Topic: Returnal

@Thrillho I never found taking the short cut worked out for me but doesn’t mean it can’t work for some people. I think going through 1 and 2 first gave me not only a lot more goodies to use but also game me some confidence in how I was playing. The reconstructors I’ve found a bit of a mixed blessing as well as it’s great to come back with most of your gear but then you’ve usually used your consumables and you don’t get those back.

@Scratchy_Seal Damn right about the ending article, can’t believe it’s just sitting there on the front page waiting to spoil it for a lot of us 😬

I made it to the 6th (?) Biome or should we call it 5th - part two? I found the 5th biome beautiful but insanely difficult 😣 I made my way through it shooting red vines behind closed doors, basically. The beginning of the new zone doesn’t seem as hard, thankfully but I’ll explore tomorrow! Wish me luck!

@Voltan any weapon recommendations? I am basically a klutz.

@Scratchy_Seal I am not going near that article until I am done!

@Thrillho I think Ixion has been the most insane fight for now- it seemed such a difficult spike for the time I faced him!

@Feena I’m sure there are multiple other options but Hollowseeker with the portal beam seems to consistently be my best pick in the Scar.
Also, the daily challenge had the Rotgland Lobber and while that needs some more careful aiming, the damage was INSANE.
Unfortunately that’s the gun that I never unlocked 😉

Went for the disk version in the end as I remembered I've been a bit hot and cold with the Rogue-lites I've played, so at least this way I can trade it in if I don't like it.

@Voltan thank you! I really like that combination as well - I hope I come across one! 🤞🏻

@JohnnyShoulder good thinking! The roguelike elements are definitely there but it’s more the calculated risk and the challenge than the overall feel imho - let us know what you think

Well I feel both unlucky and lucky tonight at the same time. Went out to get back to the scar and had the game crash on me in the second room. Managed to get back to the home screen and closed the game. Started it again and played for an hour and a half. In that time I had collected quite a bit on 4 including unlocking two data cubes and a weapon trait for the carbine, as well as doing another house sequence and getting an item from that. Eventually got killed by a sword wielding dude spamming me with purple lasers so gave up for the evening.

As soon as I choose shutdown the console hangs. I waited a bit and the tried the button on the front and eventually had to remove the power. On loading back up again I went through the usual repairing messages and then loaded up the game only to be told that my save was corrupted and that a backup had been restored. Checked it out and it had lost all the progress I made getting to the scar. I was about to cry when I thought id just check the cloud save and amazingly it was from yesterday night just after I’d died in the scar.

I’ve restored that save and luckily it is after all that work yesterday. I’ve lost that bit of progress from today but hey it’s not the end of the world. Weird thing is where did it get the save that it restored from in the first instance? I wonder if there’s a save backup made on the local storage that you aren’t allowed to access normally? Anyway just thought I’d share my relief. I was not looking forward to gathering those keys again 😂

Hey guys, if possible, can someone send me a save file right after defeating Nemesis (in 3rd biome)? which the game starts from biome 4.
my e-mail is [email protected]

@omarsolom84 I don’t think there’s any way of sharing save files on PS5. Your only way of backing up and restoring save files is through the PS Plus cloud and that’s tied to your account.

@nessisonett i mean can't u copy it to USB? u can copy saved files to a USB stick

@omarsolom84 Not on PS5. Only on PS4, they removed that.

@nessisonett too bad, stupid decision from Sony.

@render wow that is a terrible gaming experience 😣 If my current cycle got lost it would be pretty soul crashing for me - I don’t know if I can finish the game but I am pretty sure I can get to the last boss with this build if the sleep mode Gods watch over me and my run is still intact when I get back to it tonight.

I don't think it's a bad roguelike all the features of the genre are there, but it does lack the wild variety in runs found in the best examples.

@omarsolom84 I think after my moment last night I'd really appreciate the option to be able to copy a save to a USB drive. It would be ok if PS+ cloud saves were versioned as I'm sure it would quite happily backup a corrupted save over a perfectly good one.

@Feena It wasn't a great moment when I'd realised what had happened. Saying that though this game is so good that I would have gone and done biome 5 again anyway, and hell even if it had wiped my save completely I'd likely have gone back and started from the beginning. Good luck on your run later, hope you succeed where I failed 😀

@nessisonett The only other rougelike I've played was Dead Cells. While I'm sure it was a good game it just didn't really grab me as something I wanted to keep playing. I might go back to it one day. What are some other good recommendations for rougelikes? I know people rave about Hades but I think that's PC / Switch only?

@render So many, mainly indie games. The Binding of Isaac is the proto roguelite (along with Spelunky) and Enter the Gungeon (too tough for me, like Dead Cells) have massive variety within runs. Especially Isaac. Galak-Z (not a great roguelite, but a really fun game with Asteroids style physics), Darkest Dungeon (brutally punishing), Spelunky & Rogue Legacy are platformer roguelikes. I highly recommend FTL (space based roguelite) and Into the Breech (not sure if that last one is a roguelite, but it is a brilliant Kaiju startegy game).

@render Sorry to hijack your question! I do love roguelites.

@render There's a lot of variation among rogue games. PossibLeigh has some great recommendations above but ones I've personally enjoyed include Rogue Legacy, Slay the Spire, UnderMine, Enter the Gungeon, Curse of the Dead Gods, and Spelunky (1&2). Hades is probably coming to PlayStation at some point — I've been holding out for that.

@PossibLeigh @Quintumply Thanks guys, some interesting recommendations and it's good to see that people are generally passionate about the genre. I will definitely put some of those on my list. I've seen some gameplay from Spelunky before and that looked both good and infuriating at the same time. Dead Cells definitely was when I played that as I seemed to be making zero progress but I'm not sure I'd spent enough time understanding what the deal was with regards unlocking things etc.

Even if Returnal is missing a few things from the best rougelikes it seems like a good starting point. It gives you a good idea of what to expect in one, and in a very well presented package. I think it's probably got a lot more people interested in genre in general.

I think the only Rogue-lite/like I've really liked is Dead Cells, and even then I bounced off it initially. The others I've played I eventually get bored of going through the same areas repeatedly.

Phew, that's Ixion done for me! I had a decent load out with a Hollowseeker that had the serrated projectiles trait and had 125% integrity. Didn't take a hit in the first two parts but the red rings on the third got me good. I probably could have finished without it but I had a health consumable to make sure I got there.

It was also lucky as it was one of the few runs where I've found a data cube on the map!

@JigsawPieces Any joy for you? With regards to the swooping, he only ever comes in the same direction. There's a larger rock structure on one side of the arena so I always headed for that and he would then come left to right across the screen and is very easily avoidable.

I videoed the fight so it's around the 1:15 to 1:20 mark that you can see what I mean (I've only linked to the vid for spoiler reasons for others).

There was a little surprise when a random lamiadon appeared around the 2:20 mark!