I’m finally free from La Mulana. It took me 50 hours, and I had to look up hints for a couple of puzzles that I couldn’t figure out towards the end (and I’m still not sure how you were supposed to solve them without guessing).

The puzzles were manageable for the most part, although not knowing what solving a puzzle did made it needlessly more confusing and IMO a bit unsatisfying.

I found the combat to be too hard and unfair in boss fights and the hitboxes were really bad as they often didn’t match the graphics.

I’m conflicted on if I enjoyed it or not - the experience was quite unique (for good or bad), and the game being hostile and designed to waste as much time as possible is a big part of that identity.

The weird controls grow on you and navigation never got boring, as you plan a safe path through the screen. I found the story to be surprisingly interesting, the puzzles were memorable and while I disliked most boss fights, I did enjoy the final one and the previous quite a bit.

Probably gonna play the sequel sometime and also other metroidvanias, as it’s a genre I haven’t paid much attention to.

Understandable, yea.

The puzzle part feels like Outer Wilds, but without the log to help you and it’s also a bit less linear, which I’m personally enjoying but I can see why it could be boring.

The platforming/navigation is a bit janky but usable after a while.

The combat is IMO absolute garbage (the bosses in particular are pretty bad fights that waste your time and the hitboxes are terrible) and wouldn’t be surprised if this is what makes most people quit.

For now at least, the exploration and puzzles overshadow the negatives, but they are pretty big negatives that are hard to ignore.

I’ve been playing Under Night In-Birth II. I had bought it last year but never actually played it. After this first week of matches I’d say it’s my favorite in this latest “generation” of figthing games.

I randomly bought Azure Striker Gunvolt on Switch, since I rememberd hearing good things about it when it came out, but it’s not much fun to play. It feels really unpolished, the levels and bosses are a bit on the annoying side and the combat gimmick, where you need to tag enemies with projectiles to be able to damage them, feels really bad to use as it’s slow and unsatisfying.

Everyone playing Blue Prince reminded me of La-Mulana, which I’ve been playing in the last few days. I’m a bit conflicted on it, since I like most of what the game does except for the combat which I find rather bad and unfairly punishing when considering how imprecise it is. I am enjoying the game, although I’m a bit worried it might be too long.

Played Splatoon 3. The different modes are really fun, except for Turf War which kinda sucks. It’s the first time I’m trying to learn how to play a team game and I’m confused on how to improve, but I’m having fun with it.

For some reason tho Nintendo thought it was a good idea to do two day events (“Splatfests”) periodically which lock you out of any mode beside Turf War for their entire duration, so I went looking for other competitive games:

I went back to Guilty Gear Strive after dropping it for more than a year, but after playing it for a few hours, I still don’t like how sluggish the game feels and I’m not too happy with the modern design trends in fighting games (or in general the curent state of them). The biggest issue that stops me from playing tho is the terrible online experience which still hasn’t been fixed after 4 years.

Not much this week, been looking a lot at the Switch 2 trailers.

I’ve played Heavenly Bodies with a friend. We liked it, although it wasn’t really designed for two people.

I’m back to Fire Emblem Engage, played chapter 16 which took me ages.