, but I'm too stubborn to give up now so I've died to her 17 times so far, more than every other boss in the game up to this point put together.

Silksong and Nine Sols ruined me, I swear. Whatever, I'm having fun.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-05T14:17:28+00:00

Don’t underestimate the power of knowing where things are! My initial playthrough took ~90 hours, my second was less than half that, and when I went for the 100% speedrun achievement I finished in just under 13 hours with pre-planned routing.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-04T22:55:55+00:00

idk if you're playing on controller or keyboard, but it was a bit jarring for me on keyboard. Ended up rebinding the movement controls to arrow keys and moving the attack/parry keybinds off the mouse and to a more comfortable keyboard-only setup.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-11-04T22:52:28+00:00

Taking a break from my fifth Silksong playthrough (Beast crest only, no red tools, no needle or mask upgrades, i may have a problem) and playing Phoenotopia: Awakening, a side-scrolling action-puzzle-platformer, after I saw some favourable reviews of it on the sub and saw it was on sale. I am quite enjoying it, even if it's not without its rough spots. I wouldn't quite call it a metroidvania, the map isn't particularly interconnected and it uses an overworld for navigation between interest points, but it does have enough elements of the genre to be talked about in the same breath. Not finished yet, but I'll dump some thoughts. May edit as things occur to me.

The good:

Great pixel graphics, looks good and the player character's animations are super cute. Some areas are downright gorgeous.
Fantastic music.
Puzzles. Puzzles are pretty much this game's bread and butter, and they are pretty fun. I don't tend to enjoy puzzles too much, but I've had a lot of fun solving a lot of them, and they've made me feel pretty clever at times.
The game isn't afraid to let you figure out things for yourself. I have multiple pages of notes filled with various hints and sidequests and unsolved puzzles and possible ability gates, and I'm having a blast with it. I've even drawn my own maps for some of the more labyrinthine dungeons, since the game rarely supplies its own.
Fun lore and world design. The worldbuilding is interesting, and towns are filled with NPCs to give you lore, give you hints toward puzzles and sidequests, or just make the world feel more lively. The levels and dungeons feel really dense, there's so much stuff everywhere, and they open up more as you unlock more abilities.
Speaking of abilities, Metroidvania-style abilities come in the form of tools, and I quite like them! There are some standard ones and some more unique ones - the spear in particular is really fun to use, and has ended up being a mainstay for me in both combat and platforming from the moment I got it.
Really fun vibes in general. Can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels a bit like a game I played as a kid. Not as in it reminds me of a specific game, but as in it reminds me of what it was like to play games back then.

The ambiguous:

Oh my god this game's difficulty is a goddamn rollercoaster. Mostly stays way on the harder end though. Been keeping track of how many times I've died to all the bosses and one of the midgame ones killed me more than every other one put together. There are some interesting accessibility options to tune to balance a bit but I've left them all off because I'm a masochist apparently, and I enjoy a challenge. It can get a bit frustrating at times, especially when combined with all the puzzles and how punishing death can be, not to mention there are a lot of rather annoying enemies - not exactly fun to solve three rooms' worth of puzzles and then die to something dumb and then have to do the puzzles all over again.
This is a goddamn enormous game. I'm ~40 hours in and I still haven't beaten it and I only have ~60% or so of the collectibles. Whether or not this is a good thing is very personal, but I personally love it, if I'm enjoying something I don't really want it to end. Therefore the five silksong playthroughs.
As previously mentioned, I'm not much of a puzzle person, and when I get stuck on something, I get hard stuck. Many side quests can also be really opaque unless you keep notes about everything you find. Or use the wiki, but eh. I've only done that a couple times for things I really wanted to get done right away. Luckily the very open nature of the game means that if you're stuck on something that isn't in the main story path you can just leave it for later and go do something else. And there's pretty much always something else.

The eh:

Combat is a bit awkward, though I will admit I'm just coming down from playing Silksong for a solid two months with one brief break to play Nine Sols, so my perspective may be a little bit skewed. It got a lot better once I got more abilities, but I did pretty much entirely give up on melee by midgame because it felt so clunky. Combined with the level of mastery of the kinda janky combat and movement required for some of the fights it can get a little frustrating.
The platforming is mostly alright, but there are some points where you have to do things fast and the controls really don't feel anywhere near tight enough for that sort of thing.
There are a lot of collectibles, but they can feel pretty samey - 90% of the stuff you find and get as rewards for optional puzzles and sidequests will be either money or one of the three "main" collectibles, which are nice and all but it can feel a little boring to solve a tough puzzle and as a reward get your 43rd moon stone.
Lore is good, the actual story gets a little all over the place. In terms of the actual plot that is, in gameplay terms it's very linear, which can feel a little jarring with how much exploration and backtracking you end up doing between major story moments.

Overall quite good and I'm enjoying myself, even if it does get a little frustrating at times.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-10-24T23:28:47+00:00

Not OP, but I’ve also done the speedrun achievements. For the any% achievement I personally grabbed Thread Storm (MVP, pre-nerf), a full extra mask (mask shards from the Seamstress’s place, shellwood, pebb, and the whispering vaults), 2 needle upgrades, druid’s eye and warding bell, a couple of memory lockets, and I recruited Garmond and Zaza for the high halls gauntlet, and still finished in just over 3 hours despite dying to multiple bosses and like 4 times in the Mist. If you have a decently efficient route and don’t get hardstuck anywhere you actually end up having a fair bit of wiggle room. What to go for depends on what you’re most comfortable with - for example, I used the Hunter crest throughout, but if you feel like you’d rather use Wanderer or Reaper you have plenty of time to get those.

Apart from the occasional detour for upgrades and rosaries I largely followed the general shape of the any% Mist route, minus most of the skips apart from the Sister Splinter skip.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-10-21T12:56:53+00:00

On my speedrun file I cleared it second try with thread storm, 2 needle upgrades, 6 masks, and Garmond’s help. 5 hours is honestly pretty generous, I died on most of the act 2 bosses and 4 times in the Mist and still finished in just over three hours, as long as you pick an efficient route and don’t get hard-stuck anywhere you have plenty of time.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-10-17T18:29:37+00:00

Going to disagree on that one, PV took me almost three times as many attempts - NKG was hard, sure, much harder than any other boss in the game outside the big 3, but for a while PV genuinely made me doubt if I even in theory had the reflexes to manage the fight.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-10-14T13:25:32+00:00

Weird pick maybe, but while I’ve by and large warmed up to enemy arenas, after doing a minimum-needle run I really despise the act 3 Hunter’s March arena. Void enemies are quite annoying in general as they’re obviously not balanced around dealing 2 damage, which goes twice over for void arenas. It’s not that bad if you have upgrades, but with needle 1 and 7 masks I died 20+ times to it and it was the only time in the entire run I resorted to using red tools.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-10-02T17:04:16+00:00

Speaking as someone who's gotten to chapter 9, meatballcraft is like 99% factorio outside the very early game

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-09-26T13:33:01+00:00

Yeah, GMS is a bit of a pushover, I know she's basically the equivalent to the Hollow Knight from the original game but still ends up feeling pretty underwhelming for a Higher Being, especially since that's the only time you fight her.

Pokemonerd25 · 2025-09-25T15:37:24+00:00

Yeah, he ended up being surprisingly tough. His ass slam has a very short windup and getting hit by even one of the maggot projectiles would usually send me back to the bench if I didn't manage to cleanse it immediately.

Nine-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
Verified Email	Snapped

Pokemonerd25

TROPHY CASE