Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome back to side Quest. A little
bonus episode solo cast. I don't think I've done one
of these in a little bit, but I had to
come in here and share my spoiler filed thoughts on
Hollow Night Silk Song, which came out a few weeks
ago now and just a few short days ago. I
rolled credits on the game beat the game, which if
you've played the game, you know that that could mean
one of a few different things, because this game has
different endings and whatnot, so I will explain all of that,
but yeah, I guess just this episode's going to be
full on spoilers, So if you don't want to get
spoiled on the game, come back when you've played it.
Speaker 2: It's on game Pass.
Speaker 1: It's like twenty thirty dollars depending on where you are
in the world, and yeah, it's definitely worth it. We
did an episode of side Quest where I shared my
earlier impressions on the game with Travis, and I think
all my thoughts there kind of still stand. And that's
a spoiler free version of this to some extent, So
you can go check that out if you want to
hear some kind of lesser spoiler thoughts, but this is
going to be all in. Yeah, here we go right now.
Three two one spoilers completely unlocked. Let me talk through
my experience here. So I think, just at the top
very quickly to reiterate, Holloa. Night one is a game
I played, maybe put like, I don't know, ten fifteen
hours into it. I never rolled credits, liked it enough,
but obviously I kind of fell off of it. And
you know, part of that is just because of the
genre for me, Metroidvania is there are games that require
a lot of brain power, a lot of memory, and
a lot of stick to itiveness, and I think I
just clearly didn't have that for the first one. I
don't know if I was playing it and then just
got distracted for a few days and then came back
to him was super lost. And so with Silk Song,
I was like, Okay, I'm gonna just you know, if
I'm liking the game, I'm gonna pick it up and
I'm just.
Speaker 2: Gonna blast through it. I'm not gonna put it down.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna even skip one day of playing this
game at least a little bit. Keep it fresh of mine,
top of mine. I'm gonna also make notes outside of
the game, because there are quests and like markers can
put on your map, but that information isn't always super great.
So I think I did all those things and it
led to me having a much more cohesive experience, one
where I wasn't getting lost as much. And yeah, I
ended up being a much better experience for that. So
whether that's just improvements to Silksong and like Hollow Night
as a game overall, or if that's because I took
the extra measures there, not really sure. It's probably a
mixture of both. Of course, this game is in development
for a long time. And then yeah, just as like
a Metroidvania person, you know, I love Metro Zero Mission,
I love Metroid Dread Castlevania, messed around with those games.
Not my favorite necessarily indie game wise. I don't think
there's a ton that really stand out for me, so
it's not really my space, my genre, but I think
for a few reasons, this one really worked for me.
And we'll get into those things as I go along.
So I think we're gonna start with here, is gonna
just kind of do a rough review recap of the
way I went through the game and I can't remember
every detail because there's a lot of like, oh yeah,
I you know, two forks in the road, which way
did I go? And I can't remember all those intimate details,
but just kind of a general thing, and then I'm
gonna talk about my build, the kind of strategy I
sort of used. I got some random thoughts in here,
some bosses, some highlights, and some least favorites, and then yeah,
maybe just kind of close it off with some overall
sort of thoughts there. So I think one thing I
really loved about this game as a Metroid Veana and
just as a two D platform ran a game in general,
is it seemed to to the line of like the
perfect amount of openness for me. And I feel like
a lot of metroid Vania is it's like, Okay, you're
going along. Eventually you bump into a place where it's like, oh, okay,
I can't climb that ledge, I need double jump, I
need a grappling hook, I need whatever it is to
get to that point, so I'm gonna come back later.
And it feels more linear, I would say, generally, where
it's like okay, I'm gonna go around, Okay, that way
I can't clearly go there. Let me just go to
the left instead. Eventually I go get double jump. Okay, cool,
Now I'm gonna come back and jump in this one place,
and then it kind of continues from there. But I
think this game, you know, obviously the very opening, the
kind of tool zone so to speak, even though this
game doesn't have like a strictatorial uh much more linear
right just for the first like hour or two something
like that, right, like almost every player is gonna have
a similar experience there. Maybe there's a couple of little
mini hidden rooms you're finding, but overall you're going through
the same zones. But then once it breaks open and
you get into like I guess the Marrow area, then
it kind of shoots off in different directions where you
could maybe go to Hunters March or Deep Docks. From
deep Docks, maybe you just go all the way to
far Fields without even getting to Hunters March. I'm not
sure if you could do all that intimate stuff, but
I think you could probably get away with some of
these different details. But I think for me, what's perfectly
about this game is it always kind of had like
three on average, three areas I could go to at
any point in time, like any three things that were
kind of threads that I could tug on. And so
it's like, okay, I could go north up here, i
could go right, I could go east at this point,
or I could go up, go through this little hidden
pathway and take a take a left, go west. And
so I'd always kind of have like these, like I said,
three on average, like maybe sometimes two.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was just one. Maybe it was up to.
Speaker 1: Four or five different places I could go, averaging out
to three of like, Okay, I have places I can go.
So if I'm getting stuck, or most importantly, if I'm
at a boss fight that is too hard or annoying,
or i feel like I'm underpowered or I'm missinability for cool,
mark it on my map, come back to it later.
And I feel like the game like constantly did that,
and there's maybe certain points where it feels like it
opens up even more and you have so many options.
And then even outside of those three, I think I'm
more talking there with like when there's three threads to
pull on, it's more like specific zones that are gonna
really break.
Speaker 2: Into larger areas.
