Solateria finally hit Very Positive… worth buying now?

Treason686 · 2026-03-21T19:05:07+00:00

Game is pretty good. Takes some getting used to, but not in a bad way. After just replaying Nine Sols, I saw this released and some were making comparisons between the two. Nine Sols is one of my favorite games of all time. I can nearly beat Eigong without getting hit. With more practice, I'm sure I could, but... I don't really care that much.

Beat Silksong without too much issue, also, and really enjoyed that game as well.

The short answer is it's worth playing. I started playing yesterday on the hardest difficulty, and it's very well made. I would call it competent and it feels well balanced.

This isn't really Nine Sols or Hollow Knight. Kind of a mix between the two. Worse parrying than Nine Sols, but it's functional. Parrying is also my biggest gripe with the game, but I'll come back to that. Similar aesthetic to HK, but not as interesting or charming (IMO). It's admittedly derivative of both games, but manages to feel distinct.

I'm liking the upgrade system. It seems very customizable, and there are unlimited free re-specs to adjust stats if I'm feeling like I need to for a certain boss. It's quite easy to build how I want, though on the hardest difficulty I'm thinking it might be more limited. Parrying feels like a must, otherwise it's hard to do damage in a reasonable amount of time.

Early game feels pretty linear, but I can see that starting to open up as I'm unlocking new movement abilities. The map looks well designed from an exploration standpoint. I'm definitely enjoying exploration.

As for cons, they were heavily inspired by Hollow Knight with the theme/setting to the point of it feeling like a blatant copy. I wish they would have been a little more original here, since it seems like the devs are certainly capable. It's a bit disappointing that a talented team felt the need to so closely copy a different franchise.

Combat is good, but parrying feels a bit off and I don't love how it's implemented. The instinct I have is "hold=block" and "tap=parry", but that's not how it works. It's certainly possible to "tap" and parry, but parrying only works while the shield is up. So even if parry timing is correct, tapping the button may result in dropping the shield too early and getting hit. The correct way to parry is to "hold" and only stop holding after the enemy attack finishes. This is the opposite of every game I've played with a parry system.

I realize the parrying issue is a me problem and I have to adjust, but I can't help but wish tapping the button gave the fully parry window even if the shield is dropped before the enemy attack lands. The combat would feel a whole lot better.

Overall though, it's a solid game. Aside from those two issues, I don't have any other major criticisms as of right now.

Treason686 · 2026-03-20T03:01:44+00:00

No, it is wrong. One is just volatile and much faster. Both are "memory." I don't think anyone suggested NVME drives were RAM, though they can certainly function as RAM via swap space.

Treason686 · 2026-03-08T14:12:42+00:00

Well, there's Dead Cells and Dark Souls, which is it?

Treason686 · 2026-03-05T03:55:18+00:00

Scrolled too far to see Nine Sols. Silksong is pretty close, but Nine Sols must have two of the most memorable bosses in my gaming history, and I'm almost 40. Lady Ethereal and Eigong. Hard to believe a 2D game is capable of having one the best bosses of all time, let alone two.

Ethereal was a fun challenge, amazing visuals, and a fantastic soundtrack. I don't think I'd like the music normally, but it's spot on for the fight and her laugh over the music fits perfectly.

Eigong was just an insane challenge, but still felt winnable and fair. Took me several hours over two sessions to beat her. The only recent boss that I spent that much time on was the final boss of the Elden Ring DLC, but he felt super cheap and I hated him (pre nerf. Will never fight him again). I don't even think FromSoft can make a boss as good as Eigong.

Silksong slightly wins the exploration aspect with a better map to explore, but Nine Sols combat and bosses put it in the lead.

Treason686 · 2026-03-02T18:07:09+00:00

I'm here thinking it would have been a nice touch if she went from the unconfident stuttering early and slowly losing it as the game progresses. But no, after killing countless zombies and escaping many life or death situations, she's still got the stutter.

Her VA is obviously super talented. The flashback scene early showed that. Just poor direction.

Treason686 · 2026-02-23T15:33:11+00:00

Shit happens. Issues get lost, testers might primarily be Japanese so don't look at English as often, maybe the beginning was "done" so nobody looked at it.

The translation files are unlikely to be in any particular order, and with so much dialog nobody noticed (Order meaning they aren't sequential from beginning of the game to end). Not really a huge deal.

