Topic: Returnal

@NedStarksGhost Whoah! Nice work! Took me ages to even get past the first boss, not to mention the torture of Biome 3 😄
Looks like you’ve got a real knack for it since you’ve only been playing a couple days. Biome 4 is fairly easy, imo. I still die sometimes by being stupid, or in some of the lockdown rooms. But Biome 5 is pretty tough. That one took me a while to get past. And now Biome 6 appears to be almost the same, although I’d say maybe a little easier than 5, but it takes some tactical adjustments. At this rate you’ll finish the game in no time! What does the ship computer say your playtime is?
I’m at 2 days and 2 hours — so 50+ hours invested so far. Somewhere around 70 deaths.

@NedStarksGhost Well done! We either gave you too much help or you didn’t need it at all 🤣.

Great to hear you are enjoying it and sounds like you probably won’t have a problem getting through the rest of the game 👍

@NedStarksGhost As others have said, you’re certainly not messing around! Good work on getting through biome 3 already as that can be a real roadblock for people (I luckily made it through on my first go).

Biome 4 has one of my favourite bosses and then you’ve got the infamous biome 5 to come soon!

Well that confirms it, Demon’s Souls is definitely the harder game for me. Just checked out the stats and I died 322 times and have played for 58 hours. I think my Returnal count was something like 52 deaths and just over 48 hours.

Both great games though and a brilliant challenge.

@Th3solution @render @Thrillho thanks all for all the compliments! I feel I got quite lucky in a lot of ways but yeah happy to see it's an achievement!

May be nothing in it, but I've beaten Dark Souls so I'm kinda used to approaching hard to beat bosses, maybe?

It was an intense few hours, I wish you could at least switch the game off at the start of a new biome, but I also understand it's a design choice and can see why.

@NedStarksGhost Definitely the game is not for the faint of heart and really is targeted for the “hardcore” gamer (I know some people don’t like that term, but I don’t mean it in an elitist way, just that some games are more for the enthusiast group of gamers), like FromSoft’s games.
And yeah — I’m starting to think that a save feature isn’t coming any time soon. And although I’d like one, I do now see that the game doesn’t require one; as busy as I am and as limited as my game time can be, I’ve managed to make the most of the game. And on that note…

I’ve just finished Act 2!!! Definitely the worst part of Biome 6 is just getting to the boss, as I was able to beat Ophion on my first try. Granted I did take advantage of a reconstructor, so I guess it was technically my second attempt at the boss, but on the same run.

The advice of @render @JohnnyShoulder @Elodin @velio84 @Thrillho @Voltan and perhaps others has really helped.
I utilized the electro pylon pretty exclusively and was very conscientious to go into rooms slowly and just fire and back out if I could. And actually, what helped was at the point I kept dying at the Typhonops I realized I could just run past him and then hide around a corner and fire my pylons from some pseudocover past the room. Probably a cheese technique, but I was sick of dying at that spot over and over.

For the boss I first used a Hollowseeker with ‘turret’ and it was okay but I only made it to the boss’s second phase. I found my turret wasn’t spawning all that often. So after reconstructing I picked up a carbine I had left on the way which had ‘leech rounds’ as well as ‘hardened’ and ‘high caliber’ so that really did well. He went down pretty fast and I was able to keep my health decently filled with leech.

The ending of the Act was pretty awesome and although the story makes a little more sense and I enjoyed the reveals, it still leaves me with some questions.

And speaking of, I really didn’t get much explanation as to what to do for Act 3. You just wake up in the ship and it says to go into the cargo bay, which the machine there just transports you back to Biome 1? I just shut the game off at that point, assuming there’s a save point there and I need to go to bed. Do you get some explanation or direction eventually as to what to do? Just go through all the Biomes again? Fight the bosses again?

Anyways, just really love this game. My totals to get to the end of Act 2 are about 60 hrs and 79 deaths.

@Th3solution Congrats! Great to see you got to grips with biome 6 at last, and I think sometimes running past the enemies is part of that.

@Th3solution haven't read through your post fully (in the interest of spoilers) but congratulations!

@Th3solution you kinda get an idea once you stumble upon some things, but basically it’s this:
First, finish all house sequences. I don’t remember for sure if there’s a new one after beating Ophion so you might have already done that. If it’s dark in both biome 1 and 4, you’re good. Once that’s done, a new kind of item will start appearing, one in each biome. They’re permanent items so you just need to find each one once and they aren’t very hard to find. When you get all 6, a new house sequence opens. You do that, then beat Ophion again and you get the other ending.

@Th3solution Woohoo well done!! That’s an awesome achievement. Sounds like you found something that worked well for you and shows that different things work for different people. Also glad to hear that at least some advice I gave was of some use 😁.

I love the story. I think the great thing about it is that it’s open to interpretation. Even past the obvious question about if she’s actually there or not, there’s a load of other questions about her up bringing, her relationship with her mother and what actually happened on that bridge..

All this makes me want to go and delete my save so that I can start again. I’m still hanging out for some DLC but I should perhaps prepare myself for the fact that none is coming.

@NedStarksGhost @Th3solution Well done to you both.

Apart from briefly playing the other day to show my dad, I've not touched the game since getting the platinum so I'll be trading it in this week (along with a bunch of other games).

Woot congratulations!

@Th3solution Nice one on completing Act 2

Just don't go expecting any answers to the questions you have by completing Act 3...

@Th3solution so I've just checked back about my play time, just remembered you asked me on the previous page, and it currently stands at 4 hours and 10 minutes.

@velio84 thank you!

I honestly think it's down to the fact I played through Dark Souls and have played other Souls games. There's a lot of timed dodging in those games so after recognising a couple of triggers I managed it.

I remember one boss on Dark Souls took me about 30-40 tries to beat....

The second and third boss I died on the first time. The second one the astronaut saved me, and the third one I spent ether on the regen(?) Machine thing that brings you back to life.

Almost at 100 pages folks! Let's goooooooo....

I bet I could get it to 100 pages by saying that Risk of Rain 2 is the better game.

@JohnnyShoulder Do you get a prize for being the first to post on the 100th page?

@render only feeling really smug!