Topic: Returnal

@LtSarge The total B4 boss climb is probably my favorite of the game, with the way they use music and sound to its fullest. I also found B4 to be amongst the easiest levels, so it was enjoyable to go through. I struggled a little more with B5, but not to the degree of B3. You continue to make great progress and seem to have the pre-existing skill set to make short work of these levels. I don’t know if it was because I played the launch version before they added a save feature and potentially did some “balancing” or if it was because I’d never really played a roguelike, but it took me at least a dozen teeth-gritting hours of frustration to get into the groove of the game.

Do you have a favorite weapon so far?

@Th3solution Yeah the boss climb made me even more nervous. I was prepared to just run head into the boss room but then I realised that I had to climb a tower while listening to the absolutely chilling music.

I also got the impression that B4 is one of the easier levels because it's the first level of the second act. A level like this was much needed after the intense second and third biomes.

The game does seem to have clicked with me during B3. I got very lucky with B1 as I wasn't even aware of the function of the astronaut, plus I barely prepared for the boss fight anyway. That came back to bite me in B2 as I had to learn how to properly play the game then. Now I've gotten into the swing of things and know what to do in order to increase my chances of survival.

I have some prior experience of games like this, but I wouldn't call myself an experienced player of this genre. Although I have played games for over half my life, so at some point I guess I had to have become generally good at playing them lol.

My favourite weapon is definitely the carbine. The sidearm is decent but the shotgun doesn't fit my play-style of taking care of enemies from far away so I rarely use it. I don't like the newer weapons like launcher or the one that does damage over time because I don't want to wait for the enemies to die. I need a weapon that shoots and kills fast, from far away and with precision. I was considering maining the Hollowseeker instead when you get it in B2 due to how large the magazine is and the gun's high rate of fire. But the bullets travel way too slow and I noticed this when fighting flying enemies that they were constantly evading my shots even though I was aiming straight at them. I never have this problem with the carbine, so I went back to using it. It's absolutely the weapon that fits my play-style the best.

@LtSarge The carbine has good accuracy and packs a decent punch. If I remember correctly it also has a trait (“leech rounds” I think it may be called) that restores health when you damage enemies. If you get a high level carbine with that trait you can be virtually unstoppable.

The Hollowseeker does have the portal beam trait that I loved, however. And I do enjoy the guns that do damage over time because my playstyle is more of a run-and-hide variety. 😅

@LtSarge Some of the traits and upgrades (can't remember exactly what they are called in the game) can completely change how a weapon performs. I think there is one which increases rate of fire the longer you keep firing, which is very useful for the Carbine and Hollowseeker.

My advise it experiment a little and see what works with each weapon, and don't totally write off any weapon immediately just because of a bad first experience.

@LtSarge I weirdly struggled the most in B4 out of all the places! B5 is unusual in how it works compared to the other biomes and can be tricky. B6 was another I did first time but has some brutal enemies.

I guess you’ll be planning on doing act 3 as well though?

The Hollowseeker was by far my favourite weapon and I think that’s a common opinion. Some of the traits were pretty devastating but the carbine had some decent ones. The leech rounds @Th3solution mentioned is great and I think some upgrades give a similar effect. Very handy for boss fights and the respawning B6 enemies are great for boosting your health with them too

@Thrillho @JohnnyShoulder @Th3solution @LtSarge I can't remember if I mentioned it on here or not but when I was playing the game for the first time I was totally sold on the Hollowseeker, it was easily the most fun weapon to use and had some of the best traits - Portal Beam and Portal Turret especially.

Since playing it again last year for the Tower of Sisyphus mode I totally changed my opinion as I found out just how good the Dreadbound can be once you've got some upgraded traits on it. I know that some people really swear by the Coilspine Shredder but trying that again and hoping for a similar level of redemption I couldn't get on with it but it's great that there's plenty of options for everyone.

Anyway I still get to see just how good this game is due to my wife still being totally hooked on it. Since first playing it, after swearing she'd never be able to due to its difficultly, she must now be on her 5th play through from a fresh save. About the only thing she's not done is 100% all the entries in the databank which I think is virtually impossible due to one of the items having such a low spawn rate.