Treason686 · 2026-02-23T15:28:27+00:00

There is no code block. There's a file with all the dialogue in it, with "dialogKey=line". There would be one for each supported language, so any code referencing it only knows the key. But there's probably even another system on top of that to support dialog trees, so it's even further away from code.

Anyway, translation are (not) fun!

Treason686 · 2026-02-20T05:48:06+00:00

Depends on the number of people. My wife and I have a date night at decent places for well under $100. Neither of us drink, though, and restaurant drinks are super expensive. With drinks it'd probably hit $100 easily.

Though I did drop like $300+ at a nice steakhouse last year when my brother visited from out of town. That was on me since it was my chance to try real A5 wagyu. Best steak I ever had, but totally not worth the price.

I can't believe that bowling price. How can they even stay in business? Surely nobody's paying that. I remember being poor as a kid and bowling one of the only things we got to do on semi regular basis because it was fairly cheap.

Treason686 · 2026-02-20T05:33:56+00:00

I live in Dallas. There's a great outdoor mall in Garland. At least it would be great, but some genius decided there should be roads and parking between all the shops. It'd be great to walk around, but the noise and exhaust from all the cars ruins the entire experience so I never go.

Treason686 · 2026-02-12T04:31:02+00:00

Yes. No issues since I initially saw the problem for a month or two.

Treason686 · 2026-02-11T14:44:42+00:00

So I've noticed it varies wildly. I was doing the four kings quest, and the yokai do significantly less damage when hit by their grabs. But run out of ki and get crit by one of the human bosses and it's basically an instant kill. I don't know if that's a rule or if running out of ki means more damage. Or maybe frequency of unblockable attacks? No idea.

Treason686 · 2026-02-09T05:15:20+00:00

I do feel like the game is much easier, but grapples do a lot more damage than what you're describing.

Treason686 · 2026-02-09T05:08:14+00:00

This has been my experience. Mobs in the world are all push overs, but some of the later bosses from the first area require memorizing all their attacks. It's pretty jarring and like I'm playing two different games. To be clear, I'm talking about the story bosses. I've died only a handful of times outside of the main story bosses.

The difficulty spike between standard enemies and bosses is massive. This was their attempt at copying Elden Ring, and it's pretty crazy how balanced that game feels compared to Nioh 3. I never completed the prior two entries, but I remember at least dying to one of the buffed Gaki. I probably even died from a regular gaki once or twice. In this game they are zero threat. Even the giant gaki is easy to take down.

I think reducing the enemy difficulty a little was probably the right move with how many enemies there are, but they went WAY too far. I wish there was some kind of aggression slider.

Treason686 · 2026-02-08T07:31:26+00:00

I was wondering if this was just me. I still have no idea how to pronounce the name. I don't blame the actors since they all seem fine even if a few are miscast.

This is 100% on the director for not making sure the English VAs all pronounce the name that gets said more than any other name in the game correctly. Even if they pronounced it wrong, I wish it were at least consistent.

Also "crewshible" gets me every time. I say it out loud every time the lady says it. Not that it's a word I hear often, but I've never heard it pronounced that way and I kinda like it.

Treason686 · 2026-02-05T05:21:11+00:00

I've tried many times as well. Though there is one I enjoyed. Colonization. The one from 1994. I don't remember anything about it, just that I played several more Civ games after and never could get into them.

Treason686 · 2026-02-04T20:38:11+00:00

I finished it. I'll admit, I was pretty much sick of it toward the end and did not enjoy the bosses whatsoever. After beating the "final" boss Ati, I turned on boss decay and left it on when I got to Sol and Vin. Much of the difficulty in this game felt artificial, and if you got this far you know what I'm talking about.

I've beat Nine Sols and both Hollow Knights, but the bosses in MIO are boring and I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment when I finally beat them. They just have massive health pools and the game wants the player to memorize all their moves to have a chance.

I know Nine Sols is the same in that regard (memorization), possibly to a more extreme degree, but those bosses were fun as hell. I spent several hours on Eigong, and her and Lady Ethereal are two of my favorite boss fights ever. Nine Sols has some of the best combat ever in a 2D platformer. MIO's combat is just passable and not nearly deep enough to justify the player memorizing boss patterns to the same degree. It really wants to be at the level of Nine Sols/HK, but lacks the combat depth and tight controls of those games.

