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hanselthecaretaker

My flask is half full
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I fucking did it!! Completed the Pantheon of Hallownest in Hollow Knight (and earned the Platinum trophy along with it).

For those who don't know, the Pantheon of Hallownest is a boss rush of 41 (or 42) bosses. Almost every boss in the game, including optional ones and DLC ones (plus suped-up versions of a few), and a couple more created for the rush itself. Ending with the 3 hardest ones. Without any saving.

Probably the most difficult single trophy I've ever got.

Congrats. Guessing you weren’t aware of the invincibility glitch, but it’s probably for the better as your sense of accomplishment would’ve been diminished.
 

Silvanus

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Anyway, I started playing Blasphemous and so far am enjoying it quite a bit. It's got a lovely Macabre 2d artstyle and some lovely music and the weird and disturbing world of Cvstodia AKA Fantasy Not-Spain is worth the price in itself. I do very much like their take on Evocative area names that games like Dark Souls helped either poplurize or establish. Even in the early game you get such interesting names as "Where the Olive Trees Wither", "The Wasteland of Buried Churches", "Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow", Mountains of Endless Dusk" "Graveyard of the Peaks" and so on.

It's as a cryptic as a Souls game and it's all based around a fantastic, very dark version of Spanish Catholicism that's obsessed with Punishment, Penance and Martyrdom that feels like there's a lot of actual thought put into it. Basically at some point in the past the Grievous Miracle appeared in Cvstodia and made everyone's sins or virtues manifest physically on their bodies. For a lot of people this made them giants, monsters or both and what's worse is apparently most of them seem to feel they deserve this because of their sins. There's a big "God Works in Mysterious Ways" vibe here and thus, because God apparently did this(not said explicitly but heavily implied) they'd best be grateful for the punishment. As such, a lot of them seem to wallow in the misery of their altered and often monstrous conditions as just penance and punishment. Like if the world(or at least Cvstodia) became an eternal purgatory and everyone welcomed it.

It seems like it's not falling into the trap a lot of fantasy makes of "Oh, there's a Catholic Church like entity because it's a middle ages setting even though there's no fucking reason for this entity to exist and we don't' feel like worldbuilding how this would evolve in a world without christianity" or even worse, the NGE trap of "Use a lot of religious symbolism/words/phrases because it looks cool but none of it actually makes any sense if you think about it for more then 5 seconds". The game was made in Spain and is apparently heavily influenced by the local Andalusian culture and Catholicism and while I'm not Catholic, I know at least enough to feel like this is very much trying to evoke the same sense of mystery and ritual that IRL Catholicism does(as well as the theme of Guilt and Penance). I'm sure someone who knows more about it could tell me if and where I'm mistaken here. I did read some articles discussing the game from a religious POV and they were generally positive about it, somewhat to my suprise. One in particular more or less says "This is a world where religion rules all but there's no grace or forgiveness. No wonder it's akin to hell".

I'm also gonna point out I find it darkly amusing that when you die, instead of "You Died" you're presented with "EXEMPLARIS EXCOMVNICATIONIS". Especially in that, yes, in the context of a theocracy where being excommunicated is a very, very bad thing and being killed and excommunicated would be kicking you when you're down, to a modern day atheist outside of that context that's just "Oh no, I'm excommunicated. That sounds a bit less bad then getting murdered by freaky monsters". It's also a little bit more creative then "You Died".

It is fucking hard, both the combat, a sparsity of checkpoints/bonfires(in this game called Prie-dieu, a type of alter) and the fact there's a lot of platforming where it's easy to fall to your death or get knocked off a ledge by an attack. I've only made it the Snowy Peaks area and unlocked the first shortcut that goes back to the starting town and man I've died quite a few times just getting there. However, I've very much looking forward to following this weird and twisted path through a land where everyone is obsessed with their own misery and everything looks like sublime Renaissance artwork.

I absolutely adored Blasphemous. Fantastic level design, fantastic enemy design, fantastic bosses. You're in for a treat, it's one of the best 2D action games of the last several years.
 
