dug

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned I'd reached a point where there were three (I think?) bosses who I couldn't defeat. Valo was one of them. I ended up just doing other stuff for a while and coming back later when I'd levelled up and found better weapons, then I defeated her easily. So I can't really help with combat tips, I'm afraid

I've only just started this, just done the tutorial area and got to the surface. Wow. Love the new abilities, and I'm sure I've not even scratched the surface yet in terms of the contraptions you can build. I found a handy pile of materials, and put four wheels on a pallet with a fan in the back. Woo! I made a car! Sort of! It was only afterwards I thought damn, what if I put a frame in the back with a wing spoiler on it? Or put another frame on the front with another wing and drove it off a cliff? Would it fly? Only one way to find out! But then I thought holy shit, there must be so many other mad stuff you can do which hasn't even begun to occur to me yet. I'm only at the beginning, how many other pieces are there which I haven't found yet which can be put together to make, I dunno, attack helicopters or some shit. I don't want to look it up because of spoilers, but I bet some mad bastard has made a mechanical calculator or something. The scale of this, the potential is mind blowing. I've barely started, and it's already game of the year. One minor gripe though, my brain keeps thinking I'm playing ocarina of time, so I keep running off edges expecting to automatically jump. 🙄

Finished this. It finishes as it went through most of the game; being bigger than you thought. There's post game stuff after the end to get the true ending. I found of the endings myself, but had to use a guide for the rest. A couple of them, I would never have found on my own. I stick by my 8/10 assessment. It's very accomplished at what it does, looking stunning and controlling very fluidly. The issues are relatively minor: I wish the weapon upgrades and the skill tree were more meaningful, and the difficulty peaks in the mid game and gets easier again as you get to the end, because by that point you have unlocked all of the skill tree and have found the best weapons and armour, and have all the afterimages. All of which add up to effectively trivialise the boss fights at the end of the game. But, I had a blast playing this. It looks and sounds amazing, controls slickly and fluidly, and there's loads to explore. Basically all you could want in a metroidvania.

Yeas, that confused me for a moment too! The item from the boss might be a primal glyph (extra heal)? But they do show up in your inventory, so maybe not. Which boss was it? A possible bug I've found is in the late-ish area According to the map I've found 39/40 treasures, and I've scoured every inch of the place twice and I get no pings from the treasure hunting trinket. So I googled and according to someone on the steam forums, in certain patches they've moved the locations of various items around, which can fuck with the numbers of discovered items. Apparently, even though it says 39/40, that is actually all the items. So that might happen in other areas as well.

Yep, I agree with pretty much all you've written there, @Kirby. Particularly the bit about the story. I'm at the end now, and have found multiple endings, all of which made me react like 😐 because I didn't have a clue what they meant! Don't know exactly how much of that is down to the poor localisation, and how much is down the the original writing. But the English localisation is the crappest I've seen for a while, absolutely full of typos and grammatical errors. I'm now mopping up, going area by area, finding all the items (the treasure-finding trinket is a godsend for this!), which is a sign of how fun the game is. Most metroidvanias I don't bother with this. So yeah, it's an 8/10 for me, could have been a 9 if the localisation was good and the skill tree was more meaningful, and there were more varied consumables. Little tweaks, really. I'm going to have to look into the devs, see what else they've done.

I know what you mean, there's so much to do once you hit that point. The way I dealt with it was just pick an area, doesn't matter which one, and explore it as thoroughly as you can with your current abilities, or until you reach a boss you can't beat yet. Once you've done that, pick another area and do the same. I wouldn't recommend using a guide because I think the sense of discovery would be deflated somewhat by simply being told how many areas there are in the game. And I wouldn't worry too much about going into late game areas too early, because it'll be obvious which are the late game areas when the little pissy fly type enemies nearly one shot you and it takes fifteen hit to kill them! My game time is now nearly 40 hours and I think I've nearly finished it. I have all of the main afterimages (traversal abilities) and all but two of the trinket type afterimages. In the whole map there is one boss I have not yet killed, and two doors I don't know how to open. As far as I can tell, I've been everywhere else. Although the way the game has been so far, I wouldn't be surprised if those doors lead to whole new areas, and I'm still a way off finishing yet. Oh, and I won't spoil where, but I found a lovely tribute to Hollow Knight yesterday. Which makes me wonder if there are tributes to other games dotted around which I either haven't found or haven't noticed. Edit: Ah, I've just remembered the bit early on where you are in silhouette for one screen. I wondered what the significance of that was, but I now realise was a tribute to Limbo.

You can do that? I didn't know you can do that. How do you do that?! That git is such a massive ammo sponge, that when I did an infinite rocket launcher lol run, I discovered that he takes two hits to kill with a rocket launcher. Literally everything else dies in one hit. Well, apart from Krauser I guess, but that's over multiple phases so doesn't really count.

I'm about 25 hours in now, and I have a few points: Firstly, it's massive. Many of the areas are pretty big and there's loads of them! Every time I think I must have found all the main areas, nope, there's more! Secondly, the difficulty definitely picks up. Some of the later bosses are nails. But I think that's partly to do with being able to get into areas which are tuned for higher levels before you're ready, if you get me. There's been several bosses so far which obliterated me in seconds, so I thought yeah come back to that later. The skill tree sort of becomes more of a thing later. Your options eventually outstrip the number of talent points you get, so you do have to make choices about what to upgrade. But I've mainly concentrated on survival stuff, like higher hp and defense. I'm still playing this even though I have Zelda waiting for me on the shelf, so that says something about how much I'm enjoying it.

Which will be released first, Silksong or The Winds of Winter?

Sounds like you'll get there soon! I remember that boss took me so many attempts that by the end of it I was walloping the wyvern with ease. By the sound of it your pretty much at that stage. To echo what other have said, don't miss the dlc! Some of the best areas and bosses in the game.

Ah, so it is. That makes more sense then.

How can the city be 2 or 3 times the size of all Elden Ring's dungeons combined, and the open world area be 2 or 3 times the size of ER's open world, yet overall this new game is slightly smaller than ER? I'm beginning to have doubts!

I once went to a works training thing at the Bolton ground, back when it was the Reebok stadium. They had posters up around the place advertising An Evening With Sam Allardyce. Can't say I was tempted. Anyway, on the poster was the line "spend an evening in the company of the most charismatic manager in the history of the premier league." You just know that line was there at his insistence.

I've played a few hours of this and am really enjoying it. Aside from the gorgeous visuals, the controls feel really nice as well. I've found a few of the traversal power ups and it's all very responsive and does what I want it to. I've done some of the spiky platforming bits with those propeller enemies that you down kick and bounce off, and they haven't been frustrating at all. The only mild downside is it's all been a bit easy so far. None of the bosses I've faced have taken more than three goes. And the skill tree seems a bit pointless, as I've always had enough talent points to unlock everything as it becomes available. I haven't had to make any choices and focus on a particular build. But then maybe that's because it's early in the game and talent points become scarcer as it goes on. They're minor points though. Overall I think this is great so far.

What the M C Escher fuck is going on with Batwoman's leg there? Her right leg and arm are behind the tree, but her left leg is in front of the platform with the tree on. What? And what's her right leg doing? Is she supposed to be standing astride the platform? Or is she kneeling with her right leg on the platform? Or is her right leg just a stubby wee leglet that only comes down to the knee of her left leg? I don't know who the artist is, but I know they need to go to some life drawing classes.