Speaker 1: You know, there might be a little area that's like, oh, yeah,
I want to get double jump, I can come back
here and do this. And I had a lot of
those little markers around, But in terms of like exploring
larger areas, it felt like I always had just like
the perfect amount of mental load mental stack, which made
it so I could really keep focused on certain things
and trail along pretty perfectly. Yeah, so I thought that
was really great, and that would always happen to Like
in the early game. The bell Beast, for example, is
one of the bosses that I was really ruggling with
early on, which is great when to you know, go back,
get a little more powerful, come back and fight it.
And maybe I didn't have air dash or some ability
that made the fight a lot easier. But once you
finally beat that one, obviously the reward is huge. Whoa,
I've now unlocked fast traveling across the map. I should
have grinded my head against this one earlier and like
done it sooner, But that often happened, where like the
reward would be pretty big. Sometimes I think, actually the
reward we're fighting a boss is actually pretty weak, and
I think part of that is that comparing this game
to a Soul's like because it obviously shares a ton
of that DNA. Is that a soul's like game? You know,
Maybe it doesn't open a path. Maybe it's like the
last boss in an area, and it doesn't actually unlock
a new area. Maybe you get a special weapon or something,
but maybe that weapon doesn't pertain to your class.
Speaker 3: But at the very.
Speaker 1: Least you always get a proportionately like shit ton of souls.
It's like, okay, cool, now I can level up a
couple of times. Not really the case in Silk Song.
Right when you beat a boss, you almost never, if ever,
get the rosary beads or the shards. To a lesser extent,
you're really just getting maybe it's an item, maybe it's
unlocking the new zone, whatever it is, but I think
it doesn't like maybe you get an ability or a
crest what do they call it, like little upgrades equips.
Maybe you get one of those that just doesn't really
relevant to you. Isn't that exciting or something you didn't need?
And so sometimes that kind of sucks because you're not
also always getting rosary, So it's like, okay, well that
main reward I didn't like, but at least I got
two hundred rosaries. I can put that towards the next
thing that I actually do want to buy. Not a
big complaint overall, but just something that I kind of noticed.
But yeah, like I said, Bellbeast was an early struggle
for me that was a hard fight but felt super
rewarding when I finally beat it. I think the other
one that I was really bashing my head against for
a while early on was the moor Wing, which is
I believe in gray More. I think that sounds about right.
The name kind of fits, and that was leading to
one of my early complaints of the game, where I
just feel like for games that have really tight combat
like this, that have really challenging combat, really tough boss fights,
especially games, especially the Souls likes, that have really annoying
boss runs back to get to the boss, or even
if you lose, you can't just rage hit a and
fight it again immediately. You have to run through a
whole area, maybe you die again on the way there,
or maybe it's just a super long pathway like that.
That kind of thing can be particularly annoying. But you know,
I think really what it comes down to is like,
if you're gonna have those things, the combat needs to
be really good, you can't be dropping frames, you can't
have wonky hip boxes, and naturally it's hard for like
every move to feel perfectly fair. I think with the
more wing that really annoyed me sometimes because it's a
flying on me, so it's kind of like floating up
and down, it's not in one set spot or height
on the map, and then also has like wings, and
I just felt like the hip boxes felt super janky
where I felt like, man, I totally hit it or
it hit me and I didn't deserve to get hit,
and so that one kind of frustrated me. And then
I think most of the bosses that did fruate me
in the game in a big way were the ones
that like that, like that, ones that were floating around
to some extent, and so it just felt like they
were a bit more ambiguous where like their hip boxes
were and whatnot. So yeah, anyway, as through the earlier
part of the games, I feel like you know your
most players are probably gonna connect kind of bone bottom
the marrow Hunter's march, Deep Dogs, far Fields, and then
from that location, once you get through Farfields, you get
I think that's when you would get the what's it
called like the floating thing where you pop your cape open,
and that's when you can you know, use the airways,
the wind things coming from the ground. I don't have
great words for these things to shoot you up in
the air, and that's when it kicks you in a
gray More And then I feel like that opens up
almost like it it doesn't, don't. I don't know when
the act two pop apps happens actually, now that I
think about it, but that feels like a huge moment
because now you've kind of discover these different areas, but
for the most part, they're all kind of in the
same southern sort of part of the map, similar sort
of height, you know, altitude, I should say. But once
you get to gray More, it's like, now I'm in
a whole nother part of the map and I can
discover all these areas you can go directly up to,
like Center's Road, go all the way left over to
like the Blasted Steps area, that kind of stuff, And
so it feels like it kind of opens the game
up in a whole new way, which is perfect because
at that point I feel like I was writing out
of things to do, you know, that list of always
having three things to do is maybe getting down to
just one, and so that just kind of opens up
the game huge way at that point, and then I
feel like, yeah, you're really in the mid game now,
because there is still some loose threads in the earlier zones,
but now you have all these other areas you can
get to. The Wormways is a funny one because earlier
on in the game, you I forget where I think
it's the in Bone Bottom, right, there's a shop that
has a key, and it's really expensive for that point
in the game, so it took a long time for
me to actually get the money to buy that key,
and by the time I had enough money for that,
I had like three separate spots I could put the key.
I think there was the one that enters into the Wormways,
there was one in the deep Docks, and then I
guess the other one would be in Sinner's Road, I
think right. So I think the first the first time
I got a key is I did use it in
Sinner's Road to free that one character who you bump
into a couple more times. The green guy looks like.
Speaker 2: He's from the Outer wilds DLC.
