32 replies to this topic

[Ether]

Guyyyyyyyys. I swear, it's fine to throw large numbers of bulky enemies at me, I don't mind killing them once, just please for the love of god leave the doors open after the first time and don't reset them every time I have to get past.

 

The seed shooter seems very inconsistent on whether it bounces 2 or 3 times.

 

Other than that I had fun with the first part of L8. I didn't get lost and I honestly I feel like that's the single biggest decider in whether I find these dungeons enjoyable or not at this point. I think this game has a ton of cool design, enough to carry it easily when navigation pains don't get in the way.

 

.......is what I'd say, and then I got to the second half.

 

The difficulty of the third floor seemed wildly overtuned compared to everything that came before. It wouldn't be so bad except that enemies seem to return when I leave the screen. I can't tell what causes this (I thought it was tied to the state of the blocks, but killing a bunch of them multiple times over doesn't seem to help, or seems to only help inconsistently), but whatever it is, I hate it and it's bad enough to sour my opinion of the second half of the dungeon.

 

I'm still working through it right now, but I'm frustrated enough to make this post now.

[TheRock]

 

Guyyyyyyyys. I swear, it's fine to throw large numbers of bulky enemies at me, I don't mind killing them once, just please for the love of god leave the doors open after the first time and don't reset them every time I have to get past.

 

The seed shooter seems very inconsistent on whether it bounces 2 or 3 times.

 

Other than that I had fun with the first part of L8. I didn't get lost and I honestly I feel like that's the single biggest decider in whether I find these dungeons enjoyable or not at this point. I think this game has a ton of cool design, enough to carry it easily when navigation pains don't get in the way.

 

.......is what I'd say, and then I got to the second half.

 

The difficulty of the third floor seemed wildly overtuned compared to everything that came before. It wouldn't be so bad except that enemies seem to return when I leave the screen. I can't tell what causes this (I thought it was tied to the state of the blocks, but killing a bunch of them multiple times over doesn't seem to help, or seems to only help inconsistently), but whatever it is, I hate it and it's bad enough to sour my opinion of the second half of the dungeon.

 

I'm still working through it right now, but I'm frustrated enough to make this post now.

 

That's because there're 2 version of the same dungeon. That's how I got it to work. I can get rid of some of the enemies in there.

[Ether]

Please do!

 

Part of the problem here is that a lot of these screens require precision jumping, with very little space to move around and fight. So I'd definitely nerf the rooms where that's a key part in particular. (But I also think even the rooms where that's less of an issue are still laying the enemies on kind of thick right now.)

[TheRock]

Please do!

 

Part of the problem here is that a lot of these screens require precision jumping, with very little space to move around and fight. So I'd definitely nerf the rooms where that's a key part in particular. (But I also think even the rooms where that's less of an issue are still laying the enemies on kind of thick right now.)

Did it in pretty much every room. Like 2 a screen. New file: https://www.mediafir..._Realm.qst/file

[Ether]

The boss's damage also seems...uh, really, really high, given how many phases he has and how he seems to be immune to everything except swords. I burned through both potions trying to survive, just got another phase, and decided to fuck off and go explore the overworld instead for a while.

 

 

So for now I'm in Snowhite Caverns.

[Ether]

I wasn't the biggest fan of Snowhite Caverns. Not offensive, but...it felt extremely safe. I did like the ice block puzzle for the boss key.

 

The game seems to be letting me do L9 before finishing L8, so who am I to refuse the call? There's a glitch in this one where the spacebar map works in some places. I asked TheRock in private and he told me it was a bug, so I've tried to stick to the passive subscreen map.

 

I did fine, with the caveat that I opened up the passive subscreen map in Aseprite, zoomed in, and started marking off keys as I got them. (In previous dungeons I resorted to this when I needed to find that one last key; in this case I decided to just head this off. I think it'd help a lot if the dungeon just marked off keys I've gotten instead of making me do it. And also if there was a way to see it zoomed in, since otherwise all the colors and details look the same. And also if there was a way to see which screens I have and haven't visited, even if I can't see those screens, although that one wasn't an issue this time around.) There's a key on F2 that the passive subscreen doesn't mark, by the way; I still found it easily enough because it was behind the orange gates and those were marked.

 

We're at the point where I don't bother to fight half the enemies. Keeping the feather active is more important to me than always having the sword out, and a lot of the time I can't be fucked to scroll through my inventory for the sword. On one hand it's impressive that there's so many items that feel useful; on the other hand, the sword is only like the third or fourth most useful item and it's getting ridiculous. I'm serious here, having only two inventory slots in this game is an actual problem.

 

The boss here was...so much easier than L8's. I really do think L8's is crazy overtuned, all of his attacks do way too much damage for such a long swords-only fight.