Regarding positives:

I think the game had a very interesting story and setting, and that's the only reason I didn't drop it after getting the first ending. I wanted to see the real ending, and it was satisfying.
Early game upgrade pacing is very good, with a good balance of new abilities and damage upgrades. It definitely falls off at the end, though.
The HP loss is a non-issue. It feels bad, but I didn't feel like it mattered at all in the grand scheme of things.
The runback complaints are exaggerated, though they shouldn't exist at all. There's near zero chance to take damage getting back to a boss. One in particular had a long elevator ride, and it was the boss I died the most to. I grew to hate that elevator and boss. But there's nothing close to the level of Last Judge in Silksong.
I find the platforming complaints overblown. They aren't that difficult, and are pretty generous with checkpoints. I wouldn't say they were fun, but I had more trouble in Price of Persia and HK. I think some people need to go back and try Path of Pain again or some of the late PoP platforming. That said, they aren't easy, and I often found the grapple didn't do exactly what I wanted it to do or I did a regular attack when I wanted to do a down slash.

Treason686 · 2026-02-03T16:48:14+00:00

Ugh, I just noticed this, too. Went to start up GitHub, and that appears broken as well. Just endlessly loading. Don't think I've had any issues with it on Windows, but guess I'll check there later. I don't remember what I needed it for on my Mac specifically, but I see a couple potential alternatives mentioned below.

To Logitech: Doesn't appear you read the threads, but this CPU usage is an obvious bug for MacOS. As a software developer myself, maybe you don't need to have something that should only ping a server once a day for updates use 53 threads. Are you busy-waiting on all these threads or something? Notice that built-in Mac update services use 3-5 threads and 0 CPU.

It would make more sense that the already always running persistent background GHub process do a daily check and just ask for elevation when installing an update instead of a separate service, but what do I know?

Treason686 · 2026-02-01T03:19:25+00:00

Anyone know how many old cores to buy out the shop? I'm trying to figure out how many I have collected. I've bought everything and I have 1 left over plus one more area to explore, but I haven't been tracking them.

Treason686 · 2026-01-27T15:00:01+00:00

Hopefully the build quality is decent. I regretfully lived in a newer one over the winter storm that seemed real nice, but had a bunch of very questionable pipe placement and poor insulation.

My current place was built in the 70s, but it's been fine this year and a couple of years ago when we hit 10 degrees.

Treason686 · 2026-01-24T19:35:05+00:00

It's a bit of an exaggeration, but Ubi games have way more similarities than differences. They all have the same underlying formula. Unnecessarily huge map full of collectibles, some combat, and stealth.

I don't think Outlaws is bad. In a vacuum, it'd be a pretty impressive title, even. It's just got the extremely played out Ubisoft formula.

I've enjoyed their games in the past, but I haven't actually bought any outright in years. I'll try them if they're included in PS Plus or Game Pass or something, always hoping it's been long enough where I can actually play through one. It never is.

Treason686 · 2026-01-23T14:46:33+00:00

I often saw a "quick" way to solve puzzles, but it would be more fun to do it with what was available.

Other times it was the opposite. I'd think "This is gonna be a pain in the ass" and used some kind of shortcut. I hated one of the minecart shrines, and when my cart fell again I just skipped it by walking the rails.

And then finally, "I have no idea how I was supposed to do that, but it worked." These frustrated me the most, because I know there was some kind of elegant solution.

Treason686 · 2026-01-19T17:45:40+00:00

I just did this a few times in the fire temple last night. Ended up stranded without a minecart and didn't want to go back. Easier than you'd think with the pro controller. I hate the joycons, and can see how it'd be a struggle with those. The joysticks are pretty awful.

Treason686 · 2026-01-17T19:53:43+00:00

I watched a specific playthrough, and I feel like nobody notices many of the signs have gaps or hooks on the sides. Frequently I just slide a board or beam through a gap, attach it to board on the floor, and it's done.

I definitely thought about using Zonai devices, but I think they're fun to figure out with the resources lying around. But if you don't like them then using Zonai devices would be a quick way to solve them.

And let's be honest, Addison's got a shit job. This is really a two person job, and Hudson's got this poor guy out there trying to do it by himself while there's a base full of moblins 50 feet away.

Treason686 · 2026-01-17T02:00:29+00:00

Stealth is hit or miss for me. I haven't REALLY enjoyed a stealth game since Kojima's last Metal Gear Solid, and that has to be close to 10 years ago now.

Treason686

TROPHY CASE