Speaker 1: And so I think that was the first key I use,
which is didn't really unlock any new area for me, right,
It just like was request and then it wasn't for
like hours later that I actually ended up getting keys,
and like Deep Dogs key was actually one of the
very last things I did before I put down the game,
which is crazy because that's an early game area and
I you know, could have put that key in that
lock initially and opened up that whole new zone, but
that was a late game thing for me. So anyway,
with the Wormways, I didn't have that key early on
to unlock it, and then I think I discovered like
both the other entrances to it before I ever went in.
So by the time I went into Wormways, I had
all three entrances kind of noted on my map and
I even put like a little marker on them. I'm like, okay,
at some point I will go through the Wormways and
I think I waited so long and it's actually a
pretty small and like not super media area. I forget
what the unlock is for, you know, the big boss there.
But that was one that I kind of just crushed
through because I had spent so much time kind of
building up to it, and since I had three separate entrances,
I could really like tackle it, and if I ever
got stuck or felt like, oh maybe I need to
go another way in there, it's like, okay, well I
already know which way I kind of have to go.
So that one went through pretty nice and easy. Blasted
SEPs is a tricky one. I just feel like the
platforming side of it, and obviously the wind's pushing you around.
It requires precise platforming because if you mess up, you
fall into like the dune sandworm kind of pits, and
then you have to like, you know, do again, do
that again that it always takes damage from you or
takes HP from you. So that was tricky, but eventually,
you know, unlocks a whole bunch of different zones and
then the Sinner's Road area. This is like the hardest,
maybe not hardest, probably the most annoying section of the game,
right Cinner's Road, all the way up Toto buy a water,
and then through the mists into the citadel. Like all
of that was so intense. I forget where exactly you
get the map in Bio Water, but I did not
have it until deep in the game. Like I went
all the way through bile Water went through the Mist,
which I had to google because that made no sense
to me at all, Like I could tell it was
like a Lost Woods situation, but it didn't make any
sense to me, so I had google that. So I'm
you know, now I'm in Sinner's Road, I have a
bench way back. I'm going all the way through bile Water,
all the way through the Mist into the Citadel. And
that was such an interesting thing to go through like
two whole separate zones even it's like early centers road,
and then to get like a bench of finally and
maybe a map connected in the citadel and to like
connect all that and be like, wow, I have a
huge gap here. I still don't have the Bilewater map.
So that was a really satisfying thing to come back
and connect later in the mist, realizing that you never
actually get a map there, which makes sense. It's just
like four or five rooms that are kind of scrambled up, right,
So it wouldn't really make sense to have that as
a Metroidvanium map thing. It wouldn't really be that helpful.
And then the slab, so I can't remember and there's
probably multiple ways that you can get sent into the slab,
and I think I read somewhere that you can make
it to the slab without ever getting captured, which makes
sense obviously on like another play through, I could see
how that could happen. But yeah, for me the slab,
I think it happened pretty early on. And that was
also a crazy moment of like, WHOA, I'm stripped of
some of my powers. I'm in this completely mysterious zone.
I have no way to get out of here, so
I just got to fight my way through. That's the
only way out. And it was a pretty precarious zone, right.
You don't have a lot of information, you're lost in
your powers. Some of the areas are icy on either side,
so you can't even like really go to the edges
too much.
Speaker 3: And then this is why I wanted to bring this up,
because I found this.
Speaker 1: Kind of an interesting thing, and I feel like this
is maybe where I differ for some other people. Is
when you finally are able to exit the slab, you
have unlocked the teleporter out of there, you don't actually
have a way to walk out yet. You just have
to straight up the teleporter or maybe there's some secret
path you could take. But I didn't find it. And
then you also right near that exit teleporter with the
you know, the beast the bell best who teleports around
is like the entrance to Mount Fay, and I remember
walking out the cave seeing that and the name pop
Mount Fay. Seeing that, I was immediately like being frozen.
I was like, Okay, I'm out. I'm supposed to come
back here later when I have an ability that lets
me that insulates me so I don't take damage.
Speaker 3: I'm in the ice.
Speaker 1: But then I was in there for like literally five
seconds that I didn't even think about it. I kind
of forgot that Mountain Fay was an area I had discovered.
I didn't put it on my note tracker. I don't
think I put a marker on the map or anything
like that. So that was a really interesting one to
come back to hours later and be like, Oh, the
thing that makes it so you don't freeze anymore is
actually at the top of this area. So I could
have gone through this when I could have, although actually
at the time I don't think I had the grappling hook,
so I probably would have had to stop, go get
the grappling hook and then come back later. Come to think,
of it. But because of that, I feel like the
double jump is not something I had until much later
into the game.
Speaker 3: Then I felt like I should have.
Speaker 1: And obviously, once I finally had that, the amount of
markers on my map that I had marked for like, okay,
I probably need a double jump to get here, assuming
this game has a double jump. And it was so
satisfying to get that double jump and go to knock
like five or six markers off my map, some of
which ended up, you know, discovering pretty large areas or
hidden boss fights, and some of them maybe just coule
like one upgrade or something here or there. But yeah,
that was a funny thing to kind of skip and
just kind of completely forget about. And it wasn't until
I was like reading some guides and I saw the
word Mount Fay list I was like, oh, yeah, like,
you know, fifteen hours ago of playtime, I had stumbled
upon Mount Faye and then just completely forgot about it.