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NerfedFalcon

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I've finished the first set of worlds in Kingdom Hearts and I'm moving on to the second. The game is actually not as difficult with the build I took as I was expecting it to be; I've died a few times, but only a few compared to the death streaks I've had with this game in the past. Maybe it's also just that I know where to go now, but the exploration isn't as bad as I remember it being, either. I still understand why people would've complained about it being directionless and the platforming being too awkward that led to Kingdom Hearts 2 focusing a lot harder on just fighting, especially now that I've done Deep Jungle again, but it hasn't been bad at all.

And then people complaining that 2 didn't have good level design (it's passable at best) led to Kingdom Hearts 3, and maybe 4 will go back to being more like 2. I'd probably be okay with that.
 

meiam

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I've finished the first set of worlds in Kingdom Hearts and I'm moving on to the second. The game is actually not as difficult with the build I took as I was expecting it to be; I've died a few times, but only a few compared to the death streaks I've had with this game in the past. Maybe it's also just that I know where to go now, but the exploration isn't as bad as I remember it being, either. I still understand why people would've complained about it being directionless and the platforming being too awkward that led to Kingdom Hearts 2 focusing a lot harder on just fighting, especially now that I've done Deep Jungle again, but it hasn't been bad at all.

And then people complaining that 2 didn't have good level design (it's passable at best) led to Kingdom Hearts 3, and maybe 4 will go back to being more like 2. I'd probably be okay with that.
I mostly remember KH2 level to be constantly interrupted by cutscene, you'd fight for 2 minute, bam cutscene, another 2-3 minutes, bam another cutscene and so on. I never found the disney story to be that interesting so it got quite annoying.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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Better than Hollow Knight?
It's made it impossible for me to get into Blasphamous, since at every turn I'm like 'This doesn't play as good as Hollow Knight, so why am I even playing this?'

Hollow Knight has pretty much ruined all 2D metroidvania's for me. Even playing Metroid: Dread now I can feel Hollow Knight sitting on my shoulder whispering 'Not as good as my shit, is it?'
 

hanselthecaretaker

My flask is half full
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It's made it impossible for me to get into Blasphamous, since at every turn I'm like 'This doesn't play as good as Hollow Knight, so why am I even playing this?'

Hollow Knight has pretty much ruined all 2D metroidvania's for me. Even playing Metroid: Dread now I can feel Hollow Knight sitting on my shoulder whispering 'Not as good as my shit, is it?'

Damn, so I guess I should be putting that on my wishlist too, and perhaps near the top. I’m afraid of what the boss gauntlet would do to me though since I undoubtedly would be tempted by it.
 

NerfedFalcon

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I mostly remember KH2 level to be constantly interrupted by cutscene, you'd fight for 2 minute, bam cutscene, another 2-3 minutes, bam another cutscene and so on. I never found the disney story to be that interesting so it got quite annoying.
You're not wrong, but the only thing that prevents that from happening in 1 is that the plot flags are more difficult to find. If you know exactly where to go in each world, then there's several worlds of running from cutscene to cutscene with only token fights breaking it up. If you don't know where to go, then the cutscenes are broken up by more time, but it's dead air. And it's not like 1 isn't fun to play once you get a handle on it, but I find 2's fights a lot more interesting.
 

BrawlMan

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I did survival mode in Streets of Rage 4 again, and I can't seem to make it past level 33 or 34. The enemies (translucent red ones especially) do so much damage or spawn in so many of them, it's fucking stupid! I know patch is coming later to give alternate colors for the retro character, but they got balance this shit. @Worgen, did you ever make it this far or beyond?
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
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Whatever, just wash your hands.
I did survival mode in Streets of Rage 4 again, and I can't seem to make it past level 33 or 34. The enemies (translucent red ones especially) do so much damage or spawn in so many of them, it's fucking stupid! I know patch is coming later to give alternate colors for the retro character, but they got balance this shit. @Worgen, did you ever make it this far or beyond?
No, I only made it to 20, I played a decent amount when the DLC came out but then I got distracted by other things and haven't really gone back. I really should though. I do think I ran into some of the reds, they were 2 of the wrestler player/boss character and kicked my ass.
 