Hope you carry on enjoying the game Sarge.

I struggled the most with B5 and thought it was verging on unfair. 😂

@render Yeah there were one or two weapons which I found way more useful for the dlc than the main game.

@render Actually the Dreadbound was my favorite for tight quarters, for sure. It had such a satisfying feel to it. When I tried to use it in B5 it was a nightmare though. Not effective from distance unless you never miss. 😅

(Will reply properly to you guys when I have more free time)

So you might have noticed that I haven't written anything in a couple of days. That's because I've been playing Returnal and today, I finally beat the game!

I got absolutely decimated when I started out B5. Then on my second run, I had a much easier time and beat it today actually. Then I found out that the area doesn't have a boss, which was disappointing. So I continued going through B6, which is probably my favourite biome. Everything was going so well, I had such a great setup for the final boss. I had two large health packs, two regular-sized ones, an astronaut, tons of health and upgrades to my stats. I even had a carbine with leech rounds. Then I used up all my health packs towards the end and later on I even died so I used up my astronaut. All before the final boss. I genuinely felt despair because I thought I was going to have to start all over again after so many hours spent on this run. Then I faced off against the final boss and it took me literally five minutes to beat it. It was much easier to beat than some of the other enemies in that level, which could literally take away half your health if they hit you. I was sure that it was so easy because there would be a second boss fight, but there wasn't. Credits rolled and I beat the game. Granted, there does seem to be another act left, kinda like a "true ending". But I'm telling you guys, I was this close to giving up on the game if I had died before the final boss. I'm not going to go through the entire game again, especially not when I ended it on a high note. I'm content with the ending I got and it took me around 15 hours to finish the game, so I feel like I got my money's worth out of it.

Overall though, Returnal is definitely Housemarque's best game they've ever made. Great story, fun gameplay, fantastic replayability and most importantly, it was super challenging. This is the type of game you could play forever in all honesty. There's so much content and it's so much fun to play. I'm glad that I chose it as one of my first PS5 games to play. It's one of the best games on PS5 and the perfect first game to play on the system.

@LtSarge Wow, congrats! They must have made the game easier or something since most of us played it

I completed Act 3 and didn't think it was too bad. It's mostly about collecting a special item per biome and then beating the final boss again. But if you really can't be bothered then you can always just watch the ending on YouTube.

And I agree that the B6 boss isn't that bad at all and I think it even drops health at times too. But some of the enemies in that area are just brutal; the ones that cause instant malfunctions can absolutely ruin a run in an instant!

@LtSarge Well done on beating the game, it sounds like you made it through without many of the issues I remember facing when I played it on release. I think I must have gone through 50 deaths or more in order to finish all the acts and then a few more to the platinum. I enjoyed it so much I was happy to keep playing though and I can highly recommend going back at some point and finishing that final act plus having a go at Tower of Sisyphus.

@Thrillho Housemarque did rebalance some areas, especially the drones in B3. I think it was listed in the patch notes but there was plenty of discussion on the HMQ discord regarding the changes. That's not to take away from Sarge or anyone else who's finished it recently as it's still a very challenging experience even with that rebalancing, it's just not totally stupid in a few areas where most average gamers like myself must have spent most of our time dying.

And there is me with 180 hours to get the platinum. Goodness knows how many deaths! 😂

Sarge mostly likely finished the game quicker than my end game run for the platinum!

@Kidfried Those drones were my #1 enemy, they were just brutal. I remember one room I walked into in B3 had two of those malformed automatons and what must have been 20 drones. I had another experience where I was crossing the long bridge over to the tower and up came a good number of the damn things. I should have kept running but instead choose to stay and fight, it did not end well 😅

Because of those incidents though beating Nemesis and getting to B4 was one of the defining moments of the entire game for me, and the breaking point as after that found the rest manageable. Oddly when I went back to B3 on later runs I actually quite enjoyed the atmosphere now that I no longer feared for my life.

@JohnnyShoulder And just to think there were people that never got to see those house sequences because they never died 🤣

@render I’m sure it was clear but tongue was firmly in cheek when saying it was easier now. I didn’t know they’d tinkered with the drones but they were ridiculous overpowered.