So that was a satisfying want to come to. And
then somewhere in that kind of ramboly description of that
midgame section is when I happened upon the Citadel. And
for me, this is like a super satisfying thing because
really it's it is just the same as the rest
of the map in terms of its connectivity. But I
think it's really smart on the pause menu map to
like have the Citadel as one large yellow zone, but
then when you like zoom in on the map, then
it breaks it down into further sections because it just
makes it more digestible and easier to track when you're
going through all this stuff. But I think that that
made that area just feel like, oh yeah, this is
like the end of the game, like huge massive area
and just entering it from all these different areas, you know,
whether it's the blasted steps, whether it is through the
mist other ways that I can't think of off the
top of my head. Like that was such a satisfying
thing to like make all these different connections to the Citadel,
get through to different areas, blast downwards, and then end
up in other areas that I'd been to before. Like
that part of the game was really really fun and
really really satisfying. Yeah, I really like the Citadel as well,
like thematically the music, I mean, the music in general
this game is absolutely outstanding.
Speaker 3: It's so good in every area.
Speaker 1: I was listening to a bunch of it on Spotify today,
and yeah, it's just just an amazing vibe. I pic
when it needs to be creepy, when it needs to
be all that good stuff. So after I got to
the Citadel, going through there, eventually you get the quest,
which is like, okay, you need to do these three
things and it marks them on your map and then
you can go fight the final Boss. That's pretty much
the setup of it. And so at that point is
when I was like, Okay, I'm gonna start knocking off
all the side quests that I have access to. I'm
going to you know, go through these three things when
I have access to them. But I think I was
limited by not having the grappling hook for a little bit,
so I had to go go around do some other stuff.
Eventually got the grappling hook, knocked all those quests off,
and then found the you know the I love that
the to do the Final Boss you don't just walk
into the room, but you have to like interact and
like accept challenge right in order to access it. So
I like that it doesn't you don't accidentally just start
fighting the final Boss, and instead you can kind of
just choose when you're ready to do it, and for me,
I was like, Okay, I want to go level up
a bit more.
Speaker 3: I want to get more powerful.
Speaker 1: I want to knock off all the to do list
items I had on my list. And so that's when
I did some deeper searching in the blasted steps and
found the Sands of Carrick, which, my god, the ending
boss there, like the the drill boss, was super difficult
for me, but eventually did that. The Putrefied Ducks and
I guess going back to Bilewater in general, but yeah,
the Putrefied Ducks is an area I could not find
on my own until I looked up a guide. Ended
up being kind of a small and uninteresting zone unfortunately,
but you know, it's so cool to find. The White
Ward is one I don't That was, like, I think,
literally the last thing I did before fighting the final boss,
because I had that key and I had that access
to the elevator, but I just completely forgot about the
connection there, once again not making a great note on
my end. So that was one of the last things
I did in that boss absolutely slayed me. What was
the name of that boss again? I had it pulled
up here on another tab. The unraveled. Yeah, that was
a super tough boss for me, and also, you know,
a long one too, because there's phases where it's like, okay,
now I gotta fight some ads for a moment, and
so it just like takes a while to like get
through all of it. But yeah, it felt good when
I finally beat that one. Let's see what else. Yeah,
like I said, the keys, Eventually I did get enough
keys to open up all the things and putting that
one into Deep Dogs, and then it turned into this
whole other huge area that eventually connects to far Fields
in a different way. I think it has like two
additional boss fights down there. I forget what the upgrades
are the things you unlock when you do that area,
but that was like amazing to me, such a mind
blowing moment that, like, Wow, this key that I put
into some random cage to unlock an NPC twenty hours ago.
I could have discovered this whole area, and I'm sure
it would have been a lot harder because I found
that boss against Sickness and Gron that duo fight really
really tough, even though I was like coming there super
duper late. So that was that was a really cool
find and then okay, here's my little complaining corner. Is
I mentioned it earlier Sinners Road into Bile Water, you know,
it's it's this game's inspired by souls like games. It
is a Soul's like game in a way, even though
it's not from software. And you know, every from software
game has to have it's shitty ass poison swamp that
is intentionally extremely unfun and annoying and you hate it.
And I guess it's supposed to build character, but like,
I just hate these areas. It feels like they're intentionally
the worst area in every game because of the poison mechanic,
because the annoying enemies there, chip damage out the ass
like hard to parse, hard to discover, dark, hard to see,
annoying bosses, all that stuff. And so that's like one
of the worst lessons I think for this game to
take from from software is like, oh, yeah, let's just
make the area that we know every player is gonna
hate the most. On top of that, make the you know,
getting to grawl the great that boss fight there at
the top of it, making that the craziest boss run
I've seen in any of these games. Ever, that's extremely annoying.
On top of that, not making it clear that there
is a ability I think you get from I can't
remember where you get that ability from the upgrade that
makes it so you don't take as much poison damage,
which I didn't know about. So I was doing that
boss around a million times, lost not a million times.
Let's say I actually probably lost it maybe fifteen twenty times.
And then I was like, Okay, I'll come back later.
Came back later, tried a few more times, died a
bunch more times, and then eventually I found the poison
counteracting thing, and that's when it became.
Speaker 2: A little bit more bearable.
Speaker 1: But even with that, it still took me a lot
of tries, just because god damn, it takes forever to
get to the boss fight. I don't think it's probably
the hardest boss fight on paper, But for me, I
really needed all the sword upgrades that I could get.
I needed more health upgrades. I needed that upgrade. I
needed a strategy. I even saw some like cheese strats
people found online where you can like hang out in
the bottom right corner.
Speaker 2: I tried.
Speaker 3: That didn't really work that well for me. So that was.
Speaker 1: Extremely, extremely annoying, but eventually I did beat it, and
then what else about this chunk of the game, I think, yeah,
just you know, crushing through quests. I think one of
the fun ones I liked you get from the Big
Spider in Putrefied Day is.
Speaker 2: The preparing the food one.