[Ether]

Continued screwing around instead of dealing with the L8 boss, did Mirrored Ruins instead. That was neat.

 

I'm not clear on how Demon Keese was supposed to work? Do you just have to kill it really fast? Lighting the torches didn't seem to do anything so I just killed it really fast. Now that I'm thinking about it I could see that also being subject to the mirror gimmick, but.

 

I got the flare sword, and...honestly, I'm not sure I even want it. Being able to scroll between the cane and the sword with one button was better than nothing, at least, and now that this thing is taking up inventory space I don't have that anymore. Since the flare sword doesn't seem to be a replacement for the actual sword, it feels like owning it is actively a hindrance to me. Again--this is a symptom of two buttons just not being enough.

 

I went back and tried to fight the L8 asshole again to see if the fire beam would had at least damage it, and it didn't work, but I had what I thought was a lucky run. But then it turns out he has yet another phase, sooooooooooooooo.

 

Fuck this asshole. Back to sequence breaking, I guess.

[Ether]

Did the stealth dungeon. I restarted after losing to the L8 boss again and didn't keep the sword I didn't want, so I don't actually know if that would have let me light those torches in it. I...still don't like how far away the jail cell is from the gameplay, but the dungeon wasn't very big so I guess it wasn't a big deal.

 

Creation Pillar...I don't know. It has a cool gimmick. I didn't hate it, but I didn't wind up enjoying it much. I got stuck in the first half at one point, looking for the last key while mapless, which was annoying. I'm not a huge fan of the mirror puzzle type; the mirrors are hard to read quickly in that quantity. In practice the best way to solve them is just to shoot everything from every available angle, repeatedly, until the puzzle is solved. Fortunately there weren't too many of these at least.

 

Switching goriya 3 and stalfos 3 is funny but makes them annoying to talk about. But anyway, putting large quantities of them in rooms kind of guarantees that you're gonna take a bunch of hits. Just...not fun to deal with.

 

The blade trap jumping gauntlet in the basement was super rude. Even the single-room ones back in L7 were stressful, this was just hell. The third room wiped me out completely once and came extremely close the second time. Running out of the pegasus buff mid-attempt and not realizing it until after I've made the jump is the worst. Not even getting to claim my stupid key at the end of it because all it did was lower some blocks that I'd reached before but couldn't remember how to access was the icing on the cake, I love it when that happens.

 

The boss key puzzle similarly just felt unreasonably punishing and unfun. I wiped out here while also wasting all but like 4 of my pegasus seeds in the process, and decided I didn't care enough to grind them up and try again. I have the wand now, let's see what else is out there in the world.

[TheRock]

 

Did the stealth dungeon. I restarted after losing to the L8 boss again and didn't keep the sword I didn't want, so I don't actually know if that would have let me light those torches in it. I...still don't like how far away the jail cell is from the gameplay, but the dungeon wasn't very big so I guess it wasn't a big deal.

 

Creation Pillar...I don't know. It has a cool gimmick. I didn't hate it, but I didn't wind up enjoying it much. I got stuck in the first half at one point, looking for the last key while mapless, which was annoying. I'm not a huge fan of the mirror puzzle type; the mirrors are hard to read quickly in that quantity. In practice the best way to solve them is just to shoot everything from every available angle, repeatedly, until the puzzle is solved. Fortunately there weren't too many of these at least.

 

Switching goriya 3 and stalfos 3 is funny but makes them annoying to talk about. But anyway, putting large quantities of them in rooms kind of guarantees that you're gonna take a bunch of hits. Just...not fun to deal with.

 

The blade trap jumping gauntlet in the basement was super rude. Even the single-room ones back in L7 were stressful, this was just hell. The third room wiped me out completely once and came extremely close the second time. Running out of the pegasus buff mid-attempt and not realizing it until after I've made the jump is the worst. Not even getting to claim my stupid key at the end of it because all it did was lower some blocks that I'd reached before but couldn't remember how to access was the icing on the cake, I love it when that happens.

 

The boss key puzzle similarly just felt unreasonably punishing and unfun. I wiped out here while also wasting all but like 4 of my pegasus seeds in the process, and decided I didn't care enough to grind them up and try again. I have the wand now, let's see what else is out there in the world.

 

I don't recommend using the pegesus seeds on that boss key room. That's going to make it much harder because you have to worry about it running out.

[Ether]

Oil Factory was fun. I found Sacred Realm but it seems like I need a hammer to proceed? The buildup to it in Moonlight Ruins just felt like padding, didn't really add much. (EDIT: actually on second thoughts I'm going to explore it more thoroughly, I beelined for Sacred Realm and I'm not sure I should have done that now.)

 

I went back to Brorus again since I have the red tunic. Those big swords still do 4 hearts regardless of tunic. I beat him, but I still had to burn through both potions in the process even with the tunic. Christ I hate him.