BrawlMan

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No, I only made it to 20, I played a decent amount when the DLC came out but then I got distracted by other things and haven't really gone back. I really should though. I do think I ran into some of the reds, they were 2 of the wrestler player/boss character and kicked my ass.
You must be talking about the player character version of max. He and the others don't come in translucent red. It's a translucent white and blue. Max is such a pain in the ass when there's three of them or he's spawned in with another difficult boss. The developers went really overboard with the difficulty. The higher the level you get to, the more damage enemies can do to you. This leaves no big problem, because they'll spawn a whole bunch of the jackasses and the only way to take care of them is easier to span star specials (with the rocket perks) or certain attacks over and over and hopefully you're not in a crappy environmental hazard or stage. What doesn't help even further, is that certain environmental hazards like the exploding barrels can possibly spawn on top of you if you're unlucky enough and will automatically explode on you because you made a "hit". Even if you're not moving. They really need to patch that up.
 
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gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
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Steam and Origin are having a sale on Battlefield V, Definitive Edition.

I got the base game for PS+ but for $5, I do most of my gaming on PC. This thing is really beautiful with great surround sound. I played through the 1st chapter of the single player.

 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
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After getting stumped for a bit(and taking some time to get my PS2 emulator working because my PS3 is dying), I finally made some headway in Blasphemous. After doing some reading on forums and such I realized that going into the snowy mountains first was a VERY BAD IDEA, and apparently quite a common mistake for a lot of new players. So I took the other branch near the big bridge and ended up undergound, which was tricky but somewhat less difficult. After a couple tries I took down Ten Piedad(I see what you did there, Games Kitchen), and got some upgrades going. Apparently somewhere there's a way to increase my health potions/bile containers because I've found a couple empty ones, and that would help a lot. I guess there's also a way to increase the amount of rosary beads i can equip at one time as well.

But yeah, it feels like I'm getting the hang of it finally, but the difficulty ramps up FAST and there's a lot of instat death drops/spikes which makes up for a big chunk of that and your character isn't an agile as a game like Hollow Knight, so you either parry hits or figure out when you can slide under these guys who are 2x-3x bigger then you. At least the game puts a bonefire just before the boss rooms thus far, because it would suck a lot to run back to these guys each time.

Also, as a side note, I've noticed that like Lothric in Dark Souls 3, Cvstodia seems to have a mostly church based economy, because almost every building looks like a church of some sort. Which really must suck if you want to do anything else but go to church, but as zealous as the people in Cvstodia are, maybe it just doesn't bother them much.
 
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NerfedFalcon

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I've finished most of Kingdom Hearts and gotten up to the end of Hollow Bastion, about to face off with that boss and watch that cutscene. At least the HD Remix allows you to skip cutscenes if you want, so that's good. And hey, maybe I'll be able to beat him first try and not have to worry anyway.

I probably won't, at the rate I've been going, but there's always a chance.
 
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Drathnoxis

Became a mass murderer for your sake
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I've finished most of Kingdom Hearts and gotten up to the end of Hollow Bastion, about to face off with that boss and watch that cutscene. At least the HD Remix allows you to skip cutscenes if you want, so that's good. And hey, maybe I'll be able to beat him first try and not have to worry anyway.

I probably won't, at the rate I've been going, but there's always a chance.
Remind me what boss is this?
 

hanselthecaretaker

My flask is half full
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Chipping away at missions tasks in MGSV. I have 118 to go but they can usually be done pretty quickly overall. Also finished the fourth Quickdraw pass in RDO and awaiting the free Halloween update, which I hope is better than the last. Ideally it would be some kind of Undead Nightmare 2 stuff, but that's almost 100% wishful thinking.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
The Riftbreaker came out so I've been playing a lot of that. Quite fun so far. Also still messing around with the wedding dlc in Borderlands 3.