Speaker 1: So you this spider, like I want to eat you,
and you're like, how about I go slay some monsters
and give you that meat instead, And which seems like
why would you help this spider? Why wouldn't you just
like go the other way and leave? But that was
a fun one because it incentivized me to use some
of the equipment that I hadn't used before, you know,
by you know, having to put the fire sword on
to like cook some things, having to put like the
drill type items that drill up and like get the
different chunks, you know, all these different things, which I
think was fun.
Speaker 3: And that was, you know, kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about my build in a minute,
but I feel like I wasn't switching up my equipment
a ton or using it a ton because of the
kind of currency tied to it. And so that was
a fun quest that really incentivized me to like explore
some of the gear that I hadn't locked throughout the game,
that I hadn't really tried.
Speaker 2: Much of yet.
Speaker 1: I liked the quests where you had to kind of
find someone who was lost, so you'd find like a
you know, one piece of their equipment, and then it
would like you track their smell and follow them through
the levels. I just feel like it added a little
bit more replayed ability, a little bit more zest to
some of the areas that I had been before and
kind of, oh, now I'm engaging with this area that
I was at five hours.
Speaker 2: Ago in a new way.
Speaker 1: And then the delivery quests, which were a mixture of frustration,
but we're really satisfying to figure them out, like figuring
out the route to the one that takes you up
to the dining hall in the citadel where you have
to give that guy one to get Eventually that like
last sword upgrade that took me so many tries, but
it was so satisfy fine when I finally beat it
and like had the perfect line, I'm like, Okay, I
know there's like a bit of water here, so I
got to make sure I don't follow that because that
will ruin the quality a couple of points where I
slammed into a wall actidently because I was running too
fast and that damage it, which was annoying. But I
really like those delivery quests. The only one I haven't
done yet because I was just like not in the
mood for it because it only has like three hits,
and on I think is the one to go up
to the top of Mount Fay. I don't know what
the reward is. I think it's something to do with
a mask. Maybe it is just straight up a mask upgrade,
but I was like, eh, not doing that. That's a
step too far. I'll do the one to get the
sword upgrade, but I'm not doing whatever whatever this is,
so maybe it is worth it. But even just the
minor ones that I can't tell if they repeat, because
I got a couple for bone Bottom, but I think
those might just be like infinitely spawning ways to generate money.
But even those ones I thought were fun. It's like, Okay,
I have to go somewhere on the map, but let
me go to Bellhart first and see if there's maybe
a way that I can also tie this in with
a delivery quest and kind of do a two for
one situation, so I really liked those as well, and
then kind of getting through all that stuff being powerful
and then finally taking all of it back to go
up against the final boss. And I mentioned this on
last week's side quest as a little quick quick story.
But I lost the boss fight the first time, and
then the second time I beat the final Boss, which
is one of the only times in the game where
I was able to defeat a boss that quickly. And
I think the big reason for that is, like there
was a lot of bosses in the game, or almost
every single boss the amount of times I took damage
because they got knocked into the stunned state and then
like fell on me or I walked into them when
they were stunned, so much like I feel like that
was maybe one thing I would ask that they changed,
Like if the boss is stunned, it shouldn't damage me
to walk into it, unless it's like a porcupine or
something like. I just found that annoying in terms of
like precise movement stuff. It just never felt good or correct.
But the final Boss, I found that was an odd change.
The boss is kind of floating in the background and
so you can kind of intersect with the boss's body
and you won't take damage. And I think when you
stun them and they hit in the ground then you
would like in the same way. But I think for
that reason I found it a little bit easier. And
I don't know, I guess just the dodging pattern.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I was.
Speaker 1: Probably a little bit more overpowered, right because I could
have challenged the final boss a lot earlier than I did,
but I went and got more hearts, got all the
sword upgrades, had my build kind of figured out, and
so I think that also made it.
Speaker 3: A bit easier.
Speaker 1: And then after fighting the final boss is when you
kind of get the option to open up into Act
three by doing a couple other bonus quests type things
right where you feel like grab four items from across
the world which required you to fight Groll and other things,
and then you trap the boss and then that takes
you into Act three. So the reason I knew about
this because I don't think I would have known about
it if I had just been playing the game normally.
But one it was weird that, like I never procked
a thing that said Act three right, even though the
game had an Act one in Act two. But then
when I was looking up, like, okay, what have I
not done yet? Because I beat the game now I
beat the final boss, but you know, anything I'm missing,
If there's any areas I'm missing now, actually I do
want to do those. Maybe I don't need to do
every single boss. And then I discovered there was two
zones I haven't been to, which is the Abyss and
the one on the far East which is called like Verdania,
Verdonia something like that, and so I was like, okay,
I'd like to check those out, and discovered that the
way you have to do that is by getting into
Act three. So I went through, did the stuff the
prerequisites to get into Act three, fought the final boss again,
which I had to do, which is a little bit
salty about, but then I literally beat it first s
try against. I was like, okay, this boss I have
dialed in, and that one I barely took any damage.
I was like, just on an insane pace right there,
skipped one thirteen.
Speaker 3: But yeah to fight.
Speaker 1: Fought the final boss and then getting into Act three
and just immediately getting wrecked by even just like the
tiny little enemies because they deal so much damage. And
then kind of googling it things a bit more and
people being like, oh, yeah, Act three is extremely hard.
All the enemies hit super hard, getting around the map
is much harder, And I was like, you know what,
I'm good. I think I'm happy with this. I spent
thirty five hours with this game. I beat the final boss,
I got credits, I got a good cut scene and
all that. And yes, I didn't discover everything, but I
did a whole heck of a lot, and like, I'm
really satisfied with my experience, and I don't think I
want to just beat my head against the wall. It
would be nice to see these last couple areas, but.