I do wonder if the suspend feature would have helped me particularly too as the best runs were partly from getting gear I liked but also being in the zone. But conversely, there may have been some runs I messed up due to tiredness.

Oh, and I think these were my stats from finishing act 2;

And then from finishing act 3;

@Thrillho No worries, I gotcha that it was tongue in cheek 😉

Those are some impressive stats. I don't think I took a screenshot of mine which is possibly for the best. I like to think I got good value out of the game dividing the price by the number of deaths I had and hours spent. I can't wait to see what HMQ follow this up with. Not saying I want another Returnal as I like that it feels like a standalone game, but more that this was an evolution of what they had done before so can they evolve that again.

@Thrillho I think it took me at least 50-60 hours to finish the game through Act 3. Maybe longer. Although I also would never take away from the props for anyone who beats the game more quickly, I agree that having an actual legit suspend/run-save feature would have been a game changer. I recall many-a-time when it was late in the evening, and I needed to go to bed and I was a couple hours into a decent run, but I just started taking chances and playing sloppy because I knew it would be a couple days until I had time to play again and so what was the use of leaving the PS5 in sleep mode to try and salvage this run. So I basically threw caution to the wind and did a suicide run so I could shut down for the day.

@Th3solution Yeah the leech rounds made a huge difference towards the end of the game. I'm honestly glad that I stuck with the carbine. I did try all the new weapons whenever I would get one but the carbine was the one I was most comfortable with.

I think it's great that the game offers so many different types of weapons. It allows the player to experiment and find the weapon that fits them the most.

@JohnnyShoulder It took me a while to realise that the traits had that much of an impact on the weapons. I unlocked a trait for the carbine which lowered its rate of fire but the shots did more damage. I wasn't a huge fan of that at first but I became used to it later on. I do prefer the higher rate of fire for the carbine.

It was honestly quite hard to experiment that much with the weapons as I got closer to the end of the game. I would try the weapons but I didn't want to risk dying because I wasn't used to the weapons. I think starting a new playthrough would give me more of an incentive to experiment properly.

@Thrillho I got the impression that the biomes in the second act were more or less "remixes" of the first act's biomes. In the first act, I had no problem with B1, had the most problem with B2 and got through B3 relatively unscathed. It was kinda the same experience with the second act. No problem with B4 (although it was very long!), struggled a bit in B5 and struggled the most in the last area of B6 with those powerful enemies but it wasn't too bad overall.

Unfortunately, I won't do act 3 (but you probably already saw that). Who knows though, maybe I'll return to the game in the future.

@render If I ever go back to Returnal in the future, I definitely want to try out the other weapons more like the Hollowseeker and Dreadbound. I had no idea that Dreadbound had hidden potential because I didn't like it at all when I tried it out. So I absolutely want to give that one another try.

@Thrillho I'm sure they've made the game easier since launch. But I still found it to be a very challenging experience overall!

I think I might actually save it and go through the game again in the future. I think it'd be fun to explore all the biomes again with all my permanent upgrades this time around. But I definitely want to move on to other games now. This game just stressed me out so much lol.

You're right about the enemies that cause malfunctions, they caught me absolutely off guard. Luckily I had a few consumables that fixed the malfunctions, but I eventually ran out and the malfunctions caused me to lose two artefacts, which sucked. Could've gone so much worse though!

@Kidfried @render @JohnnyShoulder @Th3solution Your comments make me wonder if the devs actually made the game easier since you guys played it lol. I still found it to be a challenging experience, but maybe it was even harder before. Granted, I didn't finish act 3 or go for the Platinum.

I went back and looked at my stats. I died 9 times during my playthrough, which is quite a lot for 15 hours of playtime I think.

God I love this game…!

Surprised to hear there doesn’t seem to be many fans of the almighty Hollowseeker? That weapon carried through Act2 and Act3 - I was deciminating bosses with upgraded ‘Portal Turret’ (?) trait.
I also loved the Electro Pylon Driver.

I just wish HM had included a suspend feature from Day1. Having to beat this game without suspend was a very stressful period of my life, and one that still leaves mental scars lol