I thought the same thing at first and I was extremely unimpressed when I realized my error
i do appreciate this. iâm torn about how the eavesdropping is implemented. having to press a button to do it is strange. the fact that you can prompt people to have the same conversation that you arenât a part of is strange. i think i would have preferred it happening more organically? the player might miss bits but i feel theyâll likely pick it up over multiple passes.
dunno, it just comes off as awkward to me in the same way you need to press a separate button to climb up something youâre hanging off of vs just pushing up on the stick, but oth it does contribute to the strong ps2 vibe of the game.
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Thereâs actually people earlier that talk about the axe and where it is, might be worth listening.
Yeah the axe is literally like one grapple away from that areaâs idol
thereâs definitely a weird controller sprawl to the commands in this game but i think i can understand the throughline of thinking enough that grasping the controls feels like a matter of patience to me and not of unintuitiveness. Like, the best direct comparison i can personally think of to make between this and Souls is that those games were an adventurer/knight sims and this is a shinobi sim. You have an overwhelming shitload of options at your disposal to mostly do three things: explore, sneak, and fight. You fight things that are extremely dangerous and difficult but you are inherently capable of killing them six different ways to Sunday, because thatâs what playing a shinobi should feel like. Itâs just a matter of like, playing enough until you can remember what button does what.
itâs cool that you can remap controls this time though that was a hangup for friends when i was was trying to get them into dark souls
Also pressing a button instead of a stick to drop/climb is wayyy better because that way you canât mispress the stick or get fucked over if the camera angle suddenly changes. i applauded that decision in prince of Persia sands of time and i applaud it here
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Reaching the end last night I retraced most areas and took any npc requests left far as I could. Somber as it was I really liked helping Hanbei w/his curse, noticing the Mortal Blade and that Wolf seemed like the kinda guy who could send him off properly. Compared to the violent grapple ripping out and severing centipedes from the ape and monk, we got to give our sparring bro a more merciful extraction. Iâm not sure if thereâs actually a good application for the pills/tooth, it sounds cool and deep ninja but I canât imagine scenarios where faking is really beneficial, more than fighting til death then resurrecting for a sneak attack? If they give you a much longer window to wait then maybe, gotta experiment.
What falls under worldbuilding and âloreâ in this, though woven from Sengoku Japan and sparser than weâre used to, still has some good open space between characters and their backgrounds so that I donât mind we got a voiced, somewhat defined main character. This is built around a focus on some authentic detail, more direct storytelling and involved combat than I think a lot of people expected or hoped for.
I do wish theyâd at least given us a few options for armor or outfitting Wolf! itâs a long game to see your protag with only one difference in appearance (I know of) by the end. Maybe some battle damage?
I want to chime in not having actually played the game that I love the idea of being able to skip conversations you arenât a part of?
Games are already unreal things, and making quality of life choices that compromise ârealismâ but let you just get the information you need is extremely cool.
Dialogue in games is a subject that rarely gets examined mechanically and I get stupidly excited whenever someone experiments with it.
I think Iâve always preferred playing predefined characters. I hate having to come up with a person with no knowledge of what the game world is even like or anything. I loved the part where he refuses to break the iron code, though he still agrees to help kuro, just in a more vague way I guess.
For the most part, every bit of dialogue in these games can be buttoned past. Sometimes itâs all flavor, others youâll miss something crucial!
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relaying messages between kuro and the divine child :s (-:
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yeah i just did this too, hilarious
I spent like an hour trying to beat the Lone Longswordsman midboss in Ashina estate last night. you fight him in a tiny little underground rectangle and he is SO FREAKING FAST that I had to up the camera speed to max just so I could keep eyes on him. and still I find myself getting caught in the corner of the room or behind the fog-gate, or wall-jumping when I didnât mean to and it was definitely driving me a little bit insane. I got close to beating him on two occasions, probably should have done it but I panicked at the end and got greedy, the other 35 attempts were just embarrassing. I googled it for a slight hint and was recommended to use the firecrackers, and was immediately embarrassed that I didnât try that for myself.
before all that I was getting messed up badly by the Nightjar freaks on the Ashina rooftops, wow I hate them!
can anyone tell me what purpose destroying the smoke signals serves?
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a few nights ago i got to the big drunk guy and all his acocmplices and died a bit. i randomly restarted and managed to feverishely own him in one go and itâs weird to 0lay a 3D action game where an approachable tactic is jump slashing like symphony of the night
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I first noticed eavesdropping at the Estate and thought it was in the spirit of being a flashback, like it was saying âthis already happened, do you want to remember it right now?â Actually the whole flashback is handled in a really unusual way â at first I thought youâd have to finish the area before continuing (like being trapped in the painting in Dark Souls), but it softens chronology and is presented more like a lingering impression that one can choose to go deeper into or revise.
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Youâre getting the first deathblow by jumping down right? How youâre forced to fight him in there really is a bit much, I gave it a few tries then left him alone and came back from a couple areas after Ashina Castle. Thereâs a handful more encounters and enemies types just like him to come, but tricky as they are youâre given more space to manage.
I never noticed the smoke signals being breakable, pretty sure it doesnât do anything.
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yeah definitely getting the first deathblow. I got him up to almost full posture break on the second red bubble before getting killed
I ask about the smoke signals because thereâs an NPC in a nook nearby who specifically tells me that the Nightjars âcommunicateâ using smoke signals, as though this information should be useful to me, but breaking them (which isnât actually that easy) doesnât seem to do anything that I noticed
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Yeah, I found a note about those smoke signals too, but I canât figure out what it means.
I wondered if there was more to that too, after a while I concluded itâs purely a way to give visual cues on how to reach the back entrance as well as Isshin on the right, as the Nightjar would.
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I have a feeling that this is going to be the same as bloodborne for me in that Iâll wait til itâs ~20 bones before I buy it, then bounce off it after several hours of intense play.
That being said, I appreciate the music box spoiler and may have to go back to BB to see if I can finally kick Padre Gâs ass this time