Speaker 2: I just don't.
Speaker 1: I think I would grow to despise the game a
little bit if I did all that stuff. And yeah,
like I said, thirty five hours is plenty of time
to spend with any game, let alone a Metroidvania, let
alone a game that the you know, predecessor I didn't
even finish. So yeah, I'm pretty happy with the amount
of time I spent with the game, and so that
at that point I was ready to put the game
down and move on to the next thing. So that
was more or less my journey through the game and
my now concluded journey. You know, if there's delC for
this game, maybe I would play.
Speaker 3: More of it, but not, I think I'm pretty good.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's already more in game content I could do,
but I'm obviously choosing not to do that. So I
think I'm pretty satisfied with where it's ended off here.
So let me get into some other random thoughts here,
which is Yeah, first one I want to talk about
is my build, my strategy, this kind of stuff I
use so once. One thing that took me a while
to realize is I know you were getting different crests.
I have three crests now, I believe like the default one,
you get the one that gives you shorter range, more
attack speed, and then you have the one that changes
it so that rather than healing with your bind, you
instead get like life steal on your attacks. That's just
not my style. I just want a traditional heal, so
I never really used that one. But one thing it
took me a really long time to realize is that
all these different crests have a different downwards aerial attack.
I don't know if it says it in game anywhere,
but I feel like that's not something I realized that first.
But one of my I think, really my only thing
about the moveset character moves that I don't like what
the default move set is when you do the downwards
aerial attack and it's like the downwards diagonal thing. A
lot of characters in Smash have got that kind of
attack over the years, and I just hate it. I
don't think it feels good at all. I don't like
it feels like I'm forced and stuck into a certain movement.
I don't like the imprecision of it, and especially thinking
back on holl Night and being like, oh, man, the
downward attack in that game, you just attag downwards. It
was a downward like classic sword strike, and you use
that the platform around. I don't really like what they've
done here with the change. But then eventually realizing that, oh,
the down air attack is different with these crests, and
realizing that the second one with the tack speed thing
gives you that regular downwards attack, I was like, hell, yeah,
of course I'm gonna use that. That feels so much better
for me. And that's when the platform being immediately felt
like twenty times better and I think I just cruised
around the game a whole lot quicker and with a
lot more joy, So I I never really looked back.
I think I changed it once or twice when I
was really just up against a certain boss in which
I didn't really have to use the downward attack at all,
and that extra and like I guess, usually against bosses
that didn't give me the opportunity to hit them twice
with my quick strikes, So I'm like, Okay, I might
as well use like the regular strike because it has
a little bit more range. I think it does a
little bit more damage. I'm not using the downwards attack anyway,
so I might as well switch to that because I'll
just make this boss fight a bit better. But then
after the boss fight, I would immediately switch back to
the kind of quicker strike. The downward strike the one
I really enjoyed, So that was kind of my go to.
And yeah, man, I got to say, like, the biggest
compliment I can give for any characters movement in the
game is like I now want them as a Smash character,
and that is definitely the case for Hornet.
Speaker 3: I would love if they.
Speaker 1: Finally added like an indie character in Smash Bros. And
the next smash Smash six and Hornet is definitely a
big request for me at this point in time. Okay,
so the next thing about the build is, you know,
a bit of a complaint, but one one of the
things I don't love is that the RB attacks, or
at least RB on Xbox that I was playing on,
you know that being kind of like a bonus attack
you can use your silk for. But I don't know,
for me, it's like I'm always gonna save this for
the healing because I'm not super duper good at this game,
and so because I just like never used any of
the RB attacks with one exception that I'll talk about
in a minute. So I didn't love having those on
the same currency. I would have preferred, I think if
maybe that had just been on like a cool down,
or maybe it had just like a separate little bar
where you need to hit get get like five or
six hits off and then you can like use it again.
That kind of thing. I messed around with some of them,
Like the one I really liked is one that drops
the big orbs on the map. I think you get
that by beating the first center, Like that's a really
cool ability. I would like to use it, but the
fact that it's like making it further away from me
having like a backup heel means I'm just never realistically
gonna use it, and then I you know, I had
some complaints with the AMMO limits because I just wish
it was more based on, like, I don't know, saving
out a bench and then you get like this set
amount that you can use for the next.
Speaker 2: Life or maybe they accumulate again.
Speaker 1: Because it just once again, it's kind of like the
classic health potions in RPG Fallacy, where it's like I'm
just gonna save this stuff and then realistic I'm just
gonna never use it. So on certain boss fights, I
of course would use the equipment or like certain enemies,
you know, for obviously that one quest I had to
do it, but I just found like I would have
used more of the move set and had a better
time if those were less annoying to kind of keep
track of. So that's kind of a minor nitpick about
how that stuff worked. But in terms of the things
I would use it for is one is is the pery.
It's well noted that I'm not a pary fan.
Speaker 2: I'm not good at.
Speaker 1: Pirying, but I feel like, even though it's only two games,
this year twenty twenty five has been the year of
parying for your Boy. I've talked about it extensively, but
Expedition of thirty three made me good at pairying in
that specific game only, of course, and it helps it
its turn based instead of like a live situation you know,
real time combat system. But I think that game did
pirying super well, and this one works for me as
well because the window seems extremely generous and really the
best time I would use it and it always felt
super satisfying. Is there are certain enemies that have a
pairy of their own, right. They prepare a repost type attack.
You hit them and then they do a counter attack.
But I would just run up for them, hit them,
and then just perry immediately. There was really no timing involved.
