Topic: Returnal

@Voltan @render You were right, second time was the charm! Started a new run mostly intending to restock on ether, rather than making any real progress ... and ended up taking down Orphion

5 days, 3 hours, 54 mins, 36 secs and 147 deaths. Ha!

After that I went on to an exhaustive run in biome 1, and got the survey done - but then got taken down by Phrike while carrying a datacube, damnit.

@JigsawPieces Well done 👍, good to hear that you made it. I wouldn’t say the stats tell the whole story though. There are probably more people that didn’t even make it past b3 let alone to the end of the game.

It’s worth going and visiting the house in B4 before you do too much as that will unlock the next collectible.

@render Thanks

I didn't see your message for a while, and by then I'd played through a lot of the first two biomes. I visited the house in biome 1, where it was slightly different to before, but when I (much later) zipped over to biome 4, I visited the house there and there was nothing extra new. Hopefully I haven't missed something there! I have been collecting a new collectible along the way though (got 5/6 of them today).

@JigsawPieces Perhaps you’d already done the house sequence I’m thinking of then as I had to visit the house in 4 rather that 1, after beating Ophion, to unlock it and so did my wife. Sounds like you haven’t missed anything though so that’s good and you’ve certainly cracked on with them 😁.

How does the game feel now the pressure is off, are you playing more aggressive with nothing to lose?

@render Yeah, definitely - I've been having a go at some of the challenge rooms (almost did the B3 one, but not quite), and tackling some of the enemies I oh-so-bravely ran away from before, like the automatons. I'm looking forward to unlocking more of the weapon traits and experimenting a bit more too

The 1.4 patch is available now. Time to see of those balance changes mean the drones have been nerfed. At least we all know we played it when it was at its hardest 😉

@render I'm kind of hoping the balance changes don't mean they've made biome 6 harder!

@JigsawPieces That's a fair point 😂

Following on discord it looks like people who've tried it are seeing no changes to the drones. Someone has reported that the bats now take two melee attacks if you've taken a parasite with 50% less melee damage. It's still early days I guess so will have to wait and see but 5.6GB is quite a hefty patch so there must be quite a few changes.

At least one person is happy with the patch

@Thrillho Everyones favourite scout log is now easier to find 😆

@Thrillho @render One of the things I got lucky with, as I got that one really early!

@adrianthealchemist Looking forward to having a go later to see if I can notice much of a change. There's people reporting that there's some changes Ixions attack patterns but then others saying that they are actually beating the bosses easier than they were pre-patch.

Returnal doing good in the USA - #4 on PlayStation and #7 overall in May (physical and digital combined).

Well, either they've upped the difficulty a bit in biome 4, or I'm just not in the right headspace for it this evening (probably the latter!). It's been giving me a proper pasting this evening.

Did find a new glyph in biome 5 though, before a malformed severed ended me, so only one left there for the survey I'm pretty sure I can remember the layout of the room it was in, but it was somewhere I couldn't get to before.

@render sorry it's taken me so long to reply, busy playing Nier Replicant and Ratchet and Clank but it is indeed hostile #27 that I've not seen yet. After playing both of those tonight then a wee bit of Returnal I could really see how fast the game is.

@Voltan It’s great that it’s doing so well, even more so because it’s definitely a game that needs to be played to be appreciated.

@JigsawPieces @adrianthealchemist It does seem that they’ve tweaked a few things here and there. Someone has started to compile a list on discord so I’ll keep an eye on that.

@MightyDemon82 No worries. Glad I’m not the only one who missed #27. I’ve been playing R&C lately too and I’m starting to get into the grove a bit more with the combat now. I was really struggling because Ratchet / Rivet just doesn’t move as fast and efficiently as Selene does. The dash / melee combo isn’t as much fun either as you can’t dash forward and melee in mid air. No drones though 😆

@JigsawPieces Yup, I noticed that too. The first two rooms in B4 I got rinsed a couple of times, whereas before I hardly would get a scratch.

And now all of the item icons appear on the main map. Pretty sure before they would only show up on the mini map and on the main map only items such as chests and weapons would show.

@render I think I might have #27 in my list, but I'm missing #13 (iirc). Assuming you mean their positition in the list, rather than their code, which I think was different.

@adrianthealchemist I'm missing log 30, but I think I have all the others (unless there are more at the end of the list).

@JohnnyShoulder That change to the map is welcome

Playing yesterday evening, I felt like there were light reflections on wet surfaces that I don't think were there before. I probably just wasn't paying attention before though!

@JigsawPieces Yes it's the position in the list, the one that's displayed on the tile that you can only just about read... well with my eyes anyway 😀

I didn't get chance to play yesterday as I played a bit of R&C and then passed the controller over to my wife who is still combing for collectibles. She felt that B4 was about the same difficulty wise and that perhaps it's got a bit easier now she's got more traits unlocked. B5 was still pretty brutal though!