Azdamine🏳️‍🌈

Second ultimate down :D

It is done.

The non-true final boss wasn't good either but it was pissbaby easy at least and I could have written some poetic bullshit about being in conversation with Super Metroid by making its final boss a pure narrative victory lap but instead here we are lol

Feeling a strong 8 on this one, *maaaaaybe* a 9 if the last few bosses don't end up coloring my view of the game as a whole too much Will definitely be replaying at some point in the future (though I probably won't go for ending D) and I'll very likely check out Great Climb at some point too

It is done.

-much I adore this world structure and exploration design. Strictly As A Metroidvania I think it's undoubtedly among the very best of the entire genre, easily rivaling Super Metroid and Environmental Station Alpha And frankly the bosses were really good too until the last third!

I had a fantastic time figuring out most of the bosses in the game (though I only fought Freia and Void Worm *after* Spirella so they were kind of a joke in comparison lol) and I'm just. so sad that the game had to go and ruin it all at the finish line Almost wish I'd just gone for ending A

It is done.

-but having to re-do the boring ass first phase every single time really soured me on it In general, I think small mistakes can spiral into a death way too fast in this game for drawn-out backloaded challenges like this to feel satisfying or fun to do

It's unfortunate that the game ends on such a shitty note because it's otherwise really really good and was on track to become a new 5x5 entry (and a fairly high-ranking one at that) before the last couple bosses The movement is genuinely one-of-a-kind amazing and I cannot begin to express how-

It is done.

I think there were at least a few bosses that took me more attempts than the true final boss did, but none of them infuriated me to anywhere near the same degree. It simply goes on for far too long and puts its hardest parts near the end, meaning you have to re-do stuff you've already mastered-

-far too many times for it to stay interesting. Famine has much the same problem. The first phase of Famine is fucking braindead boring and practically trivial once you realize how little movement is required. The second phase is CBT. I actually think I'd really like the second phase on its own-

It is done.

Very solid game on the whole. Brought down by the fact that pretty much all of the bosses in the final third sorta suck for one reason or another; frankly the entire last third has a huge problem with backloading difficulty and making fights that are more stressful than they are challenging

Azdamine🏳️‍🌈 reposted

Pavel

@spavel.bsky.social

Very bad late night thoughts tonight about the state of the world, AI, and what the future looks like Too much to reasonably articulate but the fact that we're automating away all the interesting work that people are passionate about and doing nothing to compensate people who dedicated years-

The amount of this I'm seeing just makes everything harder to deal with because these are the people who are supposed to be on my side! These are my supposed allies!!! It's really hard to feel any hope at all when effectively no one seems prepared to defend the value of your skills and talents

The fact that we seem to be headed for a world where human intellectual ability is worthless and everything I specifically am good at can be done better and cheaper by a machine is soul-crushing Very hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel rn

And it's like do you not fucking hear yourselves? Do you not realize you are doing *exactly the same thing* the AI bros are? You're throwing an art form (something coding absolutely is) that you do not understand and are not invested in under the bus out of self-interest, there are real humans who-

-love writing code and the ability to do it for a living is vanishing at a terrifying rate When you say "sure AI can replace coders but it can't replace MY creative job that I'm passionate about" what I hear is that you don't give a fuck about my ability to do my passion for a living, only yours

To clarify I'm not like suicidal or anything just really struggling to deal with a future that's manifestly so much worse than what I had always envisioned for myself and those close to me How do you hold onto hope and let yourself feel happiness when everything is so horrifically bleak?

It's made worse by the number of anti-AI folks who seem to have given up the fight regarding coding because it's what AI got "good enough" at fastest I've seen a lot of comments to the effect of "AI bros think because LLMs can code good that means AI can do ACTUAL ART better than humans too!!!!!"

-to honing that craft is so fucking dystopian that it makes it hard for me to want to keep existing in this world So many of my friends are out of work or in shit jobs and I'm terrified of what my situation will look like in months to years, how do I live my life with this hanging over me

Man I hit the last area in Rusted Moss and my interest in playing the game legit just cratered lol You have like the best movement in any metroidvania ever why would you completely change it for the last level instead of going really hard on the skills the rest of the game spent building up

(Rusted Moss spoilers) This is so funny to me, imagine being in the 1.6% of players who just never went and finished the quest

Decided to give Belmont's Curse a try, I have no real investment in whether it Feels like a Castlevania game but I have to say coming right off the heels of Rusted Moss it's very hard not to feel cynical about its grappling hook mechanic lol

Having said all that I really don't think the game deserves of all the hate I've been seeing, the enemy placement is already surprisingly tricky to deal with at times and frankly if the first boss is the blueprint I'll take this paradigm over whatever the fuck SotN was doing (AoS act 3 clears tho)

Think I'm going to finish Rusted Moss before I play much more of this but I do plan to play more of this, if only to have *something* to put on my backloggd game of the year list that isn't Deltarune Chapter 5 lmfao God what a dire year for video games, really feels like we're in the end times

I realize it's sort of an unreasonable point of comparison, indie game designed for sickos that practically perfected the mechanic vs. heavily mainstream-focused series revival, but using it and seeing the swing arc automatically normalize was just depressing in comparison lol

My biggest gripe is the music tbh, I haven't heard much but it feels sorta out of place and I'm not a huge fan of the specific electronic style they went with on a personal level so it's mostly just rolling off my brain which is a shame when the music is one of the only things I like about SotN lol

Playing Rusted Moss after seeing a couple oomfs really enjoyed it. Game is fantastic, really enjoy the movement and bosses and a lot of the music is great as well I just did the first stretch of the Lab with no RL + 10 HP meaning I got two shot by everything and wanted to fucking die by the end lol

Something I really respect about this game is that it legit just does not fucking tell you where to go literally ever and you're allowed to just casually wander into areas you're nowhere near equipped for and try them anyway, it's horrible for my particular brand of brainworms but I love it lmao

That having been said Pestilence phase 1 can eat my entire ass fuck that fight LOL

Y'know the more time passes the more I think the Arcadion's soundtrack is straight-up Soken's best body of work, by a lot, like, a *lot* It's crazy how almost every single track is a stone cold banger when I could usually take or leave 80% of any given subset of his work