I could pretty much not mess this up, and then
they would do their pery attack, which was pretty much
the same every single time, right, so it was predictable.
They would hit my perry and I would pay them
back and deal a ton of damage. On certain boss
fights men that work super well. I think that eventually
helped me defeat the unraveled. It helped me fight Lace
any like those types of characters helped me fight the
second Sentinel, helped me destroy the second Sentinel, and that
was really satisfying. So I ended up really like them pairing.
But once again, it being tied to the same currency
as your HP is a really weird choice. I can't
think of another like action game that has parying and
healing as like the same resource, and I did to
think the other thing was is like I was never
really clear exactly how much silk I needed to parry.
But also I have to pay so much attention to
the visual cues of the boss fights, the things they're doing,
what I'm capable of my HP, that I don't really
have time to look at that silk bar and see
if like, okay, do I have like four spools three
like spins of it, Like do I have enough to
parry right now? And so sometimes I would go to
perry and like not have enough, and that was pretty
much always frustrating. And then also if you parry and
person doesn't hit you, you still lose that currency like that
that silk that you've built up, So just a slightly
annoying thing the equipment I used the most often was
the cogfly when I eventually unlocked it. I just liked
that I could kind of turn my brain off and
let it cruise around. Sometimes I'd put the poison equipment
on so that it would just fly around and poison
the enemy, and that was really satisfying for me. I
really liked that. Other than that, I really like the
big like kind of spear throw. Those are the ones
I kind of use the most there typically for my build.
I forget what color this is. I think it was
maybe the red, maybe it was the blue. But I
pretty much use the fractured mass for most of the game.
Once I got that, and then one of these silk
generator things like either the little green one that would
give you an automatic amount back or the white one
that just increased silk generation overall. Then the poison canceler
I would use, you know, when I was in buiot
water in those kinds of areas, But like I said,
I didn't have that till pretty late in the game.
I would always have the compass on. I needed that
all the time. I'm not good enough with just the
mental map of this extremely confusing and dense map I
always needed that on, had the speed one on for
most of the late game, and then i'd kind of
swap out the third for a bit. I was using
the one that gives you more money, but then when
I realized I was losing more moment, I got hit realized,
like this thing kind of sucks. It's not very helpful,
so I'd use it just for farming, and then i'd
just kind of swap out that third one for maybe
i'd you know, get the automatic rosary pickups. That was
what I usually had on, but sometimes i'd use the
shard one if I needed to kind of grind out
some shards, that kind of thing. I still didn't know
what the silk eater does. I was collecting those. I
eventually got ten, and I couldn't have any more. I
don't I don't know what it does. I don't know
if it heals you. I couldn't tell if it like
regens you when you die. And never tested it, just
totally forgot about it, never used it. And then I
have a bunch of extra memory locks. So I'm wondering
if there is an extra crest that maybe you are
specifically getting an Act three or just another hidden area
I didn't get. Now I think about it, I wonder
if it is doing that delivery up to the guy
in Mountain Fay, because he's talking about how like a
mask and mask and crests and masks are kind of similar.
But I feel like there's maybe one I didn't unlock,
so I'm curious what that would be. And then, yeah,
I wanted to talk about this quickly because I'm sure
everyone has their favorite places to grind in this game,
because sometimes I did want to just grind and make
a bunch of money. At one point I grind it
up to like, I think twenty six hundred rosaries, and
then I just went and bought a bunch of things,
which felt great. Well, not necessarily the grinding part, but
you know, just throw a podcast on YouTube video and
just smash out some grinding. But my go to place
was kind of in.
Speaker 2: The main hole to the left of.
Speaker 1: The first Shrine area where there's like those big warriors
kind of rate where you would go up to I
don't have the names for these things, but like kind
of at the very top of the map, the citadel
kind of where you enter the final boss and the
museum and the high halls all that kind of stuff.
There's like those four or five really big guys that
give like fifty or sixty rosaries per kill, especially when
you have that thieving equipment on. So that was my
go to grinding place because there's a nice bench kind
of in the center of all of them, and I
would just crush that and then i'd put on the
thing that give me like double damage, but I also
take double damage, and I would just smash through them
super quick, get a couple of my little cogflies in there,
and I would just destroy those guys grind a bunch
of money. So that felt really good. So yeah, that
was that was more master of my build. So I
guess that was kind of a quick, nimble sort of fighter.
I didn't have anything crazy on, no crazy high risk,
high reward builds, kind of a pretty standard sort of build.
But I don't know, I don't think the game gives
you too many options in that way. And then let's
see any other random thoughts. I think one of the
things I really liked about this game is that you'd
maybe go back to an area you've been to before
and there would be like some change in the environment,
like one of the things that happens is like you
go back to bone bottom and then like a boss
comes through and like takes out a couple of people
and like destroy some stuff and you gotta fight this boss.
Like just makes the world feel more lively.
Speaker 2: I liked that.
Speaker 1: The flea caravan would move around. That felt like it
was like they were an actual society that was moving
around and had goals. The beast fly that you had
to fight again when you go in like that lava
lava area in the far fields again, Like that was
really fun discovering that kind of by accident. And yeah,
like building up Bell Heart felt great. And getting your
own house, your own little cute bellhouse, building up the
first shrine town as well, Like I really like doing
all that stuff. And yeah, like the Citadel as well,
Like for it being kind of one, you know, many
zones within it, but one larger zone, it felt really authentic.