 

Finished Creation Pillar (I still think the boss key room is too much, I got it in the end but the stress took a year off my life). Owl doesn't seem to have shown up, I guess I'll wander around for a while and see if anything's changed.

[Ether]

The Labyrinth of Luck appears to be a cool idea ruined by a blatantly obviously bad idea.

 

Like this is just insulting. I don't play ZC quests for a gacha experience, stop deliberately wasting my time.

[Ether]

(I'm gonna keep using this thread as a journal just to keep it all in one place.)

 

I used cheats to just take the boss key for Labyrinth of Luck. Like. I could have kept spinning the wheel until it deigned to let me have it naturally, but why.

 

Did Ancient Prison for a while. I...don't really have strong feelings there one way or another. The sections of the prison didn't really feel particularly special individually, but they weren't like obnoxious to deal with or anything. Then I got the hammer and went back to Sacred Realm.

 

Sacred Realm is neat and I liked it! Couple caveats: I think the explanation for the maze path isn't written very clearly and it's open to a lot of interpretation. I'm not clear on if there was an intended way to solve those two rooms with the 5 unlit torches; I just trial-and-errored both of them. The owl statue getting super offended and lecturing me because I used a mystery seed on it, as one does with owl statues, was off-putting and weird? Also, the music didn't feel like it fit very well.

 

This boss, like every other boss, goes in the "Brorus was disproportionately harder than this" column.

 

Afterward I found Starlight Ruins with the hammer, and I remember that the dungeon with the gate to Dreams Realm also had a bunch of hammer pegs throughout it. It's really cool there's so much I'm-not-sure-yet-if-it's-optional content even at this stage in an already long game, I'm excited to see it.

[Ether]

Starlight Ruins was fun, I liked the gimmick. It took me a while to realize that the gimmick was there and was already in play--I thought it was a bug when I noticed it, but I was stuck so I figured I'd play around and do some sequence breaking and just revert it later. And then when I got access to the control room I realized it wasn't actually a bug.

 

Having the legendary sword is nice because it feels like it's actually worth using, which makes the inventory pains less bad.

 

The boss was weird--it didn't seem like I could hit her all of the time, and I'm not sure if that's a hitbox thing or what. In the end I just threw all thoughts of strategy to the wind, facetanked her and stabbed like crazy hoping for the best. This approach led me to use one (1) potion, my first since the L8 boss.

 

Went back to Dreams Gate, and...I'm a little let down by what's behind the hammer pegs. It's hard to gauge whether I'm actually hurting them and that lack of readability feels like a bigger part of the challenge than the fights themselves. I guess I was imagining, like, a whole secondary dungeon behind the periphery of the first, not just a key hunt. (Incidentally, F6ing seems to reset the dungeon state back to gray now. I'm not sure what's up with that; I don't think it did that the first time.)

 

I got to the end with 1 spare key but it said I need to have "held" the Awakening Sword to proceed. I have the legendary sword. Isn't that the highest tier? I guess I'll check back later.

[TheRock]

 

Starlight Ruins was fun, I liked the gimmick. It took me a while to realize that the gimmick was there and was already in play--I thought it was a bug when I noticed it, but I was stuck so I figured I'd play around and do some sequence breaking and just revert it later. And then when I got access to the control room I realized it wasn't actually a bug.

 

Having the legendary sword is nice because it feels like it's actually worth using, which makes the inventory pains less bad.

 

The boss was weird--it didn't seem like I could hit her all of the time, and I'm not sure if that's a hitbox thing or what. In the end I just threw all thoughts of strategy to the wind, facetanked her and stabbed like crazy hoping for the best. This approach led me to use one (1) potion, my first since the L8 boss.

 

Went back to Dreams Gate, and...I'm a little let down by what's behind the hammer pegs. It's hard to gauge whether I'm actually hurting them and that lack of readability feels like a bigger part of the challenge than the fights themselves. I guess I was imagining, like, a whole secondary dungeon behind the periphery of the first, not just a key hunt. (Incidentally, F6ing seems to reset the dungeon state back to gray now. I'm not sure what's up with that; I don't think it did that the first time.)

 

I got to the end with 1 spare key but it said I need to have "held" the Awakening Sword to proceed. I have the legendary sword. Isn't that the highest tier? I guess I'll check back later.

 

There's a sword you get later. 

[Ether]

Back to Ancient Prison. It was neat putting the maps together and realizing how they fit and that I didn't actually have to memorize all the warps. That made it a lot more bearable, although the walking is still kind of a slog sometimes. There's a puzzle in Forest SW that threw me off on previous visits because I saw the switches, kept trying to interact with them and failing--it wasn't clear to me which specific item it wanted, if any.

 

A certain screen in Purple NE in the key gauntlet is in cheat-or-ragequit territory for me.