You know, like you have your place that has like
your kitchen and your food area. You have your hospital
type area, you have your places for warship, you have
your places for work, like the inner workings, the underworks
to make sure everything is functioning correctly of your museum,
like it just just felt like a very real place,
even though it's just just combat and there's not a
lot of like conversations to be had with NPCs in
those areas. I just thought that that place was extremely
well designed, and in general, the world building here is
super great.
Speaker 3: The writing.
Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't reading every line of dialogue exhaustively,
but for the most part, I really enjoyed this world.
It's just extremely bleak and dour, setting, really dark, really
messed up, but I don't know, glimmers of hope, I suppose,
but overall, I just found it really enjoyable and really believable,
even though it's like animated bug characters in like a
weird society, you know.
Speaker 3: On top of that, let's see.
Speaker 1: I already talked poison swamps.
Speaker 3: Grapple feels great.
Speaker 2: I really like that. The dash feels great.
Speaker 1: The double jump took me some getting used to because
it kind of has like that ness mewtwo like kind
of double jump where you kind of swoop down and
then up again. But once I finally got used to
all those things and I figured out that I could
do the downward slash. When I had that new crest man,
I was moving and grooving and it felt absolutely great.
And then yeah, I think maybe the one of the
last things series want to touch on is some boss highlights.
Speaker 3: Fuck Girl.
Speaker 1: I already talked about that goal the great hate it
sucks awful. The First Sinner is one of the Lake
game ones through the Slab, one of the last ones
I beat. I found that a really really fun fight
because you pretty much have to use the grapple to
be able to do damage, and so it was just
such a zippy fight, really tricky one. You're gonna have
to get your positioning down. Really really enjoyed that one.
The Unraveled I talked about is really hard but quite
satisfying when I finally beat it. Sister Splinter was an
early game one that was like pretty easy, but I
just found really fun and I really like the animations
for it. Widow was super hard pretty much any like
Spider Boss fight was hard generally speaking, like one of
the lace fights until I figured out some of the
cheese with parrying was like pretty tricky as well. Fourth
Chorus I really like just the size scale of that one.
I thought that one was really fun, the dancers really cool,
unique setup for that one.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed fighting that.
Speaker 1: And then I just in general the second Sentinel storyline
of like having to collect these three cog hearts from
different areas I think you find in the wild when
you have to buy from a shopkeeper, putting it into
this machine, it jets off, and then you're just finding
around the map destroying enemies for you. But then eventually
you have to like fight it to you know, cause
it's you're the last thing in its way, so to speak.
And that was a really tough fight, but that was
like a really cool little b plot storyline going on there.
So yeah, overall, I man, I freaking enjoyed this game
a lot. I think it's super great. Combat feels super good.
The movement feels really great, like just really fun platforming
challenges in the combat like not necessarily my favorite kind
of combat generally, but I found myself getting really into it,
you know, switching around my build. I like that kind
of stuff. Like I said, the perfect amount of mental load.
I feel like this game put on me of like
just the right amount of things kind of top of mind. Uh,
the addition of like just wishes everywhere, and adding like
a good sense of side quests and like filling in
the world exploration was super great. The amount of times
that some place in the world connected to another place
I'd been to through some crazy, weird, long concluded path
super satisfying and just makes me appreciate how much design
went into connecting all these areas and making it believable
in that way.
Speaker 3: Music's amazing that the.
Speaker 1: Art is gorgeous, just super layered and detailed and interesting,
but also has a ton of personality to it. So yeah, overall,
I really love my time with this game. I'm happy
that I can say I'm a holl of Night fan now,
even though I'm not a huge fan of the first game,
but like, I can understand why people love that first game,
and I'm glad that there's one of the games in
the series now that I do love as much as
anyone else. So yeah, this is going to be you know,
we're approaching game of the Year pretty soon here, in
just three months, so I don't want to spoil where
this game is on my list, but it's I think
right now, gonna be.
Speaker 3: Top three, top five for sure.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's my game of the year, it's
well it's not. I can confirm that, and I don't
think that'll change. But man, I really really.
Speaker 2: Enjoyed this game.
Speaker 1: I'm not even I guess I want to maybe make
this clear, is like, I'm not really salty about this
stuff with Act three. Like, to me, that feels like
here's a bonus challenge for people who are big fans
of the first game who want an extremely hard extra
thing to do. To me, it feels like a really
well segregated part where it's like, hey, if you want
to go do this thing, go for it.
Speaker 2: It's there for you.
Speaker 3: But if you just want that.
Speaker 1: Experience and you just want to beat the game and
roll credits, like me, it feels like it's an it's
a good out, like it's a good way to close
out your experience with this game. And so I think
it was. They kind of made it pretty clear. Even
just having an act break for it is kind of
a cool narrative way to do that as well.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm pretty happy with that.
Speaker 1: I'm not salty. I don't feel like I was undersold anything.
And you know, I played this game my game pass,
so I didn't pay for it directly. But even if
I did pay, I guess, like what thirty Canadian dollars
for it. I would have been extremely thrilled with how
much time I got out of it, and I wouldn't
be like, oh, that's so stupid that they gated off
this extra content by being extremely difficult. Like, I'm very,
very thrilled with my time with it here. So yeah,
if anyone else played through it, beat it, join the discord,
let me know what you thought. I'm curious if you
have any counterpoints or points on the things I talked
about here. But yeah, onto the next game. I've been
playing a lot of Tony Hawk. October has a ton
of games coming out, so I'm gonna be jumping into
a bunch of new things. But uh yeah, I'm really
glad that I could jump in and finally become a
whole night fan. So thank you everyone for listening to
this episode, and yeah, we'll see you in just a
few short days for the next weekly episode of Sidequest.
Speaker 2: Have a good one. Bye bye.